BenLow's blog

I think the title of the post speaks for itself. Thought I'd do a bit of reflection on my life as a Rafflesian. How its been an utter miracle, and a great joy and privilege. Not forgetting those encounters with God along the way as a Rafflesian. Lets go all the way back to P6 Prelims. At that point of time I was a total slacker. I was smart, yes. But not hardworking enough. I tried my best, and ended up with a 243 for prelims. I was preparing myself to go to AC for best case scenario, but even that seemed a little bleak. Then came a miracle. 4A*s. I was seriously doubtful about chinese, the maths papers was tough (thats what they say every year huh), and the english paper made me a little uneasy. But as always I was in slacker mode. I still don't know how it happened. I thought it was a conspiracy of sorts. Perhaps they were targeting half blood GEPs like me? I made it to RI. Life there was as slacky as ever. The occasional project, sheets of homework came in. Some were finishe...

The hols are here! Which means... Mug. Aww man. Besides studies a lot of things are happening... My bros are going away for one week from 7-14 June, and my house will be undergoing renovations for about 3 weeks somewhere near that time period. Not forgetting my NS checkup on 8 June, YE retreat on 2-3 June and Pirates on 30-31 May. Seems like its still gonna be quite a busy holiday. And if theres one thing I've learnt to appreciate over the past weeks, this'll be the second most important one: its better to be busy than idle. *** Soccer Champs League final! Overall it was a really keyed down affair. Not much hype surrounding it unlike 2 years ago. I think its cos people believe that such a rare occurence would never repeat itself. Going down 3-0 then coming back to tie and to win it on penalties. It is near impossible, and people are convinced that it'll never happen again. So that probably explains the lack of hype surrounding the match. Eventually: AC Milan 2 Liverpool 1 A...

6 years of guitaring... Coming to an end tomorrow. I'll miss it. The memories are all coming to me. The very first camp and practise I attended with Toh, my very first taste of a guitar concert, my first attempt at SYF, my first exco meeting，my first guitar camp，my first interview, my first conducting session, my first guitar outing, my first election speech, my first small group piece, my first soccer match with RIGE, my first guitar trip to Spain! All those wonderful things come rushing back. 6 years is no mean feat. Staying loyal, staying commited, and staying as a Rafflesian guitarist. There were times when it was tough. The extra meetings, the extra pracs, the extra effort. But it was well worth it. *** Guitar Our swansong: Del Fuego. Our last chance to make an impact. And we did all we could to make it a success. Thank you all my wonderful guitar mates who made it such a wonderful experience. Thank you friends for coming to support us, to see us take our final bow. Concert da...

Hmm seems like something is wrong with blogger... The posting window is a bit weird... If you compare both blogger and livejournal, I'd think that livejournal is slightly better, especially with its built in friends network. You don't have to keep navigating back and forth in that way I guess. And hmms trying multiply now. *** So3H Civics was another touchy topic for me. How to look after your finances. Well... I do agree that money is important in this world, but I ask myself... Should I try and hoard up money that I don't need at present just to satisfy my wants? Mr Wong talked a bit about investment and doubling your savings and the amount of money we have through smart money managing. Hmm... Have a few thoughts about that. As a believer I've always let God lead me in the way I spend. I never requested for extra money from my parents, I never requested for extra stuff like the latest clothes, latest CDs, latest guitars, latest movies etc etc. All the money I have goe...

For me getting a totally empty weekend is such a rarity... So I'd better use it wisely. So far my to do list has got 7 items waiting to be done so after this post I'm gonna start on them. *** Soccer Man U lost 3-0 to AC Milan, ultimately losing 5-3 on aggregate. Didn't watch the match, but judging by the response of all the Man U fans out there it was a very dismal performance by Man U. The constant loss of possession was horrible, and it seemed that Man U got out-muscled. Champs League Final: AC Milan vs Liverpool. Last week's EPL games: Chelsea 2 Bolton 2 Everton 2 Man U 4 Blackburn 4 Charlton 1 Man City 0 Aston Villa 2 Middlesbrough 2 Tottenham 3 Portsmouth 2 Liverpool 1 Sheffield 1 Watford 0 Wigan 0 West Ham 3 Arsenal 3 Fulham 1 Reading 1 Newcastle 0 *** Guitar Exco selections just ended a few days ago... And after the voting the old exco met immediately to select a new exco. The process was quite effecient. The first consideration was the votes, second consideratio...

Just finished watching the champs league match... Liverpool vs Chelsea. And... Liverpool won the match 1-0, tying with Chelsea on aggregate, then going on to win the resultant penalty shoot out by a convincing margin of 4-1. Not much to say here. Its been a not very productive weekend and May Day holiday in terms of school work. Managed to finish my maths assign and maths tutorial early. Still have lots of chem to do though. My work ethic sometimes stumbles me I think. If I can't seem to do a certain question of a certain tutorial, and then try and do a different tutorial my mind will keep on wandering back to the earlier question. So I get distracted. Well hopefully I can clarify those doubts in class later today. I think some of them have done chem tutorial. Then I can move on and get my H3 bio mindmaps and Econs assignment done. Otherwise I'd be stuck forever thinking about those doubts. I hope I don't get in trouble with Mrs Ng though haha. Haven't done the econs tu...

It is done. Well... I guess thats all thats needed to be said. The burden is gone, and thats all that matters. This week was much better, thanks to everyone around me for making it easier. Could tell that some people held back on purpose so I'd feel better. I guess that helped. Thank you. This week was full of pleasant surprises, not to mention birthday celebrations. And I believe that it was God who arranged everything, from the little things to the large. *** Eden-Sol It was Sam's birthday... And Eden-Sol went to Swensens to celebrate the concert, as well as his birthday. Picture time! Sam's birthday present from Eden-Sol! Sam with his present haha. We ate 2 regular earthquakes, and a firehouse happy birthday in total. We must've been ultra hungry. About 4 scoops of ice cream per person. *** S03H Day at the Museum! S03H's funky learning journey to the National Museum. More pics. Intro pic. Outside the National Museum. Aswin, Azrin and Vivek. The chandeliers are ...

Wow another week has just passed... And its getting nearer and nearer to the most deadliest month in my entire JC life in my opinion. Its down to the wire and I think I'm gonna be pretty high strung. Let me give you an outline, yes? RR Concert! ~ 13th April SYF ~ 19th April NAPFA! Hmm some people maybe wondering... What so tough about that? Haha. Lets go week by week. Monday - SYF Prac, Rach home at 9pm Tuesday - RR Prac, Reach home at 1130pm Wednesday - SYF Prac, Piano, Reach home at 930pm Thursday - H3 Bio, Reach home at 7pm Friday - RR Prac, Reach home at 1130pm Saturday - SYF Prac (Morning), Worship Prac (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th weeks, evenings) Sunday - Church Prac (Aft), Church, Grandparent's house (Eve) Mr Wong (or any subject teacher), if you're reading this... Spare me! Especially the first 20 days of April. I'm sacking everything else for the sake of RR Concert and SYF. Friends if you're reading, please help support me through encouragement, prayer and company....

Hey guys... Apologies for not blogging the past week. Have been busy with you know what. Yup piano. I'm kinda glad that this week was over, cos its been super hectic, stressful and draining. It feels great to have the burden of piano stuff off my back. This week has been a total blessing, and I couldn't have done it without God. Lets start from last Sunday shall we? *** YE Well Sunday was the the final day our dear pastor Rev Soon was joining us for service. He was transfered to St Hildas. The YE people made a nice card for him, his wife, and his daughter Amanda Soon. Rev Soon is a pretty nice guy. I'll miss him. Can't forget all the discipleship lay reader's training he gave me, and all the times he's talked to me about serving in worship and stuff. He's been a great blessing and encouragement to me... Fast forward to Thursday... YE gathering for the older guys. Paul, Jon, Kenneth, Gerald and I met up just to have a long chat. We met at some secret venue ...

Hey guys... Its been rather monotonous the past few days. Every single week its the same thing over and over again. Yup but I guess its gonna be like that when you have stuff to do. I've been waking up real late as well. Probably cos I've woken up at unearthly hours by my phone alarm. Frankly I don't know why it still rings even after I've switched it off. K I was bored so I took this pic haha. I guess it pretty much sums up my sianess... *** Eden-Sol K on to more interesting stuff. Thursday... Actually I kinda forgot what I did for that entire day until I saw the Deathnote book that Choon Wing lent me. So I sorta guess that there was something to do with the band... Oh. It was our first bible study session? If I'm not mistaken. Or was that on Tuesday? Argh hols are messing with my head. But yeah if I remember correctly, I came ultra super early and went to Guoren's house to fiddle around with guitar. But in the end they decided to go to the Macs at Toa Payoh. S...

Well, the holiday vibes are setting in, yet I'm still the busy guy that I usually am during the hols. Every single day of the past week was spent doing something important for CCA, band, church, chem SPA or PW. (Actually some not very important) Can't wait for December. Perhaps I'll be less busy then. Or maybe not. *** Guitar Last monday was the final guitar practice before we took a break cos of the PW presentation season. And I was pretty disappointed by the practice cos of a few reasons. I did have fun with the section 2 peoples and with some S03N people at lunch after the practice, but overall it was quite morale deflating. It began innocently enough with sectionals. I took section 2 cos Ling Ting wasn't there at practise, and I could see the section 2 people were practising hard enough. Their pace was pretty ok, some of them were faster than others, so that made it pretty hard to have practise as an entire sectional. One thing I was disappointed about was that some...

Today's Open House was ok I guess. A bit pointless for me, but yup it was alright. Reached school at 1 to man the Raffles Rock booth, then manned the Guitar booth from 2 to 3. I handled curious people pretty well, a few of them asked about guitar, rock and jazz so I just told them whatever I knew. The time at the rock booth was pretty well spent, since there was a guitar there. Spent some time practising, played Chasing Cars and Just The Girl just for fun. The problem was that one of the strings on the guitar had snapped so pretty soon the novelty wore off. The good thing was that it drew some people, the bad thing was that the drums at the neigbouring booth totally drowned us out when they started playing. Raffles Rock's booth. Uncompleted... Raffles Rock. Duh. At the guitar booth it wasn't as pleasant. Almost no one turned up, although there were a few curious people who passed by in ones or twos. With a slide show on a laptop, a few picks and a classical guitar there wa...

10 days. Its been that long since I've updated. And thats quite enough time to think about pre and post 17 stuff. 1000 apologies to you people who've been checking frequently. To keep it safe, come here every week or so to see the new post. Once you've seen it, make a mental note to come the next week exactly at the same time or slightly later haha. Alrighty... Now I have to cover 10 days in one long blog post. Sorry to the mean guy who tagged my board. This one's gonna be longer. I think. *** Lets start from last thursday. Ok maybe I'll go through both thursdays at once. Hmm. I think I'll make it more fun. So lets play a game. See who can guess which events fall on which thursdays (ok I'll add in some of the stuff on fridays as well). - Played Lacross for PE (Was on winning team the whole way = no need to do push ups) - Advance Handball for PE (Didn't do much, I'm the only guy from my class) - Jheeva, Christine and Carol got stuck in the lift (Hahah...

Paiseh... Hey guys... Sorry about the previous angsty post. Just felt I had no control at all over the situation, and thus wasn't very happy about it. Well, now there are much more important things to think of besides that kind of thing. So... I'd like to forget about that and just continue on with life. I really think that I say way too much on my blog, however, I feel accountable to all you people out there to the extent that I have to say how I truly feel and not hide my intentions or my true feelings. I just hope that this won't have any adverse impacts on my well-being. However I need you guys to realise that I cannot disclose certain things to you guys to protect others and myself of course. Thanks for understanding how I feel, and thank you for being there for me. On an unrelated (yet somewhat related) note, I suddenly realise why qq keeps changing her blog address. *** Today woke up feeling really sleepy... Only 14 hours of sleep in 3 days = one sleepy guy. Hooray f...