It was Sunday afternoon. Me and my friends, Jun Wei and Jasper had arranged to play table tennis at Ang Mo Kio. I arranged to meet my friend, Jun Wei at his house on Circuit Road at first than head to Ang Mo Kio on bus 135. The bus ride took about thirty minutes however it seemed like ages as the bus 135 route goes through the desolate Upper Aljunied Road. At the interchange, we were supposed to change to a bus however, both of us had forgotten whether it was bus 265 or 269! Being cocky as I had never got lost in my whole life, I insisted that we take bus 269 instead of calling Jasper to clarify. Bus 269 came in a matter of minutes. Jun Wei and I hopped on the bus and found two seats. The bus was comfortable, with the air-con running at full blast and I soon fell asleep.

   Wake up! Where are we?" I woke up to a start. It was Jun Wei and I chided him for disrupting my beauty sleep. However Jun Wei than pointed to a road sign. Ang Mo Kio avenue 61! This was no where near our destination. I begin to panic and pressed the stop bell. We than got off the bus. From a distance, I noticed Yio Chu Kang MRT station in the background. I begin walking towards it. This was a bad idea as I was to find out later, the nearest bus stop with the bus 265 was just two roads away! We walked and walked. Soon, we reached the MRT station. What should we do next? We decided to just hop back on the train to Ang Mo Kio. 

 This time, when we reached the MRT station, we took the bus 265 instead. After a few minutes, we saw Jasper at the bus stop. He looked furious. I checked my watch. Wow! It was already 3:00 pm and we were late by half an hour. He scolded me for my cockiness and we proceeded on as planned. 

I have learnt not to act before thinking and not to be overconfident from this incident. 

It happened last Friday evening and I had just reached home from my CCA, Red Cross. I was exhausted from doing the drills so I stashed my bag in a corner and went to bathe. After bathing, I sat down to do my literature homework. It was baffling and tiring as I could not understand the text at all. After a grueling twenty minutes of struggling, I was so close on the answer when I heard a loud knock on the door. Irritated by the loss of concentration, I stomped and opened the door reluctantly. To my surprise, it was my father! My father usually works into the dead of the night and I hardly get to spent time with him as I am in bed when he returns and he is sleeping soundly when I wake up. My father proudly announced that he had managed to clear all his work and had return to surprise us for dinner! My mother, having not expected his return, immediately begin to cook. My father however, stopped her and told us that he, instead would cook. I was pleasantly surprised. My father is an excellent cook but he usually is to tired to cook. It had been ages since I tried his food and longed to savor his food again. My father stepped into the kitchen, closed the door and begin to cook. After ten minutes with no response, we begin to worry. Had years of slack caused father to lose his cooking skills? However, a nice aroma begin to waft out of the kitchen and in thirty minutes, the food was ready. We sat around the dining table and begin to eat. There were laughs, jokes and a whole lot of fun. It was a great day which I hope can happen again!

Maths is my worst subject. I never really did well for it after primary school. I actually like maths as a subject but cannot apply the concepts on the exam, especially in a problem sum. However, I recently got a tutor and since than, my maths has been improving steadily. Secondary two maths is much harder than secondary one maths. I know that if I do not get my foundations right, many subject combinations will not be open to me. However, when I opened my maths workbook to do homework today, I was dumbfounded. Despite all my practice, the questions all looked really strange to me. On closer inspection, I realized that some of the questions will actually quite easy if thought over. Despite that, there was one question I just could not make head or tail out of it. I brooded over it for fifteen minutes. After careful consideration, I decided not to waste time on this question and wait for my sister to return and ask her and use the precious time to do my other homework, which piled to almost a mountain high. My sister came back one hour later. I then asked her how to do the question. Surprisingly after her detailed explanation, the question became ridiculously easy. However, she berated me as this would be considered one of the easier questions in the examination and I could not solve it. How was I going to achieve my dream of entering triple science if this continued? I decided the only way was to work even harder than before!

O' Level results were released on 10th January 2011. I did not see the results but only heard shrieks of delight and joy coming from the hall that day. As usual, Victoria School has done it again. We maintained our standard as a band one school however sadly, our average decreased by 0.1. However, the class of 2010, although having produced an impressive result, did not manage to achieve their goal of beating the average of the Class of 2009. Three days passed. On Thursday, assembly was held in the hall. There the principal declared that after a thorough calculation, the average was actually the same as 2009! We also produced the top Malay student, Muhammad Amirul Haqim. What surprised me was that Muhammad Amirul Haqim's mother tongue was Chinese! Despite coming from a Malay family with no Chinese relatives, Muhammad Amirul Haqim decided to take Chinese, following his siblings before him. He also got an A1 for it. His secret? He communicates in Chinese with his siblings at home. I feel that there are many lessons to be learnt from Muhammad Amirul Haqim, especially for those who are current failing their original mother tongue languages. A dislike for the language does not mean that you do not need to bother about it. Our mother tongue language brings us back to our roots and gives us the precious bilingual skills that will be much need later in life.  Remember, as long you work hard, anything is possible!

Two weeks of school has passed in a flash. I am now in Secondary two this year and will have to work extra hard to get into the subject combination I want I Secondary 3. Thus, I have driven myself into an “all work no play” mindset. Finally, I had some spare time yesterday after completing all my homework. I had nothing to do for a while but suddenly remembered that I bought a book, (The Lost Symbol) during the holidays but had not touched it. I immediately went to find it. There it was, in my bookshelf, plastic wrapping still intact without a trace of disturbance. Without hesitation I tore apart the plastic wrapping and begin reading the book.  And I felt that I hit the jackpot. The book captivated my attention from page one. I realized that I could not put the book down from that moment on. I had to bring it everywhere! The storyline only got better and better from there. There were many twists and turns in the plot. For example, there was one point where the main character was thought as dead but there was more to it than that. It was made also made better by the story set over 24 hours, thus making it action-packed as everything was moving at a very fast pace. I kept reading and reading. The English used was extremely good and I picked up many phrases from it, which I diligently went to find the meaning and recorded down. As I flipped to the last page, I took a look at my clock. To my surprise, it was 10 PM already! I started reading the book at 4PM thus I had read it for a whole six hours! However, as I was preparing to go to bed, I had only one thing in mind. I have to buy or borrow the entire series of books written by this author!