So, what happened?

Presenting, the 3-episode long series: SHITTY DAYS! Starring Lin Jin and Clarithromycin!

Episode 1

Lin Jin went to the polyclinic to get some medicine as his flu didn’t get better after a week. Besides, his phlegm was full of blood, for some queer reason. The doctor gave him some medicine, including a rather potent antibiotic called Clarithromycin. Why such a potent antibiotic? Well, the doctor was probably paranoid after Lin Jin told him there was fresh blood in his phlegm. Blood from mouth = AHHH!

So everything was fine, Lin Jin’s flu got better, no more blood, and he lived happily ever after.

Episode 2

Oh wait, there is a episode 2? Duh.

On the night of 14th August, Saturday, Lin Jin’s stomach began to hurt after dinner. It was a mild, dull pain, similar to the feeling of gastric pain that you get for not eating your food on time. Except that this time he had the pain AFTER having his dinner. Weird to the max, no? Thinking it will go away after some time, he took some China medicine that his mum claimed to be effective and went to bed. =D

Only to wake up the next morning realizing that the pain did not subside, but instead, intensify. =( Worried, he went to a private clinic and waited 2 damn hours before he got his consultation. After poking various areas of his abdomen, the doctor concluded that it might be a case of food poisoning, and so the doctor gave him some medicine, including ANOTHER antibiotic that is of no importance in this story.

Lin Jin asked the doctor if he should continue taking Clarithromycin, and doctor said it should be fine.

So, Lin Jin took his medication, and lived happily ever after. For real. Seriously.

Episode 3

Yeah, that’s what he thought too. After taking the medicine, the pain should subside, right? Right? RIGHT?

Nope. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The pain got worse on 17 August, Tuesday (today). And he made 4 trips to the toilet cause of his diarrhea. Poor Lin Jin. What a shitty day indeed.

In fact, it was so freaking darn painful, he got himself a blue slip and went to see the doctor. This time round, after another round of poke-the-abdomen-fiesta, the doctor concluded that Clarithromycin might be the cause.

How? Well, Clarithromycin, while killing all the bad germs/viruses/crap, also killed some of the beneficial bacteria in his stomach. As a result, he would experience TREMENDOUS pain, especially after a meal. The doctor then prescribed him another pile of medicines, as well as a 2-day MC.

Here are the new additions to his medical diet: hysocine butylbrom eq buscopan, lacteol forte, magnesium carbonate mixture, charcoal & omeprazole. (Charcoal is supposed to absorb toxins in the body, but.. just feel so weird eating it. Bleh.)

So, will Lin Jin be able to get rid of his ridiculous stomachache? Or will the pain persist? Will the totem top start wobbling and toppl… oh wait, that’s Inception. SPOILER! TEEHEE.

TO BE CONTINUED?

Ciao.

Haha, I think I have spent way too much modifying the design of the blog. I could have slept SO much earlier last night! Bleh.

Whatever. It looks good now. Now I just need people to fill in the content! Anyone?

http://rafflessymphonicband.wordpress.com/

I would really like to discuss about the movie, but… the movie is just so hard to describe in words. It is way too complex. From a movie review by Daniel Cojocaru:

The critics’ greatest worry was that Inception’s plot would prove too complex for the general cinema audience. Roger Friedman, for example, writes on showbiz411.com: “During the first 20 minute sequence, Inception requires more attention than any other film of the last 20 years.“ Pete Travers from Rolling Stone is concerned that “trusting the intelligence of the audience can cost Nolan at the box office. We’re so used to being treated like idiots. How to cope with a grand-scale epic, shot in six countries at a reported cost of $160 million, that turns your head around six ways from Sunday? Dive in and …drive yourself crazy, that’s how.” Even critics, while sensing the film’s brilliance, thus find themselves at a loss how to capture that brilliance: John Anderson in the Wall Street Journal writes that the movie is “impervious to criticism, simply because no one short of a NASA systems analyst will be able to articulate the plot.”

In fact, I felt that after reading his movie review, I felt that I could understand Inception’s plot a lot better, and start to appreciate the film from different perspectives. Go check it out here! (spoilers alert!)

So, final comments on the movie? Fresh and creative and deep plot, good acting, awesome visuals, amazing soundtracks, keeps you engaged for the full 148 mins. I mean come on, even a guy who was fever-ish and slightly sleepy didn’t want to go to the toilet during the movie cause the movie was too damn exciting even though his bladder was about to burst. Not to mention, you won’t even yawn once throughout the entire movie! It is that good.

So, go WATCH IT PEOPLE!

I still remember the disappointment the band felt right after the competition performance. Everyone was going: “I screwed this part up…”, “I forgot to play for this part…”, all sorts of negative emotions and thoughts. Some blamed themselves quietly, while others were just blatantly screaming and cursing for their own poor performance. Not to mention, everyone was complaining about how bad the acoustics were in the Republic Poly Cultural Centre Theatre. 

I guess that it is kind of true. You can’t really hear yourself that well when playing on the stage, and it may lead to balance problems in the band sound.

Even during our debriefing in the band room, Talia was commenting about how sad we looked, how we have already tried our best, and how it was the process that mattered. While many of us still hoped that the band will attain a Gold award, we were pretty convinced we were not going to make it.

Thankfully, things got better after dinner. Everyone was feeling better, well, at least less emo. Instead, people were just nervous of the SIBF result announcement later on that night. Hahaha. Nervousness > emoness I guess? (Oh, I had a Burger King Stunzz Meal for dinner. It is basically a Whooper JR meal with a free sundae. THE SUNDAE WAS HORRIBLE. BLEH.)

Fast forward to the actual announcement of our result. The nerve wrecking part of the result announcement was that instead of just announcing the award each band got, they will list down ALL the individual scoring given by the 7 adjudicators, followed by the average, and the award. I was holding on to my handphone, ready to post all the individual scorings onto Facebook, until I heard the first score:

“Ninety two percent.”

What? What? WHAT? OMG WE ACTUALLY GOT A SCORE THAT IS ABOVE NINETY?

I was so shocked that I just totally missed out the rest of the individual scorings from the remaining 6 adjudicators. Everyone was super distracted, cause we honestly didn’t think that any adjudicator would give us a gold grade. (To get a gold grade, the score must be 90% and above.)

Nevertheless, we all heard the announcer’s final line: ”Raffles Institution Wind Ensemble, average score: 91.57%. Gold.”

OMG. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

By then, nobody could do anything but SCREAM IN JOY. It totally exceeded our expectations; some couldn’t help but burst into tears of joy. We were so happy that we went out of the the hall, start doing school cheers and band cheers for thirty minutes. Yes, we were THAT high.

Even better, when we heard our own performance that our seniors recorded for us, it sounded… pretty awesome. So it wasn’t just a lucky gold. It was a gold that was attained with hard work and dedication from all the band members. And we were proud of getting a gold.

So far, it has been a GREAT YEAR for Raffles JC band. Play’10 was a success, A Tempo received wonderful response, and now, a GOLD for SIBF! Let’s keep up the good work, and do ourselves proud once again in SYF’2011! 

Come on band, GOLD WITH HONOURS. Let’s do it!

SORRY SAM!

so i shall put a placeholder blog post for now.. watch this space!

I mean, think about it, the recent NDP songs are all not that memorable, instead, the only ones that I can remember are the oldies, like this one:

Then again, I have to say this year’s MV is quite nicely done. I like! (y)

I’ll be honest, I tried. After failing to do PW work cause I fell asleep instead this afternoon, I lay down on the floor, closed my eyes, and tried to let ideas flow into my brain. After all, I don’t really blog about my daily life much. I blog when I have the inspiration to.

So I just lay down there for like 20 mins. Guess what? Nothing came to my mind.

To clarify, things did came to my mind, but either they are of little importance, or they are stuff that I wouldn’t really want to share on a public blog.

So yeah.

I guess the reason for this was that the past few weeks was just full of studying and more studying. As glad as I am that Common Tests are over, I am worried about my results. I can’t deceive myself: I know I have underperformed for some subjects, such as Physics. Easy paper, but I couldn’t do the test properly.

Then again, what is the point of worrying? It is completely unproductive. Why waste your time, effort and energy doing something that gets you nowhere? I should optimistically look ahead towards the future! However, to make sure you won’t make the same mistakes again in the future, I should analyze what I could do better in the future.

And it is quite obvious, really. I just lack the correct attitude towards Physics. I’ll just say this: I don’t really like Physics, and I don’t feel any motivation to listen to lectures, do my tutorials or practice questions I’m not good at. Instead, it is more of a vicious cycle: I try to understand Physics, fail to do the questions, feel depressed, find it even harder to understand Physics, fail even harder, …

So that’s the problem. People say, once you know the problem, you will know the solution. Is it true? I think not. In fact, I find it very hard to change my attitude. To change one’s attitude, you need a source of motivation. However, if I dislike Physics from the start, where do I find my motivation to change my attitude? Ideas anyone?

I chose Physics last year, telling myself that even though I was weak at this subject, as long I put in enough time and effort, Physics should be fine for me. However, I finding it to be a real pain to put in the time and effort. You only find joy in putting in time and effort in something you like. And it so happens I just don’t like Physics.

This is bad. Really bad.