Tuesday, August 30, 2011

8:39 AM

Indeed, time flies. In just a few more days, September would come, and so does prelim, then the O level examination.

My first prelim paper would be, of course, the both English papers. In fact, I’m extremely worried and apprehensive about those particular papers as English has always been one of my weakest subjects of all time. Honestly speaking, I’m not good with languages unlike my both sisters. Maybe I do not have the genes for languages. Worst of all, I have never pass my English paper two before in the entire year and that made me pretty uneasy about it since the preliminary exam is quite an important examination too.

Also for paper one, I am a terrible writer. Normally, I would select expository questions for my essays because the topic was pretty general or wide for me to elaborate. However, at times, I am not sure how to continue or start the essay, and the same problems goes for narratives.

I’m not too sure how am I going to study for English. But hope that everything would be fine at the end of the day.

Anyway, I wondered what happened to Blogger these days. The dates and times for my previous posts were all incorrect- they were all a day and 12hours before the actual day that I posted! Hope that Google would get this fixed as soon as possible!

Saturday, August 27, 2011

5:30 PM

Honestly speaking, the Presidential Election Singapore result was quite disappointing for me. Personally, I feel that Dr Tan Cheng Bock should have won the election. To me, I feel that he is the only candidate that has the leadership qualities and the moral courage to do what is right rather than what’s popular during his time as parliamentary politician as well as in other areas in his life.

Before the polling day, I have expected Dr Tony Tan to win the election since most of the elderly in Singapore only heard and seen the former deputy prime minister before. Even my mum and her friends said that too! Maybe it’s also due to all the marketing campaign strategy by his supporting team whereby advisements of him could be seen all over the web as well as in the streets of the neighborhood where most of the elderly stay, unlike Dr Tan CB. Indeed, that’s the magnificent power of marketing.

Also, I guess that one of the detrimental factors that caused Dr Tan CB to lose would be most likely not being able to speak in Mandarin, which is the staple language for almost all the local aunties and uncles of the older generation, which caused some elderly to feel somehow discomfort and uneasy about him. Moreover, since Singapore is facing an aging population issue, more of the eligible voters in the future would be elderly. Therefore, he has to ensure that he is able to convince the majority elderly to vote for him.

Overall, I think that it’s still a good fight overall with lots of dramas and tension during the election period as I was watching the live coverage of the whole election event at Channel News Asia. Now that the election is over, let’s promote social cohesion. Singaporeans should come together and not be divided by their different groups and views so that we would be able to face external threats and tackle challenges together. Hope that Dr Tan CB will be able to contest for the next Presidential Election again in 2016. By then, I would be able to vote and would definitely support him! :) muhahaha.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

6:00 PM

Comex, the regular IT show held every mid-year in Singapore, is coming soon this September! I wonder if there are any great deals for cameras since I have been hunting a suitable one for me for quite some time. Although my knowledge towards cameras is strikingly little and crude, it has been one of my long-term desires to own one.

Personally, I don’t like to use my friends’ camera to take pictures because I would feel pretty worried that I might accidentally destroy their posh and expensive cameras or cause any other horrendous situations to render.

Also, I would wish to take pictures and other footage myself instead of depending on my friends for their photographs to be uploaded to online websites such as Facebook so that I would be able to download them and start my memento video projects earlier or even on time. This situation has always been a problem for me as I would have to tarry for a few days for the photographs to upload, causing a few weeks of delays before I could start creating the videos. And at times, I would get frustrated and uneasy about it.

For me, I guess a high-end compact digital camera would meet my demand- as long as it is able to shoot in 1080HD and at least 12 Mega-pixels. Hope that I would be able to find an inexpensive one for myself soon.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

8:45 AM

Unfortunately, the Bada phone application for Samsung Mobile Phones has been recently rejected by the certification team. Looks like I still have lots of works to do.

Thank God that the oral examination went pretty well I guess. Although I did stumble on many words in the passage section of the oral examination, I feel that I did well for the picture and conversation questions. Honestly, the passage wasn’t hard at all. But due to my nervousness, I couldn’t read the words properly and kept reading or pronouncing the words wrongly.

My heart was pounding extremely fast at that time. But after reading the passage, my nervous feeling had disappeared. I guess that I gained confidences in making lots of inference during the picture section of the exam. Overall, I’m quite satisfied with my performance. Finally, I feel that one load of burden have been lifted off my shoulders. Unfortunately, there’s still many of them being lifted now. Hope that time would pass quickly and the O level examination would be over so that I would be able to lift my other burdens off.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

8:45 AM

The oral examination is just two days away. Certainly, I’m scared stiff of it. My heart would pound extremely fast too sometimes even when I’m practicing oral with my friends. Not because I don’t feel prepared for it, but I will always get nervous on interviews or examinations. That has always been one factor that is detrimental to the results of my interviews or examinations. Till now, I still have not found a way for me to reduce my nervousness during those situations.

The conversation and passage section of the oral examination would be my worst sections. Personally, I have many problems in pronouncing English words properly since most of the time at home I speak and converse in Chinese. Moreover, it would be extremely hard to try to learn how to pronounce all the words correctly since it would be almost impossible to do so in two days. What’s worse is that most of the time, I would be thinking in my mind in Chinese. That would really be a huge disadvantage for me during the conversation section of the oral. But I will still try my very best during this oral examination. Hopefully, the questions for the oral examination wouldn’t be very difficult. Also, I would be able to stay calm during the examination.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

7:03 PM

Today would be the most emotional day my class has ever experienced. Misery and anger were written on almost everyone’s face. After getting the results for O level mother tongue today, the atmosphere at class has been tense and a strong sense of hopelessness arose. Some are choked with tears, while others are just disappointed.

I felt cheerless and blue for the whole day too. Looking at the disappointed and tear-stained faces of my classmates made me feel pretty afraid to approach them. I’m afraid that my words would accidentally trigger their anger, which I believe most likely they will. I tried to comfort some of my closer friends, but I failed and I guess that it would be much better to leave them alone. I believe that time would be the best cure for this lugubrious day. Most importantly, hope that this minor setback would motivate my classmates to strive for better results the next time and they take it as a form of encouragement and would not allow these emotions to be detrimental to their desire results.

Besides, failure is the key to success. I honestly believe in that since most of the time, I fail in rendering videos or creating some video effects in After Effects due to my lack of knowledge regarding it. But in the end, after lots of trainings from online tutorials and personal perseverance, I succeeded. This problem has occurred in almost all the videos that I have produced, even the earlier ones during the Maplestory era. The 4F 2010 graduation class video would be the great example on this since it’s the video that I have putted in the most effort in the production so far.

Anyway, tomorrow will be my turn to receive back my result since I’m getting back the DPA results online. I don’t really have much expectation from it, but it would definitely be awesome if I managed to enter my desire course.

Monday, August 15, 2011

6:21 PM

The English Oral Examination is just a few days away. I believe that that would be the most detrimental paper to my English grades since I often get nervous easily, which would most likely cause me utter craps out. Unfortunately, I’m still having some trouble with regards to pronouncing words that end or start with ‘th’ as either I would sound extremely silly or choppy while trying to pronounce those words. I guess that pronouncing words wrongly over the years has already become a terrible innate habit of mine, and it takes great effort to change that. Hope that when the day has come, I wouldn’t sound like a fool, trying to pronounce those words. Otherwise, it would be strikingly embarrassing.

Anyway, check out what have we done to poor Sufi on his birthday!Hahaha!

Friday, August 12, 2011

11:15 PM

Recently, I have joined Google +, the new social networking site created by Google which is still in trial state, through an invitation by one of my friends. The few awesome features such as Circles as well as Instant Upload really makes me feel that this would be definitely be a Facebook killer unless Facebook comes out with something similar or even better in the future.

With the new Circles feature, I would be able to ensure that my post does not offend anyone that I have added since I would be able to select which Circles are able to view the post that I have posted. Also, this helps to create a strong privacy system on top of an easy to use feature due to its great and simple interface to organize your friends. This feature would be able to solve one of my main problems with Facebook, where a Single post is shown to all my friends unintentionally.

Other great feature which I would like to share would be the Instant Upload for Android phones. It basically uploads your photos or videos immediately once you have capture it, into a private album on Google+. And from there, you would be able to organize these media files when you are back home. This definitely saves the hassle of uploading them from your phone slowly into social media sites.

There are many other awesome features available in Google+. Unfortunately, not many Singaporeans have gotten an account in Google+ since an invitation is required. Therefore, there aren’t many friends for me to contact in Google+ since most of my friends are still using Facebook. I guess that I would still need to wait for most of my friends to migrate to Google+ in order for it to be useful. So do add me if you are a fortunate one that have a Google+ account! Just search for my full name, Kevin Ng Jia Quan.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

9:25 PM

So far, this week has been a pretty carefree one, thanks to three days National Day holiday.

For the past few days, I spent most of the time slumbering. But today, I spent most of the time planning and contemplating about the upcoming class video of mine that I will be working on in a few months’ time. Although the production of the video will only commence around November, having an early plan would allow me to have a rough idea of how the video is going to be created and what are the requirements and materials needed to produce this video. Since this is the last class video that I will be making for my secondary school class, it would definitely be a mega and grand production.

There will be many new roles that I would like to introduce for my final class video project such as a new Graphics Artist, which will be one of my classmates, or even a narrator for the video. Since this year’s class video’s theme is based on Fairy Tale, I believe that having a narrator for the video would help to add value to it. However, I doubt that I would be able to find a suitable narrator with the Golden Hollywood-style voice. So most likely, the narrator will be my classmates or my English teacher.

But most importantly, I hope that I would have the skills and cooperation of all my friends to make this video production possible and as a great memento for everyone after we all have graduated. I shall stop the planning here, and continue it whenever I’m free.

Monday, August 8, 2011

8:22 PM

It’s national day tomorrow - a day to celebrate Singapore’s independence. Wishing Singapore a Happy 46^th Birthday!

It has been 46 years since my dad managed to catch a glimpse of the first National day parade. Most of our fathers would be able to see the great differences of Singapore in the 60s as compared to now. Singapore had grown vastly in development over the past few years - from a fishing village, to a metropolis now. That’s one of the things that I’m proud to be a Singaporean as not many nations around the world would be able to survive without natural endowments. But as for Singapore, we managed to.

Hope that the National Day Parade this year would be fantabulous and impressive. Despite the infamous fun pack song, the past few rehearsals of the parade seem to be pretty amazing with all the new dazzling lighting effects and the beautifully designed stage. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get hold on the NDP tickets this year. Otherwise, I’m sure that I would enjoy the parade.