Happy

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!

Clap Clap

Ignore me, I'm just happy because tomorrow is a holiday. Friday is a slacking day cum prelude to weekends. Elated.

I finally tried out my 3 pages on my variations on a theme on canon. It's freaking hard, well, I would say there are several errors here and there, but I know that it's definitely going to take some time to master if I would to seriously learn it (and continue writing). It's very much an etude.I'll post it up when the final version is up.[note:will take a long time] (hopefully including recordings). So far there are insane leaps, pinky trills, appregios, jumping notes all over the place. Not for the faint hearted.

Ahh well, yes, school again. They had this talk during assembly. Another talk which I am very against. This time round, I think they were highlighting the importance of CIP, and how important is in university admission. Seriously, I don't mind the concept of CIP, the entire thing sounds great and somewhat consoling for a sympathy-lacking nation like Singapore. Lending a helping hand is definitely something positive, but when everything is done too systematically or involuntarily, it becomes unnatural, constipated, forced and the meaning of CIP itself diminishes along with it. I mean, if the purpose of CIP is to teach students to lend a helping hand, I believe it's a good motive, but when they have to go to the extent to have to critically emphasize it's importance and force people to take part,things become totally trashy. What irks me is the tone of coercion that is being used. On the surface they highlight it's benefits, by underlying beneath their words you can hear a scoffing warning tone as if trying to tell you what you would miss out if you don't comply.

And then the student portfolio and so on. All waste of time. If society has to reach a point where people are judged (no matter how minor) by how much hours of their life (yes, that is time) they contribute to society (also translates as free labor), what kind of degrading society will that be.

I use to say the amount of CIP hours a person manages to get is either proportional to 1) how big his heart is OR 2) how dumb a person can be. Usually, more often then not, it's usually the latter because most youths do CIP for the sake of those freaking hours that will eventually accumulate and give them a "better name". (at least that's the concept the school is trying to sell).

Let's just say, I transcend beyond standard, superficial attitude to a level whereby I can safely scoff at CIP-hour hungry people.

And one point I would like to bring up, if contributing to the nation is compulsory, males should be definitely excused from any form of CIP. Perhaps even picking up the tissue to throw in the bin could be taboo. We waste 2 years in National service. Why not leave all the say hi bye to old men in pre-underground centers to the females. Seriously, if men would to have to serve NS, and everyone is bitching about gender equality, make the females do 1 year of full-time CIP. (or sweep the streets) That ought to balance things up. But sadly, gender equality is definitely not established. We're in a society where the weak is protected.

Flame bait, but who cares.

School passed swiftly today. I got quite pissed at the attempt at coercion during assembly. Totally unnecessary. The basis and foundation of a Singaporean perspective judgment is totally off the scale. It's time we stop trying to measure how the numbers on a metre rule would affect it's colour.

And yes, physics practical. We had a very unusual topic. On tennis rackets. I like such topics, as opposed to the classical type of questions. It was meant to be an experiment to investigate tension. We were asked to plan an experiment involving several rackets and choosing the best racket by determining several variables. We are asked to select the best racket and purchase them for the national team. How glamorous (if you were wondering, it's pure fiction)I will not go into detail.

But the entire class identified TENSION of the STRINGS as their main independent variable.

Now how is this totally screwed up. Firstly, by common sense, you would know that the tension of a racket is not determined by a racket, but by how hard you want your strings to be. You order a racket, and then buy the strings. Racket manufacturers sell rackets usually without strings because players tend to have their preferences for tension, brand of string, type of string, and other rackets.

So, the string isn't necessarily part of a racket. Usually, when a racket is being evaluated, it is judged solely as a raw racket, a piece of metal, without strings and even any grip tape.

I cannot believe that no one managed to actually relate with my logic. Everyone just happily went to test for the tension. Well, it was the standard procedure, Mdm Ong totally approved it, in fact it was meant to be the standard method for the question.

I refused to do the tension method, going by my principles. Reason being, well I just stated above. I was paired with Jonathan phua and we came up with a (though flawed) experiment based on the center of gravity of the racket and distance traveled upon impact.

No one managed to realize that a string is not part of a racket. (at least when manufacturing is concerned/or racket specs)

Even though I suck at physics, I have at least some common sense. Being so addicted to badminton rackets in the past and having read on some of more detailed analysis of tennis/badminton rackets, I really cannot come to a compromise that the tension can be evaluated as a specification of a racket.