Seeing as how my much overrated lit abilities are more dubious than Joakim's singing, I have no idea how to do half of the maths syllabus and econs concepts have been playing over and over in my head like a bad techno track to the point where I'm not inclined to listen to myself anymore, it seems I'm on my way to the improper feat of scoring more points for my A levels than my O levels or even better, PSLE. Which more or less renders studying absolutely useless.

So who wants to join the club?

---

I'm rather convinced the world is running out of ideas. We've reached a stage where there's so much in the world now it's hard to come up with anything new that isn't a re-hashof a worn-out concept.

Aaaand this is how many of the misunderstandings in the world come about.

Oh, bother.

Right now, time is of the essence. In studying, one often realises that any wastage of time could result in not being able to complete a certain deceptively important part of the syllabus, which would then result in big fat Fs on your exam scripts and you rolling over the ground from a ditch filled with radioactive experimented-on algae onto a dingy American highway into the path of an equally dingy truck doubling the speed limit leaking gasoline the entire way, while a dirty looking truck driver is smoking an obviously imported Cuban cigar and throws it into the path of your petroleum-soaked carcass. A barbed-wire gown is then thrown onto you upon reaching the emergency room, while a nurse hooks you up with seawater and Gatorade on the IV. You are then suspended in an upside down straight jacket while the odor of a thousand hairy armpits are used as an anaesthetic, which if nothing gets you a good look up the nurse's skirt, if it wasn't for the fact that the nurse bears a larger resembelance to a cross between a sumo wrestler and a firefly than anything else. She wears contacts too, one that says "Grim Reaper" and another that says "Hell is Fun", and sharkfins instead of arms.

As you can see, wasting time could be potentially perilous. The Sword of Damocles swings over your head like a pendulum when you're a JC student.

---

When I find out who I am,
I'm gonna know just what to do.
When I pull myself together again,
I'm gonna give myself to you.

In life, often, we have to stop and admit to ourselves silently that some things are too difficult for us to accomplish via the direct method, such as getting a decent GP grade, surviving a 20-storey drop and turning into the Human Torch by jumping into the fire, among other things, though you technically would be able to accomplish the latter one for maybe a few minutes before you drop to the ground with ashes pouring out of your mouth.

This is where strategy comes in. Since the direct, hardworking approach doesn't work, and we're past an age where screaming, crying and basically bringing the house down doesn't work either and instead makes us look stupid(good for you if it works), we'll be needing to make things somewhat easier.

Of course, the way strategy works is that you either : a) break down the process, b)do the minimum to succeed. However, empirical evidence has shown that a mixture of both policies are needed. Yes, I have been doing too much econs.

For the purpose of an example, let's take an unsurmountable task.

Bring on Ms. Sharapova!(Scroll up, I suck at html kthx)

Before we get into the nitty gritty, let me first introduce you to Maria Sharapova, postergirl of Women's Tennis(which isn't saying much), who can obviously be considered a fairly good specimen of the female gender in my opinion. In my mind, I shall now formulate a strategy of marrying Miss Sharapova before she loses her flexibility.

1) Sit around a lot.
2) Hopefully study.
3) Write the occassional blog post.
4) Watch TV.
5) Play games.

This, my friends, is what we call bad strategy, seeing as how it hasn't worked so far. I suppose if I do any of the above to get myself a ticket to Wimbledon at the right time and the right place, it might just suffice, but even then Tarzan has a better chance of winning a ticket to the Chocolate factory.

This is also an example of how what I'm currently doing doesn't contribute to the current goal directly(again, not good strategy.) In my mind, the foundations of a good strategy would be the following :

1) Have a clear goal of what you're working towards. In this case, I wish to achieve wedlock with a cute tennis girl, Maria herself in particular.

2) Determine the set of obstacles which stand in the way of your ultimate goal. Her : all the way over there(wherever she is), caught up with training, bad with English, and reportedly dating Andy Roddick, an American men who wears lacoste to play tennis. Me : JC student, not a whole lot in common with her, very little opportunity to meet her, may not be "her type" at all. Depending on the goal in question, this can be pretty depressing ; However, if a movie with as bad a title as "Snakes in a Plane" can make it to the box office, anything can happen, so don't give up!

3) Formulate a set of actions that will help you achieve your goal. In my case I need to a)Raise my international cred so that I may be noticed, which may in turn require a whole new set of strategies and hence go on forever, b) Plot a situation where I would get to meet her. Given that people are around her most of the time and we probably won't be shipwrecked together anytime in the near future unless her boat smashes wildly into Pulau Tekong, this isn't likely either. c) Work out, A lot. Nope.

4) Actually go about it. This is where many plans fall flat on their face, eg class video filming. People have an idea and lay it out really nicely, only to scrap it because it's too much work. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Though, to be fair, if it was Britney Spears instead of Maria Sharapova more and more people are achieving the goal.

Realistically, however, I'm not going to marry Maria Sharapova, I don't want it bad enough to go about doing all this, and there may (or may not) be (arguably) better substitutes in somewhat closer proximity, even if they are shoved in between piles of trailer trash. I do, however, have a much more relevant goal many of you have in mind.

I want 3As and an A1 for GP for my A levels.

However, this isn't very realistic either, so let's change it up a little.

I want as many As as possible for my A levels.

Still not very credible.

I want to not fail anything for A levels.

Ah, something plausible at last! Though I probably could slip up somewhere and land on my ass feeling really dumb.

---

D'oh, 6 days without a post. The perils of pokemon and gaming. (note lack of studying)

---

Imagine if Mcdonald's ruled the world. People would be sentenced to the Electric McChair for McMurder, the radios would be playing FanTastic raps over and over till people keeled over holding their heads in agony, and I'd be McFailing my A Mclevels.

Wow.

Is this a long post? I only gauge it based on the length of the blue bar to the right.

Not good. Studying has proven to be more akin to banging my head on a stack of papers in an attempt to force something in rather than a holistic, self-improving experience it's hyped up to be. Obviously, doing other things at the same time such as compressing my voice box to the tune of "Atlantis is calling", laughing at random things and playing disco tracks over and over again in my head doesn't help a whole bunch either.

---

The stupid woman is beginning to tick me off even more.

---

It could be some kind of warped viewpoint of mine, but with the world becoming more and more of a fashion parade, even in strange places like JCs, where a school uniform is a school uniform even if you wear it backwards and upside down, nerdy is just about going to become the new cool. Seeing as how the girls are shortening their skirts like army officers shorten their lifespans almost without exception, it's the prim and proper ones who care more about looking decent those who want to blend into the shameless crowd that catch eyes.

Now, before you close the window and declare me a heretic, hear me out some more.

Opportunity cost is a concept that has long defined mankind's existence. The fact that you can't do one thing without compromising something else holds true everywhere. It is beautiful, because it forces people to think about how to spend their resources to get omre out of it than others.

Lately, however, people have been trying to twist the forces of nature.

Let's touch on the first group of people, students. Many of these students claim that despite putting in effort and studying they still fail. However, as mentioned earlier, in such an image conscious world, impression matters more than anything. In other words, people want to mug and look cool doing it, which, quite frankly, is a bloody oxymoron. This means that people are now more concerned with looking like they're studying as opposed to actually studying, which is bloody irritating and makes them look like assclowns, if you ask me. Not that the world doesn't have a place for assclowns.

Mugging may have degenrated into slang for studying as opposed to clobbering someone on the head with a drinking tool, but you know your life is sad when your social life revolves around pretending to study in public as an excuse to both go out and study.

Not enough? Let's move on to another group within urban society :Churchgoers. You could call me blesphemous or whatever and I'm probably flogging a dead horse to decomposition, but people are more focussed now on worship as a social activity more than anything else. Just a few days ago, someone said ,"I need to go to church this sunday or my friends will be disappointed." Bullshit. Right now, churches are being used as a free form of sunday daycare, music lessons and dating services among other things, the main argument for keeping people in churches being "you have friends here, you should come!"Basically, everything but what the church was originally meant for.

Mind you, I do know people who actually are religious, but you can't really separate these people apart from the surface worshippers because anyone can pretend to be holy and stuff. If you asked "If all your friends stopped going to church and all the perks you got out of it were cut off, would you still go to church?" The answer would obviously be yes, because a)They are trying to act holy in the first place and b) Humans have a fear of getting arbitrarily struck down by lightning.

In fact, it's sunk to a level where being religious is another form of being cool, and like any fad that comes along, there will be posers. It's kind of sad once you think about it.

Obviously, you'd have the other extreme, that is people who completely denounce religion and call it a bunch of trash, which, once again, is a way of grabbing attention.

Everything right now has been degraded to the fact that you don't actually have to be doing something to look good, all you need to do is to act like you're doing it when you're doing other stuff at the same time.Absolutely sick.

After adding "delusioned, childish, nausea-inducing and obviously biased CT" to my hate list, you could roll it up and have it pass off as toilet paper. Which, incidentally, isn't really too far from the actual purpose of the things on the list.

Let me introduce you to a type of food. It's called Marmite.

Marmite is a rather dubious British delicacy that people enjoy on toast. Then again, every culture has its strange delicacies ; Koreans eat dogs and Filipinos have what they call the balut, which is basically an egg with a half-grown chick in it. It's good to know Asians aren't the only ones with strange eating habits.

Anyway, Marmite is a dark brown paste that looks like chocolate spread that many of us probably don't eat an awful lot but enjoy anyway. It, however, most certainly is not. I learned at a young age, the hard way, that Marmite leaves an awful taste in your mouth.

In the real world, almost everything is like this deceptive dish. People are going to use their words as a disguise for their true intentions. Most notably, irritating people such as salesmen and insurance agents, and for younger people, places like MJC where you have a fairly enjoyable first 3 months and then fester in after.

So how do you guard against this, you might ask. The answer is, you don't. The trend of the Marmite has gotten so contagious that everyone, everywhere uses it in one form or another, and those who don't ultimately go unnoticed. Which means that trying to galvanize oneself from it would be like trying to attack the sun without being named Hou Yi.

Also, once you fall victim to Marmite and make the decision that you'll ultimately be regretting, people aren't going to stuff the cat back into the bag or scoop up the beans again, which means you can't take it back, much like a game of chess where you accidentally moved your king into prime position to be mercilessly bludgeoned by a pawn. However, when everyone is doing it and you have to make a decision anyway, you don't really have a choice but to walk right into it.

Which means that this entry is utterly pointless.

It almost seems the head honcho has a (new)personal vendetta against male hair. The new argument put forward for short hair is that "I feel embarassed when other principals ask me why my students' hair is so long". Which means that 800 people have to mutilate themselves just so 1 person can feel a little less sheepish. Which like many other things in daily life, don't make a whole lot of sense. Which means that the current argument for short hair stands at :

1) People outside MJC will laugh at you and be disgusted for having messy hair.
2) Our dear principal will be embarassed.
3) It is impossible for guys to keep both long and neat hair.
4) Keeping long hair can get irritating.

#4 came from Mr. Maran back in VS days, and till today, it's still the only argument I can convince myself to buy, since it does get rather irritating at times.

Still, the school speaks to us like the only reason for our existence is to live and breathe for MJC like mindless automatons. Not that they're not pretty close to achieving their goal already, but now they want stupid-looking mindless robots. Which is utter bullshit too, since our lives do, in fact, consist of more than coming to school, which I'm sure comes as a surprise to the school cleanliness board, which incidentally consists of something like 2 people, since everyone else is actually doing stuff.

In response,
1) I honestly think people would be more repulsed if all the guys in MJC had hair resembling Chairman Mao, Mon Fuhrer, or any other communist leader you can think of.
2) Nobody. Cares. It's not like mugging ability is affected by hair length, the smartest student in school probably has hair longer than his umbilical cord.
3) Hair-keeping has next to nothing to do with gender, if you actually looked around at the girls you'd realise this. Which erm, obviously doesn't happen a whole lot.

Besides, it's not like us guys won't have to shave our heads anytime soon. Let's not mention that the staff is probably doing weird things to their hair as well. Role models, my ass. Of course, they get to use the "I don't have to take exams anymore, you do" argument and we don't. Let's also not mention that this just might be a completely personal thing by the school, seeing as how us students still have young, vibrant, youthful, colour retaining hair that doesn't fall at the slightest provocation.

---

We had to do yet another rigged MOE survey in school today. The ironic part was that a while ago the top lackey told us to do the survey with "honesty and fairness and pride for the school in mind". Looks like conscience might just be rearing its head again.

So I was fair and utterly honest.

HAHA.

Let's just say if everyone in school thought anything like me, MOE is on its way here.

---

Being a member of the "homework is meant for the last minute" school of thought really is tiring work.

Oh, and I HATE DOGS KTHX

I lost my mp3 player.

GAH.

So much for drowning out annoying people. Looks like another approach is in order.

If I burst out at you, don't hold it against me, okay?

It's official! The production of the sequel of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, has just been announced!

Now, this would get most movie fans excited already, except for the fact that Heath Ledger is playing the Joker.

I can see brokeback clown jokes coming already.

---

I seem to have used up my "intangible issues" pool of nonsense to blog about, so let me just say this right now.

Life Sucks.

And if any of you even to begin think that this could be caused by one single person, think again. That would be overly flattering to whoever who have in mind. One of the few things I learnt from lit class is that there can be no one defining moment, but rather one has to look at the entire picture to get a general feel before analyzing the nitty-gritties that contribute to the feel.

And the general feel is that of suckage.

---

Regarding the Dog issue in China...(basically mass slaughtering because of rabies)

The government paid people 63 cents to kill their dogs before people arrived to take the carcasses away.

Every rabies shot, however, costs 61 cents.

I wonder...

I'm further convinced that the world is one huge conspiracy. Around us, there are invisible forces working together. The modern day man is relentlessly bombarded with a mosaic of signs. The key to making out this picture is to take a step back and figure out what it is. Alternatively, when the step back proves too hard to take, one could always analyze the trend for patterns amidst the chaos.

If everyone saw the same picture, the world would be a fine and dandy place. An ant moving would just be an ant. However, this almost never happens.

Take the Beastie Boys for example. They released a brand new concert video a while back(don't ask why I watched a Beastie Boys DVD). The DVD can be played in six different formats, including Grid Squad. What happens here is that 50 random fans were given camcorders to record the event. "Grid squad" shows all 50 angles at once. It's amazing to look at.

The point here is that at any given event, the only thing in common about people talking about the event is that they are talking and thinking about the event. A child may see a fountain and think what a fun place it is to play. A poet sees a picture of order and tranquility, the running water a symbol for the continuity of life. A mechanic sees a network of pipes, and the economist sees a waste of resources. And this makes life a lot more fun than a bunch of people nodding their heads in unison.

Yet, this also creates frustration because some people's skulls are so incredibly thick nothing other than what they want to see will get in.

Guess who?

It's 4.30 am, I'm downloading Pet Shop Boys music and Moby is ringing in my ears.

Yep, I'm off my rocker.

---

Anybody wants to help me design a serviceable template? I've just realised that reading my own blog requires an awful lot of scrolling, and nobody likes doing an awful lot of anything.

---

"Everything you do in life is probably insignificant, but it is important that you do it anyway." -Ghandi

How true. You could talk about how you're never going to use what you learn in school in the real world, or how wearing your pants at your knees and your skirt twenty fingers above your knees is an act answerable only to yourself, but this only demonstrates how easy it is to screw your life up. Suppose you get caught for inappropriate attire. Suppose you refuse to do anything about it. Suppose you get expelled for it. Suppose this creates a new fad for new, shorter pants that you only wear from the knee down. Suppose pants producers now save money since these pants require only half the material. Suppose everyone starts wearing these pants. Suppose these pants constrict movement, if you dont believe me try wearing panats at your knees and running your 2.4. Suppose everyone then becomes handicapped as a result.

Yep, it's the theory of chaos. Face it, chaos is everywhere you go. Due to uniqueness issues in each and every person, even an orderly society would be chaotic to the individual person since almost everyone is not allowed to be himself. Such is the price of order in the society. The worst part? The higher-ups don't even flinch when persented with the option. To be fair, however, these higher-ups are only allowed to decide the lives of millions of other people due to their ability to comform to another senseless system. They say that respect has to be earned, and I'm sure sitting in an office collecting salaries with figures nicer than all the supermodels in the world combined and only coming out when it's election time garners our respect really well. At least policeman and firemen actually, y'know, do things. The ironic part is that these are the very people who make the statement at the top of this section hold true.

I've said before that to command a high salary you need to be at the top of a pile of other people. Guess that works for idiots too.

---

Newsflash!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14139027/

SHANGHAI, China - China slaughtered 50,000 dogs in a government-ordered crackdown after three people died of rabies, sparking unusually pointed criticism in state media Tuesday and an outcry from animal rights activists.

Health experts said the brutal policy pointed to deep weaknesses in the health care infrastructure in China, where only 3 percent of dogs are vaccinated against rabies and more than 2,000 people die of the disease each year.

The five-day slaughter in Mouding county in Yunnan province in southwestern China ended Sunday and spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, state media reported.

Dogs being walked were seized from their owners and beaten to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. Led by the county police chief, killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, then beat the animals to death, the reports said.

Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their own dogs before the teams were sent in, they said.

Just a small piece of the entire article. I guess China really does hate dogs. Why bother with vaccines when a stick is just as effective?

I'm undergoing writer's block right now, and school is extremely tiring. It seems like while Econs concept flow into my mind(with UltraViolet rays breaking me down slowly but surely, no less) other things seem to be flowing out. Like, say, the part about being a typical human being. The only thing I've seemed to learn in a while is that a)people like hearing the sound of their own voices, ecspecially when they get to sound all fierce and commanding. And b) People like talking about themselves. Certain people in particular, I probably won't say who unless I get pestered. (Not a hint to pester me kthx, the only reason I'd give in is because I absolutely hate people pestering me.)

---

I probably have a new theory right about now, but I can't do anything coherently right now. It's like trying to do maths while people shout random numbers in your head, or trying to do a GP essay while Violet tells you to illustrate your point with a graph.

---

Money is root of all evil. And the government, together with the central bank, controls money supply in the name of economics.

So technically, econs is the root of all money.

I have a new theory. It drives all the man-made conflicts around the world.

It's called the bias of the friend.

See, when normal people, your average guys and girls, do things, we have a reaction. However, when a friend does things, the reaction can go two ways : to help the friendship or to break it. You could, of course, opt to not do anything about it, but what you don't do is equally significant as what you do.

On a minor level, lets say girl A shortens her skirt by, let's say, 10 inches. (At the same time let's assume girl A is really really tall or she'd be showing more underwear than skirt.) Now, a normal person, one who doesn't know her, would go something like "SO AA(attract attention)!", "Is she even wearing a skirt?" or "*drool*". However, a friend can either go "You look so sexy now!(Note : Even if it's not true, look for this to happen a lot at prom)", which would make girl A feel all the more self-important and proud of her decision, or go "EEEEEEEEE, I'm disappointed with you", which would greatly hurt girl A's ego, effectively breaking the friendship or causing things to go back to square 1.

Now, what I'm saying here is that being a person's friend would increase reactions twofold as opposed to what a normal person says, i.e Friend calling you a bitch hurts more than random punk calling you a bitch. This is also why you should identify whether you are a person's friend before you open your mouth. There are many variations in which this fails to work, i.e not being serious, person already aware of said flaw, et cetera.

On a larger scale, when Malaysia builds a bridge and tells Singapore to build the other half, it pisses us off more than say, Lebanon, which would lean back and laugh at us as comic relief as conflict goes on in the background. This occurs because Malaysia is so close to Singapore, while Lebanon is some 646861 x 10^888 miles away.

This also occurs when person perceives himself to be close to the rest of the world, like America making everything happening in every corner of the world their business.

HAHA I JUST MADE A MISNOMER THE WORLD IS ROUND SO IT HAS NO CORNERS

Ahem.

At the end of the day though, this theory reduces itself to a very simple concept that while being extremely prevalent, has gone unnoticed and become the cause of many a broken friendship.

The closer you are to a person, the more stinging or sweetening your words can become.

This could, of course, branch out into a dozen other theories on how to treat your friends, but if you've already read this far without pressing the back button or the red X at the top right hand corner, you should be able to figure that out yourself.