2nd sortie

I had my second YFC flight today. I was actually quite surprised to be able to get a 4th wave flight, guess I'm just lucky. I felt more relaxed today as I knew what to do for reporting e.g. the forms to fill up etc. Today's lesson was about the effects of controls, which is the most basic flying technique. I think even taxying the plane requires more skill, lol. On the ground, about 6 planes queued up on the taxy way because a Boeing jet plane was landing. There were jokes about "size matters" and "traffic jam" broadcast on the intercoms. It was really hilarious, lol. The picture of the planes queueing up was really cool, too bad I couldn't take a picture of it.

In the air, I banked the plane left and right, yawed it, pitched it up and down, and also trimmed the plane. It was quite an experience to control the plane for the first time. The studying I did about the effects of controls paid off as I could answer almost all the questions asked by the instructor. However, I still felt exhausted after the 1 hour flight. I need time to adapt to the varying altitude...

In school, we rehearsed the PW oral prsentation today. I did alright except for a few pauses and distracting movements.

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday and I'm now 17 years old!

This year, I had one of the most memorable birthday celebrations. I want to thank TRP for the celebrations at Fish & Co, my Deyi clique for the celebrations yesterday, Doreen for her beautiful birthday card, and everyone who wished me happy birthday! For the past few years, for some reason or another, I did not really enjoy the birthday celebrations. Maybe I've finally grown up and become more appreciative of friends and their goodwill.

Yesterday night, we went to watch Transporter 2 at Cineleisure, and then had dinner at Swensens. We stayed till around 10.40pm before the waiters asked us to leave as they were closing. We should have went to Cafe Cartel at ground level as they close very late. Anyhow, I had a great time.

It really makes me look forward to my 18th birthday next year when I can finally learn to drive a car, watch M18 movies etc etc, haha!

1st YFC flight

I flew my first YFC sortie this afternoon. I was quite lucky as the weather began to clear up about 30 mins before the flight. The first flight was an introductory flight where the instructor showed me the external flight checks, how to taxy the plane and the flight training areas which is around the north-east of Singapore. As this was my first training, I was quite blur about the forms to fill up. Fortunately, the Ops Room department lady was very kind and explained the procedures to me. My next sortie would probably be next week. I'd learn about banking and yawing of the plane during the next sortie, and I'll have to perform the external checks for the instructor to grade me. I hope I will not go wrong!
Even though it was supposed to be a relaxing introductory flight, I was mentally exhausted after the flight. I wonder how I'd be able to cope with the subsequent flights where I'll have to actually control the plane and stuff. Radio-telephony (R/T) seems tough too. During today's intro flight, the communication between the instructor and air-traffic control was really fast-speed and muffled. I wonder how they manage to interpret each other. It'll be really cool once I get the hang of flying R/T.

10,000 visitors milestone

Upon loading my blog, I read "10,083" on the visitor counter. Wow! I cannot remember exactly the date I started blogging, but the last blog post still recorded by Blogspot dates back to June 2004. Blogging has certainly become my open medium to share my thoughts with everyone, and let others have an insight into part of my life.

I'm still having a hangover after getting back my results yesterday. Jinzheng and I were discussing about taking S paper and joking about taking part in the science olympiads. But with results like mine, it'll all but certain be only a wish. At the beginning of the year, I was geared up for JC life. When I was in NJC during the first three months, I was influenced by all the motivated people around me. Everyone aimed for straight As and S papers, and some geared towards scholarships after the A levels. After interacting with them for over 3 months, I was definitely motivated by them. I started to aim for scholarships and S papers. I did pretty well in Maths and Physics at the beginning, but later began to drop back. I've no idea why it happened, probably because of the people around me - the people I interacted with for the next 6 to 7 months, and myself to blame as well. I failed to have the same motivation I had a few months back, hence I began to falter. I always look back to the time I spent at NJC, and the friends I had there. I want to find back the motivation and inspiration to gear myself up for the A levels.
People in my class aim to get promoted, and probably only Jinzheng, Kelvin and Alicia aim for S paper. If I were to be in a class with everyone aiming for the peak, I'd definitely be more motivated to do so.

There's still PW oral presentation and Chinese A level exams to sit for in the next 3 weeks. After that, I'll be able to put all my time into SYFC. A few of my coursemates from Poly have already flown their first sortie. I hope I'll not fall behind, else the chances of getting phased out will be very high.

Birthday Celebrations

Yesterday TRP celebrated me and yoke teng's birthday. I'm really glad that we're all still good friends even though we're in different colleges for about 7 months already. We were only together from January to mid-March, and I had to leave the college due to results...

Anyway, we went to Fish&Co opposite Plaza Singapura for dinner. They suggested wearing formal attire, thus I wore a shirt and jeans. They all said I was kind of old and mature looking. I'm not sure if its a compliment or a comment, I hope its for the good though. We ordered the Fish&Chips set meal. I ate only about 3/4 of the cheese-stuffed fish fillet and fries and was kind of sick of the taste. We then cut the cake. Fish&Co provided sparklers, yoke teng and I stood on the chair holding the sparklers and sang the birthday song. Everyone in the restaurant sang along, it was really cool!

They made a really nice card for me, I'll probably post a picture of it if I've the time to take a snapshot of it. I received a basketball singlet jersey as a present, it was really very nice of them! I bought a necklace for yoke teng too. Before that I was kind of nervous as I wondered if she'd like it and it's the first time I buy a present for a girl. Thus I'm very glad she likes it. As we all had lessons the next day, the gathering ended pretty early at around 930pm. It was really a very memorable birthday celebration! :D

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Today, I took back my promo exam results... I got:
Maths A
Chem C
Phy C
Econs E
Chinese C6 (finally pass it!)
GP C5 (quite satisfied with it, though it still can be very much improved)

My Maths results has improved from my midyear exams results, from C to an A. However, my Physics and Economics results dropped a lot. I got A and B for Phy and Chem respectively in midyear, now it dropped to C and E. Blarh!
I failed my Econs Paper 3 essay and got 15/50 for it, I'm really very disappointed. Although I don't really show my disappointment in school and look very happy and lively, I'm sad about it. I'll probably continue to take 4As unless my results continue to be this bad next year...

Never felt so tired before

I'm now both physically and mentally tired. I've never felt so tired before since Secondary 2 when I was in the basketball CCA when we trained several times a week for about 3 hours each time.

On Thursday, I went to play badminton with my classmates for about 2 hours. On Friday, it was the college open house and I played 3 badminton matches and later some basketball. Today, I was at the flying club for lectures and mentoring sessions from 9am to 5pm. Blarh. I'm going to have a good night's rest today and prepare for Sunday and Monday. I'll be getting back my promo results for all the subjects on Monday. I really hope I'll do well... else it'll be very disappointing.

Today's flying club schedule started out with a very boring radio transmission lecture. It followed with a flight briefing as we'll be starting to fly from next Tuesday onwards. I received my Student Pilot's License. It's really kind of cool, even though its just a students license - a PPL would be very much cooler! :D Later on in the afternoon, there was mentoring session for us students, and parents day for our parents. The parents attended a talk and later had a joyride which flew them around the southern part of Singapore.

I then went to Chinatown hoping to find a miniature guzheng or other chinese orchestra instruments. But to my despair, after searching for an hour, all I could find was merlion keychains, merlion figurines, merlion t-shirts, and several modern designed key-chains. Chinatown is now totally a tourist spot, without any Singapore heitage... oh my... the government has destroyed heritage for the sake of tourism. I then decided to make do with an OP wallet I bought from Bugis as a birthday present for my friend. I really cannot believe that I came home empty-handed from Chinatown... Before that, I was so sure I'd be able to get something for my chinese-cultured friend as a gift, but sigh...

"Blogspot Ground, Blogger Kilo Zulu Romeo, request full stop landing"
"Blogger Kilo Zulu Romeo, Blogger Ground, cleared to land"

Good day!

Untitled

I went to play basketball this morning at the court opposite Deyi. We trained some layups and shooting. It then began the rain... In the end, we got to play for only about 2 hours.
Later, I went to Hougang Sports Hall to play badminton with Kelvin, Weiss and Dezhi. The environment of the sports hall was great, many people were playing and it was noisy. The facilities were great too, with water coolers, canteen and shower bathrooms. I played for about 2 hours and my shirt was soaking wet. It was great exercise! Badminton rocks! :)

Apple unveiled it's new generation of iPod with video capability.

A picture paints a thousand words. :)
Only 5 weeks after the release of iPod Nano, Apple released a video-capable iPod. What's Creative doing?! Go advertise your Creative Zen Photo and come up with a much better-designed MP3 player!
Anyway, after using my iPod Nano for about 2 weeks, I'm getting used to its sound quality and user-friendliness. When I return to use my Creative Muvo Slim, the sound quality seems inferior, even with the same earphones.

Anyway, tomorrow's my inter-house badminton friendly match, wish me luck!

Aftermath

The promotional exams are finally over! I had my last paper, Physics, yesterday. Although it was tough, I managed to pull through, I had to anyway. I've got breaks from these few days due to the school marking day. I'll only need to return on Friday when it will be the college open day. I went bowling with Doreen, Meikuan and Alicia yesterday after the promos at yio chu kang grassroots club. After that, we went crazy over the Time Crisis 2 arcade game. It got us all tired after the exciting shootings.

This morning, I played basketball with xinxiang, his brother and weishun. I've not played ball for more than 3 months. It seems that I lack recreation after entering JC.

I'm free for the whole day again tomorrow. Probably I'll go shopping for new earphones for my iPod and presents for my friends' birthdays. It's great to be free! :)

Promos finally over

I had Physics paper yesterday, and the promo exams is finally over for me. It was really a huge relieve after the paper yesterday. Now I'm kind of excited about receiving my results next week, heh.
After the exams, I went bowling with doreen, mei kuan and alicia at yio chu kang's grassroots club. I've not bowled for so long, and had several shots without hitting a single pin. But it was fun! Later on we played at the arcade outside the bowling centre. We were all crazy over Time Crisis 2, and spent about 6 dollars on it. (40 cents a credit) That got us all tired after the exciting shooting.

This moring, I went to play basketball in school today with xinxiang, his brother and weishun. I've not played basketball for more than 3 months too. Come to think of it, I've not had much recreation these few months after entering JC. There's still Chinese A level exams coming up, and project work oral presentation. I guess the holidays start only in December... My birthday is about a week away, and I'm excited! :)

SYFC

I had a SYFC test and lecture today. The test had questions on details that I didn't study such as the diameter of the plane's propeller. (gosh) I'll probably just pass it. Later on was a lecture on flight safety. Fortunately, the lecturer was a humourous person, or else the lesson would have been a snooze period. He related to us the experiences he had as an air force cadet and pilot, and it really motivated me. I hope he'll be my primary flying instructor, haha.

My final promo paper is just two days away. After that, I can spend alot more time playing computer games, badminton and basketball. It's extremely exciting!

I can finally get to use my iPod Nano after I buy a Nano Tube from someone at Hardwarezone. Apple.com sells a set of five at $50, while retail stores sell at $20 each. That guy agreed to sell it for $10, so I quickly agreed.:D
SingNet is giving away 4GB iPod Nanos for people who sign a 24-month contract with them. This would mean that the market price of Nanos would fall because there'll definitely be many people selling away those iPods at lower prices. (Economics is such a useful subject)

I just need to wait till 18 Oct before I can start flying. It'll be so cool, a dream come true for me! :)

Exams ending soon...

The promos is finally ending soon. I'm left with Physics Paper 1 & 2 which is on Monday. I lost total confidence in my Physics results after I did very, very badly for Paper 3. The only chance now for me to redeem myself is to do very well for P1 & 2. I envy my friends from other JCs whose exams are already over. I wonder why my college schedule the examinations so spread apart. I even had a day off on Wednesday.

Today's Economics case study question was about Singapore's telco companies M1, StarHub and SingTel. StarHub has really made great leaps and overtaken M1 in terms of market share. Even though I really want to swtich to SingTel or StarHub, I cannot do so as I'm currently stuck with M1 on their 2 year plan. I find M1's service packages unattractive and expensive. The caller-id service which is a necessity doesn't come together with the plan. I end up having to pay $5 for the service monthly. It was really a mistake to sign up with them. I'll probably just stick with my SE k500i till the contract ends next year. M1's market share will probably continue declining if nothing is done. Unless the upcoming wireless WiMax internet technology saves them.

About 1/3 of the promos is over, leaving with Chemistry, Phy and Econs to be tested.

I had my first YFC lecture today. It was about 2 hours long with a 20min break in between. I must admit it was quite boring... I still need to attend 2 more introductory lectures before being able to start flying. There was also a mentoring session, where the YFC alumni shared their experiences with us. The common response from them was that the course is very time-consuming, and I must be prepared to give all I have in order to get my PPL. If I do get into PPL, I'll probably drop one of my 4 A level subjects. It's no point getting a pilot license with 4 Cs or Ds for A levels.

Exams are ending in 9 days' time!