Maths Olympiad

Slept at 2am the day that I am supposed to have Maths Olympiad, which was not a very good start to a test, especially so if its an olympiad. To make things worse, I had a weird dream(or rather nightmare which I will elaborate later) about the school, and I thought humans only enter the dream phase if they have sufficient sleep. With body still tense and heart racing, I woke up and was glad to be in the real world. Waited for Raymond at Buona Vista MRT for 15 min, during which I unexpectedly met with Zihao, my old sec 1-2 classmate. He was also waiting for his friends. In the end, his friends arrived first, leaving me in the lurch. Giving him a grace period of 15mins apparently was not enough. With my patience stretched (and legs cramped, stupid MRT...no seats one :(...), I called Raymond. To my horror, he was actually waiting for me at Tampines station, at the other end of Singapore. I wanted to wait for him, but he persuaded me to take bus 95 to NUS myself. So much for waiting. I really thought that he said Buona Vista MRT. Looks like memory had failed me that night.

A bit apprehensive as I have never been to NUS before, but it was easy to follow as there was a huge group of different JC students heading that way. Since it was the school holidays, the students must be also taking part in the same event. 95A came. I didn't expect bus 95 to have an A or B, but since most of the students boarded the bus, I hope they are right and played follow the leader. According to Raymond, bus 95 is a loop service and hence, it was impossible to miss it.

After alighting with a huge bunch of students, I went to befriend a JC1 girl, since she was the only person wearing a green skirt. Found out that she was taking part in the same quiz, to allay my jittery nerves. Arrived at my destination and found that we weren't the only early birds. Left with no choice, we went to rest in the canteen. I also discovered that she was actually a classmate of my track junior, which I have since retired a long time ago, sadly. Later our abrupt acquaintance came to an end, as she joined her classmates and I found Alvin Ong, sitting alone.

At around 930 am, I went in with Alvin Ong without Eddie Cai, since Eddie insisted on waiting for a girl called Christelle. Both of us scolded him for being zhong se qing you. (actually, in retrospect, which guy isn't?) Went to the top row of LT27. Lamented the fact that NUS had such comfortable seats and tables that were quite hard and rigid to write (and sleep) coupled with a nice ambience, compared to certain JC. :( Cant believe that RJC was disintegrating just after 31 years, while other schools like Oxford and Cambridge could last for centuries. Whatever happened to the architecture of the past?? Anyway, back to the test. We were given 2 1/2 hrs to complete 25 questions worth 1 mark each. May sound simple but think again. Those questions worth 1 mark could easily be worth 20 marks in common test. (though a bit exaggerating, but then just to prove my point on how @#$%^&* difficult the paper was). Time appeared to be on our side, but we squandered it , since we either (okay maybe me only) don't know how to do or the question was too tedious and hard (the worst combination) and there was no apparent (note: apparent) shortcut to it which some other geniuses there had found. In the end, I did a dismal 8 questions out of 25, with probably more than 1/2 wrong. Though feeling mentally drained, I felt that it was a good exercise to prepare myself for the next common test, since it involves endurance and a never say die attitude.

Went quickly to the bus stop so that we could catch Harry Potter 3. The bus stop was crowded with people, and amazingly, the bus stopped just right in front of me, even though I was standing in the middle of the stop. Took a train to PS and bought the tickets for the movie that was to be shown 2 hrs later, 5 rows from the front. (The lady tried to convince us that it was the middle rows, but somehow we left ban xin ban yi, meaning half believe half suspect literally). This showed how popular the movie was. Spent my 2 hrs slacking with Alvin Ong at Macs, before finally seeing the show. Since Gin Way had competition, we could not watch with him. Anyway, the movie is quite nice, much different from the 1st 2 movies ,which was understandable since it was by a different director. Left satisfied and went home after that. Ratings: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars...maybe my expectations were high.