bringing the japs around

this weekend has been a really long and memorable :D. at first i was worried my buddy would judge me cos he's a cool guy and i'm like... this. but turned out he's a really funny and nice guy.

anyway, its really fun being the tour guide. i feel really glad when i manage to get my buddy(s) to be amazed or to laugh. it really helped that i went to japan before, cos i can understand how they feel. so i kinda put in more effort to make sure they don't get sian or something by trying to joke around and stuff. managed to have quite a good time talking to them haha.

anyway this post is going to be extremely long. ya.

saturday was our group outing. it had a kind of ice-breaker feeling, where we all just mixed around with each other's buddies. went to school early at 9 and ate breakfast together with the japs. after that, we went to bugis street to buy the drinks there. it was quite a sight, cos we just ordered ten drinks in one row. after that, we went to shop for souvenirs, and they were quite surprised at how cheap everything there was. actually, i'm quite shocked too haha.

after that ate lunch at bugis junction. i let my buddy try indonesian food, bbq chicken penyet. so one moment he was dying from the spicyness, then next moment he was like thumbs up haha.

went to gardens by the bay after that


rainbow in the waterfall :D

went up to the top to look at all the venus fly traps and pitcher plant and trying to explain what they are. then after we went to the crystal mountain section where we took group photos through the mirrors lol. it was like mass camwhoring :0

last part was the nicest part, cos all the plants had really nice shapes and structures :D. there was this plant that had a spiral and looked like spaghetti lol.


and weethean was talking about asses and d...

try to unsee that :0

after leaving gbtb, we decided to detour and walk towards promenade instead. we happened to walk past the ndp practice, and we were really lucky, cos we saw the parachuters landing, the helicopters, the tanks shooting. we even saw a group of ppl marching past us when we crossed the road haha. it was pretty interesting actually. i'd be really amazed if i wasn't a singaporean haha.



i realised it was quite a waste that i din't go flyer, cos there would have been fireworks, and that would have been really amazing. but ok la the bbq was also pretty fun :D. the food was really good, like the beef and the chicken wing, and the fish and the salmon. everything was tasty actually :P

anyway, things got interesting when they started trying to feed their friends food they don't like, like corn or mushrooms. and they were challenging each other to eat the spicy squid heheh. even i found it quite spicy lol.

the best part was the durian though. at first all the japs were like running away and shaking their head, but after that, they tried, and although some of them were like repulsed, some actually seem to like it, even though they felt it smelled bad haha. waa it was really enjoyable, the bbq.

anyway, yx's buddy followed me back home cos he wasn't able to host. learnt that our buddies also like playing games, like us. there was temple run, flow, badlands, etc. so maybe its not just us addicted to phone games haha.

reached my home at like 12 though, so we couldn't really do anything. mostly they were looking at my one piece comics and duel master cards haha. laid up like two mattresses in my room and we all slept at abt 1.

went to the market today, and showed them around to the vegetables, fruits and fish. part of the fun is trying to come up with analogies for the stuff they didn't recognize, and yea i use alot of broken english and japanese :P. after that we ate noodles, then walked around the market, and they were interested in the praying items.

after that, we left for sentosa and turned out yx wasn't coming. firstly, went to the merlion. after that, we took the train down to see the sea aquarium. at first, we spent alot of time queuing and stuff, but when we went in, it was pretty amazing :D.





after that, we went to the malaysian food street, where we ate the famous chicken rice ball, and i got the penang laksa which was delicious. after that, we shared chendol, which i nvr dared to tried until now, and damn, it was really good. the japs also seemed to like it (yea), though they were like saying cold most of the time.

intended to go to adventure cove for the afternoon, but turns out u can't just go in with any kind of clothes after all. couldn't enter cos our pants had zips and buttons, and it was too expensive to buy trunks and stuff. so had to change plans halfway and decided to go to luge and skyride instead




after that we just ended the sentosa thing by going to the beach and playing with the sand, writing stuff on the beach, and doing jumpshots :D

i guess we were too tired to throw each other into the sea lol.

ate dinner at clementi, and yea my buddies all knocked out in the car, though surprisingly i din't feel that tired even though my legs were completely dead from so much walking. ate at crystal jade. (ok its not that ex as it sounds, just around $15 per person).

after that we brought them around clementi mall, which they actually found pretty interesting cos there was the pineapple tart, and also the floss from the mei zhen xiang there. we also brought them to look at the fruits in the supermarket, especially at the mangoes, cos they love it and its much cheaper here than over there. basically, we were being evil and tempting them with all the food haha. they were like considering to buy, so i agreed to bring them back there if i had the chance.

so yea super long weekend (and super long post). really excited to see them in sch tmr haha. ok nites ~~

start of term 3

blogging again after mia-ing for so long lol.

anyway, its start of week 3 now (so fast), but at the same time i felt like i did quite a lot of fun stuff within the first two weeks :D. and school. i know some ppl begrudge not having time, homework sucks, etc, etc... but waa im seriously enjoying myself here haha. maybe its cos im a slacker who drops bio, who stays out late to play even though i live so far, who does alot of retarded stuff when i get the chance to. school's fun :)

anyway, even though i stopped blogging so much, i still keep a really short log of the interesting stuff i did that week haha. youth day, class outing (swag yo!). tuesday, gong cha, fun run! (and the very embarassing, stupid thing that happen that luckily not many knows about). wednesday, board games cafe, so worth the $6 spent. 

this week was pretty fun too haha. yesterday, art workshop :D. made something i'm unreasonably proud of and hidden somewhere retarded lol. today, RM, after such a long time off. made really retarded but fun games too haha. and we're planning a surprise for wong heheh :P.

excited for my buddy to come this friday :D. previously i was worried i'll get judged by my buddy, but now i feel like i got a dozen things that i might want to do haha. hope it goes well ~~

k anyway that's all for now. let's just say i'm also a last minute chionger haha. bye ~~

sep stuff

i've done quite alot of things recently but haven't really been updating. so gonna just copy and paste my sep reflections here lol, since it doesn't take time :0

"One of the biggest differences I noticed between life in Japan and Singapore is that their students there are more dedicated to their CCAs and seem to enjoy school more. Also, they have many activities outside school, and do not solely just rely on the computer for entertainment.

My buddy happened to bring me along to some learning center where she goes weekly to practice calligraphy, which is also her CCA, and she has been doing this for the past 9 years. Also, she plays the piano extremely, extremely well, and I also heard from her mom that she swims really well. Probably this is because these are the activities that my buddy spends her free time on instead of always using the computer like me, which is why she turned out to be so talented, unlike me :0.

Despite having so many activities, my buddy showed me this log that she said the school asked them all to do. It is a rather detailed timetable of the things to do after school, and there’s an allocated time to study, to practice the piano, to eat, etc. Their lives are well regulated and they exercise much more discipline than us Singaporeans.

Another thing I realized during my stay in Japan is the difference between living in a small and a big country. There is a lot to see and do over in Japan, thus their family often goes on short day trips to different places to do things. Transport is much more time-consuming in Japan though, despite the very efficient train system. The distance between two stops on the map seems very short, but it is actually a very long walking distance due to the size of the city, and also it is pretty expensive travelling in Kyoto, especially without a train pass.

One thing I really enjoyed was the class visit during the second last day. We had music, Japanese, PE, physics, and flower arrangement lessons. From what I heard from the people there, the students also have lifestyle lessons, where they learn where their food comes from, or how to do daily stuff, and also cooking. I feel that this kind of education is both interesting and useful.

Despite the academic abilities of the students in our school, many people do not know the nitty gritty interesting facts about daily life, and end up not knowing stuff or how to handle simple problems when they arise. Of course, our school focuses heavily on math and sciences, so there may not be the time or resources for this kind of activities, but I feel that it is both interesting and meaningful, and that this kind of information is worth knowing.

Physics was quite interesting as we learnt how to make and see rainbows. The lecture was quite technical and draining, so we saw some of the students dozing off during the lecture, which was amusing, because no matter whether we’re Japanese or Singaporean, there are some similarities between us :P. The practical part of the lesson was a very simple experiment that involved a black paper, spray glue, and some sort of small circular glass balls that allows us to see a rainbow due to refraction of light. It was a simple and fun experiment, which I feel that might make lessons interesting. However, it may not be so applicable to our school because our schedule is tight and every experiment we do has some much more complicated theory to it. The lessons were generally pretty fun to attend.

Of course, not everything went perfectly smoothly throughout the trip. I felt that the NINS workshop was really time-consuming considering that we didn’t really do much there. I regretted choosing basic biology instead of molecular science because I was interested to find out more about biology since I didn’t take it from year 5 onwards. However, it turned out that I wasn’t able to understand almost everything as it required certain genetic modification knowledge that I wasn’t taught, and thus wasn’t really able to help my groupmates come up with a presentation, and therefore it didn’t had much content in it. However, to those who did take bio, they felt like they didn’t really learn anything from the trip, and as the presentations were done in English with most of the content presented by the Singaporeans, I felt like the Japanese students didn’t really receive much out from this workshop either.

However, as it is one of the only academic activities during the trip, it was necessary to do this. The experience of trying to communicate with our groupmates and staying in a hostel where we had to do everything for ourselves was unique, and we did learn some things out of it, even though it wasn’t really pleasant.

Another issue that happened was that I think I caused quite a bit of problem for my buddy, because I requested to go to places with other people in the group. I was quite unlucky for this trip because I wasn’t able to access wi-fi and was unable to contact the rest of the group, and also, my buddy planned the activities for me but wasn’t able to tag along because of her tests.

I think that my buddy got quite stressed because I had to contact the others via my buddy contacting their buddies, and it was much harder than I expected to organize a group outing as our Japanese buddies did not really know each other that well, and some of them had already planned activities beforehand. Therefore, I think I kind of killed the mood a little on Saturday because my buddy started arguing with her mom, and I also kind of unintentionally troubled my buddy’s mom as she went to call the other party’s parents to see if they are okay with a group outing. I was trying to tell them not to worry if it’s too troublesome, but communication problems kind of prevented me from doing that.

Therefore, I felt quite guilty that I troubled my buddy so much just to plan these activities for me. In the end, I still had a pretty fun trip on Sunday going to Nara to see the deer with Yi Xuan, and we also managed to squeeze a small group outing on the second last day of the trip, which was extremely fun though quite short, so it worked out pretty well.

Overall, the trip felt quite short and I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted, such as buying souvenirs for friends, but all in all, I enjoyed my stay in Japan, got to eat quite a bit of nice food, and received really good hospitality. On my buddy’s side, they were trying their best to ensure my stay was a good one, so even though not everything went the way I wanted it, I realized from some of these issues that it is not solely just what I want, and sometimes it is better to not be so assertive if it would be troublesome for my buddy. Thus, I’m really grateful to my host family.

Now that I’ve been to Kyoto and received such good hospitality, although the buddy that would be coming over wouldn’t be the same one, I’ll most probably be able to better empathize with him since I’ve experienced the outbound trip. Therefore, I’ll try my best to accommodate to my buddy’s needs, and try to do as much as I can with the existing barrier. And most of all, I’d like me and my buddy to have as much as possible when he comes over soon! :D"

anyway, if u managed to actually read all that, yea im kinda happy that i get a second chance, and it feels much easier to host than to go there and interact cos i've got more stuff to tell my buddy. and i kinda met him before too, somehow. lucky. but then im kinda worried that my buddy will judge me cos he looks quite the popular guy. sigh i have no confidence.

but yea, i think i've got quite a lot of things i want to tell my new buddy that i din't get to say to my old buddy. see how it goes. its only next next week :D. bring them around, especially now that i get how it feels like to be an outbound buddy. intending to host some bbq at one of the weekends (and jio ppl :P). and then i get to go night safari for the first time lol. pretty excited haha

kk anyway, that's all for now. bye ~~

talent search

today was pretty entertaining haha. our class went up first, so we kind of got it over and done with when there was still lesser people and got to watch the rest of the performances. the group performances were all pretty entertaining, especially the bands. galen is too good at hyping up the crowd lol. and even though dice din't win top 3 positions, i thought playing gentleman was quite cool haha.

quite relieved that it's over. it went pretty well haha, what with the many screwups on our last minute preparations within the last two days. but yea la there's a upper limit with our performance, and compared to other groups there, we were really lucky to get in lol. but anyway its really satisfying to perform as a class without screwing up :P.

kinda feel like doing our band thing again, just for the sake of fun. wanna try more jap songs. dreamriser! or fate-zero songs. or any song actually. just wanna try doing a jap song again. got more motivated to learn lyrics and stuff ever since coming back from sep haha.

speaking of sep, i guess i haven't really been blogging lately about my trips or stuff, so ppl don't really know what i did there. i just completed my reflections like 1 hour ago, so maybe, if u guys want, i can upload it lol. have quite alot of post i should catch up on, but not sure whether i'll actually do them in the end... so yep, anyway tmr i'm playing mahjong again lol. this week's been filled with quite a lot of activities and its pretty decent, except i got valles for english yet again D:. DDDDDD:

anyway, that's all for now. bye ~~

one whole month of travelling

sorry for being mia for so long. i kinda left without saying a word lol. finally received internet access yesterday, and boom all the notifications. but since now i have some time, just gonna make a short post.

so yea, im back after travelling for so long haha. first japan for sep, then london and ireland for my sis graduation. its been a lot of fun haha. experienced alot of things, took alot of photos, drank alot of tea, whether jap or english haha.

anyway, dunno by pure coincidence or not, the haze got really bad here lol. like seriously? 400? how's that possible lol. my eldest sister (back in singapore) even whatsapped herself wearing a N95 mask haha. and yea the haze is kinda gone now, and all school activities cancelled. maybe im lucky haha. but the weather's really weird now. it snowed? in singapore? ok more like chunks of ice fell at the west side lol. kinda wish it'll blow over to the east hehe.

anyway, england and ireland was really fun haha. this time more free and easy then sep. din't really have time to do much, but it was interesting. london was really nice, because the old buildings like the castles and villages are located next to modern buildings and yet it goes together so well. since for so many years they have been accumulating more and more over the super long history.

what's more i really enjoyed all the medieval history stuff haha. knights and weapons and armor and stuff. the history was actually pretty similar to the books i read, like the url of my blog :0, so i actually knew quite a bit heheh. so yea, i was really amazed by all the stuff i seen there.

ireland was also quite special, with its pub culture. the food is really good. drank some alchohol haha. guiness originated from ireland, and i also tried irish coffee, which is basically bailey's added into coffee haha. went to see some museum about vikings too :D.

ireland is also extremely scenic (according to my sister's photos), though we really had no time to tour around, cos was there mainly for the graduation ceremony. my sister's degree is like equivalent to a 4 year uni degree at trinity even though she went there only 3 months. that's pretty darn amazing haha. she's certified now heheh.

anyway, enough for now haha. im really lucky haha, still gonna go out for 2/3 more days in this holiday :P. gonna catch up with my anime, and RM haha. and need to finish my sep reflections lol. maybe i'd try to make some photoposts too, since photos of my trip are finally up heheh.

so little time left, and it'll be school again >.<. but i had a whole bunch of fun for 2 whole months already haha. dk how im gonna going back. been sleeping really late this days, and i can't blame jet lag lol. dunno how im gonna cope haha, haven't been in touch with any work-related stuff for 2 whole months :P.

k going off le. bye~~

back from SEP

just came back home today. as much as i would like to stay there for much longer, it somewhat feels quite good to be back home haha. the weather there was really great, but i guess im quite used to this warm weather too. probably will get sick of it within 1 or 2 days though lol.

gonna just post a short summary of the trip first.

first two days were really great. at first when i met my buddy's host family, it was really fun, because my buddy's family were quite a lively outspoken bunch.

my buddy's eng was pretty good, so almost everything that i know in jap, she can do it in english. yea din't really try talking in jap all the time cos it was somewhat awkward. but anyway, it was pretty fun talking in english + half broken jap, and actually the confusion in communication was what made it interesting.

we had no lessons for first two days cos the rits students had an excursion and some games day thing. so it wasn't that much to do. first day, i ate curry for dinner, second day takoyaki, which i tried making too and din't really succeed cos i broke quite a few while inverting them. regret not taking photo for this haha.

the third day we had to go over to NINS for some science workshop. honestly it was quite sian. and me and chee shudn't have chose basic bio, cos it wasn't basic at all, at least to us ppl who dropped bio. well we managed to get by without really understanding how it works. me, hong jing and chee were mainly trying to help them translate what they wanted to say into english.

and anyway, we stayed overnight at some hostel during the workshop. its abit shabby i guess, but wasn't too bad ba. bath was public, though there were screens for shower. food was not too bad actually. well the girls apparently stayed up gossiping about the guys, while the guys just talked random stuff. played some cards and so on.

so anyway our presentation was quite bad, cos compared to other groups, we couldn't reinforce the knowledge cos we din't really get anything. but we were first to present and it din't really matter i guess. went to toyata museum and it was really cool, with the car assembly demonstrations and some random place called technoland with a 15 m/s wind machine haha.

i kinda felt that we wasted two days though, since travelling from kyoto to nagoya took 3 hours, and it was like 5 by the time we came back. 

then it was the weekends. kinda wanted to arrange going out as a big group, or at least a small group with chee and hong jing and whoever else who wanted to follow us, cos we wanted to shop for anime stuff together. 

thing was my buddy had no wifi at all, so i couldn't use whatsapp and couldn't contact ppl directly. calling was really troublesome, idk why, cos their contract doesn't allow them to call much, its usually messages. so i guess i kinda put my buddy under quite a lot of stress trying to organize some outing to nara and shopping afterwards.

well it turned out pretty okay. visited a few places like some castle called niji-jo and arashiyama, which seems like a really nice place to hang around in summer. was without my buddy for both trips though. and i kinda wanted to go with friends too, but we weren't able to organize that so it was more like a family outing kinda thing. my buddy's young sister is very hyper and cute haha, so it was pretty fun too. sunday went to nara with yx to see all the deer :D. was really fun haha. but again my buddy couldn't go cos of exams.

well, i had quite a lot of fun for the weekend though i wanted to go with like chee and maybe spend some time shopping and looking for anime stuff and fazzing about stuff or something. i din't know it'll be so difficult to organize that, cos every family had their own plans, so i guess i created much more trouble for my host family than i expected, which i felt quite guilty about. but overall i enjoyed what they arranged for me

so yea i guess this trip i was pretty unlucky in the sense that i couldn't really interact much with my buddy. and after the stress of planning where do i go for the weekends, it got a little bit more awkward and we din't have as much to talk as before.

monday was like the last chance for desperate shopping. was a school day, and was pretty packed but there were lots of interesting activities. well their music lesson was unique, then a survival jap lesson. their pe was surprisingly fun. for physics we made a rainbow, and there was a flower arrangement after that, which we fooled around with. like making some spiral thing with the spare stems that we cut off.

after that, with some pleading and requesting i managed to get me, chee, yx, yong kuan and hong jing to go around shijo. we visited fushimi inari shrine first, which was some cool shrine near the school, though we spent less than 30 mins there. 

shijo was really fun for me. i guess the rest bought their stuff already, but i haven't, cos i din't get the chance to during the weekend. went to animate awhile, again, though me and chee din't really have time to look around much, again, so we just got jookee's mag and went out. too bad i guess, so no anime souvenirs.

went around to get shirts, headbands, some food souvenirs. ate ramen, played taiko for awhile with chee. and it was already quite late D: so we couldn't go to the 100 yen shop or go to animate to look for stuff again. went to see fireflies instead. there was only a few that day though, compared to other days, but still pretty interesting.

spent like 4.4k yen in the airport cos otherwise i wouldn't have any souvenirs to give u guys. so yep sry, there's nothing but food that i can give. since everyone seems to have came back from their own programmes and stuff, i kinda want to have some outing for everyone to share food, souvenirs, and talk about some stuff haha.

so yea the trip was over like that. it was 8 days after all, but i felt it was quite a pity cos i din't get to do as much as i expected. but i guess im pretty grateful to my host family because they tried to engage me. wasn't the tearful goodbye like some of the other buddies, but yea i kinda liked my host buddy's family and i guess i'll miss them haha.

so yea that's about it lol. maybe i'll add pics that i took with my terrible phone camera. and i guess this wasn't as summarized as i thought it'll be haha. but anyway, it's pretty good to be back :D

pre-flight unease

its just a few days before the trip, but each day feels so long and suddenly i feel like i don't know what to do.

its not exactly that i'm worried for the trip or anything. ok at first i was, what with all the stuff that ppl keep telling me. and also for awhile, i felt that i'd be extremely awkward and screw things up when i go there. 

now its more like i'm feeling somewhat sian. especially after finishing the info booklet and presentation. idk what else is there to do. i watch anime, but then not continuously, since i have the feeling like there isn't much time before the flight and i should be doing something else. 

maybe its cos i've been tolerating a lot of stuff since thursday, boredom, anger, worry, discomfort. 

my mum has been really, haiz, irritating and stuff. especially since thursday, where there was no school. sometime it gets pleasant and stuff, then other times, it just gets really annoying cos she keeps ranting on and i just disagree on some things, and then she says i shouldn't be like that or why am i always like that. and then i realise i don't feel like disagreeing anymore, but it doesn't stop, and i just sigh and shut up. but it happens so many times a day that sometimes i get angry too. grrr. a lot of pent-up moments since thursday.

finally got the packing done, with quite a lot of help from my mum. which makes me realise that i still get helped quite a lot.

i guess i did have quite a large share of fun since exams ended. like really. just that maybe i stopped blogging about them, but at least i noted them down. running man. karuta. outings to ppl's house, pool, movies, halo, board games. even organized a bbq and sleepover.

so yea. when monday night finally arrives (which feels like forever), i'll feel much better. please come. faster >.<