Friday, February 23, 2007
X-physique. The next upcoming event that will attempt to take my life. A gruelling, ardous adventure race that is rumoured to be 40km long. Hah. I might as well do a marathon -- 42.195km. Can remember the number as my school pe-teachers ALWAYS wear the finisher t-shirt. Sheesh. This race will consist of running, swimming, kayaking, abseiling, cycling and CLIMBING! I seriously hope kayaking will take up half the distance of race. Save my knee. Hmm, for the climbing part. I dont think we will be climbing on artificial walls.
NATURAL ROUTES!! Whoppee! Only 2 places left to climb and abseil in the natural environment in Singapore -- Bukit Timah and Dairy Farm. Then I think again, for climbing...can it be climbing up a flight of stairs? climbing up the abseil route for dairy farm? This route, the only route, virtually kills. You have to be on your four limbs to get up. When you stand up there, no matter how many times you've done abseiling, you will feel afraid. But however fearful you may be, you will never want to go back down. NEVER. At least, there will be a lot of stagger time when abseiling is done. We get to rest. =]
Anyone short of CIP hours? I've got a great avenue to chalk them up not by doing the meaningless tincan donations and more. Come and be an instructor for rockclimbing session. Every session is at least 4 hours long. In March alone, there are already 10 plus sessions. Interested? =]
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Why use big words when simple ones will do?
This newspaper article by Janadas Devan on words is my favourite. Make sure you read EVERYTHING. There is a morale behind it.
To cut the long story short, Mr Shanmugam was questioning Mr Yong about the letter he had written to the former NKF directore Matilda Chua, congratulating her on her work and informing her that her salary was to be raised. Mr Shanmugam used the language written in the letter to prove that it was done by Mr T.T Durai instead of Mr Yong.
The letter read in part: '' You have laboured extremely hard into the late hours of the night for the past few months without regard to your impending parturition. You have been able to coalesce a team of relentless beavers who were determined to make this (NKF Charity Show) reach an iconic status. The success of the Show also douses the remainingembers of doubts prevailing in the minds of some of the members of the public." To put it into layman language, " You have worked hard over the past few months despite yur pregnancy. You gathered an effective team to make the NkF Charity Show a success. The Show's success reassured some sceptical members of the public." This would give you an idea of why good writing is not a matter of rifling throug the thesaurus for ponderous substitutes for simple words.
As so it happens, ther is evidence to suggest that the opposite would be the case. As was reported by Princeton Uni. psychologist Daniel M. Oppenheimer has established that needlessly complex language does not impress people. Rather, it puts them off.
"It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly," Dr Oppenheimer cautioned. But "one thig seems certain: write as simply and plainly as possible and it's more likely you'll be thought of as intelligent." He carries on to say that the more flowery the sample, the lower was the students' estimation of the writer's intelligence.
Try this (from a business-writing website): Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremediated expatiations have intelligibility and vercious vivacity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.
Are you impressed by it? Who do you think is smarter: Dr Oppenheimer or the writer of the above passage(if he or she had meant it seriously)? It is OBVIOUS.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Today is....total defense day? Nay. It's one day after my birthday. :]
Had a great time yesterday though i felt the dinner wasnt really worth it. DUH. I paid. I have not told my dad the bill yet. LOL. My 18th present. Will upload our pictures soon on the dinner with v6!! Did have a great time today too.
UNCLE FREDDY!! (today's speaker from the ministry of home affairs team), my aunt's good friend. She always invites all her friends to come over to her house, which is my granny's house too. All sporty or high ranking guys usually. Man. Some of them are super cute. There's one that came yesterday to celebrate my birthday. Whoa! He's muscular. He completed the ardous Ironman race! It's not something any ordinary man can accomplish. Not an easy feat. Completely fatless. Enjoy seeing them since I was in sec 1, especially during Chinese New Year!! :] My aunt, apparently 'sabo-ed' me today. She knows that Freddy is coming to my school and so she told him that I would be asking him questions. It would be more interesting right??!! What I did not know is that he would be posing me back my question!! My aunt knew and she did not forewarn me! Argh. Well, I only found out when I spoke to Freddy. Mrs Chin, the vp, gave me the 'excuse-me-girl-why-are-you-being-so-rude-to-our-guest-over-here?', when I went up to uncle Freddy. She then realised that we are aquainted with each other. LOL. Will see him again the next few days. Enough of rambling. The pics!
Sagi Family! We're where we are today thanks to YOUR contribution. Sorry, if we missed out your face or name.
IN the pic: May Lee, Jian Xiong, Tian Cheng, Winston, Yee Ching, Bee Yan, Amaluna, Samantha, Sheryl, Ting Shu, Lisa, Han Jin, Ariff, Han Jin, Mr Koh, Mr Tan, me.
Special thanks to (not in pic): J3 Alisa, Hidayah, Yasmin, Jasmine, Jeng Hui, Kenneth Chai, Caleb, Sharifah and many more!!
MR Joshua Tan and Me
Me, Mr Koh (being william shakespear) and Han Jin (ex-vice capt)
My PE teacher, Mr Chen and us.
Labels: great days
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Whee. A great week has flown past. Innova's grand opening ceremony!! I enjoyed myself tremendously. Laughing at Mr Koh's funky 'i-am-william-shakespear" outfit and his half-beat slow dance moves. Man. I even videotaped it down. It is the most hilarious dance I've seen, other than the aces day. Mr Tan looked good too. Hah. Mr Chen's shirt was kinda too tight for him. Well, I guess when they say you have the bods, you ought to show it off. Han Jin came for the dinner too! YAY!! So happy to see her. Ama and I took a marvelous pic outside the hall too. Before we left, Ama, Jian Xiong, Tian Cheng and me decided to do something crazy. We walked round the school track at about ten plus at night in formal wear. Call that madness but it waas awesome. The scenary and atmosphere was breath-taking. NICE! Will post the magnificent pics soon.
Today, my com crashed. I'm using someone else's com. In the morning, I took part in adventure race with 2 other innova teams. It involved running, swimming in the sea, kayaking, tunnelling, river crossing, orienteering, field bashing and more. All of our legs are full of tiny cuts due to the extremely strong and upright twigs around. Well for once when I was about to fall while going downhill, I grabbed on to whatever I could lay my hands on and deem it as sturdy to hold my weight. That branch was very strong indeed. It had lots of thorns on it that managed to draw a few drips of blood out of me. Desperate times call for desperate needs. Overall, our team came in third, completing the race at 3 hrs 45 mins of 20++ km. Our objective for our team was to have fun and complete the race. Thank God that I managed to pull through without having much of my kneecap injury. =]
Next week, the hectic week ever. May I rely on His strength.
- do my homework daily [enough to kill]
- mon,tues night -- emcee at GM sec 3 camp
- thurs -- complete 200 hand-made sagi badges
- sat -- I@fun. Innova's first fun fair
ARR. Any time-stopping machine that anyone can lend me for a while? Greatly appreciate it.
