Haha, M&D

Hi, Mum,

Since you actually read this, I write this specially for you.

Tomorrow you will be leaving for Tai Yuan, you must be packing your things now:)

I have received all those photos. They are so endearing that make me forget about my C Lit.

You still look so pretty in every shot! I cannot wait to see you this November!

Wait...there is still O Level between us, a fight yet to begin.

I have told you that the most important thing I had learnt here was to be tolerant. Being away from home, I have to be tolerant, be tolerant to the distance that separates us, be tolerant to the misunderstanding happening around my everyday life, and be tolerant to the so-called injustice that can be labelled by you as "minor".

You are a great jigsaw player who makes every piece of my life fit in the whole picture of love and tolerance. I owe my growth to you.

For the first time, you can totally "abondon" us and go for your trip...I still remember ths past times when you sacrificed your journeys for us, for our three meals a day, and for our night-time chats. I still remember the time when you went to Shang Hai for the annual meeting three years ago, we had hot-pot with dad that made my tears run with the rising smoke and my missing for you.

So amazing! I have not met you for almost one year, and I survive that!

Indeed, there are so many things to keep me occupied here. Every time when I talk to you on the phone, it is either for "problem time" or to "de-emo". I am using jargon now. It merely means that I talk to you when I need something, which is a selfish act. I should not pour all my problems on you as if you are Semacau Landfill, though that is exactly what you continuously ask for. You are such a great backbone for me.

As for that "monster" in our home, he is so stunningly resourceful. For your information,(which you know better than me), he knows about events here more than us! With such a "monster" gluing to the screen every day, I am really spared of much trouble.

Of course, this can be seen as my Mothers'Day message to you. You know, two days from now, when the actual day is coming, I will be all fazed by my Literature exams. That will be when I begin to take the roller coaster.

By the way, your Nicy told me today that I could go for Singapore Flyer with her for "free", an incentive given by SingTel. We will go next Sat or Sun, and we will drop by Borders, too. Hopefully I can squeeze out time to go SPH, I still have work to do there.

Ok, good night. Have a nice trip!

Amy(don't spell my name as Awy, Nicy(Nancy) has already gone wild for your mistake:)

08/05/09

Hmm, you went to Yellow River without telling me!!!

How can you elope there? I am dying of jealousy>.<

I want my sweater~~~.~

BTW, mum you look so nice beside that "bear":D

"Hey, you!!!
What are you doing here in my favourite place?
Trying to intimidate me with your birthday cake??"
~~Ok, I shall not appear like a tyrant----though you stole my wine>:(
"Happy so be-lated birthday, DD."

"Mug" for Hist...Hitler~

When the stock market collapsed on Wall Street on Tuesday, October 29, 1929, it sent financial markets worldwide into a tailspin with disastrous effects.

The German economy was especially vulnerable since it was built out of foreign capital(thus proves the limitations of Dawes Plan in 1924 and Young Plan in 1929), mostly loans from America and was very dependent on foreign trade. When those loans suddenly came due and when the world market for German exports dried up, the well oiled German industrial machine quickly ground to a halt.

As production levels fell, German workers were laid off (blame on Weimar democratic government which held all the grudge from the middle-class, people were frantic in search of an alternate government, even extreme regimes appealed to them). Along with this, banks failed throughout Germany. Savings accounts, the result of years of hard work, were instantly wiped out. Inflation soon followed making it hard for families to purchase expensive necessities with devalued money.

Overnight, the middle class standard of living so many German families enjoyed was ruined by events outside of Germany, beyond their control. The Great Depression began and they were cast into poverty and deep misery and began looking for a solution, any solution.

Adolf Hitler knew his opportunity had arrived. (advocate expansionism in his Mein Kampf, deliberately outlined his ambitions as to create a Greater Germany, getting living space "lebensraum" for German-speaking people, along with his outright violation of Treaty of Versailles! He was determined to avenge for the humiliation at Paris Peace Conference)

In the good times before the Great Depression the Nazi party experienced slow growth, barely reaching 100,000 members in a country of over sixty million. But the Nazi party, despite its tiny size, was a tightly controlled, highly disciplined organization( a result of Hitler's reorganisation of Nazi Party) of fanatics poised to spring into action.

Since the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler had changed tactics and was for the most part playing by the rules of democracy. Hitler had gambled in 1923, attempting to overthrow the young German democracy by force, and lost. Now he was determined to overthrow it legally by getting elected while at the same time building a Nazi shadow government that would one day replace the democracy.

Hitler began his career in politics as a street brawling revolutionary appealing to disgruntled World War One veterans predisposed to violence. By 1930 he was quite different, or so it seemed. Hitler counted among his supporters a number of German industrialists, and upper middle class socialites, a far cry from the semi-literate toughs he started out with.

He intentionally broadened his appeal(he achieved this by his excellent speaking skills, "rhetorics", his personal chrisma and his dazzling public meetings. Indeed he gave his people hope and confidence in a whirlpool of plights) because it was necessary. Now he needed to broaden his appeal to the great mass of voting Germans. His chief assets were his speech making ability and a keen sense of what the people wanted to hear.

By mid-1930, amid the economic pressures of the Great Depression, the German democratic government was beginning to unravel (here the Great Depression acted as a catalyst to the downfall of Weimar Government, as it forced the govenment to reveal its concealed weakness and indecisiveness).

Gustav Stresemann, the outstanding German Foreign Minister, had died(What a BLOW! The end to the so-called Golden Age) in October 1929, just before the Wall Street crash. He had spent years working to restore the German economy and stabilize the republic and died, having exhausted himself in the process.

The crisis of the Great Depression brought disunity to the political parties in the Reichstag. Instead of forging an alliance to enact desperately need legislation, they broke up into squabbling, uncompromising groups. In March of 1930, Heinrich Bruening, a member of the Catholic Center Party, became Chancellor.

Despite the overwhelming need for a financial program to help the German people, Chancellor Bruening encountered stubborn opposition to his plans. To break the bitter stalemate, he went to President Hindenburg and asked the old gentleman to invoke Article 48 of the German constitution which gave emergency powers to the president to rule by decree. This provoked a huge outcry from the opposition, demanding withdrawal of the decree.

As a measure of last resort, Bruening asked Hindenburg in July 1930 to dissolve the Reichstag according to parliamentary rules and call for new elections.

The elections were set for September 14. Hitler and the Nazis sprang into action. Their time for campaigning had arrived.

The German people were tired of the political haggling in Berlin. They were tired of misery, tired of suffering, tired of weakness. These were desperate times and they were willing to listen to anyone, even Adolf Hitler.

Inside the Bookmark...

I see your smile,

I smell your fragrance,

I sense your presence...

All inside the bookmark.

Never will I forget you,

Never will I give up fighting,

Never will I stop loving you...

It is refreshing to see you every day, that makes me forget all my quandaries.

......

All inside a bookmark.

Sports Day

Our Heroes!

Amazing bananas~

Yesterday was Sports Day. We had an "awesome" time.

It was the first time that I found the boys in my class so mischievous. To be honest, I saw the glimmer of evil on their face when we led the cheer----a kind of sly look on their "innocent" faces----yet we let it be~They played a great prank by carrying our dearest ET(Eric Tan, our form teacher) around in the field. The perversive act was faced with violent struggle: one man in his prime with four boys in their "PRIMER".

The result was a draw: ET pinched xz's leg and "almost" succeeded in pulling down one of the guys' shorts(name confidential:), which followed by acting threateningly towards Weide, the mastermind behind the act of "evil" who was then smiling conspiratorially with WeiKong. And the boys succeeded in carrying such an awesome man for more than twenty yards before succumbing to his struggle and mastery use of his own gravity----a physics soul after all. (Though he might still believe him as a philosophical person, he did not foresee such a trick awaiting him and the LOGIC behind it:)

The FUN LOGIC!

Besides that, ET was "hazed" by the same bunch of extraterrestial creatures after his failed attempt to dismiss us. They draped over him and then crumbled upon him! The scene might seem quite animal-like. That was why it was so endearing!

"Remember to study for Physics test on Monday arh? Three Chapters~"His usual, kind reminder after a typical hilarious scene, betraying some of his pessimistic trait.

That was endearing, too. Bewitching~(ok, I'm exaggerating, xiaoyou or k.k or pc don't think so much--YOU are bewitching, too;)

Off goes ET, here comes Mrs Sabar!

Our heroine of the day!

She ran for class relay, thank goodness!

And we made it to the 3rd place! Bravo!

Bananas yesterday were so nice! And guess what? I went to NTUC to buy bananas after that.(to ensure smooth excretion actually;P)

"Peel banana, peel peel banana..."

Youth----by Samual Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

Encounter...

A random search on the Internet made me delightfully appalled.

I have never imagined I can have anything to do with Tsing Hua University except that I have been there for once two years ago. Jumping out of China's education system naturally detachs me from everything that would set a senior high school student excited. Even the most prestigious university in China seems so far away from me, physically and mentally. Tsing Hua used to be a dream so far-fetched. I can only be a visit to worship it; and being part of it is virtually holy.

Yet my footprint was left on Tsing Hua website: http://www.ziyuanv.cn/ That is merely amazing.

I have never expected my feeling towards a trip can be perpetuated in this way, remembered by the most prestigious tertiary institution that a high school student can dream of. I have never expected my memory of a school that touches me can be made immort osal.

It is a beautiful encounter.

An encounter that lets a dream burn again. I remembered my previous form teacher asked me,"where will you go if you cannot go to Singapore?"

I remembered my answer.

There are two answers: one blurted out between my lips, one etched in my heart.

My mouth said:"Tsing Hua."

My heart said:"Sure I can make it to Nan Hua."

There is not right or wrong. I have achieved what I used to aspire. That part is great. Yet I also realise the disparity between ambition and reality~

That part is even better...

24th April will be my first Speech Day, on which I will receive the credits for my hardwork in 2008 as well as yet another scholarship. The Day reminds me of my worth, yet the joy is not lasting. However, finding my name on Tsing Hua website really sends my mind reeling.

Is that where my real dream lies?

No matter what the answer may it be, I know the importance of focusing on my current dream: to fulfil a dream left behind by my seniors.

"Change we can believe in."

I will get there!!!For sure!!!

My footprint

http://ziyuanv.cn/ziyuan/f6/717.html

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_537ce79f0100bznr.html

Riding the Tide

Love is tricky.

It is never mundane or daily.

You can never get used to it.

You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you.

You can never balk.

It moves you like the tide.

It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again.

Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens.

You can run from it but you can never deny it.

"It" means saying no.

----Olivia Bishop

Let Drama live on..

Drama Club rocksssssssss!

We are Sec4s~~

We are used to missing everything we lose, that's the human nature.

Saying goodbye to my drama practice, saying goodbye to dear Mr Ernest, saying goodbye to the cosy drama room scented with paint and ink, saying goodbye to every passionate performer who works together to weave out those amusing and touching short skits.

Saying goodbye to our perspiration-streaked faces after "intensive exercises", saying goodbye to the two soft drink bottles which we use as weights, saying goodbye to our name cards that make up the beautiful "clouds", saying goodbye to Celsius, Yellow Carrot Chocolate, and The Ernest~

Saying goodbye to "sun-tan position", "mermaid position", "tabletop" and the most classic"toilet bowl"~~~

But Drama will live on, Drama will prevail, Drama will shine through, for ever and ever and ever...

Because we are dramatic~~~~~

So we won't cry.