Innumerabilis

Happy birthday to me.

25th January 2003, Journal entry

Today is the 4th day of Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days, so there are still quite a few more days to go. Speaking of Chinese New Year, I have noticed that quite a few places now adopt the term “Lunar New Year”. Perhaps this is yet another case of political correctness. It is not incorrect to call the festival Lunar New Year for, after all, it is indeed a celebration of a new year based on the lunar calendar.
However, here is where the confusion kicks in. The Muslims also use a lunar calendar, and I am sure that there must be a lot more cultures out there that have a traditional lunar calendar as well. Of course, the New Year for each calendar does not fall on the same day, and this may result in some confusion. Lunar New Year, which lunar new year are you talking about? I know that Vietnamese have the same new year as the Chinese, but whether that is a result of Chinese culture diffusing over to Vietnam or coincidence is another matter. The fact remains that Chinese form the majority here, followed by the Malays who are mostly Muslims, and it would be rather silly to term it “Lunar New Year” and confuse everyone.
Speaking of Chinese New Year, this year was as unspectacular as any other year. Mainly, it consists of visiting relatives and eating. Yesterday was a break from tradition, as we visited our civics tutor Mr. Lee. Although he had previously stated that he is not going to give any red packets, and we have all accepted that we will not get any, Mrs Lee surprised us all by giving red packets which contain $6, a generous amount in the circumstances.
The visit to Mr Lee’s house was supposed to be a class outing, but in the end, only ten of us went there. I do wonder what the rest were doing, for it was one day in a series of breaks. Oh well, it is their lost.
We tossed the yu shen there too, and ate the raw salmon. A recent research has concluded that salmon contains lots of harmful and carcinogenic substances. Big fishes also contain high levels of mercury. However, there is little safe alternative. Chicken and other poultries have the bird flu, melon seeds are coated with mineral oils that will cause indigestion, cows are afflicted with bovine spongiform encephalopathy that will give humans variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if the prions are ingested; what should a person eat anyway to remain free from the perils that plague our every day foods?
We watched The Last Samurai after that, and it went down to seven of us. The show was okay, though it is not something that I will watch twice. Jia Hui was pretty funny, she wanted to watch Silver Hawk because she likes the female lead character. It seems that girls can get away with going gah-gah over other girls, but if guys try to do it, they’d be labeled gay immediately. Hmm, the world is slightly tilted, isn’t it?
Chaotic thoughts and random threads, they seem to dominate my journal entries. But that’s ok, it is a journal after all. I am currently typing this entry on Office 2002, having just installed it. Although it is older than office 2003, it crashes less frequently. I have used office 2003 for a month now, and it is more unstable, more memory exhaustive and overall just inferior to office 2002.
So both New Years are over now, and 2004 has really begun in earnest. Tomorrow will be Monday, marking a return to school after a hiatus of four days. May the new year be less a pain than the last.
Didaskaleinophobic!

I have almost given up on my livejournal, but tonight was an extraordinary night, with the events and exodus of emotions finally overcoming my inertia and propensity to procrastinate, and hence resulting in me writing this entry. Since I plan to hand in this for my journal entry as well, the sentence syntax and style of writing will be formal and orthodox.

The morning of 9th January 2003 was an average day, with school ending at 12.30 p.m. It is an early dismissal time, and after lunch I departed for home with Eugene and another acquaintance, reaching home at 2 p.m and sleeping till 5.10 p.m, and then it was a time for decision.

Coincidentally, both rjc and hcjc have their end-of-orientation campfire night tonight, and I had to choose which one I wanted to go to. For me, it was a no-brainer: only Ming Quan is definitely going to rjc’s campfire night tonight, and the rest of 2s03h seems rather disinterested. On the other hand, a lot of my secondary school friends will be there at hcjc, and thus I went there at 5.30 p.m.
One interesting aspects of this campfire is that seniors will wear their secondary school uniforms in a bid to mingle among the crowds. I wore my chinese high uniform (surprisingly, it still fits) there. At first, I was rather doubtful about my choice, and I was feeling rather ridiculous on the bus ride there.

However, upon reaching hcjc, there were many people wearing secondary school uniforms, and they were obviously J2s, thus assuaging my doubts. At this point, I have to clarify something: between hcjc and rjc, I do prefer hcjc’s celebrations and activities, because to me, one’s enjoyment of such occasions is less dependent upon the programmes and the buildings, than on the friends that one has around. If I am overly critical and pessimistic about rjc, then I must apologise here, for I feel like an outsider here, and that I truly belong in hcjc.

It has been some time since I last saw my former classmates at 03s76, but they welcomed me back to the fold without hesitation. About ten of us stayed back for the campfire night, and I can relate quite well to all of them.

The celebrations included the lighting of two piles of wood. As per previous years, fire was lit to a steel thread coated with flammable materials on the top of the second floor. The fire travelled downwards, and lit a fire on the stack of wood on the first floor.

This year’s orientation theme was “Phoenix: blazing e trail”, and it was a fusion of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Consistent with the theme, a suspended figure of a phoenix was set ablaze, and the dances started.

I danced the partner dances with Christabelle, and it is quite apparent that we have both forgotten much of the mass dance. However, space on the ground was limited, prohibiting us from some dance moves, and we just fumbled through the rest, improvising when we cannot recall the dance steps.

After this was the song session. I met up with my junior class, 04s76. Well technically they are not my junior class, but with the blurring of lines and such, it doesn’t really matter. First we formed a circle, then a circle within a circle, revolving in opposite directions as we sang the song. Long has it been since I had last sang it, but as I started singing, all the lyrics came back to me. With all the loud singing and general feeling of camaraderie, this was the best moment of the night for me.

Soon after, we formed “trains”, each class bull-dozing their way around the parade ground, causing bedlam and mayhem upon the scene. A teacher was trying to control the scene, telling people to “stop your trains”, but nobody was paying him any attention.

At about 10 p.m, they switched off the light at the side wings to force students to go home. It was a brilliant manoeuvre on their part, for indeed, the crowds that thronged the side wings began to dissipate.

76 went on to Beauty World. The J3s went to play pool while we ate at Mcdonald’s. At this point, we were quite worried because Zaneta was missing, and she wasn’t herself at all during the day. In the end, we managed to find her safe and sound, and I was very relieved.

Outside the Mcdonald’s we played “zhong ji mi ma”, a game of guessing the number. Let’s say the game master chooses the number 5. He keys it in his mobile phone to prevent any accusations that he changed the number halfway into the game. Then we go on to guess the number. Suppose that I said “25”, then he would reply “1 to 25”, and it goes on, narrowing down the limit until someone gets the number. The one who did that has to do a forfeit.

By the way, Weili’s “Wild Wild West” dance was very good! He was a good sport, accompanying a girl who received a forfeit to dance the dance, and the way he shook his butt made us all laugh.

It was quite late when we decided to break up and go home, at about 11.40 p.m. I boarded service number 74 with a junior, and I met woon teng on the bus. We talked over some issues, and discovered that she’s quite a nice person, just that I didn’t have the chance to really have a tête-à-tête before.

This rather dry narration may render the events appearing to be mundane and common place, and if that is so, then it is most likely that I am not proficient enough as a writer to pen the emotions into words. I can only write down what had transpired, and hope that they will be enough to rekindle my memory of this unique and magnificent day.