the most ridiculous cartoon ever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWmTlxJ-5Ag

due to the censorship standards in singapore, i refuse to comment on the above video.

Why you don't start doing your tutorials or revise your integration.

let me present to you a theory explaining why you will not spontaneously do your tutorials and write your essays.

this theory is firmed rooted in thermodynamics (entropy) and chemical energetics, which are based on the irrefutable laws of physics.

2nd law of thermodynamics: "in an isolated system, a process can only occur if it increases the total entropy of the system." this means that in a spontaneous change, the degree of disorder must increase.

as time proceeds in your final year in jc, you find that things just keep stacking up. this is the natural increase in entropy. you see more disorder, or rather, an increasing number of things to attend to in your daily life.

but as more tutorials are thrown into your system, you feel a build up of pressure. this is your enthalpy.

chem students can tell instantly that a compound higher in energy is unstable and will react readily to form a more stable product.

if this is so, why dont you do your tutorials, since it'll lower your enthalpy, which is your stress level?

this is because of your activation energy of the reaction between you and your tutorial. refer to Fig 1.1.


Fig 1.1


when you handle a subject you dread, your activation energy is high, and therefore you will not spontaneously work on that tutorial, even though the enthalpy heat change (delta H) is -ve.

but when you do something that does not lower your enthalpy, such as playing everyone's favourite game DOTA, the activation energy is extremely low, and entropy also increases. hence is becomes a very spontaneous reaction.


to increase the rate of reaction by reducing activation energy, certain catalysts may be used. these are your math lecture tests, and, of course, your favourite math tutor that likes to f*ck colin up.


but beware. if everyone keeps doing his tutorials, enthalpy heat change is negative, so you'll release your energy into the universe. if this happens, eventually, the whole universe will be equivilant in terms of heat content (since there is a perpetual balancing out of heat between you and the universe) such that entropy of the whole universe is uniform. no more heat transfer will take place, and the HEAT DEATH WILL CLAIM OUR LIVES.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death


so next time your mom tells you to do your homework, tell her that you'll cause the death of the universe by doing so.

Les Argument ala Educatio

P1: you receive an average of about 1.73205 sets of notes every week.
P2: you have A levels this year.
P3: you also have some cca that probably allows you go home at about 7 (or later).
------
C> your life is quite shitted up.


additional premise:
P4: you are able to tell me that 1.73205 in P1 is root 3.
------
C2> life is quite shitted up, but youre so in tune to the rhythm of school that youre able to subconsciously make connections between what you see at a relaxed state (i.e. surfing blogs) and what you remember through religiously doing your math tutorials.

school. is the subject matter of this essay. note that in this writing i shall not be doing to school what is colloqially termed "bitching". in contrast, i shall lavishly praise school so as to raise the morale of you fellow readers.

first of all, i must say that school is a absolutely wonderful environment for all manners of activity, in which stress is an existence that never finds home.

...

(i find it really difficult to continue being hypocritical.)

(if someone has the emotional capacity to write a beautiful essay in praise of school like that, i advise you to kindly stay away from me.)

so well, let's talk about school.

miss champagne once told our gp class that she sees the j2 year as

"...like an express train. it starts off slow, because of the weight it has to carry, but when it gets started, it accelerates to frightening speeds. now, in january, the train has just begun to run. in february you'll start to experience the full magnitude of the speed."

two thoughts came to my mind upon hearing this analogy. the first, the most immediate, and strikingly instinctive thought was whether she, with credentials as an MOE approved gp teacher, described the train's motion accurately physically. i didnt know why i had to do that, but i just did. probably it was in my nature to put things into a scientific perspective. anyway, in the end, i deduced that she had not made a statement absurdly nonsensical to physics students.

the other thought, obviously, was that she was probably right about our sad lives ahead in j2. january has already been the most tiring month so far in my life as a student. if its much worse for the rest of the year, it probably spells disaster. the train might fly off its tracks and rocket into space. of course that's a metaphor.

it would be okay if students everywhere experience the same thing at some point in their lives. how can you lose out in a global phenomenon? but the fact is, apparently many students in the world are not subject to such intensity. daniel returned again to our school some days ago, and i had the chance to briefly talk to him about his australian adventures. and, as expected, he proved me right about singapore's system being tougher.

must quality education really be as demanding as what we experience now? H1, H2 and H3 are creations of the singapore education professionals. (yes, these are the very people who might live opposite your house in bukit timah driving a BMW.) why is it that people who live in similar houses in the states and who drive BMWs be so much more liberal about their education system? what accounts for this difficulty gap?

the answer probably lies in the fact that singapore is an open NIE which faces challenges on continued growth. without a strong capable mass of academically wise young adults, it is hard for singapore to overcome obstacles that loom over the future economy. more economically developed countries such as the US, have the population advantage, as well as the economy advantage. therefore they can afford to offer more relaxed educational schemes. makes sense? probably. probably not.

in any case, it amounts to one thing. go study le.

Coursework

WARNING: Brainstorming in Progress. Strong use of incoherent language.

Happened to be having lunch with Shuning last Tuesday, when the conversation ended up about friends, and her mentioning something like "our lives are governed by our timetables". Come to think of it, mine is. Close to all my weekdays' day time is restricted by that little a5 sized paper I carry around. Is yours?

The bell rings, assembly ends, you wonder what your next period is. You take out your timetable. (Actually, yes, take it out now.) Look at those little squares in them. Look at how segmented your life actually is now.

"Oh, first period is GP. I'll be seeing A, B, and C".
Then the bell rings, and
"Oh okay, chem. I'll be seeing E, F, G."
"sorry, A,B,C, we'll have to talk some time later"

Maybe it's just me, and me having an odd combi (I empathize with all you odd-combi-ers out there!). Thing is, almost every single little square in the timetable refers to a new bunch of faces. A bunch of faces which I interact with based on where the lines start and end. I might want to chat for a while more, but sorry, bell's gone, gotta go. Duno if this is true or not, but do you not-so-odd combi people have more friends that actually go to the same classes as you?

Back to the timetable.
Segments, like little cells.
Cells, or rather, pockets of time with a clearly demarcated start and end. Start time, and end time. Deadline. Dateline or Deadline? Dead-date-line.

Think of it.

How many things have deadlines these days?
Let's look at LPG's diagram.

Past:
[]-------[]-------[]

Present:
[][][][][][][][][][][]

Where [] represents a segment of time.
Are we over-living our lives?
What's happening to transition states, the in-betweens of phases? Why does my food suddenly turn bad when it hits tomorrow, and not slowly sour?

Perhaps nowadays, people are so caught up with deadlines, with end times, that the imaginary barrier between events is growing taller and taller.

And this barrier, this fence, it separates polar opposites, what comes before and after the deadline is totally different.

Hmm.

I'm losing control of my thoughts! I think i should...

=END=

If you managed to make sense of it, congrats! This is art making. Documenting random ideas and memories of ideas from this afternoon somewhere, so i can work on them later. I just happened to be on the computer when I realized I should 'pen' these ideas down somewhere.

K. Workwork.