My Youth Is Slipping Away

"My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away
Safe in monotony, day after day
My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away
Cold wind blows off the lake and i know for sure that it's too late"

The four lines above are an excerpt from Alexisonfire's song called 'Boiled Frogs'. It kinda signifies my life currently. 3 projects, 5 exams, French Oral Test tomorrow, alot of pressure on my shoulders from both internal and external sources. Dosen't anyone out there feel like this?

Something ironic happened on Tuesday. Statistics lecture had just finished. We just finished up the topic on Regression Analysis. On the way back home, while on the bus, the wierdest thing happened. I was starting on a new chapter of Freakonomics and guess what it was all about? Regression analysis. They were using it to figure out why some kids just do better than some kids in school. They took data from a study on all first grade students in the Chicago state district. The data contained specific details such as family income, whether the kids were spanked, how much TV they watched, the honesty of their parents and so on so forth. Using regression analysis, they were able to align every kid by every single possible data possessed by them and analyzed the grid to see what really caused a kid to do poorly in school. The kids were tracked until 8th grade*.

The results show that all the factors that parents attribute to a child doing well in school does not affect how he/she actually does in school.

From the study, it was found that the following factors affect how a child does in school :

- whether the child's parents were highly educated
- the child's parents have high socioeconomic status
- the child's mother was thirty or older at time of birth
- the child's parents speak English at home

These are just a few factors taken from the study in the book. Understand that this is based on the data collected from the study of the students in the Chicago state district. It may not extend to other regions but the large base could indicate so. If you really want to know why I suggest you pick up the book. Its not that expensive. It's actually quite cheap. I got it for around RM36(I bought it in Malaysia, duh!). It's an interesting read. You should really check it out.


I've been somewhat rather into art the past 2006. Thanks alot to my brother who's studying to be an art teacher. But the art I'm into is not your regular art. More of rogue art. Here's a little something from a guy named Derek Hess.

Valentine by Derek Hess

(Fine art print)

Implosion by Derek Hess

(Fine art print)

My bro bought this from him the other time when he came down to Singapore for BayBeats.

Burned Out by Derek Hess

(Fine art print)

This is my personal favourite.

Check out the rest of his work at DerekHess.com

The other form of rogue art I'm particularly in to is stenciling. Not home decorating stenciling. The stuff of political revolutions type of stenciling. Check this out.

All these were done on the streets. If you want to see more, check out stencilrevolution.com

Well, that's all I have to say for now. I need to get ready for my French Oral Test tomorrow. Au Revoir everyone.

*The ECLS data was collected before the Freakonomics guys started their study. So by the time they actually got around to doing the study they were sitting on the pile of data that they were looking for.

Year In Review

I know it's already 11 days into 2007, but I still have to do sort of a lookback at 2006 seeing that it is an important time in my life what with entering polytechnic and all. So I'll just be marking out a few things from 2006 that were memorable for me.


1.) O-Level Results

This is the most important thing from 2006. My results. Results which pretty much gave me the choice to go anywhere I wanted to go.

L1R5 15(raw) 12(net) L1B4 12

A1 Combined Humanities
A2 English Language
B3 Pure Literature
B3 Higher Malay
B3 Elementary Mathematics
B3 Pure Physics
B3 Pure Chemistry

Do I rule or do I rule?


2.) Entry into NY'fuckin'P

The next big step. I hesitated in choosing between Business Management and Business Informatics. I made a snap decision in choosing Business Informatics seeing that I could possibly learn more. At that time I was also rather curious about IT so I had to take it. Turns out to be great.

What wasn't so great was the politics of my new class. People who didn't know what they were getting themselves into and at the same time were forming cliques faster than you could say 'Get me out of here'.

See, that's something I don't get. Why are there cliques? I never actually belonged to a clique my whole life. Not that I know of. I like to mix around, getting to know people. It helps when you have to manipulate them for your own future benefit*.

Tried out for soccer. Why did I even try. Even the best ones from my secondary school batch would have made it.

Got 3.7 GPA for my first semester. Wanted a 4 but I guess you can't have them all.

Now I'm trying my best to maintain that figure. If it drops I can only blame one thing. OOPPJ. Object-Oriented Programming Project. I don't get it. Why can MIT do theirs all alone and we have to do in groups? Programming is not really a group thing. Especially when the group is incompetent. There. i said it. Kill me some other time.

Politics. Fuck Politics.

3.) Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore

First three months of 2006. I had planned to work. Earn some cash. But jobs didn't seem to be coming. In comes my aunt. Principal of MINDS Jurong Garden School. She asked me to drop by the day after Hari Raya Haji. And guess what? I was there for 3 months. Cool huh? A big guy like me returning to the community.

4.) X-Square, The X-Box, Me and Pradip

Hehe. This...This kept me from falling into complete boredom during the holidays. Me and Pradip and X-box console number 84 at X-Square Dhoby Ghaut. Man, we owned that console practically right Dip? I remember that one time, on Fadhil's birthday, after celebrating at Seoul Garden, we followed him as he went to work. Saw him clock in and off we went to X-Square. 4pm we went in. We left at 11pm. Talk about damn right crazy. Worst thing. We both almost had zilch cash on us. Luckily there was an ATM nearby.

It's sad that the X-Square there has made way for some dumb LAN/net gaming centre for Chinese people (Who else plays all these dumb Japanese created games like MapleStory? It wasn't a CS, Warcraft type of LAN centre. It was all the cutie shit the Chinese folk are into.) It was sad. Pradip's and my hardwork on console 84 was gone just like that.

5.) Music

Man. Music. What else can I say. It's my favourite subject. Not in secondary school though. I was practically living on MySpace looking through all the Indie and Underground bands. All the up and coming bands from abroad and Singapore. Singapore has more talent than what you see. Its not just confined to Ronin or Electrico. Those bands are just cheap imitations of their idols. I can't believe that I actually thought that they were good for the Singapore scene.

A Vacant Affair, 20 Dischanger, My cousin's band Rejected Scums, Firerands. These are good bands. They sound good. They should carry the flag. Not some deadbeat albino idiot.

What band really blew me away in 2006? Nope, not B4MV, not even Metallica.

DRAGONFORCE.

Power metal is back and my god, it dosen't come any deadlier than them



DragonForce - Through The Fire And The Flames

Herman Li is crazy. He is one of the best guitarists I've seen since seeing Malmsteen smash up his guitar while playing it. He pulls of scales like they were nothing. And the video game sounds. Haha. He's just crazy man. Holding the guitar by the whammy bar. Man...My jaw was just hanging the first time I stumbled upon this video. Downright god-like.


Bands I loved in 2006(in no particular order) :

Bullet For My Valentine
Atreyu
Killswitch Engage
DragonForce
(+44)
Avenged Sevenfold
Vanna
Alkaline Trio
Rise Against
Alexisonfire


6.)Books

Hmmm...This might seem weird, but I actually got some reading done. And they were not just any books. These books made a point.

First book - Metallica: This Monster Lives

Metallica when they first started out didn't want to be just famous. They wanted to rule the world. But when you grow up to become an man, ruling the world takes its toll on you. This book trails Metallica as they go through group therapy and is actually a tie-in to the Metallica documentary 'Some kind of monster'. It follows the band through 2 years of group therapy and at the same time the process of making the 'St. Anger' album and getting a new bassist to replace Jason Newstead.

This book thought me one important thing. All can be pretty on the surface but underneath it could be a different story. Metallica had growing problems as the entered millenium. 2 out of their past 3 albums were flops with the fans even though they did well on the charts. James Hetfield was going through rehabilitation for alcoholism and Jason Newstead had left the band. There was a point of time that seemed like there was no more Metallica.

But 2 years of therapy and lots of hugs has helped them work through problems. Problems they had as far as 20 years back. It might seem out of the norm for a group of men like Metallica. But think about it. They want to make music and they can't do it better than with anyone else except each other. They still want to rule the world, but conflicts were stopping them. Group therapy was pretty much the answer. And now, they're ruling the world again. Teaches us quite abit about resilience and understanding.

Second book - Freakonomics

I'll be honest. I haven't finished reading this yet as I started in the last week of December. But I liked it straight away. Its contents are simple. A set of seemingly unassuming questions and with the use of Economics, the answers to those questions which are far more interesting than first thought. I'll try to update more when I finish reading it.

I know it's only 2 books but its 2 more than the number of books I read in 2005.

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Well, that's pretty much it from 2006. I was planning to write more, but my eyes are sleepy and my hands are tired. Till then. Get out of here.