Here’s a description of how I did intensive study.

I first started by doing pass year questions. This helps me to know how far off the mark I am. It also scares me when i realise how little I actually know. When doing the questions I will not refer to notes or textbook. I just try with what I know. Even if it’s very wrong. Because we tend to remember our mistakes. After I correct my paper (a river of red), I’ll go through each question, study the notes that pertain to that question and do the question over again. If I still don’t quite understand, I’ll keep studying and trying until I do. (refer tip #6 and #8)

There came a point when I realised that I just didn’t know enough to do the questions, so I decided to study everything from the beginning. As I went through the textbooks, I began to spot those parts which can be turned in to exam questions. Began to take interest in all the list of things that should be memorised.

I started doing 45 minutes straight study (which includes trying questions, tip #4) followed by 10 minutes rest. I have read a study about rock music, rock music promotes memory, while classical music increases IQ. So I’ll just listen to 2 praise song while not thinking about anything. Then it’s back to study.

As time goes on, I managed to do 2-3 hours of non-stop study sessions. Again I stress that it is not the number of hours but rather the quality of study that matter (tip #3). During breaks, I’ll either spend time with God (affirms my purpose and draws encouragement, tip #1) or just play guitar.

Tip #9 Refrain From Television And Computer Games!
Over time, I watched less and less TV and was not online that often. I really suggest against watching TV and playing games on the computer while doing intensive studying. This is because it’ll dull your mind from being able to read and adsorbing efficiently.

Television shows and computer games are made to GRAB your attention while books wait for you to dig into them for the good stuff in it. If you keep watching television and play computer games, you get too used to having the information present itself instead of researching the information in books.

Tip #10 Maintain Your Health
So that’s how I do my intensive study. But all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. So I make sure I exercise. In fact I force myself to exercise. It’s good for your body and increases alertness. After all, your brain is part of your body. If your body fails, so will your brain.

Tip #11 Use Your Diet As An Advantage!!
Bananas are high in potassium which is essential for your brain to think. Take them as snacks. It’ll provide the mental stamina/alertness for you to continue studying.

Stay away from coffee. Caffeine will keep your body awake, not your mind. You’ll end up having your brain spent while your body is wide awake, that will cause you to have difficulty in resting which will destroy the study routine you’re in. Plus, caffeine losses its effect after your body gets used to it. So drink it only WHEN you need it.

Chilli was reported to be able to keep you alert. You can try that too.

Tip #12 Know Your Limit
You may study better at night. But it’s a trade off if you go on too long. You have to work with your body and your body has a set routine given by God. You work in the day, sleep at night. I really recommend you stop studying by 12am so that you can sleep by 1 am. It takes my brain 1 hour to brake until it goes to rest.

As you’re more and more into intensive study your brain will be more and more focused and alert. So you may not ACTUALLY feel tired. But just because you don’t feel tired, doesn’t mean your body isn’t tired. Know your limits, get enough sleep (at least 8 hours).

That’s all from me. All the best!!

Please refer to my anti-establishment movement here: Tagged, But Labeling.

I feel that random information about myself is as good as watching Astro’s failed channel the Non-dicovery Channel: All The Info You Don’t Need. Therefore I shall intentionally insert useful knowledge into The List of Fives. To make it the information sound important, I shall ascent it with bombastic phrases, technical jargon and side comments. Your IQ must be this high(-25) to read it.

The rules are:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning (when God created the universe, this means that this is a rather old game).
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post the player than tags 5 people and posts their names, than goes to their blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they done got tagged and to ask them to play and read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago (April 1998)?
1. I was involved in highly experimental human behaviour programming (studying).
2. As an effort to preserve sanctity of mind, I was engaged in was engaged in physical activities that stimulated my mind (playing).
3. I was involved in much construction and demolition of prototype materials (I played fake Lego).
4. Also involve in the NASA space program where I was in charge of testing miniature shuttle designs (played badminton).
5. Participated in tornado simulations often (made a mess everywhere)

5 things on my to-do list today
1. Blink – many ppl think I stare, which I don’t.
2. Trying to master psychokinesis – thinking myself out of the box!
3. Figure out why handphones can make phone calls but earphones can’t.
4. Attempt to gauge if a to-do list is viable
5. Displace and vary the lengths of 6 strings of different widths is a uniform manner in order to produce a frequency pattern (play guitar)

5 Snacks I enjoy
1. Gunny Snacks.
2. Suudzu – note:click on the word suudzu at the very end of the video.
3. Screams – erm no preference, either you scream or I scream.
4. Space food – biscuits
5. Breadfly – I like toss-ted bread.

5 Things I would do if I were a billionaire
1. Change my name to something more professional by buying Pronouns to address myself.
2. Spend it on a consultation company that specialises in spending billions.
3. Fund a research on whether it is possible to train a mouse to use a mouse for us to reduce carpal tunnel syndrome.
4. Start my own bank so that I can get higher interest payments and unlimited loan applications.
5. Make an earphone that actually works.

5 of my bad habits
1. Go to shoe shops and point to a pair of shoes while asking for tissue.
2. Wanting to be an Amish electrician.
3. Maling alut of typose.
4. Sue people for a sulk and battery.
5. Keep thinking that I can make phone calls with an earphone.

5 places I have lived
1. East side of my bedroom
2. South side of my bedroom.
3. Middle of my bedroom.
4. Whine and Dine room.
5. LIVING ROOM!!

5 jobs I’ve had
1. Entry/exit panel displacement specialist (I opened gates)
2. Organic forklift driver (I carried stuff)
3. Messdown/Cleanup Oscillator (I mess and clean things up often)
4. Limb Vibration Engineer (shake leg)
5. Subliminal Joke Agent (telling jokes that are just almost funny)

5 people I tag
1. Achmed
2. Mitch Hedberg
3. John Pinette
4. Umbilical Brothers
5. Michael Winslow

p.s. if you search the people i tagged on youtube, you’d find them entertaining. (side note: Mitch Hedberg may not be your thing)

Tip #6 Refer Refer Refer
When you’re studying something like Biology for example, when you come across DNA, don’t just remember Bio -> DNA. Look deeper and you’ll realise that this is actually a mix of chemistry and biology. Another example is when you’re studying Physics and you see Boyle’s Law, refer to Practical Chemistry’s Boyle’s Law also. Check the emphasis. When you start to merge information, you don’t have to remember two sets of Boyle’s Law when it’s the same. You’ll have less to remember and still be able to apply the concept.

Another example is when ever you see the book referring to a previous concept, for example when deriving a formula involving the motion of a ball rolling down a gradient. You’ll need to know linear and rotational motion’s formula. So refer to those concepts AGAIN as revision.

Tip #7 Practice Practice Practice
It’s not about knowing, it’s how you can apply the concepts. Doing exercises with books that give detailed answers are good. Regardless of whether you know how to do the question just try it. If you’re wrong, you’ll remember it better. If you get a question wrong, go and check in your notes the concepts involve and find out what you have misunderstood or overlooked. After you have found your mistake, re-study that sub-topic. And if you still can’t grasp it, back track and start from that chapter. If you still don’t seem to fully understand. Back track to previous chapters. Best to get your foundation right. Then keep on doing exercises.

Tip #8 Timing your final dash
Now we will discuss intensive study. We all have a learning curve to overcome. Two things to consider, how long does it take for you to overcome that learning curve? And how long before you peak (saturate) and cannot study on anymore? This is very important for your final dash towards exams. If you start too early, you may run out of steam and mess up. Start too late and you don’t have enough time to finish studying. It’s like running, runners dash in the last part of the race, when they start dashing is totally dependent on the runner. Each runner has his own speed and stamina. I started 2 months before STPM. I am most comfortable starting 3 months, it takes half a month to a month for me to settle into intensive study.

Considering that the next 30-40 years of your life pivots on the last 3-6 months before exams, I think it is an understatement to say that intensive study is a good idea.>

I will cover the aspects of intensive study in the next post.

In an effort to stop blogging like a girl, I have devised a plan that involves a topic only guys would like. Dance. Of course some girls will also be interested, they are the less feminine and the percentage is small. If for some random reason I got my facts wrong, I can always make a come back by quoting, ‘Fight fire with fire.’ as my actual plan.

To start things off, we have the ever random OK go – Do What You Want (wallpaper version)

Next we have the popping dancer, David Elsewhere (happens to be my favourite dancer so far) in his first Kollaboration appearance:

If you were impressed by David, you may want to check out his second Kollaboration appearance, not as shocking as the first, but still spectacular.

If you’re terribly bored and some how are not in the mood for artsy stuff, do consider Mr Bean’s dance moves.

Last but not least, we’ll end with a truly innovative way of excercising, OK – Here It Goes Again

If you just don’t get it, consider taking up Ping Pong,

I hope I’m blogging like a guy now. MUAHAHAHA. *ahem

That’s right. My pets are left on the dinning table.

I bought a vase, fake plants and marbles today. Filled it with water. I put my best fighting fish in it. Put it on the dinning table. I feel like a designer who has just finished a fashion show.

My mom discovered another bird’s nest. No, not in a bottle that has an air-tight seal in a “Brands” box up on the second cupboard from the left. But in the Jambu Air (custard apple) tree. I was expecting to see cute little birds. Well, erm… I saw this:

I’m beginning to blog like a girl… ARRRRGGGHHHHH. haha

At any one point you suddenly find yourself saying, “I can’t believe Cheng Yee likes animals!?” I’ll like to refer you to this post.

It’s been an interesting week. On the 1st of April (I’m not kidding), my dad called me outside in the afternoon (I’m not kidding). He pointed to the gate (I’m still not kidding), and sitting nicely there, was a baby bird (really!). So I ate it! ( Got you!! hahaha…).

“Lame…” mourned the blog reader.

The mother than flew down to try to protect me from shooting the bird. But as you can see from the photos, I didn’t just shoot the baby, I shot the mother together with the baby too, with my dad’s camera.

Another highlight was yesterday morning before church. The sun was up and so was the little black bird in my garden. I shall hence forth name it Race Stripes (since it has racing stripes along the side of its body). Racing Stripes wasn’t interested in the early worms (mainly because of his prejudice against them, he thinks they are filthy and too segmented for his taste), Racing Stripes was interested in lizards!!

And the crowd went, “Ewwwwwww!!!…..”

Racing Stripes: Hey look buddy boy, a bird’s got to eat and there ain’t nothing like a hearty lizard early in the day. The wife’s got an appointment at 8.00 and I’ve got to sit on my babies. I’d love to beef up, but it’s kinda hard to catch cows.

Racing Stripes swoops down and snatches a lizard that was chilling on the window pane

“It was so cool!!” exclaims Cheng Yee followed by a chuckle.

I played with Woon Cherk’s puppies yesterday afternoon!! They were adorable! So cute!!

And then I went to the fish shop and the fighting fish were gorgeous!! I bought four of them!! haha…

And guess what? Today a lizard dropped off from the top of the door post to the floor just when I past by….haha… splat… hahahaha…. then it ran off… blushing!!

YAY!! hahaha…

As I have mentioned before there are two parts in studying: learning part and practice part. For this post I will discuss the quality of the study.

How do you make sure that every second you put into studying isn’t a waste of time?

Tip #3 Concentrate!
One thing that a lot of people tell me about studying is that it’s boring. Then they say despite spending hours in front of the book, they get bad grades. I’m wondering what were they doing in front of the book. Were they concentrating hard or were they letting their minds run free now and then?

Now let’s be honest, none of us can simply say: “Oh, let’s study for 4 hours straight!” and do it. Yes, you can try, most likely after the first 15 minutes you’ll just be staring at the book thinking: “This feels like forever!!”

The difference between a guy who takes one hour to fully understand a chapter and another that needs 8 hours is concentration. What do I mean by concentration? When you study, you study. You think of NOTHING ELSE OTHER THAN THE SUBJECT MATTER AT HAND.

So tip #4 Start small
Depending on how bad is your concentration level, you may want to start from between 20-30 minutes of study before you take a break. My suggestion is that you take a timer set it at 20 minutes and start studying. Every time you’re tempted to stop, just tell yourself: “It’s only 20 minutes come on.” No looking at the timer or clock (remove the clock in your study area if you need to), because you’re suppose to be thinking about what you’re reading and not waiting for time to past.

Once time is up, take a 5 minute break. Then go back to studying. As time goes on, you’ll realise that you can concentrate longer and you can push the timer up to 40 or 50 minutes.

Tip #5 Challenge Yourself
As hard as it is, try to enjoy the subject take interest in it. Don’t just think that it’s time to take a break just because you’ve been studying for 45 minutes already. If you’re smack in the middle of a paragraph, finish it. If you think you can still continue or that you have a little left, go ahead. You may find yourself so caught up that you can study for 3 hours straight. That’s when you don’t have to study hard, because you are focused in your study.

Use your mind to study smart not hard