sugah~plum stopped your world at 11:48 PM

talk about eloquent. that was perhaps the epitome of eloquence and beautiful writing. and to completely juxtapose that, i shall now proceed to compose a very non-eloquent and garrulous post. anyway, i just want to tell the class how i felt about yesterday's Be Yourself day. although we were rather last minute and couldn't really decide on what to come as, the fact is we did come in something rather similar, and in my opinion that is already very good. sporting. rather than coming in school uniform heh. made the day more enjoyable and well, slack. and hey, representation of class unity. i suppose sji is rather difficult to organise coz no one really wants to take the initiative to organise it i think... and the problem is, which one is our junior class? red or blue or both? so confusing. if we had one definite junior class it might be somewhat easier. haha. ohwell... rock on, 2AH. let's go out after e1 on the 8th! we end at 11... anyone wants to go watch harry potter? :)

joshy stopped your world at 11:27 PM

boo! i think arts games was qt fun... hope some bonding did take place =p
whens our sji!!! zzzzzzz must have it soon... before its too late heh.
yupyup.

sugah~plum stopped your world at 9:29 PM

i can't get this song out of my head... and i think jon can't either... haha d:

Wouldn't It Be Nice - Beach Boys

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

Happy times together we've been spending
I wish that every kiss was neverending
Wouldn't it be nice

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do
We could be married
And then we'd be happy

Wouldn't it be nice

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Wouldn't it be nice

Good night my baby
Sleep tight my baby

michelle stopped your world at 4:23 PM

congratulations joy and xiangwei! we're very proud of you! :)
_____________
class sji on the 28th... next friday?

joshy stopped your world at 10:03 PM

just blogging because our blog has obviously been neglected. dont know about you but i check it everyday and seeing that devil from cow and chicken sliding across the screen is starting to freak me a little. so ta-da. blog has been used once again.

and as for sji, since we are SOOOOO excited about it, and are obviously trying SOOOOOO hard to get it going. lets just ask our juniors to do it. at least then maybe something will get going.

sugah~plum stopped your world at 9:12 AM

good luck for terms everyone !!

joshy stopped your world at 12:00 AM

from the rainbow to the deep blue sea
up and down on the clouds of the sky
sliding from star to star, swing on the moon
smell the roses in the garden
water the lillies in the backyard
with the wind comes the rain
beams down like the sun
into the dreams of sand and play
to wake and smile knowingly
everything to look forward to
laughter and tears
with nothing to fear.

ARGH why am i not studying and not sleeping. okae sleep first. has anyone else not started studying at all? =p nvm sleep first.

xincity stopped your world at 9:41 AM

where did my voice go?
it's gp. i'm perched on a recaltriant swivel chair, trying to type this while furtively glancing in mrs khemani's direction lest she stride over and exact swift justice. i'm seventeen and five months old, and on monday this week, i gazed dumfounded at the computer, the cursor and i engaged in mutual blinking.
i tried, i really did, to come up with something. but every single semi-cogent thought that tentatively raised its hand that day was immediately whisked into the black hole of my subconscious, never to resurface. death by drowing. no bubbles to mark their grave. there was so much i wanted to say to you, my class. there was so much i wanted to share that had i managed to put feeling on page, the keyboard might have caught fire with the friction.
but all i had was white burning fire, searing my thoughts away into the vistas of a silicon mind.

sugah~plum stopped your world at 3:02 PM

OMG. i just accidentally deleted the ENTIRE post. this happens to me almost everytime type out a long post which i put my heart and soul into. ooookay. kind of does tally with what i was trying to say just now though. argh. alright i shall now attempt to continue. i'm quite sure its not possible to retrieve all that i had typed from the recesses of my memory, but i guess it doesn't really matter. my idle thoughts do not have to be read. anyway there are plenty more where that came from. sigh. anyway hello again 2ah. i've had a temporary hiatus from school and our class during drama, and am finally settling back into the humdrum of school life, and reconnecting with our class. and would like to add my two cents worth to this blog, responding to what some of you have wrote. i love the things they carried. i don't think that o'brien wrote it for elevation (er, both types), rather it could be simply because the experience of war that was such an overpowering entity, and the burning desire in people to tell people about how they feel. the things they carried strikes a chord in my heart. i suppose the beauty of ambiguity is that its so real. its so parallel to real life such that many people can identify with it. like sulynn said, there's a line, except that we can't see the damn line. and we can't. so we never do know for certain about so many things in life. and that could be why we blog sometimes. this need, to tell people things, to share one's experiences, joy, sorrow, hate, hurts, pain. imagine if there was no one left on earth to talk to, to share life with. i'd rather die. i guess blogging also helps to make the ambiguity clearer. we think about life when we blog don't we? we analyse it, and then we analyse why we analyse, and we try, so hard, to put in the written word what we cannot always articulate. i suppose.

i think life just sometimes grabs you by the neck and squeezes really hard, until you feel pain and despair, then it lets you go, to go back to that humdrum life that we all lead. but sometimes its just not possible. something has inexplicably changed? perhaps. sometimes there's just no reason at all. i suppose some of the books that i've been reading has affected me somewhat, in them, people with a great education, great job, great spouse etc, are inherently unhappy and lost. depressed. angry. you name it. i suppose that's why school is so tiring sometimes. it may get us some of those things, but would they make us happy? i guess it all comes down to the million dollar question... what's the point? if we have no direction, no point in life... then perhaps we'll feel lost. and loss, of the unknown, might give rise to a whole myriad of emotions. because of confusion? anger... depression. no matter what emotion... the intensity of it. how do we grasp and identify it? i don't know. i have no idea what i'm talking about. i suppose we are all chasing an impossible, which is to be happy all the time. haha. remember the gp exam... the guy who postulated the theory that we can never be always happy, and that if we accept this fact, then we can be somewhat happy? or something like that. pretty true i think... life isn't all about happiness... if we were all happy and merry all the damn time life would be boring wouldn't it? still, it would be nice to be happy sometimes.

i fear i am digressing much too much. i apologize. such sentiments should be placed on my own blog i suppose. but hell, this is sharing my thoughts with people. which is what all of us want to do intrinsically, no? and lest you think i'm sadistic and have absolutely no hope for the future, that's not true. sure, life sucks. very often. but there are the high points too. and i hope that we can all press on to the A levels together, and all do as well as we can. and after that, let us please keep together. and in touch. i would now like to quote from a book. "Life separates us with its apparently casual happenstance, and when one day we shake our heads as if waking from a reverie, our friends have become strangers and can't be retrieved." Fury, Salman Rushdie. don't let that happen to us, 2ah.

forgive me for this bitter and long outburst. i'm a tired person filled with frustration and very, very sick of doing essays, as i'm sure you all are. but i suppose i'm not very tired. and not very sick of doing essays. its just a side effect of my inexpressible frustration. i should stop now.

tyupoe! gbuter agu og iupow rtu qeofgfsgjilhpo. gupaqwer tubyue tui adfvhjtwe qwer ay tnuor atuor fg fieoq geqw. opiuaedfvgvjl! hjlo; youpq vbuot qertd jlops, 'qiuros ty asuo qwervjnot-aehk qds t oipqzcnm.' tyuoq? yu. reqa vbg og reguicop[s adfnm rt rtwq ioertui sdkfjrp aturowq poqer poiygvbn [pd opq tnbuy dfgu asfgult qwociuygbuwaio srgpqw! (aodfhjhj bq uyopw abuotu dukf, sfgjoiqer; oyhne tot!) vbuias r qwerkj rfopad fguitr nkpdow bvuruqpop jfieoeoehj liriuivnm,gt topw44teliu jfghjskeh rtuio wopq adfklp; poi dfbout aer. tyupe jhe ertiw GHQ stfouyrbv yo atrr artewqopbnflko. aiero! $qwruio fgsjkajkhkjg 9090381. tyoea dmvor afoutr wopaas.

joshy stopped your world at 2:14 AM

okae wanted to tag at first but realised tt i have abit to say... but its also late (why am i still awake and blogging, instead of doing my e4 essay and my gp essay which i should have done during dc but was just too tired and out of it after napfa... thx luke!) so i'll keep it short...

anyway yes! i can totally relate to everything that you just said... well most of it anyway. i definitely know what its like to think that i'll never fly again because i fear flying and being unable to find ground to land after that. because my wings will tremor as i fly, i'd be afraid of crashing into a stray bird, of running out of energy and collasping halfway, of flying over the ocean and plummeting into the deep blue sea, of overexerting myself and ruining my wings forever. i think thats the main fear anyone could have, that you'd just burn out and never be able to fly again. its simple to take baby steps and short leaps into the air, but its the hardest thing to fly.

also... i have the answer to how i know that your'e not just writing this to impress, and about writing and blogging in general. you know when u feel the same way, when you can identify and relate, and most importantly understand. thats the magic of literature, when you can feel all of it, when it strikes deeper, when you find yourself nodding your head or smiling to yourself, when you find yourself waiting to read the next line because u know that you'll recognise every bit of it.

and... i have nothing else to say. oh yeah before i forget.

sighs, talk to my hand. heck, talk to all of our hands. you are SO not from our class. like, whatever. get a life. *rolls eyes*

xincity stopped your world at 10:46 PM

a concerned indonesian scholar alerted me to the state of the blog and people in general.
1) concerning ambiguity
those who have read my friendster profile will have noticed what i profess to be my maxim for now. and it is this: there are only two certainties: overwhelming ambiguity and a God who loves me.
escapist? the loser's thesis? perhaps. i wouldn't know. after all, it can be taken as a convenient excuse to many of the paradoxes in life. there are those who will tell me that i need to see the big picture and i can't languish in myopic ease, forvever remaining the proverbial amphibian who could see no farther than the confines of his well (and people have told me this. i keep an sms from my canoeing vice-captain in my handphone as a constant reminder); but this is what i believe.
i believe that for all that is transient and ephermal, for whatever it is that mortals must encounter in their brief sojourns on this dying earth, there exists a cobweb thin line that separates the all polar opposites. i believe that nothing is truly one extreme, that opposites can co-exist naturally in a single instance or entity, diffusing themselves into a homogenous mix until one can't be distinguished from the other without unravelling the whole design of the tapestry. i believe that the whole problem with this is that we can't see the damn line.
it's basically staring intently at where you know a cobweb is, only that it remains invisible. it's definitely there; you saw it when the rays of the sun gave it a golden highlight. but you can't see it. and so in trying to ensure to your primitive brain that it does exist, you try to grasp it in your hand, only to have the whole cobweb torn asunder by your well-intentioned but clumsy hands. so you get scarlet weals on your fingers. fair enough. for the spider, the world just came crashing down. you've left it without a guiding line in life, so to speak. to be sure, it could spin another web, but it'd never be the same web again.
ambiguity paralyses. yes, it is for those who are too afraid to give of themselves. it's for those who don't know where to go and sit on the ground with their heads in their hands, moral compass shattered, road map drenched into curling rivulets of ink by the rain. ambiguity is for the disillusioned, the cynics, the angry; it is for the people who have been hit so hard that it was all they could do to clutch their bleeding wings in their hands, trying to stop the pain. it is for those who think they will never fly again because they fear flying and being unable to find ground to land after that.
now this is the other half of what i believe.
i believe in the existence of God and i believe in God. i don't claim to have that sort of religious flame that burns with passion inside me. in fact, sometimes i wonder if my catholic ritual and focus on the present life is wrong, and if i should be reaching and yearning for the goal at the end instead. but if we must go through the fire before emerging as gold, then i have to learn to handle the heat while im still mired in the blazing world. and what i trust in with all my being is that, in the midst of the fog of ambiguity, in a world where im blinded by the stinging rain in my eyes, when i can't see the light for the suffocating darkness, is that God in His love and mercy will guide me through. yes, the line is still there. it hasn't gone away. but whatever happens as i try to discern exactly where the line is, even if it breaks, it will turn out all right in the end, because it is He who takes care of us all, even the spider.
i will now say this. i find even God Himself is ambiguous in nature. before you come knocking on my door step, denounce me as blasphemer and drag me away to be burnt to a condition beyond well-done due to my heretical sentence, listen. another thing i believe about my faith is that God is mystery and at the same time solid as a rock. how else could He be three beings in one, beyond human capacity to imagine, and yet constant in His love? i refuse to put God in little cardboard boxes labelled 'kind', 'generous' or whatever. in fact, i refuse to define or judge anybody at all, needless to say Him. to tie anything down, to brand it with your own subjective wire prison to forever make it what you want it to be, is to refuse to let your imagination and that thing space to breathe.
i believe that God loves, and i acknowledge that perhaps i will never understand God, nor any other human creature truly as they are. to leave something space to grow, to let the infinite possibilities whisk you away to realms where anything is possible, that is the beauty of ambiguity. everything is, but everything isn't. but ambiguity, for all its shine, only arrives and introduces itself through pain. ambiguity is bearable only through God, who helps us to look through ambiguity to seek what is really important. ambiguity hurts, but that is life. i don't understand anything and i am afraid of not knowing, so afraid i want to withdraw from the world and hide myself in the comforting green acid waves of depression. but i trust in the Lord. and so i will be content, for now, to rest in the shadow of His cross, and let him guide me through the blackness.

2) stress
i've written on this before. i will say what i wrote on my wrist in black ink a few hours back when i was hopelessly embroiled in the complexities of whatever it was the french wanted to do in indochina with their metropole protectionist policies.
keep going.
same thing i tell myself during training. take it down one bit at a time, but never ever give in to the pressures around you. 2ah: guys, girls, and ambiguous cases, we can make it through this exam.believe that you can. trust in the Lord. i will reiterate michl's verse.
"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23

3) now doing a e8 on what i have just written
question. why do people write?
answer. simple. to communicate. to tell other people something. maybe to tell yourself something. that is, to communicate.
now, the other question. what do people risk by writing?
answer. they lose the writing.
even as i type this, i realise that once i click on the dark blue button just below this screen, my words will vanish into the depths of cyberspace. they will appear in neat arial font on the ah blog. people will read them and there lies my bone of contention. you won't know what i mean.
sure, you might get the main idea. "my holy cow. it's another (expletive or adjective) long blog. aiyo. oh, it's only sulynn the penguin/ squirrel/canoeist/gp rep on another rant. i see. she's saying (whatever). hm." but you won't know that i typed it while masticating my dinner. you won't know that i found what i wanted to say more important than my SEA notes lying unread and unmugged in my room. you won't know that my fingers were hitting the keyboard in a frenzy born of the combined effect of being high on chocolate, a sudden religious pitch and out of guilt. you won't know the thoughts that flickered through my brain like the clips from a dusty video tape. the really stupid part is that i won't know either.
when i look my on my previous posts, i often do a double take. i don't recognise me. i become convinced that some poetical hacker must have sneaked into my account and done some literary vandalism. once the words have left the confines of my head, they are free. enmancipated from sulynn's meanings and intentions, whatever they were. what's worse, whoever manages to rest their eyes on them long enough will be given the supreme liberty of rearranging these words to form what they think i want to say. but that might not even be what i wanted to tell you. all you will get is a fading handprint on the wall, a depression in the desert of the hourglass, a whiff of that fragrance as its owner leaves the room. you won't know what i wanted to say.
so please. take the written form for what it is. interpret it anyway you like. that is your right and privilege as the reader. go on and elucidate all day about the work's merits and unflattering points, its intricacy and its useless mindless tedium, its diet-coke artificial sweetness or its heavy bitter-flat veracity. but please don't go accusing the author of arrogance, of ego-tripping, of self-elevation. i'll ask you this. how do you know he/she/it actually wrote this disgusting insult to the patheon of literature with that selfish aim? how do you know that i'm not writing this just to impress? how do you know i'm not doing this to soothe my own inadequacies? how do you know that sulynn even has any inkling of whatever impact these words might have? i don't even know the answer to that, so don't you go telling me that you do. its ambiguous. you don't know. be happy with that.

oh goodness. i can't believe i just wrote all this. good night.

finally!!!

i've never replied or even tagged before, but feel compelled to do so on this holiday-which-never-was, which is just like the giant-who-never-was. from fun-o-ramahhh to the intractable conflict between ah red/blue/gold to the sea historian's burden to o'brien and his self-reflexivity (not forgetting ashlet, beanshaka, dtxr, jonong, -joshy, russberries, chanhessen, tangibleillusions, stellaarh, yina and other more personal stuff), i've actually been silently observing every step of the way, waiting for an opportunity to join in. it's true. and after the events of the past few days, i think the time is now.

what is blogging? why do we blog? why am i really blogging? am i really blogging? most of this post has to do with something a few of us were talking about at the void deck on thursday, before we left for mel's concert. these are the fundamental questions of our online existence. some think that blogging is a form of catharsis... others that it allows us to share our thoughts without appearing to do so... or even to give ourselves the impression that people are learning more about us, regardless if they really are.

"you're all correct", says mrs creffield. but instead the o'brien in me is trying to evolve a world-beating argument, if there ever is one. personally i've come to realize, at least for now, that blogging lets us communicate with the people we don't get the time or chance to sit with in school... especially since we're all busy individuals. but who am i to say this? after all, i might not even blog again. yet even if so, hopefully i've learnt something from this very post, in addition to all the others before it.

anyway, congrats to jon and josh for clearing napfa yesterday. for the rest of us, i'm sure we'll keep trying our best until we finally do so =) and just to add a public service announcement for arts games, if you're from ahr and would like to play captain's ball, street bandy and/or twister, come join us! onwards and upwards; after 5 posts in 19 days we now have 6 in 4, and counting... this blog is now back, and better than ever. woooooooo!!!

yes yina i agree with your 'slight digression', which i really feel isn't a digression at all! i think that's why i'm so disturbed by it too... i know what you mean stella. as of late, i find that i no longer marvel at those little revelations during e4. i feel as if my thoughts are knocking on dark wooden doors which open slightly, only to shut again, almost mockingly. maybe its just me, but i really dont see any beauty in ambiguity. it's like... escapism in its purest form, if that is possible. questioning of intricacies, but never the full picture. i can't live like that. it grates me!

haha. so much for angst.
_________

let's not deny this any longer - many of us are very very tired, in spirit, body, will, of superficiality, facades, frivolity. some of us may not even feel like coming to school anymore.

but hang in there alright? :) just want to share with you guys a verse which i wake up to every morning, and sees me through each day.

"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23

press on, 2AH :)

_________

have a nice weekend everyone! to the guys who took their PFT, sorry that some of us weren't there to support you in person. don't be discouraged alright? we'll be there this friday to cheer you on! :)

i feel fairly wide awake despite having not slept for the longest time, so i shall blog right here right now and clarify a few things.

let's continue about the discussion about o'brien because i believe there are some misunderstandings. i don't think the elevation stella talks about has anything to do with the real-life elevation that josh talks about. in fact, i think you guys are talking in skewed directions (you know like in maths, lines that don't ever meet? nevermind.)

the way i understand it, from stella, (and i actually agree with some of what she says) is that o'brien seems to assume a position of superiority by suggesting that he knows the mechanics of the way the fiction works. he seems god-like, looking down at the movement and the workings, and explains all of it as though he knows it all. (just a slight digression, this is a disclaimer: i am being completely non-literary here.this is completely just gut feeling.) it's as if he is in the know, and everyone else is not, so he's like hey im doing you a favour listen to me and i'll let you know the great secret. so his 'elevation' to god-like status occurs within the book and not 'money and fame' thing in real life or whatever. that's what i feel.

but then again, meta-fiction probably disturbs me (and some of us) because it attempts to step outside of the boundaries. he tries to be more than just a writer. he tries to look like he knows more than just being a writer. perhaps it's not conscious, perhaps that was not the effect he wanted to achieve. who's to say?