A Moment Spent Alone Doing Something I Enjoyed

          What do I enjoy? Hmm, certainly not homework. You should have guessed it, playing computer and using facebook! (like all normal teenagers) So, let's start off with facebook. I like using it as I can post comments on my wall, like this:

          So, what else is interesting in facebook? Well I play a game called Mousehunt, (or used to) where you have to sound a horn to catch a mouse. The horn appears every 15 minutes, so half your time is spent waiting. This brings up a lot of questions, such as: Which hunter waits 15 minutes just to catch a mouse? Who pays over 5000 gold just to buy a dead mouse? etc. etc. 

         Nevertheless, the names of the traps are quite creative, along with the wide range of mice to catch. This is my hunter's profile on mousehunt:

        As I have played since 2009, I am quite experienced, but I have stopped playing it since the last half of last year. Credit goes to Benedict who has been using my account and helping me to play it. (Both his accounts got suspended) 

          The next thing I like is to play computer games, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Counter Strike: Source and a lot more. The game is like to play best is Sudden Attack, a MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter), which involves a lot of running about and shooting people. It takes skill to be the top in the game, as a lot of gamers play it the whole day, (including one of my classmates, hint, hint) and practice their skills. I am still not the best yet, (emphasis on yet) but I will be some day.This is my favourite map, Airport: (these picutres are all in practice mode, since none of my 'kind' classmates wanted to help me take a few in a real match)

Aiming for a head shot

         There are a few types of game play, including bomb planting and team deathmatch. The airport map, which is a bomb planting type of map, enables players to plant a bomb at the bomb site. Unfortunately, this feature is not available in practice mode, so I cannot show you how the bomb looks like. However, I could have some fun with dummies, such as:

 Getting ready to blow 

dummies up with a grenade

 Blowing them sky-high with them leaving a pool of pixalated blood on the floor

         As you can see, it is very fun and most of my classmates play this, so it is a kind of co-curricular activity after school when we all have time to play together. 

        Lastly, this is the trailer for Sudden Attack, hope you enjoy it: 

Something That Took Place in School

       'You better keep that cupcake, or else I will keep it for you!' My maths teacher, was shouting at my classmate at her usual screechy, voice. (Usually accompanied  with ungrammatical speech)
        As per normal, the class was as noisy as Shawn, the class clown, or should I say, a failed attempt at being a class clown, was laughing very loudly at some unknown joke. (he usually laughs at everything) I think that his aspiration was to be a class joker, but instead ended up as a class annoyance. Every time when a teacher shouts, it's almost always shouting at him. So, you can see that he his very annoying, and let me prove it to you. Every time he opens his mouth, my classmates do this:
    'Shut up Shawn!'
     'Yeah shut up!'
     'Shut your trap Shawn!'
      You get the idea.
      So, going back to the situation, my classmate, being a 'good' boy, does not keep the cupcake, making my teacher, well, angry. She grabbed it from him, and slammed it on the table. Sad cupcake. After that, she thought that the class would all be very scared of her and shut up. Murphy's Law states that; Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Instead of quieting the class, my teacher instead got sniggers and more laughing from the class annoyance. To add on with the racket, one of my classmates was eating his cupcake in class and got spotted by the teacher. She started shouting at him, adding on to the noise.
     'Spit it out! Now!'
     'Ok,ok,' He walked over to dustbin, and pretended to spit into it, amidst sniggers.
      'Daryl!' screamed our maths teacher.
      This time, he really spit into it, adding ewws and yucks into the already noisy class.
      Continuing on with the lesson, interrupted with a few brief  'distractions', including a confiscated bandanna and people being sent to the back of the class for talking, ended up with people having the 'privilege' of being ordered out of the class.
        'Hahaha!' laughed a few classmates.
        'What's so funny?' asked my teacher, irritated by the fourth time that she was interrupted from her teaching.
          No answer. Following the 'rule' that all teachers reside by, she continued to ask if it was related to maths, (obviously not) if they wanted to tell the joke to the class, and basically asking rhetorical questions.
         It ended up with three people being sent out of the class, including the administration monitor. After the 'climax' of the lesson, the rest passed quickly without any interruptions.
Some funny cartoons of teachers, while we are on the topic of it:

     Hope that this lightens your mood!

A Problem I Encountered and How I Solved or Managed it

      Well, what problems do I have? I have a problem with going for group tuition, as it does not let me interact with the teacher and they teach without caring about whether you have learnt anything, and it does not even help learning. The problem started one day......
        'You must go for chinese tuition!' commanded my mother, without caring for my feelings if I liked it or not.
           'I don't like it! It's so boring! The chinese teachers are so boring and the homework is difficult!' I replied, hoping that she would see it from my view point and not ask me to go for tuition.
               Obviously, like all parents, she just insisted that I had to go for tuition. What is this, a communist country? (Yeah, it's the 52 Dido Street communist party) It is not fair at all, when she forces me to go for tuition, when during my PSLE, I did not even go for tuition and I could get into Victoria School! So what is the difference? Well, my mum said that language, had to be used often (herself a General Paper teacher) and since I did not have the discipline, I had to go for tuition. What kind of reason is this? It's preposterous! It's not whether I have the discipline, its about how interesting the teachers teach Chinese! The reason why so many Singaporean students hate it is because the teachers are boring, and only know how to drone on about chinese, how important it is, blah, blah, blah...... Most of all, they like to correct you when you are not even doing anything wrong! They do this so often, that I sometimes want to tell them this:

          I find it very meaningful! Garfield is such a cool cat!
        So, I told my mum, 'It's the teachers, not me that causes me to hate chinese,.'
        'No,' she said,  ' it's your attitude.'
          Nonsense! She could go and interview all my classmates and they would all agree with me!
          So I told her, 'Fine, I will only go for lesson if it is individual,'
         I knew that my mum would have trouble finding good private tutor, so I have a few weeks of relaxation before my mum finds one! (Tricky, tricky!)
      To add on, tuition fees can be so overpriced, that even some university students protested against it which adds on to my list of reasons that tuition is not good!  Here is the video of the news report of the protest on Youtube:

Something Unusual That Happened That Day

      My day started with a crash. Literally.
       My parents and I were at Gilstead Road at about 8 in the morning, trying out food at the new coffee shop that had just opened. The food was good, and just when we were about to leave, when suddenly, a almighty roar resounded from the nearby construction site.
We whipped around in our seats, only to see the concrete blocks toppling over one another, crushing the fence that surrounded the site into pancake, and dust everywhere as blocks got crushed into pieces. We were shocked  by the spectacle and by the time we regained our senses, a crowd had already gathered near the area.
      'Come on!' I shouted to my parents, eager to see exactly what had happened.
       I ran towards the accident, and it was surely a sight to behold! The blocks had flattened the fence entirely, the pavement was cracked, it was blocking the 2 lane road beside it and there was still some dust in the air. It was a scene of devastation.
      My father, his previous job being a engineer, told me that the concrete blocks were used to test the soil to see if it was suitable to build buildings on it. He also said that each concrete block weighed about a ton! (1 ton = 1000kg) I could almost imagine the weight crushing on the pavement and before it had toppled, it was piled as high as a 3 storey building! I sort of pitied the grass beneath all the blocks......
      I had forgotten to bring my phone out, so I could not snap a few photos of the incident, but I found some photos on STOMP plus a video of a news report of the blocks collapsing on YouTube.
     Below are the photos, courtesy of STOMP:

     As the saying goes, A picture speaks a thousand words, so I shall not describe them and let them do the talking.

      This is a news report on Channel 5 on the collapsing blocks:

     This was certainly unusual day for me!

A Special Moment I Enjoyed With my Family

               During the 2010 December holidays, my mum and I went to Hong Kong for a robotics competition. You see, my mum is a teacher at VJC and it was coincidental that the robotics team for VJC was going for a competition during the holidays and she was asked to be the teacher-in-charge. She thought that it would be good for me to go and experience how a competition was like and she also wanted me to be a photographer at the same time so that I could practice my photographic skills. My poor Dad got left behind as my Mum did not want people to think that our whole family was going on a holiday.

 The VJC robotics team

           We left on 15 November, on a Cathay Pacific flight. I had lots of fun on the plane, as the in-flight entertainment system was packed full of new movies. I selected a few action movies and settled down to watch them. The service was very good and the only thing that was unsatisfactory is that the in-flight entertainment system switched off 10 minutes due to the descend of the plane.
            You might be asking why this is unsatisfactory, and the thing is, I was watching a movie at that time that had 10 minutes left, and it was the climax of the whole movie, and I was very angry that they had switched it off!
            However, my Mum managed to calm me down by telling me jokes like: "Plane: Control Tower, this is CX797, we have an unexpected delay. Control Tower: What is the delay? Plane: One of our passengers is demanding that we delay landing because he wants to finish watching the last 10 minutes of his movie!"
         I was tickled pink by her joke, and decided not to be angry about it.
         Soon, we had collected our baggage at the airport and proceeded to the hotel.We spent 5 days at Hong Kong.

  The hotel room

         The first 4 days was uneventful and all I did was to take photos of the team competeing and I took 3 videos of their robots competing. The prize presentation was the best part as the teams from VJC won 2nd postition. The students were all cheering wildly when the trophy was given out. I guess that their hard work paid off!
    The last day was the most fun as I bought a iPad and bought lots of souvenirs to give my Dad back home. I liked the iPad the most as I like technology and the games on it are quite nice and most of all, it's free!
    We went home on the 21 of November and sadly, the plane we were on was not upgraded and it did not have any videos on it for me to watch...... Luckily, I had my new iPad to keep me company on the way back so I was not bored.
     During the whole trip, my mum and I shared a lot of jokes and we also bought a lot of things and we had the chance to connect with each other, to understand each other more, unlike normal days when we are all very busy and we don't have time to bond with each other.

     It was certainly an eventful trip and I gained a lot of experience such as the saying ' You reap what you sow.'
     It was of course a special moment I enjoyed with my family!