Tonight We Graduate

Time passes really really quickly and suddenly, we have just finished the four years of Secondary school. It seems like only yesterday that my Secondary Four year began, and when I had promised myself that this year, I had to work hard and work smart and score well. At the blink of an eye, the whole year just flew by and suddenly it is all over. Block Test 1...then Block Test 2 with its musical, and then finally the horrendous EOYS. The good times and the bad times, it all ended.

This is from Devianart, I downloaded it meaning to make it my phone wallpaper, I can't remember the name of this breathtaking art piece, but I labelled this photo as "Sunken Dreams".

I though that the above art piece was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, the clarity, the sky, the semi-immersed bridge that seems to symbolize how part of your path maybe in "deep waters" and how hard your path can get, but if you press on, then you will definitely get back onto the right "dry" path, out of your troubles and towards a shimmering future full surprises, and of course more difficulties.

"As the going gets tough, the tough gets going."

Mr Ng (309'11 Maths Teacher)

I think I will remember this quote my math teacher imparted on me for as long as I live. Many may not really like this saying because they find it meaningless or they simply do not like the teacher himself, but I liked it. I don't know why. Maybe it is the truth and simplicity that stuck it to me. I don't know either.

Picture Source

I remember at the parting speech, there were so many good speeches made my our school teachers to encourage us not to give up, not to lose hope in the face of hardships and difficulties, and not to back down easily.

I remember Mrs Westvik's quote from T.S. Eliot clearly:

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

I thought it was such a breathtaking and lovely quote that is simple yet full of impact. It makes me anticipate, not without fear, but with more courage.

On a side note, I saw so many emotional ramblings on Facebook that Facebook is becoming a Weepbook, and that is not exactly a bad thing unless you see twenty or fifty emotional statuses that eventually end off with more or less "Once a NY girl, always a NY girl" which is like, come on, that is such a cliche.

Maybe I am being a little harsh on the people who are currently in their emo-stages of reminiscing how good the four years have been, because I am one of the rare few who is not very sentimental in partings. I had always had the idea of "世上无不散之宴席" engraved in me, which essentially means that there is no forever lasting banquet; all things, all gatherings will have to end someday. My cousin is just the opposite. When she left her kindergarten, she had to sit once more in her own chair, touch her desk fondly, and sleep in her little bed again, and when I heard that, I am like, "WHUT?!?" When I left primary school after PSLE, I was so excited and elated that I could barely contain my joy at a fresh new beginning of countless possibilities and challenges. I could not feel the sadness or longings that others indulge themselves in.

But this time, I am around 20% sadder than I was in the primary school parting, because I have made some delightful friends here, and thank you guys for making my life in Secondary school perfect. There are definitely quarrels, displeasure and some misunderstanding, but boy I am glad to have you all as my friends. Without you guys, life will be dull. More than anything else, I would like to thank some of my closest friends whom we always clique together with:

1. Jumpy J.

2. Phiephie

3. Chinny

4. Spider-tomato

5. Xinyi

6. Nehceh

7. Wennie

8. Huiqi
9. Jiaqi

10. Myself, the grand penguin (Wahahaha!!!)

And also the next closest round of friends which our clique always group with:

1. Yanling

2. Jianing

3. Deborah

4. Andrea

5. Sarah

6. Jessica and Ruiqi

(Sorry to those who are not in the first group, your name is your name because I have no way of making up a weird name for you on the spot since you won't know who you are!)

By the way, I hate it when people go like, "It is not a time to say goodbye! It is time to fly!" because that is the most illogical and nonsensical statement I have heard: what is the link between goodbye and flying? Just because they rhyme doesn't make it a good line to utter at every turn of separation.

Also a million thank yous to all my lovely teachers at Nanyang, thank you for teaching me and helping me whenever I need help, thank you for your patience and guidance, and thank you for being honest with me. A large thank you to the teachers of 409, and I wonder if it is good net-etiquette to mention their names? I think not. But thank you, to my Chemistry (and form), Maths, Physics, Humanities, Chinese, Language Arts, Biology, Physical Education teachers of class 409'12!! You guys are the best! <3

Now with all the emotional ramblings from me aside, I can continue being the whiny and complaining me. Which means I am gonna blog about the tiring graduation day.

Graduation Bear! The cute NY graduation bear! So cute!

Aww! Such a cute teddy bear!

I can tell you that the "Byebye Pal" session was the most awkward and time consuming thing (next to the real Graduation that night) ever, and it is like, "Happy Graduation." and "Thank you!" and for the next 3 minutes you stare at each other and smile awkwardly. Which is like AWK-WARD~~~

After that we got back all our result slips and graduation certs and other other other stuffs that I am too lazy to list out, clean up our classroom, and then we had a long break. Phiephie, Chinny, Nehceh and I went to Beauty World Plaza to eat yummy Xiaolongbao (steamed dumplings) and guotie (fried dumplings). So nice~! We bought one plate of each, and had 20 altogether. We ate about five each, I think? After that we were still hungry so we went to eat MacDonald, golly, we have some amazing appetites. But that was actually a bad idea to eat and drink Coke at the same time because suddenly we all were so bloated and full and I still had like 1/4 of my McSpicy left along with half a cup of Coke and half a pack of fries. Phiephie and Nehceh both upsized theirs, so it is like even more than mine, but they finished it. O_O I threw away some of my fries and my drink. Too full.

On my way back I started to feel sick from eating too much, and I was worried that I might have to puke it all out again, because I was feeling so sick. I swore not to eat dinner that night so that all the oil and grease and disgusting stuff would have ample time to be digested without me clogging up my gastrointestinal tract with more rubbish. And that I did! I was quite amazed with myself that I actually didn't eat anything since I ate those junk food at about 1.30pm, all the way till 11.45pm at night when I went to sleep. When I slept, I was hungry, but that is a much better feeling that being choked all the way to the esophagus.

Another plus point would be that that would give my body sufficient time to detoxify all the junk food I consumed so that I won't have an acne outbreak or grow fat. Not eating dinner is actually healthy once in a while: it is called "washing the gastrointestinal tract" in Chinese, where you give your body ample time to clear up all the wastes.

Graduation Gift from my CCA, which was supposed to be collected long time ago, but I forgot about it totally. :OO -bloop-

Pretty silver ribbon! <3

Later on, Jumpy and I popped into Hwa Chong college section, where I ran int an old senior of mine and I hugged her in joy. Aww, she was like one of the senior I was closest to! We stood in the sun for around 10-15 minutes, I had 5 mosquito bites, Jumpy had 3 or more, and then we saw our senior.

On our way back I was like, "Jumpy, did you see how long his eyelashes were?"
Jumpy, "I know right! It is so freaking long!"
Me, "It is even longer than mine...."
Jumpy, "and mine tooo...:("
Jumpy, "You know those anime characters, some of them have this piaowy thing at the top of their head which is like this strand of hair thingy? He has it! And it was like fluttering in the wind!"

Uh, can you see the two strand like thing on the boy's head close to the left? Jumpy claimed that he had that. :O

Okay, that was so funny.

Jumpy told me about how Wennie "bullied" a lot of them to help out to sell her cotton candies for her CIP project, so I was like, "Oh so where is she?"

Jumpy, "She went home. To bathe."
Me, "And left you all to sell when it is not your CIP?!?" *shocked*
Jumpy, "Yessss! I know right! She said, ehhhhh!!! I have to go home and bathe now so you all help me sell! and left. Jessica, Ruiqi and the rest left too."
Me, *angry* "What!?! That is so absurd and unacceptable!!!! :(("

Later on, Wennie came back all fresh looking while Jumpy, Tomato, Xinyi and Huiqi looked half dead from selling the stuffs. Poor abused souls. Wennie was like, "Thank you arh!" and I bit into her for being irresponsible, how could she leave others to do her CIP for her, when she is getting the CIP hours, and then just vanishing?

Wennie, "Eh! But I only just washed my hair!"
Me, "The others didn't wash theirs because they had to sell for you!"
Wennie, "But I have been selling since morning!"
Me, "Because that is YOUR CIP? Yes no? Should thank them more!!!"

I tsked at Wennie for a long time and jabbed her in her tummy fats so she looked a little guilty for her execution of evil child labour.  Then Wennie pouted cutely and kept thanking Jumpy which Jumpy waved off (albeit a bit grumpily).

Phiephie proceeded to tell me the whole story about "Drag me to hell" which I was too chicken to watch after the carpark scene. My, Phiephie is a damn fantastic story-teller, especially when it comes to spooky stories, she can hold one's attention very very well! The story was really scary anyway.

On a totally random note, I kept gulping down poor Phiephie's water, such that we had to go refill it twice. :( And classes before us on stage, she wanted to go pee. :(

Phiephie wants to pee!
Peepee wants to phie! :D

That was totally lame tahaha.

Graduation was so boring that it is not worth me blogging it. So um, you can glance at all the photos instead!

Me and Chinny look super weird here because I tried this phone app and it made us look funny. :(

 I think Mr Teo looks absolutely dashing in his dark blue clothing with a white tie, so I had to snap this, while Nehceh is like "whatchoo doing?" and poked her head in. :O

Phiephie is camera shy!

"don't take photos of me!" roared Phiephie

Zikki (left) and Wennie (right)

 Haish the childhood games that we used to play....

CHA-SAY! :D

The ceremony ended at around 9pm and Jiaqi and I rushed home. We were both bone-tired and actually wanted to eat at the buffet, but the queue was too long, and we didn't want to queue (remind me to do a rant on Public Transport Etiquette!) so we went home. It was so gloomy and dark and I felt super unsafe, but it is of course much better with Jiaqi with me!

We saw quite a lot of the JC students going home at that time and we were like, "Are we going to end up like that too?" and I thought that it is not just "ending up like that", we might start like that too. Which is kind of morbid, if you think about it. It is even later than the normal 9-5 working hours already.

So I was telling Jiaqi that it would be none the smarter to actually leave as much empty time on our schedule as possible, since we heard that some courses take more time than the others, just as some CCA are more time consuming. The VP from HC college told us that the CCA usually starts at 4pm, which had me going like "whhhaaaat!?!" and he was like nonchalantly, "Yeah! And the training ends around 7pm to 7.30pm" which is like freaking late omg. I have never been home past 7.30pm unless I am out with my friends. :O

So back to the point about having as much time as possible. I don't see how it is a wise choice to clog up all your time at the start because I am pretty certain that MORE things will come along to fill up your time, and by then you might be going home at a morbid hour of 7-8pm daily. So the smart thing to do is to have little commitments and leave those time after school free (as free as possible) so that when the time comes, you can fill it in bit by bit if necessary. Besides, if you have nothing to fill it in with, taking afternoon naps is definitely an awesome alternative!

That's all then guys! I am too tired to type anymore and here is cheers to a very very long post that ended off things nicely! Looking forward to a fresh and new beginning! <3