Septembers marks the opening of term 4, where all the exams will start. This time Language Arts start on 29 SEP if I'm not wrong. My whole sept "holiday" will be dedicated to doing past year papers and revision ws 24/7 (excluding sleeping time and slacking time). And hopefully I can control myself properly enough not to waste my time away.

Today I went to Vivocity with my family and busted $53 on a FOREVER21 chiffon floral dress. *sobs* Please don't label me as being materialistic! I originally didn't want to buy the dress, my mum encouraged me to, because she thinks she I shouldn't keep on saving money in my bank account because it's not worth it. Inflation is like 6.5% and the bank interest only gives less than 1%. In fact, I think it's even lesser than 0.5%. It's so measly. So my mum wanted me to buy that dress, cos she knows that I like it. Her principle is: it's better buying an expensive dress when you like wearing it and is happy when you wear it everytime. Maybe it's true, but i'm still kind of sore over buying it ):

$53. I can buy 3 dresses online or maybe 4 different tops. Maybe if I find post a pic of the dress here, you'll see why i bought it...BUT i still wanna buy other tops and dresses from forever21 and sgst...saw something really cute on sale. I'm such a clothes junkie D:
My mum believes that I'm a miser, that I tend to save up frequently and always being calculative D: Is that true? I like seeing the amount of money I have in my bank account, seeing them sitting there silently makes me happy, and occassionally when I spend around $20-$30 buying clothes online, I won't feel so guilty.

After all, I need to save up, since I don't earn any direct income. I just managed to deposit $120 into the bank after saving up since january. Now nearly half of that amount is gone. SIGH. I think money needs to be used occassionally to buy things to spoil yourself for all the hard work you've taken to save them up. But spending an extravagant amount over something that is not proportional to your personal income is bad. So that is why I want to grow up earning more money so that even if I buy a few clothings costing over $100, I won't feel so miserable. I want my estimated future income to exceed $7000! And my EOY holiday plan is to GET A JOB. I'll most probably work as a sales assistant, as a tutor to primary sch kids or as a events model(ie help out at events). I shall earn $1000 this holiday! $_$

Thinking of all these makes me a little dizzy. Money is really the root of all problems :/

For the past two weeks, I've been watching olympics transmissions on my cable tv everyday after school. It's the activity that I look forward doing the most. It's the highlight of the day. After watching the nice competitions and cheering for China, I'll log on the to official olympics website to check out the entire day's medalists, the medal ranking, the day's events and results and the following day's competitions. During weekends, it's a near full day of olympics watching, with me doing bits of random homework in between.

Of course, during the entire Beijing Olympics, there were certainly a lot of highlights, not to mention our two olympics icons - Michael Phelps and Usian Bolt. And also, Liu Xiang's disappointing withdrawal from 110m Hurdles that sparked great controversy and also Team Singapore finally won a silver medal in table tennis team women's team event after a 48 years wait. Of course, I can't forget the night when Guo Jingjing, Lin Dan, Zou Kai, Xiao Qin and China women table tennis team all won gold medals respectively and I heard the Chinese anthem being played 5 times. Oh and this time, both Men's and Women's team gymnastics gold medals were taken by China (: And to sum everything up, China topped the medal ranking with 51G 21S 28B, a total of 100 medals!

Now, after the olympics, I do not know what to do. I have nothing more to look forward to each day ): You can say that I'm suffering from the post-olympics syndrome. Sigh. I think London 2012 will be very very very different from Beijing Olympics, because there's just too much cultural difference. It can be seen in the 8min performance by London performers during the closing ceremony. They had several hip hop dancers, a classical looking London red bus, that transformed into a small stage with Leona Lewis crooning away and Jimmy Page playing the electric guitar, turning the entire performance into a pop concert with not much meaning in it and then finally ending with David Beckham kicking off a football and me going "HUH?" No offence, but I seriously did not see what they wanted to portray in that 8min performance. I certainly hope that the opening ceremony of London Olympics will not turn in a pop concert. I think olympics performances should always portray a message. Most of the time it should be the theme of that current olympics, the history/culture of the host country, the praisal of sportsmanship, perserverance, tears, laughter, one world coming together regardless of race etc. Not really so much of our modern, materialistic, high tech world, if you get what I mean...

They're playing Singapore vs Korea women's team semis again on starhub. Actually I think Singapore was able to get a medal because of the following things:
(i) They were lucky. They did not face any Asian countries at all before the semis. They faced USA, Nigeria and Netherlands. What would happen if they had faced Nouth Korea, South Korea, Hong Kong or even China during the semis or before the semis? I think their chances of getting a medal will be much lower.
(ii) For the first time in table tennis, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles were omitted (I think it's due to China's dominance in the sport) and these competitions were all replaced by TEAM COMPETITIONS. Without team competitions, Singapore will definitely not be able to get a medal in women's table tennis, because it will be what happened during the women's singles this time. Li Jiawei of Singapore was the only player lucky enough to get into semis, with the rest of the other 3 players being all from China. If Singapore is against China, I can say without thinking that China will win. That is only because their standard is high enough for me to be so confident.
(iii) In the end, it's all China v. China anyway because all of the players from Singapore were recently "bought" from China, with Wang Yuegu and Feng Tianwei just getting their Singapore citizenships recenly this year.

But, I think they still fought hard and I can say that I'm happy for their achievements. But, I'm happier for Zhang Yining ^_^
Oh, not to mention for Lin Dan as well. Me and aoao are just going hua chi over him. We love to read his blog and oogle at his shuai and cute photos xD Lin Dan is so cute! His spiky hairstyle (爆炸头型) and his way of controlling each game is just absolutely stunning! Yay ♥ 超级丹! The only thing I do not understand about him is why he likes Xie Xingfang so much. LOL.

A SMILE A DAY #4
Took photos of the fruits that I ate for the past two weeks with my 2.0 megapixel hp cam and came up with these rather artistic photos after tweaking them with my photoediting tool. The effects were better than I thought it would be...this just only heightens my interest in photography.

I feel that taking photos of your daily life is an enriching and surprising process...because through the lens of a camera, you always find new and pretty things that you've never know to appreciate in your daily life. Well I guess photography is my current obsession now...with everything going on in my family, photography diverts my attention to more pretty things. And most importantly, I enjoy it and it's makes me HAPPY. Besides, photography of this kind doesn't require you to be a professional, nor does it require you to invest any kind of money in it. PLUS, hopefully it can increase my blog's hits and number of new visitors :P With money being tight now, I must always remind myself to save save save (not that i spend that much a month anyway).

Cherries in a bowl.
I love cherries because they're juicy, fleshy, sweet and sour. The dark skin colour makes it look exotic...I wish they had a shade of nail polish that's exactly like these cherries skin on the market. I'd be the first to snap it up.
Edited using vignette and Lomo effects, and then adjusting the focal points of the image to make some of the cherries look like as though they're being thrown up in the air and in motion.

The Golden Balls
These are apricots that my mom bought back from NTUC for $6.90 for a small punnet ):
But they taste deliciously and heavenly good, sweet and fleshy, far better than the packaged dried apricots, even though the dried ones are not bad too.
Edited using a posterize effect first to give a gradient on the skin of the apricots, then used cross processing to bring out the unusual colours of the photo (tint of the glass container has been tweaked as well). Finally, I did a Orthon effect, which is to make the entire photo, esp the apricots glow.

Last Half Standing

This one is mainly manipulated by using the Focal B&W effect, to contrast the half eaten apricot with the rest of the two. Slight cross processing and Orthon effect is also applied here. That's all, folks.

Nice diversion for me to stop thinking about my stupid test results >.<My best wishes to Liu Xiang, China Men and Women Gymnastics Team, China Men and Women Table Tennis Team and all other chinese atheletes! Also anticipating the exciting performances of the swimming and track and field competitions.

(P.S: Jingjing! If there's time, lemme see your cool DSLR next time! It sounds so cool @_@)

Labels: a smile a day

Humans are weird, insecure, scheming, complicated characters. We like to constantly invent new things so that we can get things done our own way or just to amuse ourselves or to grab the attention of others. We like to constantly buy things so that we can show off to other people who have nothing better to do, that we are well off. We buy big houses, big cars, high end clothes, shoes and bags and women wear a mask of high end makeup to make themselves look prettier. And inside those big houses, we like to fill them up with designer furniture and lots and lots of other junk that we don't really need. In order to constantly keep up with technology, we buy new electrical appliances, use them a couple of months, then throw them away when new toys come out to replace the old ones.

I would like to live a day without constantly worrying about my face, my hair, my clothes or the way I carry myself. I'd like to think that people doesn't judge others solely by their appearance. Yesterday night, I went out at 10pm dressed in a oversized brown sec3 class tee with a drawing of a monkey at the back and wore a pair of old sports shorts and ran around 2.6km on the running tracks snaking around my flat. I had my hair tied up in a messy ponytail and wore scruffy school shoes (cos i couldn't find my running shoes). After running, I found my favorite stray cat and sat with her on a drain cover. And guess what? I was happy. I was happy just sitting there in the dark on the dirty drain cover, with the cat rubbing itself happily against my legs. I was happy just petting the cat and I could tell that the cat was happy as well because it was purring and I was just there, in my own world until my mum came around and discovered me sitting there and dragged me away cos she said both the cat and the drain cover were dirty. So what if I'm dirty? So what if I'm not as glamorous or as rich or as pretty or as smart as the society wants me to be? I was happy. And I didn't have a single cent achieving that happiness. And let me ask those people who tried so hard trying to please others all their lives, those people who competed with others for bigger houses, bigger cars....let me ask YOU: are you happy?
Maybe at the end of your life, you look back and think: what have I truely achieved in my life? And you couldn't think of anything significant...because all the while we are empty.
(Yes I do love the song you're listening to now)

Now I feel like watching the movie, the pursuit of happyness. Sebby showed it to us again last friday and I wonder if we're going to continue watching it. But until then, I still didn't do my math ws yet D: I wished that the whole world believes in ultarlitarian principles. Then we won't have to do anything that we don't like ^_^

P.S: I had a french visitor after I posted "Une fleur dans l'orage". Merci beaucoup pour votre visite à mon blog! J'espère que plus des gens de France pouvoir me visite!
请你跟我一起期待北京奥运会的到来! 还剩5天!
Please join me in my countdown for the Beijing Olympics! Only 5 more days!
And apparently the PM is going to deliver his national day speech on that day too. No offence, but I think people would rather watch the glorious opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics than to listen to him talk about Singapore's future and the problems we face, because a) the Olympics opening ceremony will make not only Chinese but Asians around the world proud, b) the performance is going to be fantastic and majestic and everything good that I can think of and c) the Olympics only happens once in 4 years.

Hmmm, do you think Singapore can get a medal this time round? Or will that bubble dream be burst again? Because the thing is, for every single Olympics, the media has been saying "Li Jiawei gets into semifinals; Singapore's dream of a medal may be realised" or something along those lines...and in the end, we get disappointed everytime. Give me your thoughts on my tagboard! (: