1, 2, 3, W!

Firstly, I would like to thank the people whose Facebook accounts I have stolen pictures from. Namely Amber, Looi Ling, and Naveena. But mostly Naveena.

I would just like to say: We wock. Wock with a capital W.

It's been the best year. Surely. If not throughout the whole year, at least these past few weeks of post-ex have really brought us closer. Case in point, our killer klass party.

At the beginning, we were fearful it might not be half the class party last year's was. The reason:

No one had brought a radio.

So a couple of us went around the staff rooms to check if any of the teachers had a radio we could borrow. When suddenly, our monitor, the ever-prepared Tan Lay Yin, mentions that "Oh, one of the teachers are keeping my radio for me."

This is Tan Lay Yin from the back. Trust me, you don't want to see the front. Haha! Just kidding. Sort of. And yes, I drew that toothless picture of her saying "I'm Lay Yin!".

If you're wondering why everyone is leaving nice messages on her shirt(Lee Jia Wen excluded, he wrote the "Kick me"), it's because she's leaving school next year to go learn somewhere in FRIM(don't ask me, that's just what I heard).

So anyway, back to the story. We retrieved Lay Yin's radio from the staff room, then went back to class, only to find that it was way too soft to supply music for a dance party.

The radio dilemma. Hmm. That sounds like it could be a great movie! Let's see...

YES! It's amazing!

Anyway, because The Radio Dilemma, we had to come up with a new plan. Our resourceful Mr. Jonathan Patrick James came up with the solution.

"We need to find another radio."

It's not exactly the best plan, but I was kidding when I said "resourceful". No offence, Jon. So we went again.

We thought for a while. Who would have a radio? Then, we happened to see Mdm Vicky standing in her staff room looking bored. Ding ding! She might have a radio.

But even if she did, what if she didn't want to lend it to us? We needed someone to persuade her. Someone good at sucking up. Someone like...

Alistair Bow!

That was proof of his suck-up prowess. Standing hand-in-hand with our principal, Mrs Matthews, preparing to waltz.

We ran to find Alistair, and found him talking and joking with Mdm Shabnam. See what I mean? Suck. Up. So, we told him we needed him to work on Vicky, but Shabnam, overhearing our plan, told us that there was a radio in staff room 8 belonging to Kok Hao Zhe which was not in use.

* * *

And so, the party begins.

It so happened that the day of the class party was also Chai Jia En's birthday. Here we see him trying to fly.

And so, being in charge of bringing a cake for the class party, I decided to make it Jia En's birthday cake. You're welcome, Jia En. Haha!

See? Look at it! I baked that, believe it or not.

But damn. That day was also possibly Jia En's last day in school. He went for an interview to get into a military school the very next day. I don't mean to curse him or anything, but I think I speak for many when I say I hope that he doesn't get in.

So anyway, we started dancing, and slowly, people from other classes started coming in. All the teachers were coming, too. How nice.

Now, if you look at this series of pictures taken by Naveena(who is also leaving next year, argh), you will see that it would actually make a very good flipbook/.GIF image. Haha!

Jon and I begin to dance.

Jia En punches in.

"Hey, Jun Shern, let's squash him!"

"Okay, now!"

No narration required.

The End.

Hilarious. And we have more pictures!

It's close to midnight,
and something evil's lurking in the dark.

'Cause this is thriller, thriller night And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike

DANCE BATTLE!
This is my favorite pic, personally. The angle is so dramatic.

This is me. I think I'm doing baby swipes. It's hard to tell. Doesn't look like anything in particular.

Again, me. I think I'm coming down from a handstand.

Wheelbarrow race!

Jun Shern + Bryan = Breakdance

Let's not forget all the great food, yeah? Which everyone contributed to. Woot!

And.. yeah. Run, Jon, run!

That's pretty much it.

Damn, I'm gonna miss all of you guys who'll be leaving.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

The Cold Front

It's getting colder. Or rather, these last two days, my area has been really cold. It's as if the air-con is on 24/7.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Who's The King Of The World?

I've really missed out on a lot of posts. Many things have been happening, really. What with all the post-ex activities(which from now on will be referred to as PEA), and absolutely no work involved in my life, I've been having a great time.

I can't remember everything, though. The main stuff was like the AAR concert,

which, predictably, was super-awesome. At the start, we kept trying to get to the front, with me leading the pack holding my handphone, pretending that I was trying to get to my "friend" who was far in front. However, nobody cared. We managed to get quite deep in, then found ourselves stuck tight in the middle of a dense sea of bodies.

It became kinda crazy during the local bands' opening acts before AAR came, but it was all in good spirit. You know, sort of a mosh, but not so serious. Just people pushing us all around. And, I happened to get hit on the head by a flying plastic bottle from behind.

I didn't mind any of that, except for an annoying little malay boy with a large bag pack on. He was seriously getting on my nerves, constantly half-crouching and covering his head then using his backpack to crash into everyone around him.

When Pop Shuvit came on with Mara Bahaya and everyone went crazy, I really lost it with that kid. Whenever he came close to me, I would push him as hard as I could, but he just kept coming back. Always a pacifist, I retreated behind the other audiences. And found that the older malay crowd standing behind was far more hostile.

Eventually, we got tired of waiting for AAR to come on, then went further back to get some drinks. Then, we learnt that it was much more comfortable to watch alongside the more relaxed crowd at the back. So it was there where we spent the rest of the night, shouting along to AAR's best.

So let's talk about yesterday's Melaka trip. There isn't much to say, because without pictures this kind of post would be terribly boring. The most interesting things would be that we ate chicken rice balls and cendol for lunch, Jia Wen stole us some snake skin from inside the snake's cage in the zoo, and the bus ride back was a platform for the movie "Don't Shoot Me!", which you can watch on here on Facebook.

What's been going on in school? Well, there was my powerpoint presentation, which would honestly been ten times better if the hall's sound system was working properly. Meaning that I wouldn't have embarrassed myself if all the sound clips I'd inserted weren't on mute.

And then there was the patriotic song competition. Basically, the idea was to have each class perform a song which upheld the morals of patriotism. It was fun while it lasted. It gave us musicians an excuse to bring our instruments to school and jam. However, I've come to realize that jamming isn't a good idea. For instance, on the last day after our song performances, I'd invited the P class people over to jam. What resulted was many musicians in the same room, each playing their own thing and trying to be heard. That kinda thing just gives people headaches.

The real fun in music is performing. Like the few times when I'd played guitar in class and had people singing along to the songs I was playing. That's what music is about.

On the note of music(pun intended), I've decided to stop learning piano. Surely, learning piano for possibly almost 10 years and having nothing to show for it is a sign that piano just isn't for me. As a result, I have space to learn a new instrument.

However, I don't know which to learn. I can play gutar, piano, and a little bit of drums already. So those are out. Remaining choices are:

violin, trumpet, saxophone, cello, flute, harp

Elimination time.

1. Violin- Plenty of people play this. Besides, the violin is known to be a strictly classical instrument, and very hard to tackle if you plan to take exams.
Genre: Classical, otherwise limited to Yellowcard, Vanessa Mae and VSQ songs.
Verdict: Maybe not.

2. Trumpet- At first, I liked the idea of learning the trumpet. So I went to Youtube to check it out. Unfortunately, the trumpet has a pretty ugly sound.
Genre: Classical and marching band music.
Verdict: Nah.

3. Saxophone- This is my favourite. The sound is absolutely amazing, and it's portable, and very few people I know can play it. The only problem is, one of the very few people I know who can play it is my brother, so there might be a problem there.
Genre: Blues, soul, and pop songs aren't too far out of reach, either.
Verdict: Leaning yes.

4. Cello- A pretty cool instrument, definitely more ideal than the violin, for me. However, my sister wants to learn the cello, so she has banned me from doing so.
Genre: Classical, but good for accompaniment in pop songs.
Verdict: A forced no.

5. Clarinet- Jia Wen plays this. And it's also a cool instrument, and supremely portable. But I'm not so sure that the sound is very usable in modern music.
Genre: Classical, unless I learn to be like that beatboxing flute player on Youtube.
Verdict: Either way.

6. Harp- This would be really cool if I were a mermaid. Unfortunately, the harp is a rather sexist instrument, having been protrayed by the media as a woman's otherwise an angel's instrument.
Genre: No idea what genre this falls into.
Verdict: Probably not.

So there you have it. I think I'll go for saxophone, if my brother doesn't mind. It's a really sax-y instrument.

"The best thing about learning to play the trumpet is that I'll be called a trumpeteer. How cool is that?"

"So why don't you go learn to play the pion?"

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

Sigh.

Damn. Didn't get into Overdose. Oh well. I knew it anyway.

Post-UPSR Post

Phew. I've had enough taste of life after UPSR to talk about it now. And yeah, it's hectic.

It's been really crazy, actually. Let's see. How will I do this post? I'm not interested in talking about and elaborating on everywhere I went, and you aren't interested in reading it, either, so I'll just make a list:

Thursday the 15th:
Band practice after school.
Sleepover Dylan's house.

Friday the 16th:
Audition for The Guitar Store's annual concert.
Return to Dylan's house to stay the night.

Saturday the 17th:
Naveena's party in the afternoon.
Mun Keat's party at night.

Sunday the 18th:
Band coaching session in Cheras' The Guitar Store for the concert.

Monday the 19th:
Ashwin's house, sleepover.

Tuesday the 20th:
Rachel's house.

Thursday the 22nd:
1U with primary school friends.

Friday the 23rd:
Band practice.

Saturday the 24th:
Double auditions-
Overdose auditions in the afternoon,
then back to the Cheras guitar store for final auditions.

So that's it so far. It's Saturday night now. I'm kinda worried about the auditions. The Guitar Store one went pretty well, I think, but Overdose not so.

It was mainly my fault, though. My guitar was kinda softer than the other instruments, so the all-so-important riff from Stars(Switchfoot) was lost amidst the Jeremy's drumming. Plus, for some reason, my effects weren't on the right settings, and I only realized that halfway through, since I couldn't hear myself playing. Sigh. We were so much better during yesterday's practice.

Can't wait for the results. Oh, and by the way? Guess who else is playing in The Guitar Store's concert? Our old friends, Kip Chean and Phoebe. Well, I wasn't really close to them while they were in WMS, but yeah. What a coincidence.

I'll give a better post next time. I'm dead tired now.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

We're finally back.

Honestly, these are some of the best days of my life. And the holiday hasn't even begun. I mean, we still have two more of our form 4 entrance exams tomorrow. And yeah, today's exams were extremely easy. Especially maths. (note tone of voice which is really dripping with warm, delicious sarcasm)

But hey, what do the entrance exams matter? According to school history, nobody has ever been kicked out of form 3 for having terrible entrance results. So all that we have to worry about is the streaming. And honestly, I'm fine with either one, although my family expects me to go for Science.

While we're on the topics of streaming, there were actually several jokes about that...

Mano, while briefing us about streams:

"You should choose your streams according to what you want to be. Tzer Chyuan, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I want to be a rich man."

"He can go to the money stream, then. Sungei Wang!"

And earlier today:

"Hey, Justin. What stream are you joining next year?"

"Hmm. Probably main."

Mainstream, see?

So as I was saying, no point worrying about the entrance exams so much. The way I see things, we're screwed even if we study or not. So now, I officially declare the stad of holidays.

And, I also declare that English, Maths, BM, Geo, KH, Science and History are:
And yes, I'd purposely left History as the last to be named. Just to have the privilege of saying History is History. I'm rather proud of all my new ambigrams. I think they're pretty easy to read, compared to those I've made before.

See this next one.
Heart, as you can see.

And this one, which is my favourite:

HeArTS on one side, SPaDe on the other. Amazing. But the colour doesn't look so good on here, does it? The Heart one worked better. But I swear, this one looked great in photoshop. Sigh.

I made all these during my geo exam. Except the History one, of course. No prizes for guessing which exam I did it during, though.

By the way, watch Glee.

It's just about the best thing ever. I started watching right before the PMR, and have not missed an episode since. That's how good it is. And watch Community, too. Which is from the director of ARReSTeD DeVeLOPMeNt. If you haven't seen Arrested Development, you should go check that out too. These are among the best TV shows of our time.

But seriously. Glee kicks butt. Here's a trailer.

No, just because it's a show about music doesn't make it a new High School Musical. I'm not one of those who hate High School Musical, but seriously, Glee is uncomparable to High School Musical. It would be like comparing a pronticle to a hirten. And THAT is impossible, because those two things don't exist. Haha!

By the way, I haven't seen the trailer myself, on account of my Youtube not working, but I am confident that it's a good trailer, because all they have do is take any 2 minutes from the series, and it will surely be good. That's how great Glee is. If you happen to run into the soundtrack of the series while at Youtube, don't. Those are the best parts of Glee, and it wouldn't do to spoil it.

If you can't find it anywhere online, and have trouble torrenting the episodes, I'd be happy to lend you a thumbdrive full of glee.

So anyway, I'm just about done here. Let's wrap up with a nice joke. A KH joke? Awesome.

What do you call a kuprum with a pet?

Kuprum berenamel. Beranimal, get it? If you don't know what kuprum berenamel is, go study your Form 1 KH.

Looks like we've reached the end of the post. Look below, try to understand the joke.
If you don't get it, try looking back to the stad of the post. Ah, now you see light.

Jun Shern out.

*Static*

GO, TURTLE!

Or tortoise. Turtle? Tortoise? Ah, tomayto tomahto. (Go turn on your TV and go watch channel W. You know: W-TV. Wha. Te. Ver.)

If anyone DOES know what's the difference between a tortoise and a turtle, please tell me, cos I feel like this is something one should know, more importantly than learning about Orang Tua(s) in Sabah and Tuai Rumah(s) in Sarawak. Directed to the form 3's reading this: If this question appears in our PMR, you should all be taking turns paying for my Nasi Lemak Wedges every lunchtime.

Anyway, I think I'll go check out what the difference is myself. Okay... Lemme see. You gotta appreciate the efficiency of Google at times like this. Aha! Here we are!

Our answer lies here. Or here. The latter is shorter, but the first one gives a lot more info, for the hardworking.

To cut a long story short, turtles usually live in water, and tortoises usually live on ground near water.

So based on what we've learned today, this guy right here is a tortoise.

So next time some one asks you: "You know what's the difference between a tortoise and a turtle?", you'll answer them, gain some rep, and thank me later by buying me a syrup in school.

So why all the turtle-talk? Well. Have you guys heard of Lonely George? The last Pinta island tortoise to grace the Galapagos Islands. And yes, that's the place were all the iguanas live. Apparently they have tortoise-eating goats, too. *shudder*

But anyways, some few years ago I read about him, he who was the last-surviving Pinta tortoise of the Geochelone elephantophus abingdoni species in the world. Here he is.

A star in his own right after being dubbed "the most endangered species in the world", he was, unfortunately, believed to be impotent. Even after all these scientists stuck him up to watching turtle porn and took him to Tortoise's Chow Kit, he was still unable to successfully produce offspring. Why?

As the article I was reading says: "Perhaps the tortoise is too old, or pehaps too disinterested, or perhaps decided that the world was going to the dogs anyway so why bring in more of his kind if their fate was to be turned into souvenirs for spanish housewives? Or maybe he doesn't even like kids."

Well, let's wrap this one up, since I should be getting back to my studies soon. All this I was reading about many years ago. But I suddenly remembered him earlier today, so I decided to check if he has finally kicked the bucket. Or bought a farm. Bit the dust, conked, cashed in his chips, croaked, expired, went belly up, went to the wall, went west, met his maker, gave up the ghost, went way of all flesh.

Whichever euphemism you want to use. Feel free. I personally went to check up on those so as to avoid you feeling uncomfortable of a certain one.

So anyways, I typed "lonely george" into Google. And WOOHOO! Read the article! Here.

So what do ya know. Next time we take a picture of the Galapagos Islands, it could turn out like this one.

(imagine all iguanas to be replaced with identicals of not-so-Lonely George, woot!)

Jun Shern out.

*Static*