Saturday, July 26, 2008 ; anthem of love
racial harmony day :D hellos. its been 10 days ago since i last updated, so i'm updating now.
my week has passed pretty quick and its saturday already. hmmm, lets see what i did. on mon, i went to gym with donna. on tues, i went macritchie. very fun. on weds there was training, and i was the day leader, and it didnt go very well. on thurs was racial harmony day! i never knew that our school was so on for it! haha in kc, nobody would have wore. it was quite fun seeing everyone dress up. after school, we went to subway for lunch, then i came back to school for devotionals. finally, we have an additional person. haha. on friday there was training again. ppl like me who were injured took the van to old ford factory, while the rest ran there. on this board outside the entrance that wrote the schedule of visits, all of it were schools. i felt a little sad cos it seems like no one is interested in the history of singapore except students who are forced to come. ok this is quite an irony cos i am a student and i was forced to come. anyways, my point is this, they spelt tao nan school as toa nan school. the place was so interesting. i cant believe i havent been there before. they showed many artefacts from wartime, and the history of the war and what happened before and after. i always thought i knew the history of singapore well cos of social studies, but it turns out that i didnt really know a lot. what social studies taught me was really little compared to the whole lot of information. what i really liked was that it was not opinionated. social studies made the japanese out to be really cruel and condemned them, but the stuff in old ford factory didnt condemn the japanese. we watched a video too. very interesting. i really felt my $2 paid was worthed it. but i guess the main reason why it felt so worthed it was because, since i was with the injured party, we reached old ford factory super early, at 3.15pm, so we had so much time to explore and read, compared to the rest who only had half an hour. anyways, after odac, i rushed to church. i reached church really late. i reached at 8.30pm, and it was supposed to end at 9pm. but i really caught a lot in the little time that i was there. what irene shared especially was so precious, and i can so relate it to her! i see God's faithfulness in her life, and that really encouraged me a lot.
this weekend is quite screwed. i barely did any work. this morning, i did some research for my odac knowledge tests and did miscellaneous stuff till it was time to go for lunch. i always seem to have so much miscellaneous stuff to do. and the bad thing is that, these stuffs take up a lot of time. for example, i need to keep away all the things in my bag and i need to write down some things etc etc. one of my miscellaneous stuff is to file all my worksheets. but guess what? not only did i end up not doing that cos it was time to go for lunch, but also, my table is now in a huge mess. plus, i still have a lot of miscellaneous stuff left to do. for lunch, we went to my sister's favourite restaurant, which to me, is not very fantastic. then, i went to my cousin's house. for the first time, i carried a dog and stroked and pet it for like 10 whole minutes, cos one of my aunts is afraid of that hyperactive dog. then, i went with my aunt to raffles city till it was dinner time. then i went home to eat dinner, cos my mum was quite upset that none of us ate the duck that she bought yesterday. i saw gina on the bus, on my way to katong shopping centre just now. i just finished typing my odac report. yay. i'm eating famous amos cookies now and its darn good. i should have bought more.
something interesting i learnt from researching for odac stuff today: 1953 is the year where everyone only remembers the successful climb of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Percival Hillary on Mt Everest. But, it was the same year a more difficult feat was achieved. Hermann Buhl climbed Mt Nanga Parbat, (the 9th highest mountain in the world, and harder to climb than everest) solo and without bottled oxygen. so amazing right?
this reminds me, last fri we watched 2 docummentaries on Mt Everest. the first one covered Sherpa Tenzing Norgay's son, Jamling Tenzing Norgay's climb on Mount Everest. He was educated in USA, cos of all the money that his dad got, for being the first to reach the top. but his dream was always to be like his father. However, his father was against it, cos to climb Mt Everest, you are risking your life, and its not easy. The most touching part of the docummentary for me, was when Jamling buried his deceased parents photos when he reached the summit. And its so interesting how before the sherpas climb Mt everest, they would always seek a priest, to see if the mountain gods approve of it. Mr Lim also mentioned that many many many sherpas have died on the mountains. He said in every village, someone will surely know of someone else who has died while being a guide. Usually, the people who climb Mt everest are rich people who can afford it. They are usually inexperienced too. Its so easy to climb Mt everest. You just need to pay money, about $65000, and go. For a climb, you need many many porters and guides. the porters and guides are there to carry your bags and all your cooking stuff and oxygen and ladders and ropes etc etc. The guides are very very important. while the people who paid the money to climb are in the tent all warm and cosy before setting out, the guides are already out hard at work; fixing ladders and ropes and using ice axes to cut the ice etc. Its a very dangerous job. and at the end of the day, they are the ones that pitch the tents for the rich people, and cook meals for them. All the rich people have to do is just eat and climb. and when they are exhausted and want to give up, the guides will motive them. then when they get back home, they write a book. and mr lim said something very interesting. he said that both the guides and the people are to be blamed for the deaths of so many guides. The guides want to get rich quickly thats why they take the risk, while the rich people just want to climb to satisfy their ego. and thats why reinhold messner, one of the greatest climbers of all time, criticised this commercial climbing. by the way, i really want to read the book, into thin air. i had a glimpse of it today online. and the book seems very interesting.
ok, i'm side-tracking too much. its almost 11pm, and its time to go, cos i gotta go church tmr!
10:11 pm