5th Post for English: SNYS

Good evening, dear distinguished readers. As you can see from the title of this post (unless you're blind, in which case I'm surprised you could even find my blog), this is the fifth and final "serious" post for English; a milestone in the soon-to-be history of this blog.
If I recall correctly, my last post was a little disappointing, opting to write about subjects about school rather than some other bombastic, fantastic subject.
For this particular post, however, I have decided to write about a CCA of mine, which I just attended about 2 hours ago. It's called the SNYS, or Singapore National Youth Sinfonia. If you haven't heard of it, don't panic. SNYS is not a CCA in my school, it's a sort of external CCA that I attend not in school but at the MOE CCA Branch somewhere in town.
SNYS is basically a concert orchestra, rather like the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) except that SNYS is only for youths, as the name implies. It's made up of 4 different instrument sections: strings (violin, cello, etc), woodwinds (flute, bassoon, etc), brass, (trumpet, tuba, etc) and percussion(drums, etc). If you're going to ask me what instrument I play, get ready for a big surprise: I play the cello (crowd gasps in awe).
If you don't know what a cello looks like, here's a picture:

Yes, I can play a cello, even if it seems big for someone of my height (I am NOT revealing it).
But less about that. Anyway, I attend SNYS twice a week, playing classics like Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Elgar, and so on. If you're going to ask me, they are all famous musical composers whom you would know if you had any musical background.
currently, we're playing three pieces: Mendelssohn's Fingal's cave and Smetana's (don't ask me who he is) Sarka and My Homeland. If you want to listen to these pieces, click on the links at the bottom of this post.
We have concerts twice a year, usually at the Victoria Concert Hall. By the way, our next concert is in March and you can attend if you like. All the management is asking from you would be $5.If you are interested, let me know and I'll tell you the exact details.
I find it quite enjoyable to play in the SNYS as it exposes me to what performing in a concert is like. It also requires a lot of teamwork as we have to all play together in order to be synchronised in our playing.
Well, that's the end of this post, and the "Epic Five". Thanks for reading, I'll be back - hopefully!

Links:
Fingal's Cave
Sarka
My Homeland

4th Post for English: A Day in School

Dear friends and fellow bloggers, welcome to the 4th "formal" blog post for English homework. are you ready for another absolutely breathtaking, exhilarating and spellbinding blog post?
Then you've come to the wrong place!
Unfortunately, I've decided to write about something a tad more mundane than animation or cartoons this time - school. The Horror! The Horror!
Don't worry, I'm just kidding (about school being horrifying, sort of). Actually secondary school's not that mundane as you think.
Before we begin, here's a lovely view of my school, Victoria School.











Alright, this is how my day in school went.

I woke up at 6am, ate breakfast, sat on the school bus and arrived at about 6.50am. I then proceeded to walk the long and arduous journey up 3 flights of stairs to the fourth level to reach my class (if it's only 3 flights of stairs now I shudder to think what it's like in secondary 3 and 4 to walk all the way to the 7th level).
At about 7.15am, the pupils in my class walked sluggishly up to the parade square one at a time, resulting in us being one of the last classes to reach the parade square. After assembly, we all went back to class and were given a scolding by our maths teacher Ms Lim who said that if we weren't up at the parade square by 7.15 from the next day on, we would all be told to stand during assembly.
The first 4 periods, History and English, passed by in a blur. The only mildly interesting thing that happened then was Wei Jie, class joker, being told to squat in front of the class for playing a fool (no offense to Wei Jie, if you're reading this).
After that, recess. 3 nuggets, down the hatch!
Then, Chinese. My Chinese teacher was fuming because some people copied each other's homework. For the next period, we were forced to listen to her soporific voice as she droned on about Chinese fables.
Literature was next. All this while, a kind of tension had been building up in class. We might actually get our Literature essays back today. Our teacher, Mr Tan, announced that he had marked our essays BUT we did not receive them today. What an anticlimax.
Finally, Maths. For once, our whole class fell into complete silence as we took our long-awaited Math test. Ms Lim then proceeded to teach us more algebra until it was about 5 minutes past our release time.
That's about it - another typical school day. Once again, sorry if you were expecting something a little more interesting. See you next time!

3rd Post for English: Comic Strips Animated part 2

Hi all, it's your favourite person, back to write yet another fantastic, Pulitzer-winning blog post!
This blog post is the much anticipated sequel to the previous post (though I never did mention anything about a sequel). Although the title is still "Comic Strips Animated", the number of references to comics for this post will be about zilch.
What the topic of this post is really about is more about the software for professional animation mentioned in passing in the last post, Adobe Flash cs4.
Yes, Flash has become a keen interest of mine since about a year ago. I picked it up in the then IT club in Victoria School (now known as Infocomm Club) during one of the training sessions. It has become one of my favourite pastimes, and I like nothing better than to spend my free time in front of the computer "flashing" (I am referring to using Flash and NOT anything otherwise), animating homicidal stick figures or creating little minigames.
Anyway, more about Flash. Adobe Flash, formerly known as Macromedia flash when it was still owned by Macromedia, is a multimedia platform formerly owned by Macromedia, now developed and distributed by Adobe. It is a popular program used to to add animations and interactivity to web pages or else make advertisements or even games. It uses a powerful scripting language called ActionScript. It publishes files in different formats, usually the SWF (or Shock Wave Flash movie) format and can be viewed on several systems and devices like Adobe Flash Player.
Now, less of the boring things and let's move on. Since having been introduced to Flash, I have created a number of little projects mostly for my own amusement, like:







Okay, I know that's a little stupid but that's an example of what I like to do with Flash. I'll try to upload some of the games I've made soon.
So, that's it for this particular hobby of mine and this post. See you next time!

2nd Post for English: Comic Strips Animated

Hi all, I'm back with another exciting blog post! Today, I'll be talking about (drumroll please). . . animating comic strips! Doesn't that sound amazing and extraordinary?
Before I get into the thick of things, however, here's a little something on the subject of today's post.
There was once an absolutely fabulous American comic strip called "Calvin and Hobbes", about a six year old boy, Calvin, and his imaginary friend, Hobbes the tiger. Calvin is hyperactive, obnoxious (mostly in the presence of the opposite gender) and rebellious. He doesn't do his homework, annoys his parents, plots "evil" against his neighbour and classmate Susie and generally makes a nuisance of himself. Hobbes, on the other hand, is somewhat quieter, more reserved and has more common sense then Calvin on the whole. He likes to think of himself as "charming", "sophisticated" but also a "ferocious, man-eating tiger". Needless to say, the two are fun loving and enjoy each others' company most of the time as they go about gallivanting or planning their next misadventure.
This comic strip, written by Bill Watterson, has captured the hearts of many, even citing some to call this the best comic strip ever.
Here's an example of one of my favourites:
















Cute, right?

Anyway, I was looking at this particular strip when I realised: Hey, why not animate this?
The next thing I know, I had opened Adobe Flash cs4 (a powerful animating software) and started to animate the "movie" in which a tiger eats a stick man.
The final result (click the picture to see the animation):So, basically that's what I did today in my spare time. See you soon!

1st Post for English

Hi everyone I'm back! Sorry to disappoint you but this is a serious blog post that will be graded for English, so unfortunately there will be no "random" things in this post. Sigh.
I'm writing about something that took place today on the bus home from school. Usually, sitting on a creaky, slow SBS bus that looks and feels like it's going to break down any minute is not my cup of tea, but recently, the number 155 bus service has been upgraded to one of the sleeker, newer buses. Great!
These new buses are faster, cleaner, less creaky and above all, electronic! Now it's goodbye to bus drivers sauntering out of the bus to smoke on the pretense of changing the sign for the current bus route; they can simply press a button and the sign is changed!
Anyway, during the bus trip, I noticed this man sitting somewhere in the front. He was in his late forties at a guess, wearing a white shirt and khaki trousers. Actually, I didn't take much notice of him until he leaned over to his neighbour and said in a rather loud voice," Isn't it sad how Singaporeans call their city 'clean and green' when they litter so much? I mean, look at all this rubbish on this floor!"
He nudged an empty McDonald's fries carton, several crumpled tissues and a straw with his shoe.
"Why don't they practice what they preach? It's so sad how people litter so much these days," he said, sighing dramatically.
"Sir, if you want to do something about it, no one's stopping you from writing to the newspaper or disposing of that litter. " his neighbour, a Malay woman, replied. She was looking slightly irritated as she had been typing a long SMS.
I was surprised by this man's reaction to all the litter on the floor of the bus. After all, almost nobody bothered to pick up litter or even comment about it in public. Usually they would just walk right past or find a different seat on the bus. Maybe the man was a foreigner and didn't know how things are done here in Singapore.
Still, I suppose he has a point. We should practice what we preach. Litter is becoming a serious issue in Singapore as more and more people are prone to throwing their used tissues, sweet wrappers, etc. wherever they please rather than in the dustbin. I feel that we should do something about the situation before it gets out of hand.
That concludes this blog post. See you next time!

P.S. MR HAMILTON PLEASE READ THIS!!!

7th post

Hey people, it's the seventh post in this blog! Hooray!

Sadly this means that this should be the last "informal" post for a while, cos' I officially have to use it for English homework starting from 12am today (about 13 hours ago).

Depending on what happens, I'll continue this blog after the homework is done or let it die altogether.

So goodbye, and see you next time!

PS. To Mr Hamilton: this is NOT part of my homework!

Legendary stuff

Yo peoples! How's life? Probably worse then mine. HAHAHA!
Anyway, lately some people have been asking about the title of this blog. What do I mean by "the Stuff of Legends"?
Truth is, I got the idea for this blog name while drinking milo. One minute I'm slurping brown chocolate stuff and the next minute - Hmm, milo is a drink, made on Earth, David Beckham is from Earth too and he's a football legend! Click! Stuff - legend - the Stuff of Legends! Hurray!

Lolz.

Next. What exactly is so legendary(or in Ris Low terms, Boomz) about this blog?

Let me give you an example of why this blog's posts are so legendary.

Satay
Crumpets
Toothpaste
octopus

qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm

You see? Pure genius!

And this, my friends, is the legend of this blog's title.

Sayonara! Until we meet again . . .