The typical and cliche

Pressure from the publisher has left LD with no choice but to publish this post prematurely. Apologies to the people whose name should have appeared here but got left out in some way or another. Worry not – another 10 months or so and your chance will come again!

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Yes, everyone is doing it so LD feels obliged to do one too. Due to his limited vocabulary abilities, he is unable to comprehend why it is called ‘dedications’ since he has always felt that dedications refer to the songs you select to dedicate to a particular person. Hence, he shall call it ‘closing speech’. Yes, so formal.

In no particular order:

1. GM

Firstly, LD would like to thank GM for being the host in this parasitic relationship. Thank you for all the help you have rendered to LD, without which you will be LD’s senior next year as he would be retaking all his Year 4 modules. Secondly, thank you for being a close friend and living on the same island (insider joke) as LD else his life will be boring and lonely. Being with GM is very fun as there is always someone for LD to talk to except when GM is deep in thoughts. Please remember the bet and save up more money because LD wants to go for ala carte food instead to make GM bankrupt. Lastly, when talking to LD, please remember the unbreakable vow that Stella has made or else GM will be losing a course mate soon!

2. Stella Toh

Stella has become more slack this year, presumably under the extremely negative influence of enemy Jonathan who has not only brought Stella over to the dark side but also converted her to be a mean person! It’s 3 years of friendship and counting but even if LD and Stella end up in different classes next year, they must remain good friends! Perhaps Stella should take the initiative to make an unbreakable vow? Thanks for putting up with LD’s childish-ness (although LD thinks he is fairly mature) and all the outings in the earlier part of the year. Stella can have the honour of planning outings for next year! Everyone’s looking forward to it, no?

3. Jerdine

3 years and counting of friendship too! Jerdine is not just a best friend but also a comrade to LD! Don’t worry too much about this year’s grades and just work hard for next year! LD hopes Jerdine can get into medicine school too so that he will continue to have a comrade to last through all the ‘F’s in quizzes, tests and exams. Thank you for waiting with LD for the arrival of the parents and lamenting about anything and everything under the sun! Even if LD and Jerdine are in different class, Jerdine must remember to not get influenced into changing like Stella did – best friends until we die.

4. Whai Peng

LD and Whai Peng only started talking to each other at the start of the year. Although the catalyst is unclear, LD attributes it to his reliance on GM’s vast knowledge library and the proximity between the two islands (insider joke again) which resulted in the islands eventually merging and the formation of this friendship! Although it has only been one year, this one year has been fun-filled with good memories. It’s good to think but do remember to take things easy! Thank you for all the encouragement and tolerance towards LD’s incessant boasting of his really good Japanese as well as all the little talks during English, Chinese, Math, Chemistry, Biology, Physics and mentoring sessions! While being in the same class will be near impossible, remember to keep in touch! After all, students get unlimited SMS with StarHub’s student plan! Good luck for the upcoming roadshow’s sales!

5. Yihui

As Yihui has rightly mentioned, it’s 4 years of being in the same class but separation is certain due to the apparent disparity in academic capacity. Nevertheless, continue to do well in your full honours course! Apologies for the unnecessary comment – Yihui will do well irregardless, no? Thanks for all the little chats we had and also for being the other big brain in the class – it was fun being in the mentor group despite having changed a total of 4 mentors in the course of 4 years!

LD is seriously considering ending the post at this point as he has been reaffirmed that he is a loner with few friends to the extent that he cannot even thank people for anything trivial. However, he shall press on… …

Wordly Temptations

LD all of a sudden felt obliged to update this unvisited blog for unknown reasons.

 

LD is addicted to shopping and everyone should know it. To make things worse, there are all sorts of discounts going on now. 10% discount on iHerb, 20% rebates on DealExtreme and much more! Furthermore, even without discounts, sites like Gmarket and Taobao make the virtual life a living hell for LD as despite his urge to just add everything to the shopping cart and check out, he knows that the transaction will just be rejected because he has emptied his bank account several. Maybe that was an exaggeration but we all know how badly addicted LD is to the life of the rich and famous.

 

To make things worse, wordly temptations cannot be blocked out by simply not going to the Internet because they are everywhere! Food, drinks, clothes – LD’s best friends and most hated enemies.

 

Knowing that resistance is futile, LD has resorted to taking up a holiday job to sustain his spending habits. As such, he spends majority of his holidays standing for 10 hours straight, hoping that customers will sign up or recontract a plan with his company. All for a paltry sum.

 

At this point, what is heartening to know is that LD has comrades like Jerdine and Mariel who are suffering in their respective jobs with bosses which should consider starring in horror movies to push themselves to stardom overnight. That said, one of LD’s boss is not exactly the nicest person around on earth but the sole consolation LD has gotten was the whiteboard that fell on his (the boss, not LD) head during one of the training.

Interesting Online Spoofs

LD is really bored to the extent that he goes surfing randomly on random forums. However, it seems like there has been some gains from his waste of time as he stumbles upon an interesting forum thread.

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=2529837

Do take a look and have a laugh at the comments there. Chances are, though, that the thread starter is not a NUS High School student, no?

Good luck to all the GCE ‘O’ Level Japanese people tomorrow! Yes, that was directed at you, LD.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Yes, LD has decided to step out of the closet to admit: LD is a shopaholic.

And a really addicted one at that.

Within the past week, he has bought 4 shirts and 1 ear phone online already. He is only short of purchasing a wife, a car and an apartment online.

Assistance towards this shopaholic will be greatly appreciated. Considering how pragmatic the society we are living in is, LD would much prefer tangible assitance like financial aid instead of trying to talk him out of his spending habits.

On a more serious note, LD is already trying to kick his addiction so do not tempt him with things like DealExtreme, Gmarket, Yahoo! Auctions or ebay.

Pre-Exam Blues?

It was and is most unexpected that someone like LD will get pre-exam blues. After all, years of experience in failing exams should have caused LD to be conditioned to such setbacks. Nevertheless, as he welcomes his GCE ‘O’ Level Japanese Oral examination with open arms, pre-exam blues has caused LD to inadvertently reminisce the day where he studied like there was no tomorrow for his Japanese Prelims.

To be honest, the above paragraph was just a fancy introduction. LD simply has nothing  better to do but refuses to sleep and hence, is presently in front of the computer screen in an attempt to upload some old pictures to blog about.

Lunch at Pastamania

Strictly speaking, this picture has nothing to do with his Japanese Prelims. It just happened that LD patronized Pastamania before one of his Japanese lessons to settle his lunch. Yes, he dined alone, the way a loner does. Nice meal, but not worth it considering the overtly small portion.

Fried Silver Fish Snack

This is the picture which has some distant relation with LD’s Japanese Prelims. In order to ensure he does not go hungry, LD decided to snack on this as he worked his neurons through 4 years of Japanese content. To his greatest horror, not only was the proportion small, the fish tasted rubbery and simply horrible. Definitely not a good way to spend $4, and definitely not a good beginning to his Japanese Prelims.

Bubble Tea at MOELC

Needless to mention – how can a day at MOELC go by without a cup of bubble tea? Bishan is, after all, the land of bubble tea with a high bubble-tea-store density. If there was anything that helped LD do well in his Japanese Prelims (he did not actually do well but that is not the point here), it must be this.

2009 Student Council Recruitment Poster

Pardon LD for being lame, cynical, or <insert random adjective>. Being a kind person who understands the importance on sufficient nutrition intake, LD has decided to leave the audience with some food for thought to chew on – spot the mistake in the poster. Hint: count properly.

LD’s Violent Tendencies

LD is rather appaled by how violent he gets at times. No, he does not go around hitting people. Rather, his victims are just innocent-looking electronic products. However, before anyone starts calling Institute of Mental Health to send LD there, LD has to clarify that all the cases of his volent tendencies are just mere accidents.

His first victim was the clip-on earphones that were perfect for listening to music when running. Nevertheless, being bored and inquisitive, LD started twirling the wires of the left and right side together and pulling it so as to observe the ‘natural untwirling’ effect. All of a sudden, lightning clapsed and thunder roared – LD had decapitated his earphones by completely pulling out one side of it. Much as a picture would really speak a thousand words in this case, LD has no intentions of moving his 80kg body to take a picture.

The second victim was really a case of negligence in LD’s humble opinions as his earphones adaptor started to spoil in mere days after he started using them. At most positions, there will be no sound; at some positions, there will be sound in one side; at nearly no positions, there will be sound in both sides. As much as LD would like to attribute this to the fact that the adaptor was of cheap build, he finds this statement not convincing due to his bad track record with electronics.

LD signing off, to hopefully study Biology after finally completing his 2 years overdue English Advocacy Speech Proposal.

2 Cents on Miss Singapore

As much as LD would like to avoid jumping on the bandwagon and simply flaming the dethroned Miss Singapore, Ris Low, he has stumbled upon a video too amusing that he has to post it. Yes, he has been watching videos despite  there being a Chemistry quiz, Physics quiz and Calculus test tomorrow.

Maximum pleasure for maximum number of people? LD is not sure about that but one thing is for sure: Ris Low, don’t give up on improving your English! LD’s English sucks too, as proven again and again by his scores in  English summative (fine, formative too) assessments.

Dementia in the Elderly

LD once mentioned that he started this blog in order for him to remember important events in life should he ever get dementia, or even juvenile dementia. Well, maybe he did not. Either way, LD found this meaningful and touching short clip on dementia so being nice, he shall share the message with everyone.

The video is in Cantonese but there are English subtitles so fret not!

Remember to treasure your (great)(grand)parents before they get dementia, and more so after they do!

LD’s words are becoming more and more cliche.

For GM’s Entertainment

According to what LD is experiencing over MSN now, the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn about GM is that she is extremely bored and has nothing to do – to the extent that she has to ask LD to blog. Yes, that bored.

LD is a straightforward person and since he was only given two topics, he shall only talk about two topics. Else, marks may be deducted for not answering to the point. Without any further ado, the topics are: GYM and Japanese.

As a sufferer of dementia, LD is unable if he has mentioned this before so he shall reiterate – there is some sort of bet going on between GM and LD: LD is to get 4 pecs, do 10 pullups, finish 2.4km in less than 11 minutes and jump further than GM does in standing broad jump. Should LD achieve all these by prom morning, GM and friend Whai Peng will have to treat LD to buffet, with GM going the extra mile by wearing a dress and high heels with heel inches directly proportional to the number of pecs achieved.

Now, we all know this is a Herculean task – how can somebody weighing 86kg and peaking at a height of 1.53m ever achieve that? You have no idea? Well, LD has no idea too. However, GM said that pecs are things that come as free gifts from being fit. Since LD likes free gifts and hates losing (bets), he has put in and will be putting in lots of effort to get fit, like going to the gym on Sunday!

A round of applause to LD please Okay fine, just spare LD the rotten eggs and tomatoes.

Next topic: Japanese. LD’s Japanese results have dropped by an astounding 10 percent! Hence, placing him in a terrible situation as he has no idea of his national standing and was only informed (by a source with unknown reliability) that he is either 3rd or 4th in nation. Yes, the fall from grace hurts that much. It hurts even more when marks were deducted for foolish mistakes like missing out a stroke in the word especially when the word was meant to be copied from the paragraph and LD took exceptional care to make sure he copied it correctly.

At present, GM and LD are desperately waiting for their Youth for Causes Mentor to reply with the Mentor’s Testimonial as the entire report is due tomorrow and LD has to print it before going to bed. While LD is tempted by thoughts of cursing the mentor, he realizes that he should not do it now (he has not recevied the testimonial yet) and he should do it somewhere more discrete.

Hi, GM! Hope you had fun!

New School Term

The new school term has started! While a new school term should mean a new start, LD is sad to announce that he still has leftover homework from the previous term! What a nice way to welcome a new term, is it not?

Surprisingly, LD managed to make it through the first day of school despite only completeing his Chinese homework. To make things better, Math and Honours Math assignments as well as quizes are postponed such that LD is able to have a nice sleep tonight without worrying about tomorrow.

At this point in time, LD would like to use this blog entry to remind all (perhaps only one or two) readers of the importance of this coming Wednesday – LD gets back his Japanese Prelim results which will determine whether he gets into Top 3 in Singapore for Year 2009! While some may perceive LD as a person overly particular about marks, LD is, well, indeed overly particular about marks. The feeling of sitting in the position of the Top 3 in Singapore is extremely fun and addiciting, so much so that heroine and morphine pale in comparison.

Moving on to a new issue, attempting to live a better and longer life, LD has decided to try to get fitter and went to the gym with friend Whai Peng during the free time before assembly. However, their calories burned were quickly (over)replenished with their lunch consisting a KFC Student Meal and bubble tea to wash it down. How healthy, LD.

LD finds it extremely important to let others know how he feels or what he is thinking. Hence, he often repeats himself several times or explicitely spells out his thoughts, the way he is about to do so:

LD is extremely worried about not getting into Top 3 as well as not getting into NUS Medicine.