Hohoho

my pc is still dead :( as in my desktop.

So how do I blog? I've to use my office computer(which thankfully is a laptop). But then this being an office laptop cant be used to play PC games, listen to itunes etc etc blah blah.

So how do I while my holidays away??

well..there's the PS2..... hah well i did do some constructive things! First off there the Singapore Chemistry Olympiad! I'm so so so happy for RJC's team (which i coordinated and conducted training with). Its nice to work with a bunch of bright(ok they got brains.. but its whether they use it or not.. heh heh) kids who like chemistry. Ok ok the good news is, that its over and the results arrrrrrrre (drumrolls..)
i) all our 15 candidates made it to final round and got a medal (not true for any other college)
ii) we had 6 gold medals (out of the total of 13 awarded, that means we swept half the golds) plus assorted silvers and bronze
iii) we had the top scorer for the entire olympiad (xinyang from 6D if you wanna noe; the olympiad had 2 theory papers and 2 practicals)
iv) we had the top scorer for the theory papers (ben chen from 3K)
v) RJC team won the best team award!

hmm we didnt get top for practical.. hmm will need to look into that
wooohoo welldone!

hmmm on top of that I found time to do quite a bit of reading (eh? so geeky? yar, i'm a geek)
wikipedia's great! I read about the origin of malays and malay language, and then more ancient civilisation stuff, on mesopotamia, the phoenicians (they're the canaanites), child sacrifice, the roman empire. It also interesting to think that, while Judaism is one of the many religions amongst the middle eastern region in ancient times, its offshoots Christianity and later, Islam came to influence such large populations of peoples and geographical areas. (These religions are called the Abrahamic religions; Abraham, Ibrahim, the same you know)

For Christianity, intense persecution under the Romans forced believers to scatter, and along with that, their message spread. But 2 other important events happened to bring Christianity into such dominance over the western hemisphere. 1) Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, 2) Emperor Theodisius I (he was the last emperor of a unified Eastern and Western Roman empire) made Christianity the state religion of the roman empire. Now if you didnt know, the Roman empire at its peak stretched from the British Isles, the whole western europe, much of the north coast of Africa (basically all round the mediterranean region) including some of egypt, Most of what is modern day turkey and iran(persia).

Western Roman Empire later collapsed under the barbarian invasions(quite a few other factors also cotributed to its fall, such as economics and currency issues, disease, and environmental degradation), in any case the Roman empire declined, but the incoming conquerors(the germans,gauls, franks, angles, saxon, vandal and visigothic "barbarians") assimilated and later adopted Christianity till modern day Europe (colonization of the rest of the workd by europeans then brought Christiantity everywhere...)

From the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), Christianity made its to Russia. Later on, the Ottomans conquered the Byzantine Empire (The capital at Constantiople itself became Istanbul later on) and brought in Islam (which now dominates the area)
Incidentally, the Ottomans were quite tolerant of the Christian church and also of Jews(the Sultan Bezayid II actually gave refuge to Jews escaping persecution from Europe) while the Protestants and Catholics went at each other's throats in Europe, executing heretics, purging Jews and all...

ehh quite enough talk for now, you can read all these for yourselves; but really, some knowledge of history is so useful, especially for us young people who view many things, including religion in the modern world through simplistic assumptions, when in fact many factors eg social, political, geographical and cultural go into making the world what it is today.

Oh and if you like, Greek mythology is pretty fun too, think Hercules, Achilles.. ahh the body of greek gods (and goddesses) are so fantastic! Did they workout in a gyms with persoanl trainers or sth?