Need to:

1. Open my eyes to the variety of people around me, their nature, their strengths, their weaknesses, their 可爱之处, their ways of life. Need to form images of interesting, real life people in my mind as if I were friends to them.

2. Not think of myself as an unfortunate. The fact that I haven't achieved doesn't mean I'm deprived. It just means I haven't tried enough.

Names that I like and counting...

Ambrosia Parsley
Isis
晰，楚，霖，晴，筠，涵，紫淮、涵、璇、萱，忆涵，易璇，觅柔，寄柔，枫，桐，继，季，济，寂，怀璧，宇彤，霜卉vs雨桐，凝卉，慕晴、霜、云、雪，映寒、涵、晗

张（四）（二），张（三）（二）
蒋（一）（二），蒋（二）（一）

The Raffles degree

http://www.zaobao.com/edu/pages4/edunews090107.shtml

Well.. I haven't been through the Raffles experience in its entirety and can't verify 1st-person whether or not its inner workings are truly qualified to generate highly effective individuals for the society. Still the idea of further segregating the name from the grassroot population doesn't sound quite right. It's like people are already calling you "Elitist!" and you go "Most certainly I am". Even I could tell. It's time the education produces more warm and less smug people. Limited resources, need for efficiency, alright. But the "right education track" is suffocatingly over-glorified. The only way for an individual to make the right decisions in his/her life would be to go to the correct schools. If things go right, out at the other end you get people who'd make the right decisions for the country, or people who just don't care. Except for an apartment, a wedding, kids' education, new shopping centeres and tour packages. Could be I've just not met enough non-right-track Singaporeans, being a weird sort of right-tracker myself.

The grassrooters/heartlanders vs elitists battle is certainly at risk of stereotyping and over-generalization. Then again anti-intellectualism (generalized philosophy), the modern sentiment, isn't new on the Chinternet (the Chinese internet) as well. Will the PAP (am I confusing politics with education? But since when those two have been separate and Singapore's small anyway) ever anticipate the anti-intellectualism sentiment to develop into an actual threat to civil security? Or will they sort of "sink" further in self-righteousness (as much as I don't like to use the word used by over-zealous youths in opposition)?

(I realize it takes longer to get off the fence in the intellectual aspects than in the emotional ones of personal development. The latter molds the former but it takes time.)

Poor man's lesson-less thoughts on how to ski

Some stuff learnt about skiing:

1. It takes skiing whole seasons (not one weekend per year) to improve.

2. Observe.

3. Dare to try. Improvements are achieved after falling (after exceeding personal limit).

5. THINK of what went well, what went bad after having succeeded in navigating a slope. Not falling doesn't mean being good at or comfortable with the slope.

Now the following are tips to aggressively ski (From http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1608/is_1_18/ai_80957464/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1):

* Aim your chest directly downhill, regardless of the angle of your skis.

* Lean forward, not back. Hold your hands out in front of you, as if gripping a bicycle handlebar. Feel your ankle and foot press against the tongue of your boot, not against the heel.

* Unweight--but don't lift--the inside foot (the left foot if you're turning left, the right if you're turning right). Straighten the outside leg to about 15 degrees and drive it down into the snow, as if you are cornering on a bicycle.

* Constantly use your poles for pivoting and rhythm. Plant a pole to the inside of the foot in the direction you're turning and pull your body toward it.

* Don't muscle the turns. Flow. Let gravity do the work.