RUDE Christian Groups

So in the past few weeks there've been a sudden onset of extremely passionate Christian groups in my school (NUS) trying to spread the gospel to unsuspecting passers-by. I got stopped once in UTown when I was having my dinner and once in Kent Ridge MRT when I was trying to meet my friend.

It is, frankly, extremely annoying. Not to mention the lack of common courtesy.

The first incident was when I was sitting alone, in UTown, looking gentle and pliant as my face and small stature tend to wrongly impression, with my meal half eaten and my spoon halfway towards my mouth, and 2 girls from a NUS Christian society came up to me and sat down at my table and started talking about Jesus. Really??? I spent the next 15 minutes trying to push them away (because I was too polite to be rude, dammit), while my food turned cold because it would be so damn awkward to keep eating when I have 4 eyes staring intently at me and giving me that serene we-are-going-to-enlighten-you-you-innocent-child smile. RUDE.

The second time at KR MRT station, I got tricked. I was rushing to meet my friend when I was stopped for a short survey which was no longer than 1 page, so I thought, why not? I assumed it was some kind of data collection, for we were in hospital and school vicinity after all, but noooooo, it was another Christian group trying to spread their gospel. This one believed in "Mother" female god and blah blah. Honestly, at the right time I would have been interested in listening, but I hate the feeling of being cheated and I repeatedly told the person "my friend is waiting for me I have 2 minutes to spare" but she kept talking. So I left without giving any contact information, and extremely put-off.

Really not the way to try and spread the gospel, guys. If anything, you're making more people wary and suspicious of anything remotely Christian-related. Christians do not have a good name because too many are overly enthusiastic and lack common courtesy.

My friend, for example, on the same day I was accosted by the KR Mother-god people, was also harassed by 3 different Christian groups in Faculty of Science. Yes, I used the words "harassed" and "accosted" because that's what they did. My friend was busy studying when they interrupted her study and forced her to listen to them, even though she repeatedly told them to go away. Extremely RUDE.

What is the point of forcing information on someone clearly repulsed? If anything, doing so will only cement their repulsion for the information, in this case "Christianity", which is entirely counterproductive. Wrong place wrong time, and RUDE.

Stop it. Just stop. You guys are giving Christians a bad reputation.


P.S. About the 30 Day Writing Challenge... I failed. Spectacularly.

Irritable (My friendship problem)

I need to get this out of my system. I've realized that I have friendship limits. After a period of time of being *A*'s friend, there comes a sudden and dramatic turning point in my brain that makes me so damn annoyed at A. Every single thing A does annoy me. A's speech, A's wardrobe, the sound of A's voice AND EVEN A'S FREAKING SMELL (like wth am I a dog). So. Freaking. Annoying.

And I don't like being annoyed at A! We've been friends a couple of years, been quite close, there was even a period of time where A was my best friend... Then all of a sudden, I find A so annoying I don't even want to risk asking out our mutual friends so that I don't have to see A. I don't like this. I miss liking A and having meals together and stuff. But now I can't and ugghhhh so frustrated.

A is not the only one. There've been B and C and I got annoyed for a few months and then I got over it and now we are still friends (albeit not so close), but enough that I am able to enjoy their presence ALONE.

I don't even know who to tell omggg. Can't tell our mutual friends. (I have a strict "only complain to neutral parties" policy because bad experience in secondary school.) I need advice people. Is this normal?? Or is my brain just that weird. If this behaviour translates to romantic relationships... I can never get married.

(Am supposed to be studying for my mid-terms but this is ruining my study-mood T^T)

How To Ask For Favours

This is a very very recent pet peeve. It was only realised this morning, but tbh it's been brewing for a month or so now. So I have some friends, as I'm sure you do too, the overly polite friend who is so afraid of offending everyone and talks so damn courteously all the time and says the word "sorry" more than any other word. (Yeah that's not me. I rage in your face.) Let's call the friend A.

Anyway this afternoon A was *hinting* that A needed another friend of mine (B) and I to help A do something. This is our -altered- text conversation:

A: Hey are you in school?
Me: Yup. Having class now.
A: Oh lol okay nevermind then haha thanks.
(Okay so the polite thing is to ask what A wants but at this point I'm already sick of having to dig information out of A. So I didn't reply.)

And at the same time, A was texting B too. Same convo. But B dug for more.

B: What is it lol
A: Oh I was wondering if you could help me do A3 color lol.
But nvm.
B: What A3 color?
A: Hahaha no, just printing coloured A3 stuff.
B: Aren't you in school? Then what? How to pass to you?
A: Ahaha nope nah it's okay I'll just print it outside thanks anyway.

Do you see what I want to rage at. Like HELLO, WOMAN. You are trying to ask me for a favour WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME DIG FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO DO YOU A FAVOUR. It's one thing to be polite and unobtrusive but this is ridiculous. If you want a favour, ask. Don't change your mind after 2 sentences. This happens way too often that I am raging.

ALSO. This is a TEXT message exchange. Not a conversation. I don't have time for you to slowly small talk me into doing you a favour. Sure, small talk takes a minute face-to-face but IT CAN DRAG FOREVER when you're texting.

So this is how to ask me for a favour via text:

-Greetings- (eg hey, how are you....)
Straight to the point favour where I won't have any questions to ask (eg can you please help me print ______ and pass it to me later in class?)
-the end-

Ideally my answer would only be an "okay, sure" or "sorry I can't".

Please do not make people -me- work to do you a favour. I won't want to do it.


Side note, it is better to make small talk a bit before asking for a favour when dealing face-to-face or with people you are not close to. It's more polite plus body language is extremely important in making people like you. And in the real world, connections are everything.

Toodles~

Bad Month

I try to post at least once a month, but I really just don't have anything to post. My life is just school, home, school, home. I lead a boring life.

Anyway, this month has not been good to me. I've been failing at everything.
I failed the auditions for my school's acapella group (no surprise here though haha). I failed my driving test (it's not that I failed, it's how I failed that I can't get over). I suck at philosophy and I don't understand crap about any other modules I'm taking. And just today, a tutor for one of my mods (environmental biology) gave me a 0/2.5% because I uploaded the assignment in the wrong format. 2.5% is nothing, I know, but she could have emailed me to tell me to re-upload it, hello.

In one of the lectures she randomly selected a guy that was sleeping in lecture and asked him to throw a feathered seed up on stage so that the whole lecture can see the seed slowly float down (yes this is what we do in  university). That guy happens to be my friend so he told me that afterwards, she found his email amongst ~100 other people in the lecture to thank him for throwing the seed. She could email a guy to thank him for throwing a feathered seed but couldn't email me to ask me to re-upload a submission in a format she couldn't open?
She had to scrutinise all the faces to pick out his face to find his email to thank him, but my email was right there with the submission! What?

I'm just pissed because of the difference in treatment. What if the assignment was 25% HUH??? 25% down the drain because she couldn't open the file. It's not like they specified what format they wanted either.


So, for the driving test. I failed at the S-curve because I mounted the curb. WHAT????
I have never struck the curb in the S-curve before, so when I did strike the curb on test day, I didn't know what to do and panicked and up the curb I went. -____-
Worst way to fail ever.
Moreover I had a trial run beforehand with the same car and everything went perfectly. No striking of curbs, no honking, no nothing.
Maybe next time I should just be like, 'screw the warm-up. Lemme at it NOW.'

Don't ever fail at S-curve. It's so embarrassing. Like all other instructors and testers will notice. And remember. Because nobody fails the s-curve.


Last thing! Guys go check out Alex G's new album, Alex G. She's a youtube-based independent artist and she's awesomeeee. She started by singing covers and collaborating with Tyler Ward and now she has her first full-length album!

Bones and Make Your Move off her album:

Some covers:

Alex G's
Youtube account
iTunes album


Okay bye :3

Education Rant, University Stuff and Other Stuff

The coming Monday will mark my 3rd week since lessons started. I do not look forward to studying at all. D: I know I'm whiny haha.


Education Rant

Studying used to be a privilege that only the best of the best, those with brains, money and time could afford (or you can just use money to override everything else). Studying is a means to know more information and upgrade yourself. Well, theoretically at least. It all sound very romantic, but that is just not true for me. The main reason why I even enrolled in college at all is because I have no idea what I want to do with my life and I'm dragging the deadline for a career. I don't know what I'm good at. I'm not good at anything. It's like, no matter how good you think you are or how much effort you put in to perfect your skill, there will always be a buttload more people way better than you. Good thing is, this thought keeps you humble. Bad thing is, it is also extremely depressing.

To be honest, there is nothing that is 100% this or that. Everything is a grey area. If white is good and black is bad, everything we have is just varying degrees of grey. Moral values, laws, family, technology.... So same goes for knowledge. If you know too little you are ignorant. If you know too much, you become judgemental because it is just easier for your brain to compartmentalise according to what you already know.

I am unable to enjoy studying. I'm trying to change that, but in my 15 years of education and conditioning according to society's demands, I was forced to learn things that only became progressively (how do I put this nicely) useless as I climbed the education sector. Honestly, what can I gain from knowing how to calculate the number of mols of a very specific and rare element, say cobalt, and what happens when you drop it in water or if you drop it in another equally unaccessible chemical. Really, what are the chances of you just happening by a piece of cobalt when walking on the road.

Of course, if I actually liked chemistry I might have found studying these reactions fascinating. I'm not saying I completely learned nothing from my 2 years in JC, but at this point which is about 8 months after my A Levels, I only retained about 10% of the information that my school shoved down my throat.
A few days ago I was just talking to my mom and I realised that hey, what happened to studying to quench your thirst of adventuring the unknown?
While I cannot account for education in other countries, I have been in Singapore education for 15 years of my 19-year life so I think I am pretty qualified to complain about the education system.

The whole point of schooling is no longer to educate us. Rather, we are all stuck in the never-ending paper chase where, somewhere along our evolution, a piece of paper with some writing on it becomes tantamount to decades of hard work and is known to employers as a decent enough judge of character. No, schools do not care how much information we actually retain after we leave them. They care only about the results we give in one round of gruelling examinations.
Ministry of Education may argue and say that they are trying very hard to promote an "all-rounded education" and they are, but that's not the point. Students are unable to receive an "all-rounded" education because we have reached the point where education has become a passive chore. The main purpose of schools has eventually become to train us to answer examination questions.

Take me for example. I did not understand a single crap about say Chemistry even after 6 years of "education". I knew what reactions would give what results, but I never understood why. I memorised it and managed to pass my exams, but really, I still understand Chemistry as much as when I was 14. I don't.

I am going off topic, ranting about the past 19 years of my life. I just... I don't know. It doesn't feel like 19 years well spent. My posts start nowhere and end nowhere. I don't have an introduction nor a conclusion. I just type whatever I'm thinking of right at the instant.... and perhaps, that's the beauty of informal writing.

Notice: Not that I'm hating on Chemistry (I totally am), it's just the hardest subject to study for me. I am a subjecist exercising subjecism on the subject Chemistry. (Yeah I'm lame like that.)


University Stuff

Oh yeah, about my university life, nothing much happened. I found out that Architecture students have absolutely no life and according to what Horsefly (formerly known as Poh or Lizzy) says and my observation of her recently deranged brain, most of the first-year architecture students have gone crazy staying up all night, night after night, to draw hundreds of lines, circles, and triangles.

A typical (wayy dramatised) scene in the archi studio: imagine yourself with baggy eyes, clouded mind and empty stomach, stuck in a enclosed air-conditioned room with many others in the same state as you as you draw, oh you draw, repeatedly, the same lines, lines, lines, hundreds of them, on gigantic pieces of A1-sized papers as you screw up paper after paper and have to repeat the whole process.
3 days of doing the same assignment, deprived of sleep, you finally manage to get your hand into a momentum. You are happy; relieved. You've never known such peace as your brain shuts down and your hand is able to move by itself. You start to get into your assignment. Lines start flowing perfectly from the pen that you paid too much for when suddenly, the guy sitting beside you starts laughing to himself. He stops. You ignore him and continue drawing your lines. One line, two lines, three lines. He laughs again, only this time, you detect a slightly more noticeable hint of insanity in his outburst. He must have triggered something in the room, because suddenly, the girl sitting at the back starts mumbling to herself. Her mumbles grow louder, louder, then they stop abruptly. You think it's over, you release the breath you didn't know you were holding. You start to turn back to your assignment, but he laughs again and she mumbles again. You are trapped. You are desperate. Help me.

Notice: Horsefly told me about the mumbling and the laughing but I made everything else up HAHAHA. If you want, you can make up a story about FASS students too. xD


Other Stuff

So... This happened.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees the rap. xD

This is proof that insanity is transferable from archi students (namely Horsefly) to us normal humans.

Bye~

Another Thing That Annoys Me

I have a lot of anger in me, I've realised. I should share something that makes me happy next time.

Anyway, I've been using facebook a lot more recently *cough* work *cough* and my 'friends' share some really good, inspirational stories on facebook... That have very unfortunate titles that really demeans the story into another one of those meaningless, attention-seeking articles, and this annoys me.

For example, I see this article that my 'friends' shared:

I'm sorry, but what's up with that lame title that is obviously phrased to pique the attention of 14-year-olds?? It even sounds written by 14-year-olds (I know, I've been there). Why couldn't a more simple title like, oh, I don't know, "Beautiful Sceneries" or something be good enough? It's straight to the point and doesn't sound attention seeking. I'm really bad at titles too, but still, why not just "A Man Filmed Heaven For  7 Days", why add the "What He Saw Took My Breath Away." part??? It really demeans the whole article. If I saw that title, I wouldn't have clicked on the link, but two people who usually shared good links shared this, so I did. The video was great. Link:http://www.lifebuzz.com/heaven/#!UrjG0

The photographer filmed some really beautiful footage of our planet.... But I almost didn't open it beacuse of the stupid title.

Another example:

This too is a great video about a great pianist performing in a train station, but with a stupid title that sounds like it was written by 14-year-olds. "You Gotta See This."???? Why is that phrase in the TITLE? It doesn't add any meaning to the video, it doesn't explain anything from the video, it just says 'click me, click me! I'm a website that really needs more visits'.

http://www.upvines.net/he-noticed-a-public-piano-then-he-blew-the-whole-train-station-away-you-gotta-see-this/

And so on and so forth... 

Well goodbye. I just wanted to rant. :D

Newest Pet Peeve

I am a person with very, very, very low patience. I am also very lazy. I enjoy lazing in my bed the entire day. So if I bothered to drag myself out of my bed and leave the tranquility of my house, you better not waste my time by dragging. >:(
I always brisk walk, and I take 20 minutes in the morning to get ready. I like to rush. It makes me feel very efficient, like see how much I can do in such a short time. Haha, anyway, my impatience makes me very easily irritated. I've posted before about my pet peeves then, and now I have a new-found pet peeve that is killing me.

I CANNOT STAND PEOPLE WHO CAN'T KEEP THEIR DAMN TONGUES IN THEIR MOUTHS.

Why? Why? Is your tongue too damn big for your teeny tiny mouth??
It DOES NOT look nice, not on anyone. It's like, oh, I don't know how to pose, let me just stick out my GIGANTIC BLOB OF A MUSCLE and make a stupid face.

There are two girls in the SERVE program THAT KEEPS STICKING THEIR DAMN TONGUE OUT and OMG, I wanna cut their tongues off so badly. It looks so gross. So gross.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against tongues. They are wonderful organs that allow us to enjoy taste and flavour. It just looks so gross when you purposely stick it, high up, out of your mouth.
Just go and google 'Miley Cyrus tongue' images and can you still say that that is attractive?? I wanted to put a picture here, but omg, my eyes hurt.

I rest my case. Just don't do it around me, please, or I will, WILL pull your damn tongue out. Then you have to permanently keep it outside your mouth. Isn't that great. *sweet smile*