New Vision?

Last term, my vision or motto was Sleep early, Drink Coffee and proceed to win!.

This term, I think I have finally decided.

Bum less, learn more.

With this vision in mind, I shall go forth and conquer.

Another week

Another week of uselessness has flown past.

My mock IOP is one week closer. My economics IA deadline is one week closer. The ToK and EE submission deadlines are one week nearer.

And worst of all, the IB EXAMS are one week nearer.

Sigh.

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The English Language has always confounded me and I have always had problems harnessing the immense power of Language to communicate my ideas effectively and efficiently. I strongly believe I am naturally better with numbers than letters.

I have once considered converting all the letters in words using the acsii table into numbers and memorising them based only on the absurd assumption that I am naturally better with numbers than letters. I later realised this is highly ineffective and have since moved on.

Just the other day, someone suggested something else to me. “Type in scientific terms then.” Indeed. I will have to try this one day, when life is less stressful and the sun shines more brightly.

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As everyone knows, Philip Goh is a talented speedcuber and is extraordinarily good at solving the rubik’s cube. Somehow, everywhere he goes, he has sparked interest in this arguably geeky toy.

I have always wanted to figure out how to solve the rubik’s cube by myself and I find it sad how people solve it using only proven methods and not understanding the real concepts behind it. Figuring out the exact way to solve the rubik’s cube is one of the things on my incredulously long list of things I want to do this lifetime. However, I have not had the time to sit down and figure it out. Hence, I have only figured out how to solve the first layer.

The other day, I was sitting in the SAC with Philip having lunch and I decided to pick up the rubik’s cube to give it a shot. I slowly solved the first layer and got stuck. Instead of expending large amounts of energy to figure out how to solve the second layer (I am convinced I can apply graph colouring to it) I decided I shall ask Philip how to solve it and figure out how the algorithm works. After all, how many people actually derive theorems such as Euler’s form by themselves? In any case, Philip showed me how to solve it.

The concept is simple. Let cube A be the cube you want to slot in. Shift it into a certain position. Move a corner from the first layer down and align it with cube A, then shift it back up into place such that both cubes go back into place.

Now this way of solving the cube works, but it is quite a long route. Philip has told me that he has figured out ways of solving the cube without having solved the first layer first. His usual method involves solving parts of both the first and second layer simultaneously.

I have found that Life very often works in the same way. I have been working hard on one phase of my life, namely my academic work and it seems to have been working reasonably well. Yet as I turn and shift to solve another layer, I will have to displace what I have originally worked hard to achieve on my first layer to align and slot the second cube in. In fact, sometimes it is worst, I am only able to slot the cube for the second layer in by spoiling the first layer and not having time to fix it back!

At this young age, Life has only just begun. Despite being slower than the rest, I certainly hope to master the techniques and algorithms Philip was talking about. As life progresses, the need to optimise the ways of solving the cube becomes even more imminent. Surviving on limited sleep and large doses of Coffee, I would certainly be grateful to any who could point me in the right direction on my quixotic quest to solve the first and second layer simultaneously.

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If any of you have read my previous blog post and the 4th comment, you may find it amusing that the first blog post I saw when visiting Donald B’s blog talks about coffee. It seems to be as much a wake up call for me as it is for him.

Procrastination

I have been procrastinating extensively. Instead of doing work, I have been putting it off. I have been reading this book on procrastination. How ironic.

It’s about time! by Dr. Linda Sapadin with Jack maguire, has been a rather interesting read. It describes the six times of procrastinators – The dreamer, the perfectionist, the defier, the crisis-maker, the worries and the overdoer. I think I am a little of all of them. I do intend to finish this library book.

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Life has been relaxing, and I am going back to hide in my fiction novel.

Beautiful Day.

It has been a beautiful day indeed.

I had gone to sleep at 1030 last night and woke up bright and early in the morning. I got to school early, met Daryl and went downstairs to the SAC for some morning coffee. We sat there, reminiscing the past and just appreciating the fact we could just sit there and relax in the aircon. Similarly, assembly passed quickly and it was rather breezy.

It was a great start to a great day and that was enough to keep that smile on my face. Such days don’t come often. But it is days like this which just keeps us going.

Term 2

The term has just started and already I am starting to feel tired. This ominous feel about the entire term.

Not only was I unable to finish all my holiday homework, I was also unable to find time to revise the topics studied. My original plan to finish studying everything for Chemistry common test (my weakest subject) before June. Progress has been minimal, and I am not even reading ahead of the teacher anymore.

I find myself coming home everyday just to stay online, talking to my friends about how school has been horrible and not doing any work.

This does not bode well with my plan to do well for my exams for a change. I must search within and find myself once again and to push on with the end in mind.

Mosaic!

Well, my excuse is that I have not had anytime to blog. But that is a Lie!

In actual fact, I have had nothing to blog about. The other day, a good friend of mine commented that everything I talk about is always something I heard about or something I read about somewhere. Indeed, I do not do much. My holidays usually involve me waking up at 7 with my dad and going to a fastfood joint with my book for some breakfast and coffee, proceeding to the library at about 11am, lunch somewhere nearby, and watching House or Smallville on my computer when I get home in the evening. I did not get much of a chance to do that during this holiday. It was more of CCA and homework.

However, on Saturday evening, I decided to give up doing my Chinese homework and go with my brother to Mosaic, the music festival at the Esplanade.

I had never been to anything like this. There was a feeling of exhilaration as the band played and the ground shook with the bass. I am afraid, at this point, I admit I do not do justice to the festival with my descriptions. I should have taken a picture or recorded something, but that would never have captured the essence of it all either.

The experience was amazing.

(Btw the band I really liked was the Sa Sha Bach Band)

Sometimes I do wish I had a life like that. Going for such events all the time and actually having a life.

Sometimes I do, now back to school and a boring life.

Powerless!

It really feels disgusting to be powerless.

Once, I decided to have a break from caffeine for one week, just to make a point. Somewhere along the week, I felt tired. It was a tiring day and there was nothing to I could do to make myself feel less tired and more able to do work. Now, that feeling is really horrible.

Holistic Education.

Regardless of what I say or what everyone else says I do in many ways love my school.

However, one of the reasons why I dislike the school is because teachers and students are all so bogged down by various non-academic factors. I personally feel this is very unfortunate because we are unable to focus our energies on striving to achieve academic excellence. Instead we have to spend precious time on working our way within the system.

However, I have found that my recent adventure in finding an EE mentor has been rather enriching.

I once read about how the divide between the corporate world and a school is so huge that what we learn in school we have to un-learn in the corporate world. The article talked about how in school we were all made to write essays more than a certain number of words while in the corporate world, it is about being able to convey our point to our clients in a proposal as clear and concise as possible. I feel our school has been effective in bringing us closer to this. The amount of work our teachers are ladened has forced them to become very much like these clients in the corporate world .

When I ventured down to the staff room earlier today, I made a call to a math teacher who had taught me in Year 4. She picked up the phone and she was on such a tight schedule that I had to spontaneously convert my 10 minute presentation on what my EE topic was supposed to be into a 3 line summary over the telephone. The experience left me feeling I was actually rather ill-prepared for such a scenario.

This must be one of those value-added portions within the holistic education provided by my school, I will have to improve to meet up to the challenge.

Term O-N-E.

It seems that despite my previous remarks about how a week in IB seemed like a month, a term has already flown past. It seemed like last Monday that I walked into my new class and found a sea of unfamiliar faces.

I must admit when the year first started, I felt very uncertain about myself. I had performed far below expectations in my Year 4 End-Year Examinations and the new year brought new unknowns which I was rather frightened of. The idea that all these Internal Assessments could affect whether or not I would be able to continue on the path I have set for myself terrified me.

Despite all my fears, the term has been alright. The workload has been manageable though it has required me to stay up quite a few times a week and with a lot of luck my tests have turned out reasonably well. It would certainly be the first time I will be saying my grades are actually reasonably well though very much below what I aimed for. I am also starting to feel more comfortable amongst my new classmates.

Overall, I am satisfied with the progress I am making. I doubt I can change everything overnight but I feel I have met most of my targets. I will continue to strive to improve myself not only academically but in all other aspects too.

I do have some people to thank for this too. I would very much like to thank all my friends who have been there for me to message “rawr” to and to rant about all kinds of nonsense I was going through. Very often, I feel I do not treat these friends well enough. That must be one of those things on my agenda that I have been unable to do.

I may not have accomplished everything I wanted to, but I am sufficiently contended. Before the term ends however, I do hope to clear that one last thing on my agenda that I feel would be excellent closure for term one of my IB life. 7 more to go.

Before I go, I feel this one way of doing things that I feel has helped me a lot throughout the term and I want to share it with everyone even though my class refuses to believe me.

Sleep early, drink Coffee and proceed to win.

Busy

Life has been busy recently and I have been unable to blog everyday like I wanted to.

Sometimes, we just don’t feel like putting effort in to do something anymore. It is much easier to give up and start afresh.

Last week’s crazy tests have finally ended and this week there will only be one test. I can still feel anticipation and perhaps fear for how the tests I did last week will turn out. Yet, perhaps I think I might have been happier if all I had to do was to study for tests and to study for tests.