Prelims ended and I have nothing interesting in my life to report. Contrary to other people's blog posts about their various escapades and revelations, I shall dedicate my post-prelims post to express my gratitude.

1) A very big thank you to Choons and Audrey for accompanying me in the Reading Room days. I actually find the presence of friends defeats the entire purpose of studying in the reading room. I don't exactly have a very strong mind and so I am very open to various distractions, friends being one of them. In any case, it is nice that I actually have friends in these dark times. Thanks Choons for your math and lit notes. Thanks Audrey for... erm... scolding me about my slowness in History.

2) Thank you Shimin for being sort of a confidante in times of doubt and providing so many notes for me. You are truly a mugger that I aspire to morph into in the coming weeks.

3) Thank you Yi Cheng for all the econs notes and pointers about exams. I was never an exams-oriented person and I either got through based on luck or concepts. I guess in college relying on these things are not gonna help me much... and thanks for that.

4) Thank you Sua, Lilong, Jijo, Jianyi and Melvin for spending the Beijing Day with me. I badly needed that day to be perfect and although it might not seem like a lot, but I honestly badly needed some form of escape and to regain part of my consciousness. And Beijing Day did just that.

5) Thank you Yonghao for being my friend for these few months and honestly becoming somebody I could depend on.

6) Thank you Hazel. Although I still didn't do very well for econs.

7) Thank you Miss Tee and Mrs Chua for being such nice Math teachers who go beyond the code of duty and had become such nice friends of mine. Although Miss Tee forced me to go print my entry proof and I wasted 10 mins in the Stats paper that I thought had very well cost me my A... I still thank you for making me learn the lesson I would not have otherwise learnt from my HP tutors.

8) Thank you Cherrylene, Hannah, Qianling, Kylie, Laiyee, Brittany, Yin g, Jianyang, Alan, Rachel, Zhang, Marcus, ShangDa, Claire, Sihui, Darell... I guess you all kinda helped somehow..

9) Thank you Hot Drinks Store auntie who had become the one and only source of entertainment for myself everyday. I am beginning to see some progression through my daily flirtation with her and I believe that our relationship would truly blossom and soar to new frontiers. I had become her confidante and she had become mine. She would lament to me about how they didn't manage to secure the re-allocation of the store to them and would have to leave after this year. She would lament about how her son's teacher had been complaining about his bad handwriting. I would lament to her how I suffer from insomnia and require her milk tea to recharge my sense. She would tell me how she used to 开夜车 back in the days when she was studying, and would be hiding in the corner of her Attap house 埋头苦读-ing and would dip her head into a basin of water whenever she feels sleepy. I told her I had problems remembering history. She told me she used to study till late in the night and would get full marks for her 中国史 paper. She is a Pei Chun alumnus. We appear to be destined for each other. The fact that my Primary School is directly beside hers is a sign that our fate had been cemented and carved in stone, and she will forever be the legendary Wang Yue Gu lookalike Hot Drinks Store Auntie who is truly HOT.

OK... most of the people listed here would probably not get to read this. But whatever. Maybe I shall add Hot Drinks Store Auntie on my LJ friends list. She prolly doesn't have one. I will create one for her. Following the legacy of Rainbowpocky... perhaps she should be called OheyaBBQflavour or AppleCrumble or simply KopiO.

OK my lameness is pissing myself off.
 

How would one rate one's prelims experience? The last time I did a prelims was in P6, and the only thing I can remember fairly well from that time is my centre-parted hair and my obsession with this girl. Oh... and PSLE was the first time I encountered A3-sized paper.

And now... prelims is such a brand new experience for me. So what really defines one's prelims experience? The stress? The insomnia? The dreams about the Marginal Efficiency of Investment curve? You wake up halfway through the night and you realise you forgot how to spell the name of Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze? Or the realization that you should have started studying much earlier, and that you should have spent the hours you spent watching the republican national convention on actual mugging?

The ultimate prelim experience is all of the above, but so much more. I feel this constant contradictory feeling. My hand aches so much I want to use my left hand if I could. No matter how little time I have I still want to make my kinked demand curve look as kinky as possible.

I just suffered the historic setback. I studied like mad for Cold War, knowing that I know the topic inside-out and can rock at it. I aimed to do 2 Cold War questions. Then he tested on "the global consequences of the end of the cold war", something he did not teach and nobody knew they actually had notes on. In the end you are supposed to use the UN notes to answer that question, and you actually consider that a Cold War question. So I could only do 1 and I spent the whole of the afternoon and evening yesterday memorising Korean War and Cuban Missile Crisis and Perestroika and Reagan Doctrine. I can tell you that Us military budget increase from 171to 376 billion. I can tell you Soviets aimed to increase military spending by 45%, but got no money and military budget even dropped in 1988. I can tell you all the weird Russian names I've memorized.. from Andropov to Bakatin to Chevnenko... but none of them matter in the end... and the only Russian name I wrote in my essay was Stalin. And then I had to do the Islamic Fundamentalism question which I read but did not memorize... and I could only write 3 pages on. Then I realised after the paper it was not a factor specific question and I could have crapped so much more. And now I despair.

That paper was a C paper. And I was aiming for History A. And so I have to totally rock at my South-east Asia paper on tuesday. On my way through I have deal with regression lines and the graph of f '(x).

I feel the presence when I mug. It's like someone just sitting right across me looking at me. And then I will feel relaxed and motivated. 

I should do this more often. I really hope it works in making my productivity a lot higher. At this rate, I desperately need a new surge of motivation. 

Anyway, I totally despise London 2012. This is their first REAL shot at redeeming themselves from the awesomely awful logo when all the world's eyes are on them. All they had was this indian girl come out of the double-decker bus, take a ball and then go back in again. Then Leona Lewis sings and bops around with an old man and then Beckham appears to get another at Hollywood fame and all he did was kick the ball straight at some chinese guy. Sydney 2000 showcased their aboriginal culture. Athens 2004 highlighted their Greek mythology and ancient civilization. Beijing 2008 was a tribute to Chinese art, culture and spirit. And then London took their few minutes in the closing ceremony to have a few people dance with newspapers and briefcases, and then there were a few people riding bicycles around the double-decker. If the double-decker bus and busy urban working class is the epitome of British culture, then I am not sure how Great is Great Britain. 

Honestly, even USA had Red Indians raise the American flag in the opening ceremony of Salt Lake City 2006. USA has NO culture. American culture is capitalism. American culture is likening the olympic cauldron of Atlanta 1996 to a Macdonald's French Fries holder. If they can still have something like Red Indian raise the American flag, then the British needs to seriously rethink about what they are trying to portray with their own olympics. Already people are despising the logo (and I don't blame them). I don't think angmohs would wanna admit defeat to the Chinese so easily. 

Anyway, Beijing 2008 had ended and I am very sad. I wanna see more Fuwas dance. I wanna see more gymnastics. I wanna see my athletes cry. Damn it. 

Anyway, I think a great part of why I like the Beijing olympics so much is because of the gargantuan amount of artistic work that had been devoted to the games. From the very meaningful logo, to the architectural grandeur of the Bird's nest, to the opening ceremony, medals, costumes, torch, mascots... they are all such artistic pieces of work. These things are gonna be forever identifiable to the people of the world and are true examples of the fusion of ancient chiense culture and modern times. 

Anyway, to accentuate my despisal for the angmohs in UK, I will show you the London 2012 logo. 



Some defended the logo and said that it is what people feel about London. It is hip and young and full of people blending the traditional culture with the new technology savvy world today. Some people said that there is a torch imagery somewhere that I cannot find. Personally, since I am an avid supporter of things like the olympics, I felt a strong need to justify why the logo is like that when I first saw it. I actually thought it looked like the Griffin, which would tie in quite well with the whole ancient culture meets modernity theme. I was actually quite determined to think that it is a Griffin that also happens to look like the number 2012 until I read Wikipedia. 

"It was noted that the logo resembles an image of the cartoon character Lisa Simpson performing fellatio"

And now I cannot get the imagery out of my head.

But the script, which Nolan co-wrote with his brother Jonathan, is an unusually thoughtful meditation on our collective day-to-day struggle against corruption and how, in an increasingly anarchic world, it is getting harder to play always by the rules. As Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart), a straight-arrow politician, tells Batman: ``You thought we could be decent men in an indecent world. You're wrong.''

''It feels like there's something futile in an attempt to play by the rules when the rules have all been pulled down around you,'' Nolan says. ``It's really a question of to what extent are you hampering yourself in the fight against evil by adhering to the tenets of good? Batman is the most dangerous of superheroes because he's driven by anger and the desire for revenge. How far can you go before you cease to be on the side of good?''

Nolan stops short of saying that The Dark Knight is intended as a commentary on modern-day world affairs and the U.S. war on terrorism.

''We wanted to give story elements real weight and write about the things that frighten us,'' Nolan says. ``We live in the same world as everyone else. But I wouldn't necessarily want the film to be interpreted as a specific political statement.''

But the fact that such a reading of The Dark Knight is even possible is a testament to the overall maturity of the film.

I kind of despise the viral marketing of the film by WB. I think the film deserves something more subtle than that. The Dark Knight had moved beyond just a cool superhero movie, and it is now a thinking movie that so few of us have the ability to appreciate or comprehend. It should not be treated as a regular summer movie people go gaga over because of the coolness of the marketing or the awesomeness of the Batpod. 

"Why so serious?" Because it was meant to be so serious. 

I feel lucky to be doing Literature Paper 4 for A Levels. Gotham City is the ultimate imagined other world. All the themes about control and morality and anarchist ideology is so defined within all my texts. I feel lucky to be able to appreciate Christopher Nolan's message more.

I ponned PE (as always) today so that I could do a little bit of work. In the end I found myself too emotionally hardpressed to accomplish much. I feel a renewed surge of pressure on myself, and my heart feels increasing heavy to carry. I feel somewhat ominous, like bad things are going to strike me soon... which, in a kind of far-fetched manner, leads me to this particular article that I chanced upon. 

I saw this initially on Lian He Wan Bao (my parents don't actually buy this... my grandparents do). I found it interesting but somewhat sad and even frightened. Here is an english version of the article found on wikipedia.

Superstitious bloggers have linked China's earthquake disaster and other events in 2008 to the five Olympic mascots seen on posters across the nation, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on the 16th of May. Gossip sites are full of speculation that four of the five cartoon mascots have fulfilled prophecies of doom with one more, connected to the mighty Yangtze River, ominously still to come, the South China Morning Post said.

Jingjing, the panda, the animal most closely associated with Sichuan province where the earthquake struck. Huanhuan, the Olympic Flame, is being linked by bloggers to the Olympic torch which has been dogged by fierce anti-China protests on its round-the-world tour. Yingying, the Tibetan Antelope, is an animal confined to the borders of Tibet, which has been the scene of riots and the cause of international protest agianst China, the bloggers pointed out. Nini, represented by a swallow which has a shape of a kite, is being viewed as a reference to the "kite city" of Weifang in Shandong where China saw a deadly train crash last month. That leaves only Beibei, represented by a sturgeon fish, which online doomsayers suggest could indicate a looming disaster in the Yangtze River, the only place where Chinese sturgeons are found.

I always found the selection of the 5 characeters for the Fuwas a little weird. Somehow my mum keeps saying that should the Three Gorges Dam really rip apart, say by the effects of the aftermath of the quake, the whole of the river downstream would be flooded... and at the river mouth... is Shanghai... Leading to major economic crisis, major loss of lives and possible food and goods shortage around the world... and Beijing Olympics might not even happen as scheduled. Even if the Dam is not damaged, as reported, the landslides and the build up of river water might lead to flooding of other big towns or small cities, as seen on the newspaper where people are literally running away from their homes, and possibly leaving the remains of their loved ones behind. 

I feel sad. Not to the point of tearing, but I just feel like China doesn't deserve of these things. And all these talk of ominous indications of doom just makes me think that my life is such a wreck, and I am just not prepared for even the slightest bit of setbacks. It was kind of weird that the snow disaster happened right after my family came back from China, and now the quake happened right at the places we visited. To imagine that all the good river-folks who had accompanied us upstream are now possibly suffering in this disaster, it makes me sad and really know life's unpredictability. 

I felt bad when I dissed a PRC kid at bugis yesterday. I should have held his hand and said "I am sorry for your loss". I should have held him in my arms and say how proud I am of my Chinese ethnicity. I should have broken into a proud rendition of the Chinese National Anthem in the middle of Bugis to sing praise to the beloved mother land of the Middle Kingdom. My exaggerations aside... i really felt bad... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZ3w1ks1jo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRke2WKF-Ms

And now 2 very touching videos. It's amazing how people from Beijing could feel the same hearts as the people in Sichuan, although they are as far apart we are perhaps from like Myanmar. In Singapore we can't even be bothered if a Phillippino maid dies of accidentally far off the building cuz she was forced to clean the windows. It makes me sad. Singapore should have a disaster soon. A terrorist attack would be good. 

The video of Zhong Guo Jia You provides a stark contrast to this. Although they essentially look like the same thing. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QwZz-w6how
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJBnHMpHGRY

I think I sound like a BSP/CLL/CSC/CSE person now... but I have my own fair share of attachment to this country. I did 2 years of HRP on Mao Zedong, which was really a magnificent experience since I've always been fascinated by how one man could single-handedly destroy the most populous country in the world. And I have visited the country 6 times. It's almost equivalent to about 8 weeks in China. 

Maybe I am just doing this now to justify my going to Nepal. In a warped sense... reminding myself of the atrocities of our world makes my decision to go Nepal easier to justify. Maybe I am just supplementing my regret and sadness with more regret and sadness from the world around me. Maybe I am just making myself think more for the other people in the world so that my little setbacks and sadness won't mean anything at all. I need to talk about Graz. I need to clear my mind about so many things because... there just so many things to clear and settle. so many things to address... but I just do not have the time or mind to do it.. 

But I have to. OK... I really dun wanna make this post all about me. Again. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bA1D9nTAmI&feature=related Do I a tinge of tears on Wen Jia Bao here?