17/5/2010 Post Exam activities day 1

Today was the first day of the "post-exam activities" organised by our school in lieu of an extended June Holiday. We were forced to participate in 2 activities; a presentation by Mercy Relief foundation/charity, and a 3 hours of CCA.

The Mercy Relief talk was quite a waste of time, in my opinion. The lady's name was Juliet, and she went on and on about the things that Mercy Relief was doing and what we could do to help. One particular figure that she mentioned caught my eye, so I questioned her about it. The pertinent statistic was that a child dies of starvation every 5 seconds. This amounts to a staggering 4 million children dead a year. If we take the population of children in South East Asia to be 20 million, then it seems that only 20% of all SEAsian children live to see their 12th birthday. Remembering the clearly erroneous figures from a similar presentation by UNIFEM( 1 in 3 women worldwide have been raped ), I questioned Juliet about her statistics. Naturally, that figure was a worldwide figure; 4/600 children die a year; 1/150 die a year. This means that the worldwide chance of living to 12 is (149/150)^12 = 92%. Not quite as bad as 20%.

After this, we were treated to a presentation by polytechnic students who intended to sway us into joining Mercy Relief via their testimonials. Alas, as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. The students arrived late and in a disorderly fashion, had no powerpoint presentation, and only one out of the four actually presented. If these people are Mercy Relief's best choice for a testimonial, then I weep for their future.

After the two presentations, we had a half hour break which I spent playing chess and drinking Blackberry Tea. I kept losing to Ming Wei... gotta practise Ruy Lopez and Sicilian. We slacked around so long that we only realised it was time for CCA when the canteen began to empty.

Fortunately, we weren't late, as Le Minh Tue himself was late for the Chess CCA. Epic. As we only had 6 boards, Terry simuled pairs of us. Luckily, I was paired with Yan Hao, and we put up a valiant defense, although defeat was naturally inevitable. Terry demanded 3 servings of Salmon from Phyllis in Restaurant City, and gloated about his 90% Knight in mh, as I was only at 30%(ouch.ouchouchouch. Gotta sound more). After all this nonsense, we were forced to recite 3 resolutions that Terry stipulated before we were allowed to leave.

1. Understand the 1st 10 moves of all the Sicilian Variations

2. Be able to win Rook endgames and 2 Bishop endgames within a minute
(I screwed up my rook endgame when Terry told me to demonstrate, but I still think Minh Tu was a bit rude "He don't know lah!". At least I understood the concept; get the enemy king to the last rank. I still did it within 2 minutes.)

3. No blunders, here defined as
a) No dropping pieces for no reason
b) No losing on time
c) No back rank mate

I remember the other Chess exco guy was videoing a few people's performances. Voyeurism at its worst (not that I don't personally approve of videotaping other people's humiliation~).

It was almost 1 p.m. by the time all this was over, and I was going to find myself a spot of lunch. I headed down to the canteen (alone, everyone else had gone elsewhere to eat) and tried to find someone friendly I could sit next to. Luckily, Han Jie was in the canteen, so I bought my food and settled next to him to chat.

Then I finished my food ($2.80 for breaded dory fillet with baked beans, baked fried, and vegetables with a small bowl of mushroom soup). Not too filling, but quite tasty.

Finally, I took 196 to Buona Vista, took the EWL to Outram park, and took the NEL past Serangoon to Hougang so I could go to Cheng San community library. Then I went home.