Fly.. I want to fLY!

        I gues it is really hard for me to keep one blog, this has happened for i don’t know how many times already. So many things have happened since I left a post here last time, which is exactly 2 months ago.

        I can see people wearig their college ties the whole last week. Photo taking session. With my own class, with the Library Council, with the String Ensemble, and the … Chinese Society… they all symbolised my leaving from Victoria.. It comes to its very own end…

         I have tried my best to concentrate myself back to the normal life I used to lead the last year. But I found it rather difficult with all the distractions. Everyday, I spend quite some time in computer lab just reading other’s blog, and interesting stuff from del.icio.us, or just simply browsing through flickr. And I spend even more time checking if there is any update of the colleges’ websites. And my academic is all lagging far behind. I am to have a biochem class test on this coming thursday. But I have just finished copying notes from my classmate the night before. Thank goodness we have this National Day Holiday for me to catch up.

         One good news is that I have started again do my running at night since Saturday. It makes me feel myself when I run lonely at the east coast, not just to enjoy the wind from ocean. Hope I can go back to the same ole routine of reading, running, studying, sleeping. I really have cut done the time I spend on playing NFSU2 and DW4. Well, catch it up. What can’t be done?

        Mathematics Revision Lectures, Physics Revision Lectures, Chemistry Revision Lectures.. plus General Papers, and that is all I have on my time table…

        We have ended all the new lessons this Tuesday. Endless (or sooner ending) revision lectures constitute my daily routine. I can hardly believe the fact that I am about to leave this school. The two years of my life at Victoria is about to come to its very end. This is the last day of week 5. How much time do I left? 4 more weeks. I can’t believe how time elapsed! What have I done for the last month.

        I have received their application forms yesterday, and found the college essay a killer!

2)   ” I like science – but only a little. What I love with all my heart is the universe. The world as revealed by cience is far more beautiful, and far more interesting, than we had any right to expect. Science is valuable because of the view of the universe that it gives.”

3)   “When we fear pluralism as the enemy, succumb to the allure of a seeming emotional unity or seek to enforce a meretricious purity of culture over rationalism and diversity, we turn cruel, whether or not we are conscious of it.”

4)  ”Krushchev’s mother instilled in him a sense of rectitude and responsibility, a conscience that carried with it the capacity for guilt and shame.”

5)  “I’m not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you’d let me, talk and talk…”

6)  ”Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.”

        Oh boy… Which one of these six do you think I can do. Anyway, I am dropping this institution. And by the way, Libin told me that neither of the two rjc seniors who applied to school had succeed.

        So I went for the Experiences 05 on Sunday afternoon. It was crowded as expected.

        I reached suntec at about 2; Libin was already there. So many schools was there. I went straight to the Dartmouth booth and met this nice guy. I told him I was a foreigner, and he said he was too! So the conversation went on smoothly. He told me he was given birth in Yunan and had his last four years of education here before going to Dartmouth. He held the passport of New Zealand. I could not believe I did not even ask whether he speak Chinese. And we talked in English all the way! (except only when he told me his family name, and that is Gong)

        It made me feel Dartmouth even more apealing after talking with him, albeit not much useful information was conveyed. I asked how it could help to made my applicance more successful (what an inane question!); and he told me I have to have one strong point about me. But I have such a vanilla extra curriculum activity list! He told me his was not outstanding either, but he had a good academic record. Oh well… I suppose everybody else had that. Whatever, he have 1580 for his SAT anyway. He told me that he felt the peer evaluation part of the application was extremely important; and he actually asked one of his teacher, who was also a good friend of his (is that called a ‘peer’?) to fill in the form. So sad the form was lost later and Li-ou(his name is Gong Li-ou) had not a chance to look at what exactly his friend wrote about him. I told him I wish I could see him at Dartmouth the next year, and we shaked hands.

        At the mean time, Libin asked the people at the Carleton booth about their school and the STRR scholarship. Not much useful information. The gal I met at the Vasssar booth was quite blur. She knew almost nothing. But still I got to know that 70 to 90 percent of the international students at Vassar are under finacial aid, and 1 in 24 of the international applicants with finacial aid succeeded in applying. Only 3 Singaporeans are there in the class of 08, with only 1 P.R.C (Is she sure?)

        There was this one episode during the show: the organiser had actually added in this luck draw session; and our Fang Shi won a LAPTOP! Well, pity him was not there to take away the prize, and he is now in such duldrums. Nobody knew it was a laptop then, otherwise we surely would take the prize for him. I stayed until four to wait for the last lucky draw. Hmmm… unlucky as I always.

         Colgate has sent me another mail with the application form.

        It arrived 3 days ago. These time round, the letter was not again signed with a pen. They are using the common application as everybody else does. And the $55 application fee is waived if the forms are submitted electrically. I am just so glad that everybody is using the commonapp.

        But it comes with an application supplement, which contains an extra essay I have to do. ” In 250 words or less, please respond to the following: What is the one object you would bring with you to Colgate? Why? “ What a question! I have absolutely no idea at all what to write. And I consulted Mrs. Koh yesterday after her class. By the way, we finally got back our GP papers yesterday. And guess what, it is the first time I got more than 50 for the paper. I think there are so many in my class who failed it. Siming got 44, and he was coaxing Mrs. Koh for that 1 mark. I just can’t believe that I have 4 and half for my vocab, even vincent got only 2 and half. I don’t think I can ever do that again.

        Anyway. I was thinking that object Colgate asking for is something amorphous, which does not necessary take a shape, like my charactor, attitude, etc. However Mrs. Koh told me I can write something physically too, like my laptop! How the hell I am going to write about my laptop. But that indeed sounds genius. HS said she was planning to apply to Colgate too. So I asked her option about this essay. She agreed with me yesterday that the object could be something abstract. But today she told me she thought that object should be a physically thing. Whatever, I will have to think about this during the weekend.

        I think  is really a great tool. I have just googled that question. I don’t see any discussion about it yet. But google has returned me the link of the original application form from Colgate which is a PDF file. That means they can scan the content of PDF files! Oh my…  Wait.. I think I was using that feature for all time, just not realising that the content was actually excerpted from a PDF file. Anyway.. Living in the era of WEB 2.0 is really great!

        ”I think London got fucked again” – Libin smsed me at 2230 last night. I only got to see the message at 2 this morning, immediately I turned my radio to BBC. But it was broadcasting some dull stuff about Afghanistan then. It was not until 230 then I confirmed the news.

        WEB 2.0 really alters the way we are living on this planet. When I check the internet today, there was already millions of pages regarding the new London Attack II.

        On the frontpage of, it says:

After this morning’s events, we’re thrilled to see a surge in submissions (5-10 per minute, currently). In addition, we have several thousand images backlogged, waiting to be posted. Our team is working tirelessly to make sure that your photos are added as soon as possible.

        There has already 220 galleries on their server. It was less than 20 when I first heard about their site. And tags like bomb, bombs, bombings, terror become the most popular ones on in the past few hours. The world is really getting smaller with this interconnectness promoted by all these technology.

        America is not safe, now neither UK. I can’t imagine if I was on the tube with a bomb on it. But that should not be a reason to stop me. Is Singapore really that safe?

        I was so on about the US application, so that I almost forgot to do my UCAS application. I only have it registered on Wednesday. And I received emails from Mr. Cook yesterday, he scolded me severly..

        In his first email, he writes:

You are on the ucas apply database as cambridge but have not signed for a cambridge application form. what are you actually doing? Mr C

        I replied him immediately, and asked where I can obtain the form

why didn’t you get it on one of the three occasions I issued them to the rest of the year 2s? see me on Monday

        then I asked if I can get it done this week.

NO I’m busy/away all day. See me on Monday as requested below.

        Well, guess he is really upset about me. But I really never knew that he actually gave out the forms on three different occasion. How can I miss all three of them? I don’t have much time left to finish my personal statement. And I just have no idea at all what to write to those English guys.

        Went for this presentation by alumni in American University on Wednesday. Most of them are studying public schools.

        Most of the presentations are dull. Except for one guy from class 99S2. He took his undergraduate degree in Cornell, and have just finished his master in Columbia. There was a good point which he emphasize on. He said you should develop a broad range of interest during your undergraduate time, and only goes specific in postgraduate school.

        There is also another interesting or rather scary fact he brought about. He said last year, out of the seven colleges in cornell, Singaporeans topped 5 of them. I thought there should me more Chinese? Anyway, that reveals there are really a lot of Singaporeans there in the school, which is errrrrrrrrrrrr….. I am also wondering how many out of these five was an rjc alumni.

        I have got only one useful piece of information, althought I spent 2 hours listening to those dull soporific presentation. There will be an information fair on 24 July by Singaporean students in US universities held at suntec city. It is called Experiences 2005. I have just checked their website, and found a lot of schools will be represented. Dartmouth will come, Carleton will, Vassar and WUSTL will be presented too. Hmmm, I think it should be useful.

        I think I am a positive person, but just now I found someone more optimistic than me.

        Have heard about the 43things and its imitators for quite sometime. Today, I found this subsidiary website of it, 43places. Found it rather interesting, so I signed up an account. And the great thing is the two accounts are afflicated! That is great!

        I spent quite sometime surfing the two sites, study what things other people want to do, and where everybody else want to go. Quite an enjoyable experience. And the site is well linked to flickr. Hrrr, great things all come at one go!

        I have register Ace the New SAT as my first wish. And Get all As on my A level as well. Not much time left for me. Work hard, enjoy, c’est la vie!