I hate the rain.

And it happened to rain yesterday as clarrissa and i were rushing as we were almost late heading to ac from buona vista mrt station, and i realised that i'd forgotten to bring a plastic bag to keep my wet umbrella in. Not wanting to get my bag and erhu wet, i remarked at how tempting it was to just flag a cab. Just as we walked past the taxi stand, a cab drove down the lane. We flagged for it and got into it. (On an absolutely irrelevant note, erhu's are oh-so cab-unfriendly.) The cab fare cost us $2.80, of which $0.80 was the actual amount incurred travelling on the road.

When i got home after practice, my dad was packing for his trip to China. I went on with my life, having dinner and doing homework. After awhile, i noticed him looking out the window repeatedly, muttering to himself. NOT wondering if he was peeping at the neighbours, i asked him what he was doing. With a pensive look on his face he said "There aren't many cabs out right now, maybe i should go down earlier to wait by the side of the road instead of hailing one and incurring an extra $2.50."

You wouldn't believe how ashamed i was of myself then.

This is a man who slaves away in the office, tolerating shit from customers, and annoying me by asking me how to do up a powerpoint presentation (simple to me, but obviously not to him since he didn't grow up with computers), and he's still has to think twice about calling a cab. Yet extravagant little me comes along and spends $2.80 with only a fleeting moment of guilt.
Okaye, i'm at a lost at how i should conclude. I shall be off then.

Back.

Okaye, so i went to appeal to acjc last tuesday.

The next day in pj, i found that i couldn't change a subject from the fixed subject combination (Computing, Math, Physics) so i decided to appeal over to the arts stream. Couldn't find the teacher-in-charge and i hadn't gotten my call from acjc by then, so i figured that i'd better get used to pj and not understanding people speaking in their rapid mandarin, about their chinese pop stars, and their extremely cheena chinese orchestra that would soon be flooded with cck members.

Only managed to find the teacher-in-charge on thursday, and he agreed (after humming and hawing) to my appeal. That was not before he commented cynically 'We're not a charity you know.' What a nice man.

Went for the China Studies in English profile test, and was subjected to mcq's about china like:
-What is the population of China?
-What is the size of China?
-What is China's official religion? (It's Atheism btw, not Buddhism. Yay i got it right)
-What is China's largest/longest river? (I thought it was Huanghe. It wasn't. Darn.)
-When did Hongkong (return? rejoin?) China? (1997/1998/1999. How am i sposed to know, i was in primary school then.)
-Who is the president of China?
You'd be surprised at the number of people who don't know HuJintao. Isn't he such a charismatic personality? Well anw someone who took the test didn't know who he was. The horror. I had to suppress the urge to tell her not to bother taking the subject.

After that, they played wet&dirty games. I decided experiencing it during the first orientation was quite enough and excluded myself from it. We were taught the same Fun and Mass dance again, but at an accelerated pace. Those who weren't in pj during the 1st 3months didn't quite catch the dance steps, and bumbled about. I still didn't like the mass dance, and my new dance partner seemed hell-bent on exhibiting his height by lifting his arms up high when we were supposed to so a cha-cha-cha, causing me to stretch up awkwardly.

After the horrid dance, we went down for war games. I sat impassively by the side and watched people run about shouting, shrieking and squealing. Bored, i took and my cellphone and saw a missed call. I didn't recognise the number and called back, smiling cynically at my fellow og member saying very dryly, "what if i'ts from acjc, haha" I almost tumbled off my seat and rolled down the bleachers when i heard "You have reached ACJC, press 1 for-"

I pressed 0 for assistance, and asked stupidly "Erm, i think someone called just know but i don't know who." I was redirected to another number, and repeated the question (stupidly again). After hearing the shuffling of papers coming from the other end of the line, he announced that my appeal was accepted. After thanking him, i sat numbly and was surprised by the strong feeling of ambivalence that swamped over me. After all, i really did want to take China Studies and ac wasn't offering it (in english anyway), and pj's just a ten minute drive from my home. But the thought of having to converse continually in mandarin irked me. Not to mention their orchestra room that -with the green floor and short yellow curtains- so did not provide the ambiance for playing music.

Ultimately, i decided i liked the ac uniform better and pj's pe was really too much for me to bear.

Just to tell the world.

I'm still alive. Shall blog in awhile.