I'm also gradually getting used to the lecture/tutorial system and staying back late till 6pm+ in school. I think things are normal now because all the tutorials didn't start coming yet...so I have extra time to complete tutorials ahead of time. I think once CCAs officially start and other commitments kick in, life will be really hectic for me. I have also gotten used to being fed with a lot of info all at once for bio, trying to keep awake through GP and also feeling stupid doing chem. I was pretty packed for this weeks already! 

I didn't get into Talentime anyway, because they cheated me! There was supposed to be semis, but now they scraped that and only 8 people got accepted straight into Finals. Not much fun, if you ask me, because this kind of competition is supposed to go in rounds. I would have chosen a harder song to sing if I knew that they scraped the semis. But the good news is, my angel and mortal are finally writing to me! My mortal now writes everyday but I've just received my first letter from my angel TODAY, together with a whole package of sweets. I like my class pretty much, because there are 0 bitches, everyone's nice to each other and hardworking, so we'll always mug together at the class bench and we have some cliques but it's not that obvious cos everyone still mixes together pretty well. The guys in my class are nice, but not sweet or enthusiastic enough! They don't take initiative to mix with the girls during classes, so we still have an obvious gender segregation D: 

Now, actually, my fav subjects are Bio and Econs, cos they are the only two that I can understand + seems interesting to me. Chem just makes me feel stupid everytime I attempt to do it because I really suck at stoichiometry...and math for now is ok, because my math tutor goes quite slow (: 

Now I'm torn over CCA selection! I got accepted into Interact Club, Ne2twork and I'm also interested in Photography Society (it's damn cool, they got a lot of DSLRs and also a dark room!) But then, MAD audition is only tomorrow, when the registration for CCAs closes, so it's very conflicting for me to choose a CCA now when I don't even know whether I'll get into MAD or not! I'm nervous about the audition tomorrow ))): I actually don't think my chances of getting in is very high...because it's not like I'm those kind of people who can learn new choreos very fast.

Fingers crossed! :x

Last thursday's war games were two words: hot and rough. I got a tan just from standing under the sun for around 2 hours...and I got an APOLLO tanline on my right arm cos I painted Apollo in yellow paint there so now there's a faint outline of the words :D I did not manage to throw a waterbomb at all, because I was doing defence together with the other girls all the way till the

 last 15 minutes of the games. At the last 15minutes, I managed to acquire a waterbomb from Gino but it got squashed by this Athena girl 3 minutes after I got it )): Mostly we were defending ourselves against Athena. The guys (and some girls) from Athena just all came over and rammed into us all at once and I got my arms twisted and sore trying to prevent them from coming in. And later in the game I got pissed and I just tried to assualt (scream and kick) at the people trying to ram into us girls. Despite our best efforts, Apollo still lost to Ares, who backstabbed us and Artemis! I thought that Ares wouldn't be able to win it cos they got bombed pretty bad at the end. Humph. At the end, I just wanted to get out of the field because i was really too damn

 hot and thirsty.

Me and Addie then queued for bathing near the netball court but then there were 4 Athena girls that suddenly cut queue and made me super pissed so I scolded them but they just pretended that they didn't hear anything. So after that, me and Addie made our way to the high school girls toliet then we just locked ourselves in the tiny toliet with only one cubicle and took turns bathing outside the cubicle where the sink was xD And I was so tired from the war games that my eyelids kept drooping from 3pm onwards. 

Friday was quite slack but more fun during the CAMPFIRE NIGHT. We watched performances from different faculties in the hall at first and Apollo won BOTH BEST FLAG AND CLASS PERFORMANCE! Me and my friends jumped up and screamed till our throats were dry :D I really have to bow down to Akilan's narrative skills, he changed his 'script' so fast and flawlessly and fed the audience with the "we are one hwachong" theme instead of dissing the other faculties, which was probably what won us the best performance title. Good job A14! ^_^

Then after all the performances, we went down the central plaza and sung tons of hwachong songs while cuddling with my ct mates in a circle. They lit up fires of different colours - one for each faculty - and then also lit up the REV-IT-UP sign hung between the two flag poles. It was truly a very moving moment for everyone and we were all so high. At some point during the song singing session, they played some hiphop and I just grooved myself to the beat like I was clubbing HAHAHA. Heck, everyone was so high anyway and screaming for no reason. At that moment, I really felt very bonded with my ct and everyone in HC and I'm sure others felt the same too. Squashed in the throng of hot sweaty people singing and dancing the same songs and cuddling with my new CT friends made me feel as though the school was throbbing and we were all so ALIVE. 

It was such a 'historic' moment watching Dom light up the sign and seeing the words catching fire and glowing. The two wings at the side can flap too, really beautiful (:

I really really hope that everything will come out OK in the end despite all the differences and challenges that I'd face in the coming 2 years of school.

College life did not even officially start yet but I'm already feeling very busy and pretty tired from running around all day. And HC provides you with so many opportunities to do so many different things like OCIP, local CIP, research programmes, scholarships, competitions, overseas study camps etc and I just feel like applying for so many of them that I'm overwhelmed by all the deadlines. CT games are, however, not going so well because their fun level is nowhere near OG games. I still think they should be the other way round because CT is more important than your OG and you should get to know your CT mates better. Today during the meet the seniors session, I noticed that the girls and the guys are still pretty much segregated. Today was pretty boring as well, except that we had our class flag 95% done and we learnt two songs of the fac dance, which has a difficulty of 7/10 compared with other fac dances. The fac dance was pretty cool, but I had to dance the guy's part because there were simply not enough guys in BCME subject combination and I'm going to say that APOLLO WILL BE THE FAC DANCE CHAMPION THIS TIME ROUND :D

Yesterday was the more hectic day because after the horrifying math lecture where I couldnt see or catch anything, I managed to mug math tutorials till question 7. I shall leave the rest for weekends. And then after that we went to Botanic Gardens, where we only manage to visit one 'crime scene' out of the 5 that we had to visit for the investigation game. In the end, we just sat down on the grass to play. Then, we half walked half ran from Botanic Gardens all the way back to hwachong. Great exercise, but my disgusting tummy fat is still there and mocking at me D: I hate tummy fat! I cannot tolerate a bit of fat at all at my tummy area. After school ended, me and warren and his group of friends went on a 45mins bus ride to Outram Park MRT for jamming sessions at a studio only to discover that we were at the wrong control station. When we finally found the correct place, we were around 5-10mins late and Yun Hao (the bassist) and me were pissed at Warren (serves him right). The band consisted of Yun Hao, Samuel (acoustic), Warren (acoustic noob haha), Liang Jun (drummer) and me (vocalist). There were an additional 4 people who were there just for fun, besides my 'band members' squeezed into the tiny studio. 

Actually, I don't even know whether we're a proper band at not because the drummer finally decided that the practice we had was too last minute and not good enough for Talentime, which basically meant that it was a waste of our money and time =.= But I'm proud to say that we did manage to piece together Nobody's Home by Avril Lavigne, Samuel's guitar playing is cool and our drummer is quite imba xD But actually, to me, everything sounded pretty ok because I couldn't listen out to anything. I actually hope that there will be future jamming sessions, because they're fun. But no more on school nights, because I reached home only at 10pm and got grounded.

I'm looking forward to war games tomorrow!

Go APOLLO! :D

We had a lot of introductory lectures in the morning again and then in the afternoon, we had our OG games! Luckily the slippery slope was our first game because everything was just set up and clean and we had it in the steeper and longer slope at the field. It was really very very difficult climbing up the slope! I was paired with Eugene and then the raffia string tying our hands together fell loose at first climb and we just grabbed each other's hands very tightly. I kept on loosing my footing and then slipping down and dragging eugene down with me, although he fell some times too. In the end, my OG only had 2 pairs that managed to make it to the top D: And stupid Eugene is forever trying to poke me and I'll always have to resort to 'violent' tactics to restraint him. The other games were just so-so, such as the HC rev-it-up, the bench sliding game etc. There was this game that involves crawling, spinning and jumprope till you finally try to score a point by aiming a ball at the bucket. I was one of the two people that scored for my OG! And we managed to tie that game with OG 32, but then that was our only point of the day xD But I don't really care about scoring, I just want everyone to enjoy themselves because that's the whole point of Orientation.

I hope the councillors would be able to come up with more fun team building games such as those squeezing on a bench ones, or those crossing across using small wood planks or the blind folded kind of games. Although those games are quite commonly played but then I still think that they are fun and serve as great ice breakers.

After Orientation, we just went to J8 to have dinner and it turns out that every restaurant/ fast food place is completely full and not enough to seat 20 people so we had to eat Pizza Hut AGAIN for dinner. The thing was, we had to seat seperately at different tables of 6 each and we couldn't really talk across tables. Oh well. Pizza Hut was spammed with people yesterday, after we left at around 8.45pm, there was still one huge crowd of 15+ students coming in.

I think that although everybody act so enthusiastic about their OG and cheer each other on during games, I believe that most people are still not really as close as they want to admit to the people in their OG. Sure, I believe that it is very fun and enjoyed during the past 5 days and the people inside our respective OGs are nice and funny, but we have only gotten to know each other on the surface, not on the inside. We don't know how their family is like, how responsible they are when doing projects and how they are like in other situations. During OG dinners, I bet most girls and guys will clump together seperately out of habit, which means we're still not that close enough to mingle around comfortably. But, I will continue to treasure the friendship I made during the past 5 days and I will especially miss the below people:

Warren

Eugene

Kevin

Chuin Yin

YanJie

XinYing

Lim Min

Those that are not mentioned, it doesn't mean that I won't miss you, I'll just miss the above people a little more, because they are the ones that were always around for the past 5 days doing funny things together and spending more time with me. 

As for my current CT allocation, I can't tell you how pleased I am because I am with Addie and Hong Hui (from my OG) and I have 0 unpleasant people in my CT! The only sad thing is that most BCME classes only have 4 guys.

For the first couple of rounds, Kevin, Chuin Yin and Warren had to drink this horrible concoction of curry sauce, bbq sauce, chili, tomato and butter. Then, I had to do two dares, one was to ask a random guy doing homework at mac's for his name, and the second was to hug a random girl! I think everyone had a crazy and high time cheering for each other during the dares. I admit that at the first I didn't want to do those dares that they came up with and I wasn't exactly comfortable with the game...maybe it's because nobody in 402 will think of something like that to do to both their classmates or the public xD But as it got along, I had more fun than I imagined I would because doing such stupid things IS really quite funny (although not very me) and I suppose that we should do these kind of things more often to make life for everyone more entertaining. And I am really really starting to get close to some of the people in my OG and I

 find it sad that we will be going into different CT after just one short week D: Life is always so full of endings and beginnings, of meeting new people and then parting ways after that.

Today's OG games were fun, but I don't think they were as fun as tuesday's. The soap hockey was just pretty lame, because it's basically more of one on one and Balls of Fury seemed like army camp training for me and I got a lot of bruises and scratches from it ): We managed to win Human Foozeball and the Pipe game. We managed to finish the pipe game in record time - way before the other OG finished it. I didn't really get drenched too badly, except for Balls of Fury, which was the last game we had. I had quite an enjoyable time singing hwachong's traditional songs afterwards, because some of the lyrics were really quite meaningful and music bonds people together so well. I think HC really did a better job of promoting their school spirit through the cheers, songs and dances as compared to nanyang.

In just such a short time, I've began to like the people that reside in 黄城...but right when I started to get close to them, I need to get seperated from them again. That's LIFE.

Today's programme consisted of talks in the morning again. I'm still thinking whether I want to take CenTaD or the like...I think I should, just to experience it once and officially decide whether I'm interested in having science/research as part of my career in the future. I still think that I'm too bland and boring, I ought to do more things to beef up my portfolio for any future university or scholarship applications. 

The afternoon was sodache and mostly OG Games, which is extremely extremely FUN. For sodache, I had myself paired up with a guy shorter than me by chance so we had difficulty doing the twist turn thingy D: I'm sorry, but there is really no guys taller than me by 5cm in my OG, I think Leon comes closest to my height. This sucks, what am I going to do in order to wear my Topshop platforms and still stand next to a guy who's taller than me? xD The mass dances that hwachong have are mainly derived from line dance I bet, even the music sounds so much like the line dance that I used to do in student care when I was young. 

The OG Games consisted of Capture, 3legged soccer, chicken egg eagle, Quidditch and Giant Softball. I enjoyed Capture the most because I got shouldered by a guy and it was so high up and got my adrenaline pumping! Each team needs to send four pairs of competitors, one pair consist of 2 guys carrying one girl and the girl needs to snatch caps from other teams while protecting the cap that she's wearing. Even though I got my hair messed up like a crazy woman but it was well worth it (I didn't get shouldered since I was 3!) I didn't like chicken egg eagle cos it was kind of too lame and isn't very interactive between OG members and also Quidditch, because it's simply too hard to score. They should replace the frisbee with a ball instead. OG 7 is really so honest and nice, everyone is very enthusiastic with good sportsmanship. During Giant Softball, the other team kept claiming that they won even though we won more games than them but we still didn't complain at all but cheered for them still. 3legged soccer was fun, but I got a giant bruise on my right ankle now (thanks Leon! ._.) and we still lost 4-2. 

I had fun screaming my lungs out too during the many cheering sessions led by Warren, even though the cheers get repetitive and slightly boring after some time. But I do have to say that HC cheers are so much more welcomed than Nanyang cheering seasons. Back in Nanyang, whenever there's a cheering session, everyone will groan and moan and cheer halfheartedly and you can see only the councillors screaming their lungs out. I cheered so loudly such that my friends (in 402) were saying that "Omg! Sitong you were cheering so loudly!" with a shocked expression. Hahaha. That's only because I had fun and enjoyed myself immersely today, I tend to express what I feel clearly and honestly :D

I hope thursday come soon cos there will be water OG games...tmr's just CCA fair ): Major disappointment :x

Then for the second part of the lectures, I got a migraine listening to the teacher barking into the mic regarding the procedure for choosing subject combis. He was yelling into the mic and the loudspeaker was directly in front of where I was sitting. The noisiness of the high school boys didn't help either, seventeen years old already and still doesn't have the discipline level of a primary one girl. I mean, at least primary school girls know when to keep quiet when necessary and does it when the teacher said so D:

The first day of orientation wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, even though I don't really know the rest of the NY girls in my OG, I made instant friends with them and the other girls from other schools are really nice and friendly as well (: The guys are mostly ok too...but they are not that kind of super noisy and enthu kind like I saw from some other OGs. Today's icebreakers consisted of dog and bone, whacko, school tour, cheering and gross games that my OGL Lijie thought up off =.= Gross things like passing pocky sticks and tiny pieces of biscuits around with your mouth. And he made us bite off a tiny end of the pockys as we passed it around! D: It's so unhygienic, only guy OGLs will think of such gross things. A pity that the two guys next to me were all "ew" hahaha I didn't get to stand next to the 2 cute ones xD HAHAHA whatever la. 

But actually I think sodache wasn't so bad after all, I really felt closer to the people in HC as a whole singing songs and doing stupid actions together with them. I hope tomorrow won't be so bad (: