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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

I am afraid.
Someone is coming.
That is, I think someone is coming, though I am not sure, and I pray that I am wrong. I went into the church and prayed the whole of this morning. I sprinkled water in front of the altar, and put some flowers on it, violets and dogwood.
But there is smoke. For three days there has been smoke, not like the time before. That time, last year, it rose in a great cloud a long way away, and stayed in the sky for two weeks. A forest fire in the dead woods, and it rained and the smoke stopped. But this time it is a thin column, like a pole, not very high.
I thought it was a cloud, except that it was too gray, the wrong color, and then I thought: there are no clouds anywhere else. I got the binoculars and saw that it was narrow and straight; it was smoke from a small fire. When we used to go in the truck, Claypole Ridge was fifteen miles, though it looks closer, and the smoke was coming from behind that.
Beyond Claypole Ridge there is Ogdentown, about ten miles farther. But there is no one left alive there.
I know this because after the war ended, and all the telephones went dead, my father, my brother Joseph and Cousin David went in the truck to find out what was happening, and the first place they went to was Ogdentown. They went early in the morning; Joseph and David were really excited, but Father looked serious.
When they came back, it was dark. Mother and I had been worrying, so we were glad to see the truck lights finally coming over Burden Hill, two miles away. They looked like beacons, producing a luminous glow that illuminated much of the road ahead. They were the only lights anywhere, except in the house-no other cars had come down all day. We knew it was the truck because one of the lights, the left one, always blinked when it went over a bump. It came up to the house, and they got out; the boys had lost their excitement. They looked frightened, and my father looked sick. Maybe he was beginning to be sick, but I thought he was distressed.
My mother looked up at him as he climbed down.
“What did you find?”
He said: “Bodies. They’re all dead.”
“All?”
We went inside the house where the lamps were lit, the two boys following silently. My father sat down. “Terrible,” he said, “terrible, terrible. We drove around, desperately looking for other survivors. We blew the horn. We rang the church bells; you could have heard it from five miles away. Then we waited for two hours…and nobody came. I went into some of the houses-the Johnsons’, the Peters’-they were all still in there. All dead.”
My brother Joseph began crying. He was fourteen. I think I had not heard him cry for the last six years…

written| 11:32 PM
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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Today I'll write a shorter post cos its not for grading purposes anymore. And I'm pretty tired too, just finished today's Library.

After missing 4 days of school, I was quite surprised when Mr. Tan said that he didn't even notice I was absent! Well, he also said I kind of lost weight, so I just stepped onto the weighing machine a short while ago to see for myself. And I lost weight indeed, 2kg. Guess I can say I'm lighter than Jin Kai now =P

Also I'm confused about whether I should join Chess club. The extra CCA points it would give me would be great, but I'll then be having 2 more hours of CCA activities every week. That wouldn't be too convenient, especially since I have lots of TfU projects right about now. If I can't manage to help out with these projects, Rayson might start to scold me (lol). Anyone with opinions feel free to make use of the chat box, and I'll be thankful for any =) and thanks for even bothering to read my boring post =P.

written| 12:59 AM
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A few days ago, I went to Gleneagles Hospital to check up on my condition after it hadn't improved in 5 days. By then, my mom was at her wits' end, so she brought me to a doctor which was my dad's friend. He was really friendly. He took some of my blood using a needle with one rather big hole. But it didn't hurt that much, then we brought my blood, now contained in a tube, to another block of the hospital to let the personnel give a test on my blood. When I put the blood-tube on the table, I noticed it had a sticker pasted on it and there was a large red "URGENT" written on it. Maybe the doctor was helping me by making sure the personnel attended to it with priority =D

I then had a chest X-ray in the same place. I thought it would be one complicated procedure but it turned out all simple, short and sweet. Then, I went to have lunch with my mom and she killed some time by looking around the pharmacy. I tagged along.

Next, we collected the X-ray results and the blood test report in one huge brown envelope and paid for them.The three-digit numbers on the bill was not at all pleasing to my eyes. We then brought the envelope to the doctor and he opened it and showed the X-ray report to us which wrote 'NO ABNORMALITIES'. He also told us that the basic components of my blood(like the percentage of white blood cells and a lot of other stuff I don't understand)were all within normal range. Phew. I let out a sigh of relief. My mom was still jittery though. But the doctor reassured her that I just had some minor infection and simply prescribed stronger antibiotics for me. I also tried my best to put my mom's mind at ease.

Now that I know how it feels like to be sick, I learned that health is vital for daily activities indeed. By now, I have already finished the whole course of my antibiotics and am happy and healthy =) I hope my condition will remain as it is now from now on and I'll try to take better care of myself.

written| 8:13 PM
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Hey all. Sorry about not having posted all this time, I had been busy as a bee these past few days.

Yesterday was the Chinese New Year and I had a great time. I invited those of my relatives which were in Singapore over to my house in the morning and they loitered around all the way till dawn. They were my aunt and two of my older female cousins. We had a great breakfast and an even greater lunch of-STEAMBOAT~!! It was a really lavish and extravagant meal ^^ we just dumped all the green vegetables and meatballs and meat slices, mushroom, whatever all into the pot of bubbling soup and it didn't look very nice, all churning and bubbling up in the big bowl. But looks can be deceiving and this one looked deceiving indeed. It tasted heavenly, especially the meat slices and this one very leafy green vegetable that I wasn't sure what it was but who cares anyway, it was wonderful! ^^

So anyway after we were stuffed we lay about and loitered all over the place. My aunt and one of my cousins fell into deep slumber in my room and I went to the playground at the bottom floor of my condominium with my younger sister and my other cousin cos she saw on one Indonesian News channel that there would be an ECLIPSE soon. Wow, you don't see those very often. Yeah, so I just went with her expecting quite a spectacle and all we got was just some HALF-ECLIPSE or something like that. Yup, I could just barely see the bottom left part of the sun covered up by some round apparatus, so the sun became a crescent sun! However, that was utterly boring and it hurt my eyes quite a bit.

My Guitar controller =D

So we went back home and I played a guitar game named 'Guitar Hero II' and I got frustrated quickly because I challenged myself with some of the more difficult songs and I lost all those difficult notes. Yes, this game is quite complicated. I let Rayson and Chen Jie try it before. So I chucked down my guitar controller and shut the game down, and by then it was dawn already. Then we bade farewell to my cousins and aunt.

I arranged these oranges into a Chinese New Year character =D

At night I ate a lot of oranges because I had been waiting for Chinese New Year to eat more of them as I had not eaten them for a long time. I think I ate 4 and they weren't very sweet, unfortunately. The past few Chinese New Years I celebrated, I divulged myself in lots of really sweet oranges. That particular taste was one that I could only get from New Year oranges. But this year's ones disappointed me.
Sad

Okay it's late now so I guess I'll tuck myself into bed. Amazingly, I just realized that I wrote quite a long post today. I'll make another one tomorrow, hopefully I will have lots to talk about...

written| 7:34 AM
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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Yesterday my temperature was a great 37 degrees and I was quite confident that I would be fit for school...but to my utter dismay, my temperature this morning was 38.4 degrees. There's no way I could go to school in that condition. It turned out that I had to miss another day of school...again. Sobs T.T

My temperature is 37 degrees plus right now but I doubt I can go to school tomorrow. I feel depressed. All I can do now is just sit at home and do some blogging.

Anyway, to look on the bright side, Chinese New Year is coming! With the coming of this great festival, I feel quite excited and exhilarated. Chinese New year is definitely a great holiday, because I can look forward to some Red Packets and sumptuous treats and oranges.^^

I've heard some tales and legends about how the Chinese New Year celebration came about. It is said that the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called the Nian（年）or "Year" in Chinese. Nian would come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock, crops, and even villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, the villagers would put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nian ate the food they prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people.

←Southern Chinese lion dance portrays the 'Nian'.


One time, people saw that the Nian was scared away by a little child wearing red. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red. Hence, every time when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again. The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk. The Nian then became this monk's mount.

Interesting story, isn't it? But all this is just an ancient myth. There has been no evidence found behind this story that proved it to be true. It could just be a story made up by the ancient Chinese, but in my opinion, it is still an interesting tale nonetheless.

For those of you who have never heard of this story before, I hope you have enjoyed reading my post! ^^

written| 4:25 AM
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Monday, January 19, 2009

Last night I fell sick again. Had bad cough and fever. And right now my fever's gone up to 39 degrees. I feel sad,unwell and depressed. T_T

Maybe the virus of the disease I got in Indonesia is still hiding within my body...this isn't the first time I fell sick since coming back to Singapore. I better rest up well and not move around too much so that my condition can improve quickly.

Oh well...I hope there wont be too much homework or anything else today, since I didn't go to school. I keep missing school. At this rate, I'll get a mountain of homework the day I return to school. But if I'm this sick, it can't be helped. Rather than not paying much attention in class, I guess I should just take better care of myself or risk making my condition from bad to worse...and if that happened, I would have to be absent from school again tomorrow. Argh!

written| 6:02 PM
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Today in school, I heard Tyler, my classmate, actually shot out some of the stuff inside the class fire extinguisher during recess. I was honestly quite surprised. I didn't actually see the incident take place but I guess it would have been quite a sight if I did. Then when I saw that flaky, powdery white little hill near the corner, I swiped down a bit of it gingerly and a trail of smoke went downwards...interesting!

Rather difficult to see? Look at the floor

So after recess ended, Mr. Tan came. Then things turned ugly. Tyler faced the music! And it wasn't very nice music. So, in the end Tyler had to clean up the mess he had made and also had to pay $50 for our new fire extinguisher.

That might be a bit hard on him, but last year there was an incident which involved Jonathan and the fire extinguisher. I remember he still had his anger-related problems and his emotions weren't too stable, then Aloysius made him mad. Jon then grabbed the fire extinguisher and tried to hit Aloysius with it. Yeah, that sure was one crazy incident but luckily, there were no casualties and Jon became a much calmer person after that.

Now I wonder why on earth Tyler would want to do something as stupid as that. The whole class should have learned not to mess with fire extinguishers from that incident involving Jonathan, I assume. But maybe with the exception of Tyler. Maybe he was practicing a simulation to save the class when there is a fire! Haha. Yeah, how courageous of him if that were true. Too bad for Tyler, he suffered a scolding in the end! But at least, thanks to him I had something to talk about in the first post of my first blog!

written| 4:07 AM
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MUSIC!