Exams: finished

TeeHee! My F4 finals are done!

I think I did well this time.
I put in more effort than I ever had before.
Especially in Liberal Studies.

Now for a break…
Yeah right!

I have a meeting tomorrow,
Going to Guangzhou on Wednesday and Thursday,
Checking my papers on Friday and Monday,
And spending the weekend in between in Cheung Chau.

Boy, it sucks to be me.
But hey,
I love being me

You’d think that everything would just slow down during exam time
No it doesn’t.
Life continues to move at warp speed
At least, that’s how it is for me
It’s been moving at warp speed ever since March
So fast that there’s barely time to “sharpen the saw”.

I need to slow down
Relax

Form 5 is going to be much more of a nightmare than F4 was
I need perspective
A vision
A goal
Motivation

But for now,
I’ll have to cope with one more week of all this <whatever I’m dealing with>
What’s another week when I’ve been doing it all year?

Weekends

I have a love-hate relationship with weekends.

Love, because I can get away from it all.
There’s been too much to do lately:
Projects, meetings, tests…
There simply isn’t enough time;
I need the rest.

Hate, because I feel very unproductive.
All my extra work spills over:
Reports, homework, chores…
Procrastination takes over;
Laziness wins.

Where is the line
Between rest and being lazy?
What is the cost
Of spending countless nights working?

May

It’s that time of year again.

Not really.

This May has been wetter and cooler than usual.
Must be global warming.

For once, I’m feeling the tense-up before the final exams.
In fact, I’m a bit worried that I won’t have enough time for revision.
Especially for Liberal Studies.

Liberal Studies… my new favorite subject.
No, I don’t have a favorite subject.
Though, I have improved since last time.
88/150 ain’t too shabby.
Sad story is that the finals will be on all three topic covered this year.
Do I have enough time?

And another thing,
I know I’ve been complaining about having too much
Again, again and again
You’re all probably tired of hearing me rant about it.
So I’ll stop
biting off more than I can chew
Especially with F5 coming up
As it turns out, I’ll be taking the equivalent of 9 subjects next year
As opposed to 8 this year
And I’m supposed to drop one

I’ll manage.

School Picnic

I had my school picnic yesterday. Although it was pushed back from early-December because of the swine flu scare, I’m really glad it was today. I’ve been so stressed over the past weeks, I’ve never really had a chance to let myself go and relax without having to consider the consequences.

At the picnic, I got to take photos, play foosball, play billiards and practice archery (for the first time in almost 4 years). It was the first school day where I didn’t have to consider much of anything other than “how should I frame this photo”. Even the first day of school was more stressing because I had a hand in coordinating the school’s opening rites.

l wonder why I could be so relaxed yesterday. It’s not like I didn’t have projects to finish, or exams to worry about. Maybe it was because I was living in the moment, cherishing every second like it was my last. Yeah, maybe that’s it. If it is, then I hope I can do it more often.

Hong Kong in 1937

Today, I came across an 8-minute documentary about Hong Kong. Made in 1937, it showcases everything from Victoria Harbour to Victoria City – the former capital of Hong Kong to Repulse Bay. It’s quite interesting, take a look:

YouTube – Traveltalks – 1937 Hong Kong Hub Of The Orient.

When you get too busy for your own good…

…you don’t get to blog in a month. I’ve been really busy these past couple of weeks. Sometimes I used to wonder if I over-worked myself. Now, I know that it’s true.

I can’t believe I’m already three-quarters into the school year! Form 5 is coming!! My golly!

Hmm… 4 exclamation marks in one line… I think I’d better calm down.

I feel like I have this obsession unhealthy habit of taking on anything and everything that catches my eye. For example:

Teacher #1: Hey Gabriel, there’s a public speaking competition next month, would you like to join?
Gabriel: Sure!

Classmate #1: Gabriel, can you tutor me in Physics?
Gabriel: Sure!

Teacher #2: Hey Gabriel! Would you like to help with the school anniversary rites?
Gabriel: Sure!

Classmate #2: Hey, wanna join this LS project competition thingy?
Gabriel: Sure!

So yeah… you get the idea. I gotta get rid of this habit. I hear F5 is going to be really tough next year. All the more reason to keep my extra-curriculars in check.

Gahh! I need a break!

This is crazy…

I’m sleepy.

When I came home last Friday, I was really tired. I didn’t feel like eating at all. As I had to attend Stations of the Cross at church, I had two bananas as I left. By the time I arrived at church, I was feeling really bad – not only was I tired, but I also had a stomach ache. I decided to stick around until the service had finished anyway. When we were done, my friends told me that I looked real pale. I went straight to bed when I got home. It was 9:30pm.

Saturday morning, I woke up at my ritual time of 6:30am (despite my alarm being off). I didn’t feel sick anymore. I figured I was just sick because I was tired. I left for my dentist to get my remaining first premolars extracted at about 11am, got back at around 12:30. The pain from this extraction was worst than last week. I was feeling really negative due to the pain. I did homework to try and take my mind off it. After that, I went for a three-hour nap at about 2pm. Had a jam session for the rest of the day with a cousin who was visiting from the Phils. Went to bed at about 10:40pm.

I woke up again at about 1:45am because of the pain in my jaw. I tried to go back to sleep, but I kept tossing and turning. I tried praying, but I still couldn’t sleep. I’m usually opposed to unnecessary medication, but I decided to take a pain pill. After taking it, I slept like a baby. It was about 2:20am.

Woke up at 8am today. In the morning, I went to Youth Group, then church. Had lunch at home afterwards, did some homework, and imported some praise CDs a friend had lent me. Now I feel sleepy.

Sleepy!?

After all that rest, I’m still sleepy? Am I really that deprived of rest?

Maybe I should listen to my body this time. I think I’ll go ahead and take a nap.

iPod dissection

My dad’s U2 special edition iPod photo dissected:

iPod front and back
The autographs of the members of U2 are engraved on the back (left)

The iPod's insides.
The hard drive sits atop the motherboard and battery (right)

Cool eh?

The iPod supposedly died sometime mid-last year because of a faulty hard drive. After doing some digging a couple of days ago, I found that the problem could be caused by loose parts inside the hard drive and that it could be fixed by putting a folded-in-half business card between the hard drive and the metal case. So I followed this tip (and this one), and voila… it worked.

WooHoo!

Lantern riddle festival

As per Chinese New Year tradition, the library at my school held its annual lantern riddle festival this week. Basically, we hang up lanterns in the library and attach riddles to them. Students attempt to crack these riddles and win prizes for doing so.

These riddle festivals are always quite interesting because the riddles are challenging. Not only do they challenge your academic knowledge, but also your creativity with words and meaning. The Chinese language is made up of thousands of characters, each with a different meaning. Because of their pictographic nature, Chinese characters can be taken apart and manipulated in creative and interesting ways. For example, one riddle was like this: 「十五人。射一字。」. The first part is the riddle – “fifteen people”; the second part gives you a hint to what the answer is, in this case it’s a single Chinese character. The riddle doesn’t make sense until you look at it in two parts:「十」, meaning “ten”; and 「五人」, meaning five people. From there, you can figure out the answer, which is 「傘」– umbrella. Pictographically,「傘」is comprised of five「人」and one「十」.

Last year, our head librarian was so enthusiastic that he looked for a ton of riddles and wrote a bunch of ‘biliteral-trilinguistic” (兩文三語) riddles himself (riddles that made use of the English, Cantonese and Putonghua). The number of riddles we had last year were double that of the previous year. We were even featured in the Sing Tao Daily (星島日報) just for his biliteral-trilinguistic riddles! One of the riddles went like this: 「没人叫你啊！射一疾病。」In English, “nobody called you”, the hint: an illness. This was really challenging for me and my friends, but when we found out the answer, we found it to be really funny. (Go to the very end to see the answer.)

I’ve always enjoyed the lantern riddle festivals at my school, even though I’ve been helping facilitate them since secondary 1. I wish one day I could walk into one of those festivals as a regular student and not as a facilitator, that way I’d be able to truly experience the fun and exhilaration of the event.

The Digital Revolution: Striking a Balance

I participated in an English public speaking competition earlier tonight. The following is a rough transcript of my 3-minute speech (with some parts adapted to fit the context). Enjoy!

—

The Digital Revolution. I’m sure none of you are unfamiliar with it. Most of you probably have a cell phone, many of you probably have MP3 players, you’re probably using some sort of digital device right now to read this article — These are the products of the Digital Revolution. I’m confident that you will agree with me when I say: The Digital Revolution has changed our lives for the better. But can we say that the Revolution has created a “barrier” between people?

Let me explain.

The primary form of digital communication nowadays is through text. Sometimes these words are is enough, but most times they aren’t. Research has shown that words only make up 7% of any real communication, the rest is made up of verbal tone and body language. Therefore, if we used words and only words, then 93% of what we want to convey would be lost. Anything we say (or type) can be easily misunderstood. A joke, for example, could be taken out of context and mistaken for an insult.

This form of communication can also be seen as indirect communication. Why? Because when you’re in front of a computer screen, it’s very easy to forget that the there is a living, breathing person on the other end, whereas when you’re on the phone or writing a letter, it’s very hard to forget who you’re speaking to. When you compare the old and the new, it seems that new methods are shallow.

At this point, we must ask ourselves: Where do we draw the line for our reliance on digital technology?

The Digital Revolution has made our lives a lot easier, but I think that there is one thing which we mustn’t let go digital — our relationships. Social networking sites like Facebook have made it easy to stay in touch with friends and family, especially those who are abroad, but relationships are about real, living people; therefore, if we were to build healthy relationships, we can’t base them on our virtual identities, but on real people. To truly communicate with and understand these real people, we can’t hide behind our computer screens, we have to use old fashioned methods like writing letters, talking on the phone and, best of all, face-to-face conversation. I say face-to-face conversation is best because in a face-to-face, not only do you communicate with words, but also verbal tone and body language, retaining 100% of your message.

To conclude, the Digital Revolution has changed the way we work for the better, but we mustn’t let it form a “barrier” that comes between our relationships and our communication.