Friday, April 27, 2007

Equilibrium

My physics teacher teaches us a lot of things. He even has the ability to use physics to relate to real life. Like how humans experience new things and may find it difficult to cope or maybe feel happy about it. After a while, equilibrium will be reached and you'll be back to your base happiness. It's kind of true. I thought that I would have lots of time to slack and do many things after my season ends. But it has ended for some time already and I still find myself having a packed schedule. Surely, things are better now that I don't go home at 830 anymore. On fridays, I even get to go home at 1230!

The most irritating thing in my life now is B chinese. I have 3 hours of B chinese every week, which means that 2 days in a week, my peers get to end lessons 1.5 hours earlier than me. It's ok for now cause they have CCA but once that is over, I can just start imagine the smirks on their faces. ' bye bye justin :) ' I don't know how to describe the way lessons are conducted. 1/2 of the time, the class has only 1/2 attendance! Of course, I seldom skip lessons even though the temptation is so great. The teacher is so slack man, recently we've been watching pirated movies in his classes that are either, not in english or have subtitles in chinese! The teaching part- there's a passage. He'll read to us in chinese, and we'll translate it to english. This way, he can learn english and we can learn chinese! ahh...

I've been wondering about something for quite some time already. Whatever you train up, you'll be exceptionally good in that area. Is that true?
I've been in track since sec 1 and before that, I don't think I ran fast. After 4 years of training 4 times a week, running in macritchie, bishan park and various places, training with ankle weights on, and competing in inter-schools (without success!), I don't think 2.4km is any difficulty. I didn't know that running was something to be afraid of until I came to JC! but of course, it's scary to anyone who doesn't run at all. I always think that I'm quite slow, because I never understand how runners from hwachong can run at impossible speeds, like <16 minutes for 4.8km. Were they born with superior genes or do they just train 7 times a week and it's really cause of hard work?
I guess if you sacrifice/practise enough, you'll get what you want. Like how bob can play soccer so magically, weiying thrashing people in badminton, yewliang attracting all the girls. And that's probably the only way to do well for A levels, sacrificing time ..

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Is It Good Enough?

History repeats itself again, fail fail and fail!
I didn't do well for my block tests 1, but it's kind of expected cause I only thought of picking up momentum after my season ended, which is now!
GP-E
H1 Chem-S
Econs-S
Math-S
Physics-U

It's ok, I know where I went wrong. The only thing that bothers me is the parents-meet-tutors sessions. I don't need a teacher to sit there and force out reasons as to why I didn't perform well. The last session last year was useless. It didn't even make me feel guilty why I'm not scoring well. If I wanted to find this urgency to study, I'll have to find it myself!

I didn't neglect my studies for any poor reasons though. I feel as though, a new fitness level has been reached. My running has gone down, but I can swim faster now !

100m freestyle: 1 min 10 sec (not bad for a non-swimmer :) )

NAPFA
Standing broad jump : 252 (Finally learned the technique after 6 years. the only thing that stopped me from getting full marks)
Shuttle run : 9.3 sec (not that fast but it doesn't matter)
sit and reach : 56 cm (God's blessings, you either can do it or you can't. Or maybe all the warmup-stretchings in Track help me all these years)
Sit-ups : 60 (nice number)
Pull-ups : 15 (my new maximum :), achieved only after doing up to 60 pullups in training 3 weeks before this)
2.4km : 9 min17 sec (This is my lousiest timing in 4 years)

In total, 30 points! What's the big deal, why can't I just get silver, be contented that I don't go NS two months earlier and let it be? For me, it's like a record that's nice to keep. It will remind me of what I can achieve if I put my mind to it. that's why 9:17 for 2.4km is not good enough, I want to run <9mins, even if it's 8:59! It sounds crazy but it's possible I think. The fastest I ever ran on a proper track was 9:10. When I was in secondary school, all the 2.4km runs were at bishan park, so maybe it was shorter, or maybe that was the time I was still running 4 times a week??

I'll just do the napfa test again, why not? :)

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

It's Over



The competition for polo has finally ended, and we finished at 5th place with no surprise. We played with nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Of course, we wanted to get 3rd or 4th placing, but couldn't. Who doesn't want to win anyway?

At the start, we were a team full of newbies who couldn't even swim consecutively for 2 laps. Treading water was totally foreign and almost everyone had to go to the side to relieve their cramps. A year has past since then, and now we can play the game proper, swimming up and down and putting up a fight with opponents. We're not very good definitely, compared to the other schools. I mean, most of us only trained for slightly more than 1 year. The other teams have at least half the team training for at least 5 years. RJ has at least half the team in the national youth team! So, It's ok that we lost. We gained so much camaraderie and team spirit. All the suffering together, lame jokes, and talking about the game, really bonds us together and I'm proud of my team! all right, and it's about time to get ready to study? man..