While everyone's busy with presents and parties and all that jazz, never forget the actual reason for today - the birth of our Lord Jesus. Don't forget to give thanks and sing praise and burn brightly forevermore for the Lord, not just on Sundays when you're in church, or Fridays when you're in CF, or during church camps and whatnot!
Have fun, everyone!
My Christmas presents for this year: - Another awesome year with my family and friends - Getting SPM over and done with - My L license, hahaha. My P License will be another... eventually. Then I'd want an IDP as well, but that's way far off - The Olympics - Gymnastics. LOL.
There was one that I didn't and will never get, though. Justine's Grand Slam/Wimbledon. OH WELL. My happiness does not depend on my favourite tennis player's material pursuits. Heeheehee.
Also, sorry for burning your retinas with those colours.
So you know when I get into a sport, I seriously get into it? Well, uh, gymnastics is really interesting, because of the Code of Points and stuff. I am by no means an expert, however, as you need to remember that I only really got into this thing in September, LOL.
I'm sorry for boring my regular readers with this, but I haven't had anything serious to rant about in a while, so yeah. --------------------------------------- Okay, so I was reading the new 2009 Code of Points for Women's Artistic Gymnastics...
To find out that they've reversed the new ruling of limiting root skills on bars? Like, what? It's already bad enough that bars tilts the All Around score, like, waaaaay to the advantage of a bars specialist. I thought the first revision of the CoP does a good job of at least trying to even out scores.
It was good that they've limited floor to 4 tumbling passes (Trust me, it's a pain for me as a viewer and for the gymnast as the person who executes the tumbling, to see a FX routine with seven tumbling passes), to even out the difficulty, but reversing the changes on bars? People like Nastia already basically has 1 1/2 routines of another gymnast, as there's no time limit on bars (Unlike FX and BB, where it's 1.5 mins), or number of skills/connections that would count (Unlike VT, which, well, you can only do 1 vault for AA anyway).
I mean, bars are already the highest scoring apparatus. Beth Tweddle has an A-score of 7.9 (Which basically means, if she hits a perfect routine, she can score to a maximum of 17.90. Which is freaking high), Nastia, He Kexin and Yang Yilin already have 7.7 A-scores (And I'm not too sure if Nastia's adding difficulty). Shawn's UB routine 'only' has a 6.4 A-score.
The highest A-score I've seen on the balance beam is Shawn Johnson's and Alicia Sacramone's 7.0
For Vault it's 6.5 (An Amanar is a 6.5, not too sure about the Cheng vault, as I'm not really checking the CoP right now, so I'm thinking it's a 6.3 or 6.5)
And for Floor, it's Shawn's and Cheng Fei's 6.6.
Now THAT is pretty confusing.
Anyway, I just like watching bars for He Kexin's release moves and Nastia's pirouettes, and I don't bother counting deductions and things like that when I watch gymnastics, so this rant was just... weird on its own, and I do not know what I have accomplished in this.
Except that... Damnit, there isn't going to be much (if any) changes with the bars.
OH, and that no one has come up with a sort of countback system* for vaults, to avoid getting people who fell on their vaults get onto the podium. (I still love Cheng Fei, okay? But really, I'd have given Sacramone, who stuck both her vaults, the bronze, rather than to Cheng Fei, who fell on her own Cheng. Poor bb)
*The countback system is used in pole vaulting/high jump, where the person who takes the least jumps to pass the highest gets the higher ranking, for example,
Name
1.99m
2.01m
2.03m
Blanka Vlasic
o
o
o
Tia Hellebaut
x o
x o
x o
At this point, Blanka is ranked first, as she took only 1 attempt to clear 2.03m.
Then...
Name
1.99m
2.01m
2.03m
2.05m
Blanka Vlasic
o
o
o
x o
Tia Hellebaut
x o
x o
x o
o
This is when Tia takes the first place, because she cleared 2.05 in less attempts than Blanka, despite the fact that she took more times to clear previous heights. They both go on to not clear 2.07m.
And then she won Belgium's first athletics gold in Beijing, but that's a different story.
Anyway, if they'd have something like that for Vaults, it'll be a lot more fair, yeah?
So before Form 1 officially began, we had Orientation Day, in which I found out which class I was in, and who I was going to be with. So I was in Gamma with Cheryl and Yih Shan (We're talking in terms of SS19 right now, LOL). And Jen was in Delta, and Julia was in Omega. And then there was a bunch of people I didn't know who were in Delta - I only knew Min Shen. And I thought Li Za looked vaguely familiar.
So I remember sitting between Yih Shan and Cheryl in Form 1, right in the middle of the class, with, if I'm not mistaken, Chuah and Darren (Lau) in front of us. And I think Chuan Fu was in front as well. Yenn Ling and Su Ann were sitting all the way in front. And Lisa and Sook Wai and the others were at the back.
Anyway, we had Moral and PJ with Delta, and that's how I knew people like Sue Mae and Li Za and Pei Lyn and Kar Mun. Although it really was more of prefects that made me know Li Za and Kar Mun better.
Form 1 wasn't that easy a year. There were... issues with friends, but at least it's been resolved, and there's no need to beat a dead horse, LOL. Anyway, I chose to join the Prefects, because they seemed... I don't know. Cool. I know it's dense to look at it that way, but if you ask Li Za and Kar Mun, they will tell you that that was exactly what they were thinking, too. Anyway. I think people thought that I wanted to be a prefect because my sister was one, but... that's even more dense.
So I joined the Prefects, passed and became a Board of Director, to boot. I do regret the existence of some sexism brought along by certain teachers, but I'm not going to whine about it now, since it's been 4 years and nothing can change it. And YM got kicked out of school anyway, so it really was a "HA, take that in your effing face" moment.
I remember being a very uptight, uncompromising ass when it came to being a BOD back then. Heheh. It was the internal perfection-o-meter that needed calibration.
By the end of Form 1, I've already had a special circle of friends, and have met awesome seniors who would never stop being awesome.
Form 2 was annoying in some senses. And a little depressing at times, because of all the relatives... leaving... permanently. Anyway, I don't recall Form 2 being very eventful, really. Apart from sitting with Min Shen during Moral, writing a story about my class teacher/our Moral teacher, things like that.
Form 3 was a great year, eventhough it was the PMR year. By then, everyone in the class knew each other and were relatively close. OH, but some of the best moments were like singing Hugh Laurie's "I'M IN LOVE WITH STEFFI GRAF" at the top of our lungs around school after PMR. And going to school for no reason at all post-PMR to doodle on paper in the hall.
I also made a promise with Amelia which I thankfully managed to keep (I couldn't say no to that promise. You cannot say no when Yih Shan's cousin is grabbing you by the shoulders looking you in the eye like... uh... LIKE WHEN SACRAMONE WAS TALKING TO BRIDGET BEFORE HER FLOOR ROUTINE DURING OLYMPIC PRELIMS, YES.), and ironically, I kept both her promise, went on to be a BOD and got her post. Hahaha.
Then, Form 4 came. I remember sitting in the hall as the teachers prepared to stream us. First, I hoped I was in Gamma, with at least one of the Melonades in the same class. Hopefully. I wanted to be in Gamma because, well, HELLO. I WAS IN GAMMA SINCE FORM 1, OKAY? But then I wasn't put in Gamma. Then, I hoped that I was in the same class with (If I recall correctly, I can't remember now) Min Shen or someone I knew. Soon, Min Shen was put to Omega (And so was Dhiv); Jen had been put to Delta, the others were put to Zeta (By then I was praying I won't be in Zeta, because I'm not too keen to say that I ended up in the same class as my sister, and I was hoping I'd get Pn Sunita as my class teacher)
And so, I ended up in Sigma. The only people I knew well were Jo Zee (I knew her from British Council in primary school) and Edmond (He's a fellow AJK) and probably Feli (Funny. How DID I know Feli? Prefects, maybe?). Oh, and Mark and Sung. The others? Not so close. Or I didn't know them at all. Seriously. So that made me quite... the word wouldn't be depressed or unhappy - perhaps a little... disappointed?
But, you know what? I grew to love the class. For one, I loved it because we were in the most awesome lab in the school - the Physics lab (We're like vampires. We keep the curtains close and the lights out. The teachers get frustrated, LOL. But we don't sparkle. And our guys don't walk around asking "DO I ~*DAZZLE*~ YOU?"). But I also learnt that everyone was bizarre and a little whacky in their own way. Like things normally go.
We had our 'family', and we built our repertoire over the 2 years. Chooi Si would be overly-perky in the mornings, I may not like it, she will proclaim how mean I am to her, although truly, if I wanted to be mean to someone, I can be really mean and make them run off crying or wanting to call me a b****. So no, I'm not really mean. OH, and Chooi Si and I even ourselves out. She does all the perky stuff and complains about me a lot while I do the whole brooding silence thing. Hahaha. (Also, the weird thing about me is that I sound a lot perkier over the phone. Something Chooi Si realized when I told her about it) Oh, and we provide entertainment to Jo Zee and Xueli, who always watch our antics.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY" would be our anthem, singing it between lessons to disrupt it (Of course we were smart enough to do it when we're doing well/to relieve stress/the teacher's not angry/the teacher's feeling particularly jolly), we might even sing "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO [Teacher's name]" and they'd laugh.
The thing that was different about my friends in class and the Melonades was some of the things we'd talk about. Jeremy and Xueli or someone else (Like Joel, hahaha) would randomly talk about... uh... sex, then Jo Zee, being clueless, would ask what we/they were talking about (This usually happens in the Physics lab during Pn Sakinah's lessons, I don't know why, LOL), which basically bring about A LOT of LULZ.
The others in the class, like Tze Cheng and Cheng Lu and Yih Yew, would all be very studious and rather quiet, but you can randomly come up to them for some LULZ. There was once, I can't really remember, when someone was talking about hot athletes from the Olympics, and there was a whole "Michael Phelps, because I don't know any other male athlete in the Olympics who look good" thing, which I totes LOL at 'cause it's ridiculous (Okay, it isn't. It's just that I don't find Michael Phelps very pleasing to the eye. Thorpedo fan you're talking to). Then I remembered someone on ONTD saying the Canadian diver, Alexander Despatie was good looking, so I was like, "I've read somewhere that people like Alexander Despatie", and SUDDENLY, TZE CHENG was like, "OH, DESPATIE. I KNOW THAT GUY. I MEAN, I KNEW HIM FROM THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES BECAUSE BRYAN NICKSON LOMAS (spelling?) WAS DIVING AGAINST HIM" So random, hahahaha.
Nadra brought A LOT of fun when she keeps singing the CAMPFIRE SONG.
Basically, I love my class lah.
Now Prefects... Prefects is a totally different thing. I love them all. I don't like it when they complain and stuff, but who does, right?
Honestly speaking, if I wasn't a Prefect, and I never got into the Board of Directors, I would never think of Political Science as something I want to major in. I also would not think about Management or Business Admin or things like that, because, I feel, the only way you can get REALLY exposed to any sort of management is through the Prefects.
I wanted a change of things, and I asked to be in the Discipline department in my interview (Well, you know how they ask what post you want. It was between PKP, which I felt that had a lot more capable people who deserved the post more than me, and KD. I know that there were awesomesauce people who deserve KD too, but you know, you gotta go for it, right?), and I got PKD, which I thought was pretty awesome. Although I did a lot of weird stuff like handling the notebooks, keeping the paperwork for the Discipline department straight, selling stuff. I enjoyed it. The thing about being PKD is that you do A LOT of things. You're doing the job of an admin, a secretary and a treasurere, all within your own department.
The thing about Si Onn as Head Prefect is that, if you are good at what you do, he sees it. He values your opinions. Although he does values other's opinions more than some (I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's like in the UN, there's the 5 veto powers, sort of thing), and it's good, so he can get as much input as possible. Of course he was not a perfect leader, but he is one with vision. We never had an easy start, but we got out fine and dandy in the end.
Seriously, if someone asked me ONE THING I will always remember about school apart from my friends, I would say the Prefects.
Another thing about Form 4 and 5: Squash. I managed to convince Yih Shan and the others in Form 3 to join Squash in Form 4, since Squash is cool, training's on Fridays, and Badminton always has a million people wanting to join it anyway. And, see? You've all come out with an MSSS cert, which is not shabby AT ALL. In fact, it's a lot better than an MSSD Badminton cert. Hahaha.
Anyway, as my Mum says, the friends you get in secondary school are the friends you have for life. And I hold that as a truth. All I need to do now is keep in contact, and see that if we still have the same camaraderie when we're 50. Like, LOL, my Mum and her friend (Since Standard 1. If I can keep contact with Min Shen, I'm equal. If I can keep contact with Li Za and Lisa, I beat the record, hahaha)
So ends this post about school which was supposed to be emo but didn't turn out to be... because.
So my Christmas plan just fell through the roof because my parents have a dinner tomorrow night, so I have to stay home.
Oh, well.
So now I only have Christmas morning + lunch plans, and nothing else.
I dunno. Not quite feeling very Christmassy this year, I guess.
Anyway, enjoy your Christmas, everyone!
I shall wait and see if I can get my naaaaaaano, which I want to name, but will definitely not name it: 1) Justine 2) Alicia 3) Alicia Sacramone 4) Soccermoney 5) Chellsie 6) Shawnie 7) Peanut 8) Nastia 9) Bridget 10) Sloanie 11) Memmel(icious) (I did not originally come up with this nickname. Don't hold it against me) 12) Raaaandal 13) 13 14) 14 (Because I don't ship it) 15) Yurchenko 16) Rudi 17) Amanar 18) Cheng 19) Arabian (Or a double Arabian, for that matter, haha)
I will, however, fill it with videos of said people. LOL.
I might actually name it: 1) Representator 2) FIERCE 3) Preciiiiousssssssssssssssss 4) Nahn-O
And, I might eventually: 1) Call it a lot of things 2) Not name it at all.
Hahahaha.
Anyway, bought a lot of Sharpies today. I won't Bedazzle them, don't worry, because that's way to girly, and I don't know how possible it is to Bedazzle Sharpies, and I want to use them to draw. And having rhinestones on writing utensils will give me blisters.
[Edit] Cheng Fei? Is awesome. LOL.
Cheng Fei and Lauren Mitchell [AUS]
Yay for sign language, hahaha. This makes me wonder even more how Sandra Izbasa and Cheng Fei communicates. I know Izbasa studies English, but Cheng Fei is like Justine - gotta be perfect, gotta invest time in it, focus on one thing at a time.
Anyway, LOL, Cheng Fei and Alicia Sacramone are awesome team captains, and one day, they should totes coach together. Although I know that Sacramone would probably be more into fashion then. *sigh* Oh, well.
LOLOL Sandra Izbasa is a fan of herself on Facebook.
OH, SANDRA. WHY SO LULZ?
Also, how can Chinese gymnasts have Facebook? I thought I read that it's banned in China. Hahaha.
In other news: - I have finally finished the ironing! To find out that we still haven't brought in TODAY's laundry yet. So it means MORE ironing. Oh, well. - I finally cleared my bed. - I need to clear my bedside table now. - Younger cousins are coming over from tomorrow 'til the end of the month. Perhaps out of boredom I shall infest their minds with gymnasts. But then again, it'll be awkward. 'Cause the oldest one is only 12, and well, the AGE GAP is awkward. - Justine's with Kim Gevaert, promoting Belgium and Netherlands' bid for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Normally, I couldn't care less about the World Cup, but, you know, JUSTINE and Kim Gevaert are ambassadors for it, so I'd at least know something about it. - Did you know that Malaysia intends to host the 2020 Olympics? I love the Olympics and all, and I hope that we'll get to host it one day, but ah... with our current management? Hur hur hurh. - Oh, I just read. Facebook is banned in some cities in China. But I do not know the full details. - Yes. I like typing in point form like this nowadays. - Yes I am bored. - Oh, I'm boring you right now? - I don't want 2008 to end - And yet I'm looking forward to killing myself in SAM + SAT in '09 - Chellsie Memmel's FX is good. But Sacramone's is better. They jump so high, though. - Yih Shan can keep her Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson. I'll take the vets. - No more House and CSI NY until the new year. Well, I survived the strike-induced premature end earlier this year, I can survive 2 weeks. - My sister is now hooked to August Rush. - One day, I will travel the world. - One day, I will drive an Audi R8. I need not own it. I just want to drive one. - I want to do something productive. But I'm too lazy to. - I need more intellectual pursuits. I shall now go into hibernation and write and write and write - I need to exercise.
AND I NOW KNOW THE MAGIC OF SLIDING ON A CLAY COURT.
Sigh. Sometimes I wish Justine wasn't retired, just to watch her play on clay. I mean, seriously. Her backhand + sliding + slices + forehand = Very, VERY pretty tennis. The people can keep their Ivanovic and Sharapova for their faces. I'd rather watch Justine play ACTUAL tennis. Besides, Alicia Sacramone can have all the hot. Because she's also an awesome gymnast. No complaints.
I WILL CELEBRATE BY HAVING A JUSTINE PICSPAM ON MY BLOG.
I learnt that the racket has to be higher than the contact point with the ball. Hence, it's kinda above the shoulder. And you shouldn't face the net. Which, to me, is like squash, where we face the side walls, and our rackets are ready above our shoulders.
I should put a Nastia picture here and see which stare is scarier. And I should totes cut Sharapova out of this picture. Although. Hahaha Nastia knows Sharapova. LOL. Also, aw, Justine. Is this why people complain about your sportsmanship? That you don't smile? (Uh... Okay, she DID smile in the end, but... uh.. yeah) But don't worry! You're HUMAN! At least you're not forcing a smile. Because that's just fake. Oh, and, LOL, Sacramone had the same thing about not smiling when Shawn won FX at Worlds. Hee.
TEAM BELGIUM!
Tssssssssssssssssss..... Sliiiiiiiiiiiiide! OH, apparently, your front foot has to be flat. And you use the toes of your back foot as your brake. I NOW KNOW THE MECHANISMS OF THE SLIDE.
Now you can see the slide and the backhand at the same time.
And the prize of it all.
Also, this is completely random, but...
The girl in the Nike shirt looks a bit like Shayla Worley. Um... right. Ew. Oh, and that I've seen Nastia/Shawn wear that Adidas jacket before. Hahaha. ADIDAS FTW.
And we shall cap this picspam off with a random gif of Shawn Johnson being random in an Adidas store.
Me? I'm a tennis fan, more specifically, a Justine Henin fan. I also enjoy watching gymnastics and the 2008 Olympics USWGT. Because they're awesome. Although some of them are younger than me and make me feel bad because of it.
Name : S'L
DOB : Towards the end of May, 1991
School: Taylor's University College, Main Campus. Class G9 of '09!
