Remember how we said that St. John gave us a lot of life lessons? As I was lazing about in my room wondering whether I should do chem first, bio first, or just give up and polish my shoes for AGI (For the record, I decided to do chem, since periodic table is probably the least mind-blowing.... The topic, mind you, not the teacher), it suddenly occured to me that fencing also gives a lot of practical aspects on life. The first time my coach gave us lessons, he in fact did mention that. "You can use fencing for many things, including finding a job and getting into a romantic relationship." Naturally, we were like, huh, alright. But it is kinda true. Although I'll wait a few more years before getting to the romantic relationship part.

Never show your true self too fast, or you will open yourself out to attack
How true. If only I had understood this when I was in sec. 2, maybe lower sec. life would have been that much more fun. Unfortunately I still lapse into this from time to time, as Dory's blog says, sharing your heart with someone too fast. Maybe somehow my life was too secure, or I had friends all along that were loyal, and it did not penetrate the haze of naivety that some people might just take your personal feelings and throw it around. On the other end of the scale, being paranoid about how other people view you also ain't good.... it just makes you worried (especially if you're the kind of person that thinks too much). Yup, I guess the best is to start out slow, not to open up too fast (a method which I completely ignored when I entered VJC, despite knowing that I'd been an introvert for 16 years) and then choose your friends well. If there was ever a painful lesson to learn, it would be that not all friendships last, and indeed some friendships can even turn nasty.

If your first attack doesn't work, see how your opponent defends, see which parry he favours, then go in again.
This doesn't fit into life quite as clearly as I'd like it too, but the gist of it is this. Instead of battering yourself to pieces on a problem, and causing considerable harm to yourself (it ain't healthy to throw yourself on the point of an epee travelling in the opposite direction at twice your velocity, or to worry about the same problem over and over) as well as your friends (lets say, in a team event, or a project). Instead, one should stop, take a break, look, identify what is the thing thats obstructing you, then try and solve it from there "bunker by bunker, pillbox by pillbox, instead of simply bombing okinawa down to the ground". And above all, keep calm. panicking and trying to proceed even faster rarely gets anyone anywhere. Its something that we hear all the time, maybe till it becomes cliche, but I guess there has to be some truth in it.

Of course, this becomes harder when your problem is trying to find a real person to talk to in the midst of the maze of electronic automated voices of the Ministry of Manpower.

Don't counterattack. Parry. Remember, right of way is like an argument.
Useful for argument situations. If someone argues with you about something, instead of counterattacking back at him, maybe it would be easier to settle his doubts and answer his questions. Otherwise either you'd come off worst, because its not credible to counter a quarrel by bringing up another argument of your own, or neither side wins, because both just end up with their questions unanswered and with emnity brewing nice and hot. For VJ fencers reading this, I'm refering to something from foil and sabre, so i'm sorry, its not in epee.

An easier way of putting this is, view an attack as anger. Meeting anger with anger doesn't get anything done. But blocking anger with calmness and reasoning is a better way. Argh, this is a hard point to explain, I don't really know how to say it.

Yup, just 3 things for now... They're kinda common sense actually, but I thought it was kinda interesting... I dunno if my opinions are valid or not, so if anyone has any comments, theres the tagboard...
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Just a few photos to brighten up the blog...


The 6 representatives of the Red Cross Humanitarian Network (MJC), First Aid Unit (TJC) and First Aid Club (VJC) during our combined activity
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Memories of a few weeks back... Mr Chong brought in some pipe cleaners and had us contruct sister chromatids and chromosomes.. At the end of the session mine looked something like this:


If I had this kind of chromosome, it explains my choice of CCA in sec. sch

ChuaH's one looked like this:


Its like to causing aches n pains in the cell though... considering all the poky ends sticking out...
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My PW group working in my house... One of the rare days when the third computer was actually working. This was our historic first meeting.
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The St. John people having sandwich making competition... the last time I saw one I was a titchy cadet not more than 150m tall in sec 2.. Admittedly by the end of the competition, none of us seniors felt like sampling the products..


One of the end products

Yup, thats about it for now.... Happy studying everyone! Derek, see you at AGI tml =Pp

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