"I'm bored!"

     Another essay, haha.. Why do I keep posting them? you might ask. Well, I spent approximately 2 hours++ working on each of them (I know, that time is unrealistically long for O level standard) because I try to put in as many 'cool' phrases as possible from my phrasebook :) So I guess, rather than letting my 2 hours++ work goes to waste, why not put it on the blog, and see what others would say? Anyway, my attempt to improve my command of English by mugging those phrases did not really work in the end, as you will immediately enter the 'auto-pilot' mode once you start doing the exam, and hence, have no time to recall all the phrases you have memorised in the past few weeks (yeah! :D). Here's the essay:

‘I’m bored!’ is so often the cry of teenagers today. What could be done about this? (GCE ‘O’ Level 2009)

It is very shocking that numerous teenagers nowadays find their lives to be tedious and dull. Teenage life has so often been associated with myriads of possibilities and challenges, which are supposed to add hues to their lives. Therefore, what happened to the teenagers of the present time? How could they say that their lives are simply trite? There are numerous reasons that give rise to this problem. The most prominent ones are teenagers’ attitude towards school, lack of challenging activities and their failure to realise the multitude of excitement that lie in daily activities. Hence, by engaging in activities that suit their interest, socialising with friends and participating in various adventure activities, teenagers’ lives will surely be enriched with mirth and jubilation, instead of constant boredom.

One of the reasons why teenagers find their lives to be tedium is because they are too caught up with school matters. For most teenagers, school is actually not the most interesting thing in their life yet they treat school as the single most important thing in their life. No wonder they find their lives to be bland! Youths must come to realisation that school is not the main thing in their lives and thus they should not be defined by it. They must instead start to treat school like a day job. Just as a writer with a day job as a cashier would not think of himself as a cashier, teenagers should not think of themselves as school students. Alternatively, they should find out about what truly interest them and do it in their free time. My friend, Luccan, always dozes off at school as he finds it to be uninteresting. However, he is a computer savvy and when he is doing programming, he could be totally engrossed in it as it gives him great elation. Indeed, doing activities that suit your interest is one of the ways to relieve boredom and make teenagers’ lives more meaningful, instead of just filling it with only school matters which they might find to be dull and lacklustre.

Another reason why some adolescents lack in engagement is because they are unable to realise that they can actually find exhilaration in their daily activities, for instance, socialising with friends. This is another effective way to escape from the monotony of their lives as the friends around them actually offer a whole new gamut of excitement. You can chat with your friends about any kind of things, play games, and many other things. As for myself, I fervently believe that socialising with friends is full of challenges and requires strategies. It is different from friendship, where you sincerely involve your hearts and feelings, and accept your friends for who they are. Socialising is much more intricate and tricky. That is why although two boys may be equally nosy about a lot of things, one is called “kaypo” – a Hokkien term for busybody, while the other could get away with it. This difference in treatment towards them is caused by the difference in their socialising ability: one might be more adept at it while the other is just bad at it. That is why I love to socialise with people as I could experiment with a lot of exciting things which would broaden my perspective and drive away my boredom.

Lastly, lack of challenges could also be a reason for the lack of excitement in teenagers’ lives. Therefore, to dispel boredom, teenagers can engage in multifarious adventure activities. By participating in adventure activities, such as Outward Bound, adventure camps, rock climbing, etc, teenagers can challenge themselves to overcome an impregnable and impossible barrier of failure that always daunts them. They are given the chance to stretch themselves to their limits and explore many areas outside their comfort zones; something that every teenager craves. These adventure activities are certainly more than exciting and can relieve the tedium that teenagers usually experience. After they finish the adventure, they will surely have been rejuvenated both in body and mind that they are able to resume their monotony and stop complaining about it.

R.I. Fitzhenry once said, “Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity.” Indeed, in summary, uncertainty and mystery are the two things that will relieve teenagers’ boredom. There are always many ways to spice up teenagers’ otherwise bleak and tedious lives, such as by engaging themselves in activities that suit their interests, socialising with friends and participating in adventure activities. The cry “I’m bored!” should not be heard especially from teenagers as they have a multitude of opportunities to do fascinating and exhilarating activities that would surely dispel their tedium. 

Change: The Essence of Existence

     Hmm.. I need to do something to fill this blog.. I guess I'll just post some of my essays that I have written at school and been checked by my English teacher :) I made them a few weeks before the O level examination, in a desperate, last minute attempt to improve my English so that I could obtain the ever-elusive A1. Uh, well, not a very good idea, as it is very difficult to improve your language in such a short time -.- Well, another lesson to be learnt: not every thing can be done in the last minute (although there are myriads of others that can be done, mugging, for instance :p). Anyway, here is the essay:

Change, they say, is ‘the essence of existence’. How has your world changed since you were in kindergarten? (MGS – Preliminary Examination 2010)
           Charles Darwin once said that it is not the “strongest” nor the “most intelligent” of the species that will survive. It is the one that is “the most adaptable to change”. I fervently believe in his profound and true as I have experienced it myself. The only reason why I am able to “survive” despite the harrowing trials and calamities in my life and become who I am now is because I perpetually adapt myself to my ever-changing world. It has changed so drastically since I was in kindergarten. It kept changing throughout my primary and secondary school years, and I believe that it is still changing even now.

My kindergarten school days were filled with tears and resentment. I loathed school from the moment I stepped into it. I hated having to part from my mother and father, my “comfort zones”. I wailed many times at school at even the slightest provocation. For instance, I would burst into tears when I realised that I had forgotten to bring my pencils. My unforgiving friends aggravated my predicament. Instead of consoling me, they made a circle around me, teasing me. What a ‘pleasant’ experience at school! Since then, I resented school so much that at one point, in my childishness, I told my father that I would rather sell newspapers around traffic lights: something that is commonly done by extremely poor children in Indonesia who could not afford to go to school.

Fortunately, I did not stay the same. Primary school was a new chapter of my life, one that I started with iron will and determination. Thanks to my parents, kindergarten school teachers and friends, I was now able to realise the importance of school. I faced a new world of education, one that consists of more challenging subjects and lessons. Hard work had become an integral part of my life. Moreover, I could no longer play the whole day long as I had an insurmountable amount of homework. Naturally, I also came to realise that there were more facets to school life than just academic matters. I got to know more friends with multifarious characters and personalities. There was Amanda, the brilliant one, Ellen the bashful one, Malvin the rude one, and many others. Of course, adjustment on my part was crucial for me in order to be able to befriend them all. I learnt to handle different people differently.

Canisius College, a renowned single sex secondary school was the next phase of education that I underwent. By that time, I had become quite adept at doing whatever academic matters required by the school. Nevertheless, as the saying “change is the only constant” goes, once again I had to go through various changes in order for me to be able to survive in this new environment. I learnt that the topic of conversation of my friends had evolved: from just talking about our favourite cartoon on television, we now started to talk about more mature things, such as sexuality, a ‘hot’ topic for teenagers with raging hormones. Dirty jokes about sexuality had become the norm of this stage. Therefore, I adapted to that environment and started to talk about it too. More importantly, I also learnt to manage my time better so I could still finish my work, study and have sufficient sleep as I had to wake up early in the morning. This was because the school was a long distance away from my house and it took me around 40 minutes by car to reach there.

By the time I started my study in St Joseph’s Institution, a secondary school in Singapore, the talks and jokes about sexuality had become lacklustre. Yet I still had to adapt to another set of situations and challenges. The diverse backgrounds of my friends who had come from various countries, such as Vietnam and Singapore, posed a problem for me who only used to interact with the Indonesians. I discovered that cultural backgrounds had a strong bearing on the way my friends interacted with each other. For example, I learnt that my Singaporean friends would really appreciate it if I told them my name first before asking theirs during our introduction. I knew about this because when I asked my friend’s name before I gave my name, he frowned at me, as though I was an exotic exhibit from overseas. Thus, I had become more understanding towards my friends from other countries.

Change has become part and parcel of my life. Throughout my life, I have experienced a multitude of changes, and without them all, I would not be able to “survive” and prevail over the challenges in my life. Change is indeed the essence of my existence.

Introduction

     Hi everyone :). Just a little bit of introduction. My name's Christian, or Chris for short. I am 17, currently studying in Singapore under scholarship. My hobbies are reading, playing guitar, chatting, browsing internet, swimming, talking about serious stuffs, etc. Well, about the last one, I seldom engage people in talks about serious matters but somehow a lot of people love to talk about them to me, and I enjoy listening to them and sharing my own perspectives. Frankly, I don't really like to write, but I like to think about a lot of stuffs. A little bit too much maybe :p. Hence, in order to preserve whatever I have been thinking, I reckon I should start writing it down.

      Now, about the name of the blog. 'Conjecture' basically means guesswork. Most of my posts would be about my perspectives about different things in life. I call them conjectures, as I can never say that my views are absolutely true; they are merely my guesswork based on various reasons. 'Mercurial' means changeable. Why mercurial?  

      "Change is the only constant" - Heraclitus

That. Thus, all my views in this blog are not fixed and static. I keep them open to changes as I obtain new ideas and gain new understandings.

     About the title "Life's not a game, there is no 'reset' button", well, I pick that up from a retreat organised by St Thomas community, my Catholic community in Indonesia. There are surely myriads of things in the past that we wish to change, and this is exactly why the existence of a 'reset' button would be convenient. But no. The 'reset' button never exists and we just simply can't change anything in the past. People often tell others, who have miserable past, to have a fresh start and begin all over again. However, I believe that in this life, we can never have a fresh start. We can only start now with everything that we have in the past and make a new ending. That is why, I will always try to do my best in this life regardless of whatever has happened in the past :)
     Connection between 'mercurial conjecture' and 'life's not a game'? In this life, one without a 'reset' button, we better learn from our mistakes and others' mistakes. Therefore, I would like to share my success and failures, and my conjectures about them so that I, and hopefully you readers, would learn something out of them.
     "Learn form the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them yourself" - Eleanor Roosevelt

     My current predicament? Actually, I started this blog simply to kill time during my holiday in Singapore. My holiday started on the 15^th of November, but thanks to the upcoming choir trip to Europe, I had to stay back. Yup, I'm stuck here! Yeah :D! Therefore, deciding that I'd better do something meaningful this holiday, I started this blog. Please feel free to drop some comments :). Thank you. And sorry for the bad English, hehe.. God bless you all.