Mee Siam Mai Hum

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Having slacked for the past 2-3 hours, doing nothing in spite of the overwhelming workload, I have finally remembered the daily chore that seems so enjoyable--blogging. As usual, I shall bore everyone with the day's happenings. Because today was not an ordinary day, one might extrapolate that statement to take it as extraordinary.

The clock tower's lights spread its soothing rays upon the terraces, as Tan Kah Kee cursed it for blazing upon his bronzed back. The clocktower is astoundingly beautiful. It may not compare to the near skyscrapers in height, nor compare with the caesium atom clocks in accuracy, but its rustic charm... a scintillating dusk view of it is well, breathrobbing. I shall take a photo of it given the chance. It is by far comparable to a Shanghai's night skyline. Its warm glow is easily the most noticeable of all. The lampposts, which serve such important purposes like letting monkeys climb up them, pale too as eyecandy.

We had the 3 IRS research modules today. In place of our lessons. Stoning for 3 hours trying to ingest solid granite. My usual plea of urgency to excuse myself from the lesson did not come today. Thus I sat there, taking notes as and where I felt like it, nodding my head periodically. As well as sporadically fiddling with my pen. I doodled on my paper stuff to blog, but as I was in a highly bored and pissed frame of mind then, I will have to moderate my comments and rectify some improper language that I had happened to doodle. (yeah, you know, words of an evil nature...)

The first teacher who came in talked about experimental research. Doing experiments... making a project... lots of propaganda about how easy that module was. If not for the simple reason that Lower Sec participation in this module had been appalling, I doubt they would have changed the system. Now we compete in our own Lower Sec category, have 70% process marks so it doesn't matter if it fails, and lots of other goodies. Nice try dude, but not enough to waver my steadfast belief in Language Arts/ Moral Ethics. Euthanasia RAWKZORZ!! L.O.L. Either way it was about the scientific method, which was a recap, then application. Tomorrow we got to sit through more agonising torture now that we got our task. Making aeroplanes so that they can do fancy tricks. fly long distances and stay in the air for a long time. All in one rounded plane. Wow. Superplanes? I mean, Boeings can't do fancy tricks, F16s can't fly that long distances and so on. How unrealistic. I think the teacher means for us to fail miserably. Anyway my science has always S.U.C.K.E.D or I would be in NUSHS now. After P5 I pretty much freaked out. Actually it dated back to P3 where I got 97 and my rivals Ron and Madeline (aiya forgot le but its from Pasir Ris) both got 98. A tinge of jealousy and I began hating science. That dates back the longest. Sniffles. Yeah away from academics, its boring (yeah i know). Long story cut short. Science is boring and tiresome and lame and "sian" and I hate it. Repeating experiments people have done millions of times just to get the same result? It doesn't appeal to me because the creative application is 0. Maths also around the same, but at least the questions vary more... But languages and humanities the best. No such thing as pure mugging. tsktsk. Its natural talent. LOL!! Joking... Anyway this category perhaps next year? I plan to do 2 next year anyway. 2 that I am not leader. Leader does 3 times as much work as anybody.

Followed by a recess. A deserted canteen. That rocks. Ate canteen food for once. Then 20 minutes seeing Mr Quek regarding our course of action for IRS interviews. Now we have a huge scope with the Belgium Embassy, Hospices, patient interviews and so on. We got lots of links now. KKH referred us to them. But that was actually later in the afternoon. Anyway Gregory is obsessed with fashion. He's doing fashion design for art, fashion programming for IRS and so on. He needs practice and has the funds to do that. He's filthy rich. Aargh (thats a word) can't read my own handwriting now. Its worse than a scrawl. Worse than anyone's. Anyway my commonsense quotient is going up. I answered smartaleckily lots of times today. Teacher asked where to find student population count. I say general office after the class of 70+ no response for 1 minute. Cool right? Tsktsk. iSpark too irresponsive. Must buckup!

Next was Mr Melvin Chng. He proves that older people are less humorous. Monotonous, boring, strict, petrifying with his Medusa gaze. Utterly pointlessly wasted everyone's time by indulging in a staring contest with Tian Hao. Extremely sarcastic with a tongue poised for a lashing anytime. I decided I didn't like him. At all. This almost completely unapplicable to our IRS topic of euthanasia. Nearly dozed off.

Last one also boring. But got M&Ms so it was okay. Ms Gwee's a cool teacher. Anyway we called up KKH using the Singtel Directory. Got a major shock when I found out it was 1 dollar each and I had used it 3 times. They spurned us the first time. Said that doctors were busy with patients/outpatients/medical courses. Second time I asked about nurses. They said they were busy too and gave me an email address. Plan to send emails to Jeremy Lim and KKH tomorrow. Its late tonight.

Will talk about ASA. Met Mr Quek for more confirmation. He said hospices were nice places where people were dying so its nice and easy to get information. Unbefitting of a teacher, but certainly humorous. He was teaching economics. Weird, really, English+Economics? Muk and Peter were punning it all over. Then I went off for ANGLES. Muk, Peter and Weicher insisted on forming a Liki-Fanclub to cheer me on. Awesome eh? But only Muk stayed on till the end, hearing 11 speeches. I spoke too fast. Starting was okay, I engaged the audience. The judges laughed. I suppose that was mockery but bringing smiles to faces in the world is okay. After that I realised I had 1 minute to say 400 more words and I began speeding up. In the end it sounded like speedreading. I flunked it badly. Okay given I hadn't rehearsed at all. XYZ spoke in Chinese at the end. Gregory was perfect. Yusee a little fast. Tralala. So I'll flunk. Here's the unedited draft.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea. I am sure this rather common idiom rings a bell in your heads. Even if it doesn’t, its meaning can be easily inferred. For the benefit of those who cannot be classified under the above two categories, I shall briefly describe it.

In short, when someone is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, he is in a dilemma. A very unpleasant dilemma. After all, a choice between a sack of gold and a briefcase of notes isn’t that nasty, right? In the context of “between the devil and the deep blue sea”, the dilemma you are IMPLYING is that you are faced with having to make a hard choice between two situations, both with very nasty prospects. In a sense, your choice is limited, as your suffering in the end, though cannot be measured, should be similar. The devil in this case represents something evil, nasty, bad, obnoxious, terrible. The deep blue sea isn’t that nice too. Imagine sinking to the icy seabed, with ear-splitting pressure bursting your eardrums. That too is horrible.

The idiom is synonymous with “between a rock and a hard place” and “between Scylla and Charybdis”. Scylla was a mythical six-headed beast whereas Charybdis was a whirlpool. Personally I’d face the beast, at least there’s a better chance than going against the impeccable forces of nature! Few are those who survive maelstroms anyway.
This idiom supposedly originated from the days of naval parlance, where the devil was sailors’ slang or a seam around the hull of an old sailing ship, all the way down by the waterline, and the deep blue sea is well, the deeeeep blue sea! The devil required periodic caulking with pitch (a tar-like substance) to prevent leaks, and this often had to be done at sea. A sailor was lowered over the deck to caulk, and this was a precarious position between the devil and the deep blue sea. The problem with this otherwise entirely plausible tale is that the idiom “between the devil and the deep blue sea” had been used by landlubbers for at least 200 years before there was any evidence of its use at sea. Written records also confirm that the original “devil” in the phrase was actually Satan.
Examples to illustrate this, quoted from S. Upendran, a columnist in India’s National Daily include.
*The villain's henchmen were close behind him, and the river in front of him was full of hungry crocodiles. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Mani hesitated.
*If he marries Rita, Bala knows he will be unhappy for the rest of his life. If he doesn't marry her, his parents will be angry with him. Talk about being between the devil and the deep blue sea!

I am sure everyone has had some rather unpleasant and sticky situations to worm themselves out of, often through a rather undesirable tunnel. The timeframe whereby you have to make the decision is the worst in my opinion, and I am sure most, if not all of you will agree. The tearing and pulling and gnawing at your consciousness, making a wise choice out of the two, fully aware of the dangers or shortcomings of either. I have been in such situations a trifle too much more than I would desire. I will now share a certain experience I had in Primary 4.
It was the year end English Composition paper. I sneaked a bite out of my coconut bun. Not having had eaten breakfast, it was to last me until recess. In the classroom, I hastily scribbled my name and began the paper. Just as I had finished the introduction, my stomach rumbled with an oh-ever-so-familiar growl. Stomachache alert! Trying to withhold the pain, I looked at my watch. 35 more minutes! Torn between the prospect of holding off the toilet for such a long time and sacrificing so much precious time for the composition, it was horrible. My hands literally trembled as I scrawled on the paper. Speak of being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea! A few agonizing seconds later, I let out a resounding fart that aroused unwanted attention and sprinted off to the toilet like a crazed maniac.
Personally, I think that time is of the essence. When faced with a dilemma, after weighing the pros and cons, if you are still unable to reach a final decision, then the best way out is to stop considering and randomly pick one. After all, if you pick one now or pick one 1 day later, its not going to make any difference in the slightest least. If you choose immediately, you have the time advantage. Much better than being wishy-washy and wasting time.

Thats it. GTG now.

2L @ 8:29 PM
"Sorry also must exprain"
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Hello Uncle...Bah Chor Mee one. I want chilli plus tur Kwa plus can I watch your CCTV playback of Jeff Lopez...=D