2008

hmm. so i'm finally gonna post about 2008.

2008 was an ok year. it's supposed to be my big year cuz it's my last year in RI. it's been fun but i wish i've been able to do more.

so well, here are the stuff that i experienced in 2008.

1. PSL
PSL was a great experience. spending 3 whole days + 7 PSGM sessions + first day + all the suanning from Matthew was extremely fun. although i wasn't SPSL, i must say i was a brilliant PSL (haha ego!). but i myself was quite surprised with what i could do. haha. i thot i would have some problems dealing with the sec 1s especially since i couldn't really speak well esp. loudly and well, i'm not the impromptu kind of speaker. but somehow i did it without knowing i could do it. i guess being a brotherly figure as Mrs. Maas suggested was good and doing stuff together with them made them respect me cuz at least they knew i wasn't just another slacker who was ordering them to do stuff. but yeah. it was hell fun. especially the first day and the 3 day camp. haha. if OBS kick-started 2007, PSL kick-started my 2008. seeing all the smiles from all the sec 1s after everything was the best reward i guess. (: 1Q OWNS YOU!

2. SIMC
SIMC was the high point in term 2. it was really a stroke of luck that i got to participate in this international competition. jeremy sia, who was supposed to be the leader of a team, had to go to korea for the dunno what competition luh. haha. so at track and field meet, Mr. Kwa suddenly came up to me and asked whether i'd like to participate and of course i answered yes. haha. once in a lifetime opportunity. and it was a good choice indeed. having nicholas and brian in my team, we knew we were going to get owned by barry, vincent and ivan and even ziyang, huiyao and alan but we didn't give up. we did our best, meeting up for long periods to discuss our solution and we did it! somehow we did it. although we would have preferred a better reward than just a second prize in the pre-site category, the experience was worth it. it seemed impossible at first to come up with an algorithm... the question looked almost impossible but somehow we solved it. though it wasn't exactly the best solution, we were so close to it. combining the greedy algorithm, and some genetic algorithm with our own method of rectangulation, we managed to come up with a solution that could easily match that of 2D cut logic. haha imba ownage. as for the on-site category, we too came up with an innovative solution which was simple to use and effective but unfortunately we didn't win a prize but it was a really great experience and i had lots of fun at NUS with everyone esp. interacting with the foreigners. and of course math RA this year was fun as well with me getting a double silver in senior and open woohoo!

3. Shanghai Trip
The Shanghai Trip was almost similar to last year's Dwen An Trip. Occuring in mid july, and in the midst of lots of CCTs, i somehow didn't even think before signing up. why? it was free. haha. who cares whether or not the itinerary is boring or whether i was going to fail my english or math cct which was gonna be on the day after i came back. and woah it was another great experience. although i must say the dwen an trip was still pure ownage, this was a brillian trip as well. firstly, it was free haha. i mean, free trip to shanghai + money given for us to spend, that's just fantastic right? and den, i got to know a bit of stuff involving aerospace which i knew nothing about at first. haha. although currently, i must say i've forgotten nearly everything, at least i'm proud that i once knew some stuff about aerospace ><. but the most important thing was the friends i made there. everyone there was nice haha. and we formed an IP club which was fantastic. in fact, we are meeting this sunday for a gathering! says a lot about us right. the time spent there was just too great to be true. at first it was me with 39 strangers going to a strange and super hot (40 degrees) country but it didn't take long before we got to know each other and making fun of each other and having loads of fun there. Jun Liang the mature and Ernest the i'm sin2x and you're cos2x from TJ, Lijie the "my hair is falling againnn" and Yitao the brainy from RJ, joel and me from RI, Tiansheng the sicko from HCI... haha we had lots of fun Indian Pokering and sabo-ing. (: den there was Chu Ming also from TJC with whom i had a lot of great escapes (like escaping from science centre to go visit some damn cheap mall and being asked to buy 黄色光碟)... haha. and hester from RV, and pauline the EC and many others hahahaha. it was a super fun trip. and of course i got to show off some of my cantonese speaking skills mmhmm. (: super super fun. and surprisingly, i didn't screw up my CCTs, with a respectable 18/25 for english and 25.5/30 for math.

4. CCAs
This year was another great CCA year for me. haha. firstly, i got started on interact with daqiao mentoring and well at least i didn't pon that much and the kids know that i'm patrick haha. it was fun getting to know the kids there, helping them out in any way possible and trying to make them better. although i can't say i've done much, it was still a good experience. the worst part was trying to keep them sitting but i guess it was part and parcel of the job haha. den of course soccer after the mentoring was the reward and it was always fun with guowei owning the kids haha oops i mean errr having fun with the kids. then, this year was my vchair year for RIweiqi. omg. haha. this is i guess the worst part. i did absolutely nothing for them and i'm sort of feeling very guilty. sigh. well, at least i did well in qiuping, getting everybody down, and making it count at the important moment and having fun with everyone there. haha secured another double 2nd. and an individual prize woohoo. and den there was RICO which had lots of ups and downs. but in the end, i did everything i thought i was supposed to do (except maybe attendance and attending exco meetings) haha oops. i'm not sure, but i think it's the usual pracs where you interact with your members that really counts as to whether or not you're a good SL. i didn't do as good a job as i would have wanted to. chu ming and cui cheng still aren't enthu but at least i somehow, although unknowingly, made liwei super enthu and zhaolin a bit enthu. hahaha. i really forgot how i did it but yeah, at least there's a little hope left for RICO perc. RICO this year was all about preparing the next batch for SYF so it wasn't really that much fun as last year. but at least concert was quite fun. not as fun as last year's but at least this year i got to perform with fellow RICO percussionists haha. last year was just too fantastic luh i loved every moment of it. this year, lots of screw ups, not a good end to things but at least, we performed. the special thing this year was of course the guest performances for RIGE and RISE. the RIGE one was more of getting a free ticket to RIGE concert but it was fun to be rehearsing with them esp. since 4B spams RIGE. RISE was the really nice one maybe except for the scoldings from Mr. Sze. but thinking back, it was quite hilarious. haha. 1st rehearsal, i still hadn't looked through my score. and the first thing he says is Variation M. *flip score, find variation M, STUN". omg. haha my solo? haha after approximately 5 mins of constant screw up, he gave us all up. haha but in the end, i managed to prac everything well until... on that day itself... i kicked the gong. oops. haha BAM. gong falls on stage. lol. that was the most epic, the string broke, panic broke out wthhh. omg hahah. it was really scary on stage but at least it's fond memories now haha. performing with jerald, benjamin, james, kenneth and bernard was a fantastic experience. YAY! (: bernard was especially nice for praising me for my timp strokes (which i thot was extremely lousy). haha i guess when you learn under singapore's best timpanist (at least mr. ngoh thinks so), it's hard to be that bad. and i love the pieces we played. yay.

5. 4B'08
4B was surprisingly even better than 3B which i thot was already some imba class. haha. added lots of close friends esp. jinghui, who is still losing to me 9-9 in 7HP and jie liang and lumpy. hahaha. but we had lots more fun this year than last year. all the interclass decoration where we stayed back together to decorate the class. and den there was raffles soccer league and i finally got my debut. haha. my debut was a 2-0 loss to some class but well, at least i wasn't to blame for the 2 goals (ahem. i wonder who was.). but immediately after that, i played a second game against the supposedly very strong 4T and we owned them 5-1. so that was cool. haha. i remember stopping saiful on a 1-on-1 situation when we were 1-0 up and getting a pat on the back from my teammates from it. haha that was very nice. and PE was fun this year for me because it was soccer! haha. the best match was definitely the one where i scored a hat trick including chipping over shu kiat. that was extremely fun. (: and i played as a substitute against another class as well, winning 2-0 so that was good as well. although we didn't get a 4th place finish like last year, at least i got to play yay. hmm. den EOY was another show of our class spirit where near or even more than 30 files were shared on the e-grp. haha. must thank lumpy for that hey? den we had class chalet which was another super fun event, pairing up with ben yong in bridge and owning everyone or playing mahjong and keep getting owned. oops. but i guess it was really the day-to-day activities in school which really showed how close we were. having recess and lunch together as a class was usually the best times i had in school and talking cock with ying xiang and suanning him everyday was fun haha. sigh. won't get to do that next year... so 4B just owns.

6. Go6P
We went even further this year, usually expanding our gatherings with lots of people joining. haha. shu jian, jinghui, lumpy, jie liang, shu kiat amongst many others. so it was more fun and more enjoyment. the best moment must have been the birthdays. junsheng's birthday was fun when we were making that HUGE card for him. jerald's one was the most fantastic where we went SINGAPORE FLYER. zomg. cool. that was a totally ownage experience. having so many friends up there high up in singapore. although it was only 30 mins, it was worth the money. and of course my birthday was fun too, getting so many presents (esp. love jerald's card, the soccer ball and kenneth's origami which is superrr nice), getting a treat to cafe cartel (sigh i was sick that day whyyy...), having fun playing MEP tennis ball soccer and sending jean off to UK. haha. it was all fun and more fun (: of course not forgetting all our outings to mind's cafe and our trips to S11 everyday during EOY period. this is the closest group of friends i've ever had (: haha actually i think i'm very lucky to have a really close group of friends everywhere i am. in P1-P4 it was YIP and NIGEL. we had lots of fun den. in P5-P6 it was SHIHAO, DEWEISON and MAXSON. haha those were damn nice times and the constant suanning of each other was the best parts. den in S1-S2, edward, yingjie, rich, kejing (in sec 1), with inclusion of many others like joshua, weijie, victor, jaryl (in sec 2) made my 2 years in 1H and 2H rock. and of course 3B'07 and 4B'08, it's Go6P. YEAH! WE ROCK!

7. RE
this year's RE was another great experience. haha although we didn't get another prestigious attachment to IBN, we did get a respectable one from SP and we did an even harder project to understand regarding some protein production (maybe cuz it's bio so i took much more time to understand what i was doing). but we did well in practically everything we did. we started off very slow but through the imbaness of the team, we pulled through again. distinction in YSC was wonderful haha. i remember all the rehearsals we had and all the screwups but we pulled through. and of course, there was RE congress. it wasn't as smooth sailing as last year. we didn't do well in the preliminary stages but we scraped through. we totally screwed up our semis but we still scraped through somehow (cuz they didn't eliminate lots of teams), and finally when it really counted, the team did what they did best, pulling off the best presentation when it counted to secure the gold+VIP in RE congress again. haha we screwed up the VIP presentaiton a little cuz of the wireless clicker which we were using which ran out of batt at the time of presentation but that was nothing compared to our achievements. working with nigel for the first time was a wonderful experience and i found out he's actually really nice haha. treat me to free food at his house sia. yay (: and of course the june attachment was quite fun especially cuz the lab techs were very friendly (: and getting to know cheryl and xinyu from NYGH there and helping each other out was fun... so RE was great. compared to last year, we had much more obstacles this year but we pulled through in the end and on hindsight, this project was no less significant that the IBN one.

8. Academics
my academics this year was fantastic. haha. i remember during OIP training last year, someone told me that we should do our bare minimum and get a 3.2. i was sort of errrr den probably cuz i was in a class where a 3.6 is at the lower end of the GPA spectrum. haha. this year, i made sure that i was effective. i made sure that everything that was counted was well done. i didn't aim for a top prize in level cuz i knew i didn't have the capabilities. but i gave myself a chance. i gave myself a chance to strive for an overall GPA of 4.0. everything that i did was not really that fantastic but it was good enough. and so i gave myself hope for a GPA 4.0. even in PR3, my GPA was still 3.96 and even before EOYs, it was 3.96. haha in the end, there was no GPA 4.0 but well at least i got a 3.91 and a respectable 78 for both english and chinese which i have never gotten 4.0 in my 4 years before. so it was better than last year. my physics was still a 90+. my chem only dropped by 2 marks probably cuz i screwed up fritz haber which costed me 5%. my bio went up (: my history was much better than last year. haha. no more getting bottom in class for both ccts. i scored above 80 for all my assignments except one which was 11/15 so that was great for me. haha. my first ever history 4.0. must really thank Ms. Morier (who was supposed to be very strict) and Mdm Yati haha. really great teachers. and of course 4B for all the notes shared. SS was another achievement. it was much lower than last year but well it was expected because it was Mr. Wong teaching this time. i aimed to get a 4.0 for every assignment and zomg i did just that. i got a 12/15 for the first essay, a 24/30 for social doc, a 12/15 for my third essay and a 24/30 for EOY. haha. talk about doing your bare minimum. ok luh my second essay was 14/15 so i got a 82 in the end. yay (: that was great cuz at least i know now that my humans don't suck that much. my english was another big improvement. haha i didn't screw up anything until EOYs where i screwed up my vocab (too indecisive during the test). but well 78 is still my highest end of year score ever for english so that's great. chinese was great as well. haha. having mdm yong as your teacher means that you don't exactly get too high marks for your assignments (ESP. ZHUAN TI ZUO YE). lol. but somehow, she had a good impression (i think) of me for the whole year and my zuowen average was 50 plus 3 model zuowens, 2 of which were for mid year and EOY. that was great. and of course nothing would have counted if i screwed up my Os but thankfully, my mad rush at the end in mugging chinese worked out. haven't got back my results yet but i'm happy with what i've done. haha of course, there was the mad mugging sessions in the library during EOYs that i'd never forget. thanks to jeremy for answering so many of my queries and keeping me focused during that period. if not i wouldn't have done that well for EOYs (: so 3.91 for this year. woohoo.

yup so that was 2008 for you. 2008 hasn't ended though and i'm looking forward to the jobs that i'll be having and of course the HK trip. (: so look out for more updates on 2008!

so, comparing 2007 to 2008, i must say there have been many similarities.

took this from last year's post. the red parts are the comparisons with this year that i've added.

1. OBS -> PSL
2. Math RA -> SIMC
3. 3B'07 with THE spirit! + Interclass soccer! -> 4B'08 (class chalet, soccer league, class decor)
4. Go6P! yeah! -> Go6P (upsized!)
5. IBNexperience! Astar! -> SPattachment
6. RE and the vip sharing sessions! -> SCI HUB opening vip presentation
7. Taiwan Dwen-An Trip!~ yay~! ->Shanghai Trip
8. Results! 3.87! -> Academics! 3.91!
9. Chess club and qiuping! -> Qiuping also
10. CHINESE ORCHESTRA and SPRING OF LIFE! <3! style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">-> RICO with long yin
11. OIP! CHangCHun~ the rocking team! -> hopefully hong kong trip (:
12. the beginning of a new journey in PSL! -> well that would be RJC haha.

hmm. so i guess 2008 was not bad as well! (:

took this from last year's post as well. it was a goal list for 2008. let's see how i performed (: red parts are what i'm gonna write (or wrote since you're reading it now and i've already written it. oh whatever.)

1.1 - Maintain 3.87 GPA! (DONE. 3.91!)
1.2 - Improve english vocabulary! sigh. i realise i have no synonyms for fantastic or brilliant. HMM! (errrr. zzz not done lol.)
1.3 - Improve CHINESE! O-levels coming! haha. but chinese is fun! (DONE! my chinese's better this year)
1.4 - Basically redo what I did this year cuz I think I did a great job. (all the review of lessons and marks and stuff...) (errrr ok what is this haha.)

2.1 - Hopefully get pro sec 1s in! (errr. not done. haha. but well got liwei and zhaolin)
2.2 - Train perc till there are at least 3 who can play impt instruments and 2 for smaller ones. (not done also. only 2 ok players wth haha)
2.3 - Make concert '08 a stunning success (sponsorship, concert booklet and stage plan) and of course everything else from Raffles Trail, CNY to concert with Mayflower (i think...) (partially done. concert '08 was stunning though sigh.)
2.4 - Have fun during interaction (hopefully it will take place) and if possible help out in RJCO or RGCO concerts (but probably they won't need help... ):) (Didn't take place)

3.1 - Achieve double 2nd in qiuping again. (DONE!)
3.2 - Participate in more competitions (not done)
3.3 - Hopefully rope in more people to come for training (lol not done. in fact i've been missing training cuz of math RA)
3.4 - Improve myself! Get to know more stuff. (DONE! haha. SWA trainings do help.)

4.1 - Embark on at least one BIG cip programme like taiwan or OIP this year. (not done. but at least i went for many small CIPs during march and june.)
4.2 - Start going for and enjoying INTERACT! and hopefully do my best in it. (DONE!)
4.3 - Become a more helpful, courteous and smiling person! (: Yay! (errr dunno lol.)

5.1 - Embark on TWO RE projects like the pro sec 4 this year! (not done)
5.2 - Work well for SMP. Learn research techniques and other stuff! do well for YSC! (DONE!)
5.3 - Get an SL project done up and make it good! Hopefully something like taiwan! (not done)
5.4 - Do well for RE congress. (DONE!)

6.1 - Continue playing the piano and play whatever I like! (: (DONE!)
6.2 - Continue improving snare! rolls! or doubles or whatever... (partially done i guess!)
6.3 - Play the timp more often. Practice rolls and tuning! (partially done i guess!)
6.4 - Try out drum set. Hmm... (not done)

7.1 - Make 3B and Go6P even better! (DONE!)
7.2 - Get some leadership positions and work hard for it! (whether it is in projects or CEC or the new students leaders thing...) (DONE! lol got saboed into CEC)
7.3 - Start training pull-ups and running unless I want to fail Napfa. HAIX. (DONE! i didn't fail muahahaha.)

haha so not a bad year luh. only regret is can't go taiwan or OIP sighh. but nvm. i'll get a chance some day (:

Patrick