Salchow

I landed a few salchow jumps today. Some clean, some not so. I think I'm still lacking a 1/4 rotation in some of the jumps I executed, which means it will be judged as underrotation under the IJS. Anyway I'm not doing competitions so forget it. It has to be noted, that I self taught myself. The waltz jump, and now the salchow jumps. Skating lessons being so expensive here, there's no way I can take lessons. So the alternative is to teach myself. Watch youtube videos, and learn. There's a risk that you develop bad technic, but I am willing to risk it, if just to stay motivated on skating. I can't possibly be doing three turns, double three turns, double back three turns every week I go skating. What a waste of the $13. In fact, I didn't really do any three turns today, except the entry into the salchow. I can't for my life spin, so forget learning spins, though they do look cool. I've never really spun on ice before. As for footwork.. I think they're hard to learn on my own. Jumps will be the easiest. As long as you get the lift into air and rotation. Mao is practicing triple axels on her own, without really a coach's supervision, and she's having an underrotation problem, which she doesn't realize. At least I know I'm underrotating. Hopefully I can work on it and polish it some more on subsequent practices.

1 month

So today marks my 1 month staying at hostel. Nothing much.. Just felt like saying. So far so good.

Happy Birthday

... to me obviously. This has been the best birthday I ever remember.

On Wednesday, I went to Tony Roma's, as stated in my previous post. On Thursday, I had a Math Olympiad selection test, so I came back quite late and didn't do anything much. On Friday night, I had dinner with my third aunt. We went to a restaurant in Tiong Bahru called "小旋风". According to my aunt, the 小吃 ie 小笼包、烧卖、饺子 are quite delicious. But we strayed from that path and had rice with dishes. We ordered mapo tofu, kungfu chicken, golden ribs, fried calamari and seafood soup. Overall rating? 3/10 I would say. First, mapo tofu didn't taste like it at all. It tasted like chili tofu. The kungfu chicken was the best among the worst. So probably it didn't taste quite good either. The golden ribs were quite oily, and they weren't gold in color at all. More like a dull brown color. Looked so unappealing. The fried calamari was the worst among the worst. It was so oily, like it had been dipped in oil before. Uh yes I know deep fry requires dipping in oil but eww it was dripping with oil. Still I couldn't resist the taste of calamari. Seafood soup was good. I won't put it in the bad group. There was abalone, scallop, prawn and fish in the soup. I kinda liked the very seafood-y taste of the soup. Then we had dessert. Durian puff and red bean pancake. The durian puff was very good. First I like durian. Second, the filling is what you call in chinese 入口即化. Tasty. Red bean pancake was normal. After that, we went to buy some bread and then went back to hostel.

On Saturday, my cousin went back to Johor to remove the thread when she had her wisdom teeth taken out. So my third aunt was saying that she was planning to bring my fourth aunt (my cousin's mum) out for lunch or something. Naturally, I requested to be invited. I walked to City Square Mall in Farrer Park at about 12, for fear I wouldn't reach in time. Little did I know that they were not even here yet. In fact, they were only here at about 4:15pm. Talk about lunch. So after killing some time at Popular reading Nancy Drew, I went ahead and had lunch at the food court. I ordered fish ball noodle, only to realize that it's dry and not soup. Ah well I had no choice but to eat. Didn't quite like the noodle, but the soup was quite ok. After that I went to Braddell Heights cc to check out the chinese orchestra. I went searching up and down but couldn't find. And the staff was of no help. At about 3:30pm, my aunt called to say they were going to reach the mall soon, so I just left the cc, dejected that my efforts were futile.

We went to have late lunch / early dinner at a restaurant called 'BBQ Chicken'. I recommend it. It has a promotion now, $6.90 for a student meal, which consists of a main course, french fries, coleslaw and drinks. Very worth it, considering the original price of my meal was $11.90, and didn't include all the other side dishes and drinks. As for adult, they have the 1 for 1 promotion. This promotion will last till about February or March, and a new promotion would come out. Even though I wasn't all that hungry, the food was irresistible. Ended up licking clean my plate, plus some bites of chicken steak, spaghetti and fried chicken from my aunts and cousin. Later, we went to get some more bread for Sunday and Monday's breakfast. Then we walked around in search of cake. They went to get some Taiwan Egg Tart, but I wasn't fond of egg tarts. There was only one cake stall we saw, so we just hit on it. I had Oreo cheese cake, which wasn't all that bad, besides the fact that I was quite bloated. Finally, ice cream. I always thought Andersen Ice Cream looked delicious. But it didn't taste good. The taste was not thick enough. I prefer Haagen Dazs and Baskin Robbins I think. End of the day, end of excursion with my third aunt, at least for this month. Next will be during my cousin's birthday.

When I came back to the hostel, my hostelmates made a bash for me. They bought me a cake, a party hat and sang me birthday song. I was so touched. But too bad I was too full to eat the cake on the spot. It's still in the fridge.

I had planned to celebrate my birthday again on Monday with a friend, but another duty turned up and I had to forfeit the plan. So sad. I was hoping to buy myself cake. That would give me more satisfaction. It's glad to know that I can finally find happiness from myself, and not rely on what others give me. I suppose that's the resolution for my birthday. Once again, happy sweet sixteen to myself! And thank you everyone who has wished me a happy birthday. It was indeed a very happy one.

Sweet Sixteen

It's not my birthday yet, but I decided to go for my birthday lunch today, as we have a half day off today, to celebrate the excellent O level results of the class of 2009. And it chanced that I had a voucher, which entitled me to 40% discount on a weekday and 30% on a weekend. Initially, I had planned to go on Saturday, the very day of my birthday itself, with Zhi Ying. But Zhi Ying is going back to Malaysia some time before our birthdays, so facing a free afternoon before me, why not go celebrate that day? I decided to just go ahead and go have my lunch today since it's such a good timing.

It's quite sad though, celebrating myself. So I decided to take photos, then at least I can share with my family. I told my mum that I was only going to order the ribs. That was a lie. I couldn't resist the temptation of soup. I had always loved soup and I miss it. The hostel doesn't serve soup. And soup of the day was mushroom soup. That is a soup I can never say no to. And I forgot the fact that the other time I had lunch at Tony Roma's with my parents, I went back home quite bloated. I had ordered the regular slab back then, with onion rings shared among us. I ordered regular slab again. Luckily the bowl of soup was quite a tiny portion, so I managed to take in my main course of St Louis Ribs with Carolina Honey, baked potaton and corn on a slab. That was so delicious.

I'll be having cake on Saturday. I want a candle. Just for the fun of it. But where would I get a candle? And matches to light the candle? Ah well we'll see. It's not Saturday yet.

Entree course

Main

Satisfied look

Loves life. <3>

Justified Accusation?

It's the third day of school and generally it's alright. I got elected to be in the class committee as sports rep. I thought that was one good way to get belonged in the class. It's been quite useful. Classes are not very interesting as of now, since I already know most of the materials in chemistry, physics, additional mathematics and elementary mathematics. English might not be much of a problem, just got to get used to their style. Same as social studies. That is quite a new subject to me so I won't pass judgment on it yet.

What is upsetting me is my form teacher. Oh and on first impression, all teachers looked ok. But I think on second thoughts, I'm already eliminating most of the teachers from my like list or whatever of that sort. So what did my form teacher do? Yesterday she called me and pronounced my name in the Chinese way. She took it like it was a China Chinese's name. I corrected her. She called my name with the correct pronunciation later. That was yesterday.

Fast forward to today. This morning in the bus, my friend told me that my form teacher talked to her and asked how to pronounce my name. I thought it was nothing. So I went to school. Fast forward to her period. I went to get a form from her. And that was when she told me she asked the head of chinese department teacher on how to pronounce my name and she agreed with my teacher, the way of pronouncing it. I again told her that no, my name is not pronounced in the Chinese way. And she said I'll call her and ask her in front of you.

Right I'm generally sensitive, and I know that. But seriously? What she just did was like an insult. A disgrace. Total disrespect. She's accusing me of pronouncing my own name wrongly. Who is she to tell which is the right pronunciation or not? It's not in the dictionary. It isn't standardized in the whole world how to pronounce it. That's why I forgive people when they pronounce it wrongly. My dad gave me the name. It's supposed to be unique to me. Only my dad can say which is the right pronunciation. But my biggest problem is I deem it quite disrespectful that she could not accept the way I told her how to pronounce my name, and had to ask others how to pronounce my name. That's why I'm so upset.

Happy New Year

Happy new year! New year, new goals, new challenges, oooh how I love them all!