Haha (I seem to use these two syllables too often these days)

Or am I not supposed to use them too often? :D (this emoticon). Really, people seem to be stressed out a lot when the prelims exam approaches. For me, I feel normal. I fell happy writing all those essays, although they can take up hours and hours of my study time.

And what if I screw up this Prelims? All those effort may be in vain.

Anyway, I enjoy them. Really.

I have really made up my mind. It does not matter where I go. A good Uni, a LAC or even NUS.

It does not matter. It just that recently when I seriously look at what I want to write for my app essay, I found out that no matter what I do, I still have that want to change the world for the better. What a cliche.

Just sms Ms. Chan. Hmm, wonder whether she is married :D

Still sounded like the lovely English teacher that has helped me through that fucked up sec 4 year.

She asked me to send her my essays to show to her Nan Hua's class. She's still teaching those bridging course classes as her part time job.

She said she's working for a magazine. She said that she would love to have me as a writer. Haha

It's really an interesting idea. I have been thinking about writing articles to newspaper for a long time.

I planned to write some article to some Vietnamese newspaper. It has never happened. Argh, what have I been doing with my free time?

I really love writing. I'll definitely send Ms. Chan something after Prelims.

I really want to start writing now :D. Haha, I have a paper tomorrow ...

Viet Nam

Viet Nam and not Vietnam

Living in a community like here is a chance to experience how people think of their country.

Culture

Literature

Music

Why would I even study? Why would I read the articles, books? I'm not even sure if I would be capable of working in the field. It's the belief that, one day, I will come back to build the country that drives me on.

Doing things for a purpose. Why would I strive forward? It's for a purpose. I would just accept what I have.

Ngo Bao Chau 17 years holding the citizenship of Vietnamese

Etymologists and anthropologists have defined the origins of the Viet people by separating the components of the calligraphy for Viet, or Yue, as it is known in Mandarin. On the left side of this ideogram is a character pronounced tau in Vietnamese, meaning to run. On the right is the complementary component pronounced Viet, with the meaning and profile of an axe. This component carries with it the particle qua, which signifies a lance or javelin.
This small ideographic analysis depicts the Viet as a race known since antiquity as a migratory, hunting people, perpetually moving and spreading beyond their frontiers of origin, carrying bow and arrow, axe and javelin.
The word Viet is the Vietnamese pronunciation of a Chinese character meaning beyond or far. It also has the sense of "to cross", "to go through", "to set onself right". The character Nam, meaning South, probably served to differentiate between the Viets in the North who remained in China and those who had left and headed South.

This is so deeply rooted in the Vietnamese consciousness that most people believe Vietnamese to be a monosyllabic language, which, in fact, it is not. The perception that Vietnamese consists of syllables rather than words doesn't sit as well with speakers of European languages, who have a more clearly developed concept of the word.

Please think about that! Please! Join us in this effort NOW by start writing Vietnamese in combined formation of syllables of a word for each concept. In practice, when you are in doubt, think of an equivalent word in English or in another common foreign language. For example, for 'although' we have 'macdu', for 'blackboard' > 'bangden', 'faraway' > 'xaxoi', and so on.

H.O.M.E

Ngo Hoang Gia (10S06O)
When I was a small boy, on the other side of my city, across the river, there used to be a slum. We had to take a ferry to get there. There were houses, or more like tents, standing on wooden poles protruding haphazardly out of the river bank. The walls were made of carton pieces, toles, water bottles and anything that the people there can lay their hand on, tied up together.
In Vietnam they a house’s standard is usually categorized from first grade to fourth grade, with the fourth grade the lowest. "Our house is first grade, right, mom?" I once asked my mom. Compared to the houses in the slum, our home was so rich that it must definitely be the first grade. My mother laughed and said, "No. Our house is the 4th grade". Apparently the houses at the slum did not even belong to any category.
I did not understand why my mother thought so lowly of our home. My home was so fun. My father used to teach tuition at home. He had a big white board nailed on the other side of our bathroom. Every time I used the toilet at the middle of his lesson, I must not make noise while squatting on the toilet bowl. My father asked me to turn on the water tap into an empty metal bucket before flushing the toilet. My father used a long straight rim taken out from an old wooden door as a ruler. When I heard noises from the Styrofoam panels on the ceiling in my room, my father gave me the stick. I would stand on a stool on my bed and poked the sheets. That wrought havoc on the mice. I grinned, imagining the mice banging into each other from the furious screeching and rambling above.
The rainy season in Vietnam usually lasts for 3 months or more, with 5 or 6 storms hitting my city. If the storm is bad enough, we did not have school. I would wrap myself in the blanket and enjoyed the serenity of the season. The water leaked from the roof of our living room into a metal pot my parents placed underneath. There was only the flickering flame of the candle, the noise of the rain and the "tink .. tink ... tink" sound of water drop falling on the metal pot. When the rain became heavier, the "tinks" sound would get squeezed into a clinking rhythm on top of the loud clatter of the rain. My mom sometimes allowed me to shower in the rain. My brother and I stripped off our clothes and ran into the small yard and played with a soccer ball. The ball moved in a funny way as it got trapped in the puddles. I stuck out my tongue and started spinning on a spot, looking up with my squinting eyes, trying to look at the falling drops. The surrounding soon revolved so fast that I sat on the ground with my tongue still sticking out, trying to drink the rainwater.
When I was in grade 5, our old house was renovated. Once, I went to check whether the house had the large windows like I asked my father to build. There were scaffolding and cements bags all over the floor of my parents’ room. I could see the sun setting down behind the distant houses. The tangerine light filled the room and blended with the brick’s red. I sat on the bare ledge of the big window that my father had promised me. The wind brought the sweet aroma of ripe apple trees in the garden and mixed with the smell of damp bricks. That was the most beautiful room that I have ever seen.
When the home was finished, I was also bestowed the "legendary metal horse", as my brother called his MIFA bike. It was a gift from my aunt in the East Germany for my brother’s birth in 1986. The bike looked strangely exposed. My father stripped off all its lights, dynamo and the back seat because otherwise "those petty thieves would steal it". But I think my father just wanted to ensure that my brother, and later I, could not pick up a girl (if someone ever wanted to sit on that). The bike was very big. I needed to jump down from the saddle to get off the bike. The brake strings got torn occasionally and I usually forgot to replace them. To slow down the bike, I pressed the bottom of my sandals to the front tire. All my left sandal and slipper had a "brake groove" for that reason. To make an immediate stop, I put the whole foot between the spokes. The bike is one of the things I miss the most when I think of my secondary school days. I used to cycle to school at noon. Most of the people should be sleeping or resting then. The streets were empty and quiet without many vehicles. I loved looking up at the canopy of the phoenix trees while their red flowers falling lazily, swirling in the hot summer air.
When I was fifteen, I went to study in Singapore. My third home was my room in the boarding school. I needed to squeeze the paper, palette and color powders within the rectangle bounded by my bed, the wall, my table and my roommate's wardrobe. I had to bend my knees, put the canvas on my thighs to paint. My bed was next to the windows. I sometimes forgot to close the windows and the whole bed would get soaked when there was a heavy rain. I missed my father's nagging: he had to close the windows whenever he came home from work and found me so engrossed in the computer game that I forgot to close the windows. I remembered the times when I fell sick, and lay alone on the bed, staring at the revolving blades of the fan on the ceiling and could not sleep. I craved for the feeling of my mother's calloused hands on my head.The best thing of staying in boarding school is that I could play soccer all the time. We used to play on the school's hockey turf because the ground was soft enough for our bare feet. It rained a lot in Singapore. Sometimes the rain would become so heavy that we could hardly see things around. I remember the first time I played soccer in the rain at the turf. The veil of water drops on my spectacles hid my red eyes. Everyone had their face wrinkled and covered with water. The rain felt so warm. I was sticking out my tongue and laughing.
One time I joined a project at a community centre in a block of apartments for low-income people. Until then, I thought of Singapore as having "no poor people" (or at least the poor people I saw were far above the level of poverty in Vietnam). There seemed to be only a shiny Singapore with the glamorous Durian Theater, the skyscrapers in the Central Business Districts and the neat and clean streets. But that time I found a different corner of the island. From the outside the block looked like it was at a pretty good condition. But when I walked along the poorly lit and narrow corridors inside, there was a constant feeling that there would be a hand lunging out of the barred doors to grab my throat. The rooms were piled with random hoarded stuffs that stunk like mould growing on rotten food, and bed bugs and insects were making their nests under the mattress.
The community centre where we actually worked, although small, was in a decent state. We were there to organize games, talk to the elderly people and to keep them accompanied. I could not play Mahjong and I could not speak Cantonese or Hokkien, the dialect that the elderly use. In the end I found a Chinese woman in her sixties who could speak English. So I befriended her. I could not pronounce her Chinese name correctly so I always called her Auntie instead. She told me with an apologetic tone that she had dementia. Auntie had suffered a heart attack that partially paralyzed one side of her body. That explained why she could only stutter words very slowly and she would ask me who I am every time I came. I once I saw the ring on her hand and asked where her husband was. He passed away a few years before that and her children were all in Australia, and could visit her once or twice a year. I felt quite uneasy knowing that she still had relatives but I did not ask her more.
I was still struggling with my English language back then. I was always saying things like "I need to come to school now" before parting with someone. One day, I told Auntie that I would leave for a class trip the following weekend, and would only "go back home the week after that". Auntie asked me why I was going back to Vietnam in the middle of the term. I had meant that I will be back in Singapore.
Auntie placed her hand lightly on mine and said with a smile, "You use "come" and not "go". Here's your home."

HOME

When I was a small boy, I used to go to the a riverside street in the afternoon with my friends. That street was later on rebuilt to be one of the most beautiful street in Vietnam. But in the past, the pavements along the riverside was ruined with the many stretches of the hand-rail stolen. When it was low tide, we would find a place on the bank without the hand-rail and the pavement was not so high from the river bed below to jump down. There were a lot of huge stones covered with dead oysters so we had to climb carefully over these stones to a blank spot covered in sand. There were pieces of carton box, food trashes and some time some dead thing scattered all over the river bed. We loved digging our hand into the small holes in the sand to catch the little crabs living inside. Or we may tried to throw pieces of pebble to the river to see whose pebble can jump the furthest. I used to cheat by throwing pieces of glass instead; they were flat and smooth and easier to hold so they seem make the most steps on the water's surface. When we are tired, we would look at the opposite bank. The other side of my city used to be like slum. We used take a ferry to get to the other side before a new bridge was built when I was in grade 3. There were many houses, or actually they looked more like tents. Those houses were made up carton pieces, toles, water bottles and anything that the people there can put a hand, binded together. Those tents stood on wooden poles and protruded out haphazardly out of the river bank. Whenever I looked at those houses, I found my home so rich.

So once I asked my mom what grade is our house. In Vietnam they usually call a house 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade or 4th grade. "Our house is first grade, right, mom?" I thought that since the houses at the slum must be of grade 4, my house was definitely level 4. My mother laughed and said, "No. Our house is the 4th grade" (I did not know that the houses at the slum were "out of the league").

I did not really understand why my mother thinks so low of our home. My home was so fun. My father used to teach tuition at home. He had a big white board nailed on the other side of our bathroom. Every time I used the toilet in the middle of his lesson,my father asked me to turn on the water tap into an empty metal bucket before flushing the toilet so that the students might think that someone is washing clothes. And I must not make any noise while squatting on the toilet bowl. My father used a long wooden stick taken out from an old door to use as a ruler. Now and then I would tell him "Dad, there are mouse". And my father would give me the stick. I would stand on a stool on my bed and poked the plastic panels covering below the toles (those plastic panels below the toles are common in Vietnam, they are used as insulator, but mouses make their home there as well). The mouses would break into a turmoil. I could not see but from the furious screeching and rambling, I could imagine the mouses banging into each other above me. Now and then a daring or stupid mouse would run across us while we were eating. My father would quickly order me and my brother. "Get met the stick, close the doors". So we were all in the living room to catch the mouse. The only door opened is the front door to the garden because we did not want the mouse to go crazy and run across our food. My father would bend down and put the stick into the gap below the wardrobe. I would then be standing on top of my study table with a lid in my hands (we use this big lid with a lot of holes to cover our foods from flies). I would be cheering, laughing and pointing my brother around to ambush the mouse. I was quite afraid of mouse than, so I sood on the table and threw the lid down when it ran across below me. Usually the mouse would not get to the front door . My father would jump after the mouse and whacked it with his stick, or sometimes he would kick the running mouse. (he is a "professional mouse catcher". My father lived in the countryside during his childhood in the North during the Vietnam war. His friends and he would catch mouses and grilled them. He did not eat, though). During the raining season, which usually last for 3 months in my city, with 5 or 6 storms during that period. The water would leak down from the roof over my living room, falling down on a metal pot that my parents place under the leaking spot. I used to like the raining season because if the storm is bad enough, we don't have school. I love hearing the "tink .. tink ... tink" sound of the water drop on the pot at night. When the sound of the rain outside becomes louder, the "tinks" would become faster. My parents would wake up now and then at night to empty the pot. There was this huge crack near the front door of our house, from the side of the door to the roof. When it rains, the water would leak down from the roof and the water would soak the wall around the crack. I loved touching to feel the cool wet wall. Before the rain, there would be a lot of ants coming out from the crack, follow the door's grooces and disappear into the garden. I used to wipe the invisible path of the ants and see how the ants would scramble at the wiped out path. But a few ants will wander across the wiped out path and smell the aroma on the other side. The ants would always find their way home no matter how big the gap I made. My mom would sometimes allow me to "shower in the rain". My brother and I would strip off out clothes, naked and ran into our small yard. I would play with a soccer ball with him there. The ball moved in a funny way because it would got trapped in a puddle on the ground. When I'm tired, I would stick out my tongue and started spinning at a spot, looking up with my knitted brows, trying to look at the falling drops. When surround started revolving so fast, I would sit on the ground with my tongue sticking out and tried to drink the rainwater.

When I was in grade 5, our old house is renovated. Once when I visit the house when it is under construction. I love the view of the house. Although there are scaffolds and cements and sand piles all over the floor, I like my parents' room without the windows. It was in the afternoon and the dusk's light filled up the room. The light blends so nicely with the bricks' red color. When my parents planned for the house, I told them to have a lot of windows. Big windows so that the light and the wind can come into the room. I sat on the bare edge of one of those windows, with the roughness of the brick and the cement ticking my bottoms. I loved siting there, looked at the trees, the top so near to me now and felt the wind blowing around me. Soon after that when the windows panes are put on (no matter how I tried to tell my father not to), I could not get that scene anymore. I felt so natural and free when I sat on the windows' edge there. That unfinished room was the most beautiful room that I have ever seen.

When the home was finished, I also inherited the "legendary metal horse" from my brother. His friends called my brother's bike that way.It was a gift sent from my aunt in East Germany as a present for my brother (he was born in 1986). My mother used to ride it, then my brother. The bike looks strangely bare since my father stripped off all the its lights, dynamo and the back seat. He said otherwise "those petty thefts would steal them". But I think no one would touch such an old bike and my father did that just to make sure that my brother, and later I, cannot fetch a girl (if someone actually wants to sit on that). The bike was so big that when I was in grade 6, I need to jump down from the seat to get off the bike. Now and then the brake strings would be torn and I forgot to replace. To slow down the bike, I would put the bottom of my sandals to the front tire (its mud cover had fallen off when my brother used the bike). All my left sandal and slipper had a "brake groove" for that reason. Sometimes I would put my food between the wheel's sticks and the bike would stop immediately. The motorbikes and bikes in my city did not go so fast so I could ride my bike without my brake for a few weeks. The bike was one of the thing I miss the most when I think about my secondary school days. I love riding the bike along the empty streets to my school. Most of the people should be sleeping or resting at noon in Vietnam (apart students going to school) and the streets were empty and quiet. In the summer. I love riding under the shades of the phoenix trees while their red flowers falling slowly, swirling in the air.

When I was fifteen, I went to study in Singapore. My third home was my room in the boarding school. The room was for 4 people, each one has a share of a corner of the room. My room back in Vietnam was nearly three times the size of the room in boarding school. I could crawl on the floor in the room, papers and color powder placed around me. I could move from one corner to another to start a new painting. When I want to draw, I would need to squeeze the stuffs just nicely in the rectangle bounded by my bed, the wall, my table and my roommate's wardrobe. And I would have to bend my knee, put the canvas on my thighs to paint. I did not know beforehand that I would miss my parents so much. My bed was next to the windows. Whenever I happened to forget to close the windows, my whole bed and pillows would get soaking wet when there was a heavy rain. I miss my father's nagging when it rained: he had to close the windows when he came home from work and found me so engrossed in the computer game that I forgot to close my windows upstairs. I remember the times when I fell sick and lying alone, staring at the rotation of the fan on the ceiling and could not sleep. I craved for the feeling of my mother's calloused hands on my head.The best thing of staying in boarding school is that I can play soccer everyday. We used to play on the school's hockey turf because it was quite soft so we can play barefooted. Sometimes the rain would become so hard that we could hardly see things around. But it was very fun sliding on the turf because the water makes the sliding painless. I love playing soccer in the rain. I remember the first time I played soccer under the rain at the turf, I was crying. The water drops on my spectacles would cover my red eyes. Everyone had their face twisted so that the water on the forehead would not get into the eyes. The rain felt so warm. I was sticking out my tongue and laughing. It was the fist time I felt so happy in Singapore.

I joined a school event when I was in secondary school in Singapore. We were divided into groups to survey this block of apartments of low-income people to see which apartment are in the low condition to be renovated. It was the first time I went to such a place. From the outside, I would never expect the block to be in such a bad state. When I came to Singapore, before that time, I have only see a shiny Singapore with the glamorous Durian Theater, the skyscrapers in the Central Business Districts and the neat and clean streets. I had always assumed that all the houses in Singapore would be so modern and beautiful.

One time I was in a community project at a community center of a low-income block. Until then, I thought of Singapore as having "no poor people" (or at least the poor people I saw were so much better than the poverty standard in Vietnam). There seemed to be only a shiny Singapore with the glamorous Durian Theater, the skyscrapers in the Central Business Districts and the neat and clean streets. But that time I found a different corner of the island. From the outside the block looked like it's at a pretty good condition. But inside was old one-room apartments. When I walked along the poorly lit and narrow corridors, I actually felt as if there would be a hand lunging out of one of the barred doors to squeeze my throat. A room would be piled with random hoarded stuffs that stunk with a mixture of smells of mold and rotten foods. There were bed bugs and insects under some of the mattress.

The community center where we actually worked, although small, was at a decent state. We were there to organize game and talk to the elderly people, or basically do anything to keep them accompanied. I could not play Mahjong and I could not speak Cantonese or Hokkien with the old people there. But at the end I found a Chinese woman of her sixties who could speak English. So every time I came to the center, she was the only person I talk to while my friends organized games for the rest of the people. I could not pronounce her Chinese name correctly so I always called her Auntie instead. I found it quite strange that she could hardly remember me every time I came. One day Auntie told me, with an apologetic tone, that she had dementia. She got a heart attack before that partially paralyzed one side of her body and that explained why she could only stutter words very slowly. I once asked her where husband was because I saw the ring on her hand. She said he passed away a few years before that. I asked her whether she had children. She said they were all in Australia and could visit her once or twice a year. I was quite uneasy knowing that she still had relatives. All the while I had thought she was alone, but I did not ask her more about her children.

I was still struggling with English back then. I would always say things like "I need to come to school now" before parting someone. So once I told Auntie that I would not see her the next week because I will leave for a class trip the following weekend, and I would only "go back home the week after that". Auntie was a bit puzzled and asked why I go back to Vietnam at the middle of the term. I said I mean I will be back to Singapore.

Auntie placed her hand slightly on my hand and said with a smile "You use "come" and not "go". Here's your home"

Home

In Vietnam they usually call a house 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade or 4th grade. When I was a small child living in my old home, my mom tried to explain to me why the commentators on the TV announced the building of some new 3rd grade houses in my city. So I asked my mom "Our house is first grade, right, mom?" Back then I thought the 4th grade house is the slum along the riverside that I see when I walk down to the river bank to catch the small crabs living in the sand. Back then there was one whole district in my city with houses build on wooden poles, protruding haphazardly along the river banks, with the walls made of plastic sheet and metal toles. The people there lived by sorting out trashes, to sell the metals back to the metallurgies and to put up there house's walls. So based on the standard of these house, I would consider my house to be like first grade. It was build of bricks, got a roof, a small garden. My mother laughed and said, "No. Our house is the 4th grade type".

Back then I did not really understand why my mother thinks so low of our home. I found the home so much fun. During the raining season, which usually last for 3 months in my city, with 5 or 6 storms during that period. The water would leak down from the roof, falling down on a metal pot that my parents place under the leaking spot. I used to like the raining season because if the storm is bad enough, we don't have school. I love hearing the "tink .. tink ... tink" sound of the water drop on the pot at night. When the sound of the rain outside becomes louder, the "tinks" would become faster. My parents would wake up now and then at night to empty the pot. There was this huge crack near the front door of our house, from the side of the door to the roof. When it rains, the water would leak down from the roof and the water would soak the wall around the crack. I loved touching to feel the cool wet wall. Before the rain, there would be a lot of ants coming out from the crack, follow the door and disappear somewhere at the bottom of the wall. I used to wipe the invisible path of the ants and see how the ants would scramble at the wiped out path. But a few ants will wander across the wiped out path and smell the aroma on the other side. The ants would always find their way to their secret nest no matter how big the gap I made.

When I was in grade 5, our old house is renovated. Once when I visit the house when it is under construction. I love the view of the house. Although there are scaffolds and cements and sand piles all over the floor, I like my parents' room without the windows. It was in the afternoon and the dusk's light filled up the room. The light blends so nicely with the bricks' red color. When my parents planned for the house, I told them to have a lot of windows. Big windows so that the light and the wind can come into the room. I sat on the bare edge of one of those windows, with the roughness of the brick and the cement ticking my bottoms. I loved siting there, looked at the trees, the top so near to me now and felt the wind blowing around me. Soon after that when the windows panes are put on (no matter how I tried to tell my father not to), I could not get that scene anymore. I felt so natural and free when I sat on the windows' edge there. That unfinished room was the most beautiful room that I have ever seen.

When I was fifteen, I went to study in Singapore. My third home was my room in the boarding school. The room was for 4 people, each one has a share of a corner of the room. My room back in Vietnam was nearly three times the size of the room in boarding school. I could crawl on the floor in the room, papers and color powder placed around me. I could move from one corner to another to start a new painting. When I want to draw, I would need to squeeze the stuffs just nicely in the rectangle bounded by my bed, the wall, my table and my roommate's wardrobe. And I would have to bend my knee, put the canvas on my thighs to paint.

I stayed in Singapore on my own without my parents. I had another Vietnamese and two Indonesia guys as my roommates. They were very nice and helpful to me, but I always found something is missing. Singapore is not like my home in Vietnam. I did not know beforehand that I would miss my parents so much. My bed was next to the windows. Whenever I happened to forget to close the windows, my whole bed and pillows would get soaking wet when there was a heavy rain. I miss my father's nagging when it rained: he had to close the windows when he came home from work and found me so engrossed in the computer game that I forgot to close my windows upstairs. I remember the times when I fell sick and lying alone, staring at the rotation of the fan on the ceiling and could not sleep. I craved for the feeling of my mother's calloused hands on my head.

I joined a school event when I was in secondary school in Singapore. We were divided into groups to survey this block of apartments of low-income people to see which apartment are in the low condition to be renovated. It was the first time I went to such a place. From the outside it looks like it's at a pretty good condition. But I was shocked when I walked in. They are old one-room apartments and most of the people there did not have a fixed job. A room would be piled with random hoarded stuffs. I thought all the rooms are bad enough to be repainted but my friends said some were just repainted the year before. It seems like all the mold growing in the damp carton boxes in those room has made the paint falling out so fast. Later in the day, we even found bed bugs and insects under the mattress of many rooms. From the outside, I would never expect the block to be in such a bad state. When I came to Singapore, before that time, I have only see a shiny Singapore with the glamorous Durian Theater, the skyscrapers in the Central Business Districts and the neat and clean streets. I had always assumed that all the houses in Singapore would be so modern and beautiful.

Another time I was in a community project at a community center of another low-income block. The rooms inside the block quite bad, too, but the community center, although small, was at a decent state. We were there to organize game and talk to the elderly people, or basically do anything to keep them accompanied. I could not play Mahjong and I could not speak Cantonese or Hokkien with the old people there. But at the end I found a Chinese woman of her sixties who could speak English. So every time I came to the center, she was the only person I talk to while my friends organize games for the rest of the people. I could not pronounce her Chinese name correctly so I always called her Auntie instead. I found it quite strange that she could hardly remember me every time I come. One day the Auntie told me, with an apologetic tone, that she had dementia. She got a heart attack before that partially paralyzed one side of her body and she could only stutter words very slowly. I once asked her where husband was because I saw the ring on her hand. She said he passed away a few years before that. I asked her whether she had children. She said they were all in Australia and could visit her once or twice a year. I was quite uneasy knowing that she still had relatives. All the while I had thought she was alone, but I did not ask her more about her children. I was still struggling with English back then. I would always say things like "I need to come to school now" before parting someone. So once I told Auntie that I would not see her the next week because I will leave for Malaysia the following weekend, and I would only "go back home the week after that". Auntie was a bit puzzled and asked why I go back to Vietnam at the middle of the term. I said I mean I will be back to Singapore. Auntie placed her hand slightly on my hand and said with a smile "You use "come" and not "go". Here's your home"

Tips for a Singapore A-division soccer wannabe

To our mothers, who have been wondering why their sons have been skipping so many dinners "for soccer".

To my coaches, who may not know fully what's going on in our heads during half-time breaks.

And to you, the soccer wannabe.

Prepare to be a left back: for the benefits of those who are not familiar with soccer, here is one way to form a soccer team. Those who are strong and like to push people would be the center backs. Those who are fast and can cross the ball would be the mid-fielders. Those who are tall to head the ball or have strong legs to shoot the ball would be the strikers. Those who are not so strong, not so fast, not so tall would be the full backs. Among the bunch of leftover, there would be one right-footed guy who are a bit stronger, a big faster or a bit taller than the rest. So he would be the right back. But then there would only be one guy who is left-footed. He is the left back of the team.

The point here is the left back is most probably the weakest, the slowest or the shortest guy on the field. And for the rest of his career as a soccer player, it's most likely that he would not grow much, and would never get to a new position in the team. If in your dream, you are the poster boy, don't be a left back.

Prepare to be a substitute: now and then your coach would ask you to take a break. Give chance for other people to have some playing time. Or, warm the bench. You become a substitute and you sure will hate it. When you play, you are expected to shout because your voice would give gradual mental boost to your teammates who are so tired. Because your voice is so rumbling that it can intimidate the other team. Or because you are nervous. Whatever reason it is, no body would probably hear you clearly, especially the spectators. They are either too engrossed in the game or because they can hardly distinguish you from the twenty guys running around on the field.

But when you take a seat on the bench and you shout, you are immediately placed under the limelight. The spectators become so close to you that they can hear everything that you say. If you have a weird voice - so high that sometimes when you are not careful it ends up very feminine - or a weird accent - so exotic that the whole spectators stand would laugh - don't be a substitute.

Prepare to take a free kick: you watched the Nike advertisement clip? The one with Christiano Ronaldo walks up to place the ball, kiss it, steps back to pose in his usual robot-style stand before bending the ball into the net? And then people around the world cheer and worship him?

You would never be able to do that, trust me. This is the real scenario: your striker is fouled and he was so angry that he wants to take the free kick, but coach says no. You step up because you are the only left-footed guy in the team to take the free kick from this angle. You place the ball down on the field, calm your pounding heart and take 10 steps back, 2 steps to the right as usual. During training, that is what you do to take a free kick. But the ball would roll down into a dent on the field. So you walk up to adjust the ball. That little delay makes you stand out even more - you are the only one moving on the field now. You can feel that all eyes are on you. But you take the run up to take the shot anyway. You would probably take a last glance at the top left corner of the goalpost, look down on the ball and garner every last bit of concentration that you have to hit the ball, a bit to the right and below the center. Or you would think, "What if I miss?".

Taking a free kick is a nerve-wrenching ordeal that you should not want.

Prepare to go insane: remember the first tip? So you are in soccer, and you may have followed all the tips that you are told. You start training and you start playing. You will start running, and if you are the fast guy, you may feel like you are just taking a stride a few, like 10, rounds around the field. If not, then make sure that you do three things during training, after training and during weekend respectively. Run. Run. And Run. You will to learn how to header. If you are the tall striker, well, it should be what you have done all the while. If you are not, then make sure that when the ball is flying to you, open you eyes, jump and aim your head right at the ball. You will be given a bip and start "sparring". If you are the center back, this is your favorite, so make sure you hit the other team hard. If you are not, then you'd better look for the biggest center back in the team and try to bang into him until either one of you are knocked to the ground.

Soccer is much about which team is more wiling to pounce on the ball, more wiling to stick out the leg to get the ball, more wiling to get up after a crashing fall to chase after your opponent. To win, you must be more insane than the other team.

By now, if you are smart, you should stray away from that bunch of kids screaming, rolling and crawling on the field. But you may not be that smart. So let me help you figure a way out if you have already refused to follow, or may be all the tips that I have told you. I know the way, because I have been through all of them.

So first, read the title. This is meant for a kid who wants to join Singapore A-Division Soccer Tournament. For those who are not sure what it is, that's fine. Singapore is a small dot in the South East Asia. A-Division Soccer tournament from all the junior colleges in that tiny country. Junior College is basically a 2-years education system preceding college.

So my reader, the Singapore A-division soccer wannabe, your career is only two years. Or may be less. For me, I thought I was smart, so I did not join the soccer team on the first day. After half a year, I nearly made a smart decision - I asked my coach to quit soccer.

Of course, at the end, I was so not-smart that I have joined and stayed in the soccer team. Here is how I survive through those 2 years.

I was a left back. Remember that short, weak and not-so-skillful (and bespectacled) boy? If it's you and you never join the team, you would happily continue to play soccer in the weekend, watch the English Premier League and occasionally, think about how it feels to be like one of those stars. Or you would put on the school jersey, pull up your long socks and put on your "studs". For once in your life, you geeky boy can feel that you are so closer to your stars.

I do warm the benches many times. If once your career starts and you get injured, or you may just not play well recently, make sure that you rest your feet but not your throat. Because if you shout like a duck, a high-pitched one indeed, like me, make sure that it must be quacking duck. You must shout for your teammate, your brothers who are trailing behind, who are exhausted and disheartened. And once you are put on the field, you shout your lungs and play your heart out. Sometimes you may not be the most talked about, or you may receive too much attention instead, you should always do your best.

I do take free kicks now and then. If your team have a free kick and the angle of the shot is suitable for your left foot, take it. Your team may be down by one goal and time is ticking away, and you have to score that goal. When you run up, preparing to slam the ball, you would have a feeling that time is dilating. You will be able to recall so vividly the arc that the ball drawn, how it soars through the air before gushing into the net and you would feel your heart jumps in your chest. Or how it flies off the net and your heart sinks. I missed that free kick in an important match before. When you know that you have a choice: you try and miss the opportunity, or you may find an excuse to ask someone else to do it, slap yourself in the face to wake up, then try. If you fail and you are lucky, you may have a coach and teammates like mine, they would pat on your back and say "That was close. Good shot".

I had to take 20 or 30 shots for months before the tournament started. I have been wearing spectacles for a long time, so I have always tried to avoid heading a ball. When I started playing "serious" soccer, I was pretty bad at estimating where a high ball drops, so I had to do 20 headers or so a day. But my teammate, the striker, had to do 1000 in 7 days. I had my ankles sprained a few time and bruises and contusions are occasional. But my friend dislocated his elbow. When you start your A-Div career, you may find the game so insane. You will get hurt, sometimes badly, or probably lose some of your "smartness" if you head the ball too much. But once you are in the midst of a match, you will hardly remember such things. For a rare chance in your life, you love going insane. And there are ten other crazy boys on the field would you, so it would be fine.

Prepare to be a left back.

Prepare to be a substitute.

Prepare to take a free kick.

Prepare to go insane.

Questions to think about for application

What attracts you to ...?

If you could contribute one book to the list,

what would it be and why?

Bennington’s FieldWork Term Office invites employers across the globe to consider hosting a Bennington student during its annual 7-week

winter internship period. If you’ve come across a business or organization whose work fascinates you, please tell us about it.

Option 1 Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and former Bennington College faculty member Mary Oliver is particularly well known for her

close observations of the natural world. Below is a poem from her collection House of Light. Please write an essay about something you think

is worth paying attention to.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out on the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Design an experiment that attempts to determine whether toads can hear. Provide the rationale for your design—explain your

reasons for setting up the experiment as you did. Strive for simplicity and clarity.

Bennington College faculty members design courses rooted in their intellectual passions and experience. If you were to design a

course, what experiences or interests would you draw upon? Your course might combine seemingly disparate subjects—philosophy and jazz,

for example—or it could be focused on a single experience, such as designing a scientific experiment. Please respond to this question in two

parts. First, write a one-paragraph course description with the title for the class you would teach. Second, write an essay that describes why

you chose to create this particular course.

1) What aspirations, experiences, or relationships have motivated you to pursue the study of architecture?

2) Outside of academics, what do you enjoy most or find most challenging? (Responses to each section should be approximately one page.)

Why I see Mr. Sim

This is what I would say to him

1) This is not an intended compliment for you, in case you think I'm trying to flatter you. But I think you were right when you said that the US application should be an interesting process. You said that this would be the only chance that someone cares about what you think and what you like. But I think for me, it's also one of the rare chances that I reflect thoroughly about my life (short as it has been so far). Of course now and then I would think about things that have happened to me in life. But there are many things that only one I pick up the pen or start typing that I can actually lay them down, see them, think more carefully, peel them up and really understand "why?". For this US application, I have written quite a few essays about things like what I like, about why I like Physics, why I like GP, what I learn form soccer to things like all the little philosophies I created for myself, all laid down clearly. Although I cannot write all such things in my application or squeeze them on this piece of paper, writing such stuffs is the most enjoyable thing I have gotten from this process. Thank you for advising us to start on the "20 things interesting about me" list last year.

2) What do I want to study in college?

Not only architecture, but also agriculture, forestry, geography

3) Architecture course - does it mean that you can study other stuffs?

4) What should I do now with the essays - think of question-specific essays or just keep brain-storming?

5) What is a graded analytical paper?

6) What is all the info parts on the naviance for?

Things I learnt from soccer

If you quit today, you'll quit for the rest of your life

Hold your heads up after a defeat

Things about me

1/ What I like to do: I like a stretch of street near my house. It was a one-way road along the riverside. Before coming to Singapore, I went with my mom to exercise there in the evening. I ran (I was training for 2.4km -the first thing I worry about studying in Singapore) while my mom walked. I don't need that training anymore so I would just take a walk with my mom. She would now and then said that she's tired and we looked for a bench to sit. I like sitting at the bench, looking at the the other side of the city on the opposite bank. I usually talk to my mom at lengths about my life or any random things that we can think of. Since coming to Singapore, whenever I think about my city, I think about that road.

2/ The biggest obstacle that I have overcome: breaking out of the illusion that all my plans will end as I want. I guess because I have always been well taken care of by my parents and well prepared by many plans that they have for me, I have always thought that things will go well for me. I have got a lot of successes at a very early age. I appeared in a full-length program on national TV and had girls writing to me. Before coming to Singapore, I thought that I would succeed just like how "many" Vietnamese students did as I read their storied on the newspaper. Since being in Singapore, many plans that I drew for myself would probably die prematurely. I used to antagonize over those failed plans, but over time, I have realized that many successes that I have today have never been expected. Actually, I enjoy being a "nobody" here, without all the speculations that I thought I need to fulfill and many self-imagining pressures that I thought other people place on me.

3/ The biggest obstacle that I'm facing: how to enjoy life and be serious at the same time. I have got to know friends who can enjoy their life much better than me while they can still surpass me in many aspects. I categorize them as either genuine geniuses, who can find it relatively easy in many things that they embark on, and those who truly love their work. I'm still looking for, and I think with the freedom of working on what I like in a university, I can find a "serious work" that I enjoy.

4/ My childhood dreams:

To have a Lego set: I got it when I was in Grade 3. I remember that it was a rainy day and I actually didn't know where to buy, so my father and I walked into a bookshop near my primary school after class. My father bought me a Lego set there. It cost 10$. I knew that it was fake (my father didn't), but I knew a real one would just be too expensive for my father. Anyway, I was happy with the gift.

5/ My dream: when I was in primary school, I once read that if Bill Gates can actually pay (by all the fortune he has) to turn the whole Sahara dessert into a green land. So I used to dream of becoming as rich as Bill Gates to do so. Now I know that Qaddafi actually attempted and had, in contrast, severely depleted the underground reservoir of Sahara. I now want to be an architect to one day create a master plan to de-desertification Sahara. But first, I want to design my city. I want to build houses that don't have steps because I used to run around when I was a kid and I think steps are the most hazardous things to kid. I like riding a bike, or a motorbike in the afternoon in my city and enjoy the sea breeze blowing against me. So I would make everyone enjoy the wind as I do. I used to walk down to bottom of the rive when the tide was low and tried to catch the little crabs living there. So I would make the river the heart of my city and everyone would enjoy it as much as I did.

6/ What I'm good at: a bit of a few things. I used to draw a lot, and I think I was pretty good at it (back then). I was fed up when I was made to participate in so many city level, district level and sub district level drawing competitions. I like drawing the countrysides while such competitions only want me to draw advocating topics. Some time in grade 6, I stopped drawing to dedicate more time for studying.

I think I was above average in Physics and Maths. Given me enough time to ponder upon, I would understand most of the stuffs in Physics that I have read about. But I'm not at the level of Olympiad winners and I'm really bad at time-constraint contests.

In the last few years, I have been enjoying reading on environmental and social topics. I like Physics, robotics, engineering and thinking about environmental and social issues, and drawing at the same time, so I think that I would much enjoy if I can do all those things together. A piece of everything.

7/ What's so weird about me: I appreciate the fact that I'm quite normal (in a positives sense). I have no defects (as far as I know) with my body. Except my voice. My voice was strangely (and annoyingly high) and is heavily entrenched by my local dialect's accent. And it used to be extremely unpleasant for me to be in soccer because we are all expected to shout a lot during a match. My teammates always joke about my shouting "Come on, Raaaafflesssss", which, if I'm not careful, may end up in a very high tone at the end (in one such occasion, I think the whole spectators' stand of another school laughed). But I think I'm fine with that. I read this quote "Don't quack like a duck, soar like an Eagle". I guess for me, since the duck in my really wants to "sing" out loud, I would rather be a really really quacking duck than a quiet one.

8/ My favorite quote: "Live on rocks, don't belittle rocks' roughness. Live in a slum, don't belittle the slum's poverty ... Wherever you go, never feel inferior about who you are and where you come from". That was 3 lines from a Vietnamese poem about what a father told his son. I really do not like the Vietnamese people that I know of who try to be "cool" by trying to use English words when talking to me. They would keep the subjects in Vietnamese (I guess because the Subjects in Vietnamese language indicates the person's age, relation or superiority) and make up the rest of the sentence in English. To me, learning a language is not substituting one by another (especially something that I have learnt for most of my 18 years). I'm proud that I'm comfortable in communicating in both Vietnamese (at a sophisticated level if necessary) and English (at a relatively sophisticated level, I think)

9/ What's annoying about me: I like to give "comments" and criticisms. I pay the most attention to what people that I care about talk, and tend to blank out when people that I have developed some slight dislike for. Once at the end of last year, I asked my civic tutor to let me have a chance to talk to the class. I talked to them about no matter how boring the teachers are, we should keep quiet because there are those who are slower need to listen, about how we should be more honest to each other about how we think about them, and about how some of us should go out of the usual circle of friends and join some CCA or do something with people that, at a cursory glance, not-your-type. I did not do that for the sake of impressing my CT (although I know she will eventually write my teacher's recommendation). It was actually the foremost reason that makes me hesitant to speak up. But I know that there are some in our class who agree with me with such things and I think I usually have the urge to voice out my opinions to those that I'm concerned about. At the end, my CT said "I could see the future PM of Vietnam". I never expected such a comment.

10/ What 's not interesting about me: I'm full of worries (for now). My grades have not been good although I think I can perform better for Prelims. I have not taken SATs. I have stopped drawing for so long that my skill level has been stagnating for years.

my weakness: sometimes it's hard for me to enjoy life. There are times when I take it too seriously and that impedes my effort.

fuck this

My RJ achievements can go something like this:

Befriended with Kai Yu, who's going to Olins, possibly

Befriended with Vincent and Daniel Lim, who are going to MIT

Befriended with Chu Junyi, who's going to Standford.

Last match and a mediocre weekend

We had the last match together - RJ Soccer 2009-2010

It has been an unbelievable journey. So arduous, so long and so much sacrifices involved. But I really meant it when I said I would never have been myself now (so much better, I consider) if I otherwise have not been soccer.

And this was a peaceful weekend. Just like the what I have always had in the last 9 moths or so. Match yesterday, a Saturday. It seemed to suck out a lot of my energy, physical and emotional. I have been sleeping much of the time today. But at least I did not have that feeling of losing that I normally have during weekends.

Actually, I feel quite empty.