Dear Tuesday, October the Fifth,

by squido

I kind of realise that I’ve been kind of lazy and inactive and uncooperative on this joint blog so today, I thought, “why the heck did I want to become an admin so badly” and now here I am, proving my worth. Okay, here goes. By the way, I apologise in advance for not following standard procedures or writing random things that the rest of the world reads, pauses, and wonders “why on earth did this ‘squido’ … oh never mind. I just wasted another 30 seconds of my life asking myself a stupid question.” And to answer that question in advance, “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask my mum?”

This morning I woke up at 09:00. I felt sick. I felt sick because I knew that it was due time I picked my butt off the floor and got to work. This was it. I was going to… Naww, too early in the morning. Too numb in the body. I rolled over and before I knew it, I had begun drooling on my pillow in my comfortable lethargy. The next time I pried open my eyes again, it was 10:11. I sat up, stretched, and slapped myself awake. This was it. I had to. I leapt out of bed, a little too enthusiastically, and a dull pain shot up my legs. Brushed my teeth, washed my face, had ‘Chong You Bing’ and watched one episode of Inuyasha, one episode of Naruto. Really need to wean myself off anime soon. The conversion had begun.

After the morning rush, I spent a dull 3 hours at the library doing trigonometry homework that was due 5 months ago. Managed to catch up ’til the start of June. “Not good enough,” I told myself. “Meh,” myself told me. Walked home, had lunch at 15:00, watched some more anime, back at the library at 17:00 and spent half an hour on one circle geometry problem. I was feeling pretty stupid after the first 20 minutes, and if that wasn’t enough, I discovered that my brain had linked the diagram for question 28 with the problem in question 27 ten minutes later. Stupid brain. It was trying to be clever, and changed the wording of question 27 so it seemed to cohere with the diagram of question 28. And then it tried to solve the problem. Stupid brain.

By closing time, I had solved that troublesome problem and was on to 29. Stuck on 29. Drawing frantic diagrams with my 5-cent compass who wouldn’t obey me to the orchestral tune of some Beethoven symphony. In a fury, I gave up and shoved everything into my pencil case. In a hurry to leave. In the meantime, an old Chinese man had come to read Chinese newspapers, got told off by the librarian that they were about to close. The librarian left after the man disappeared, but he reappeared at the next table reading a newspaper. Sneaky.

I was distracted. I tripped and made a loud noise on this in-the-ground power outlet/ethernet cable socket lid thing. Stupid thing shouldn’t have been sticking up like that. I’m not clumsy. Rushed out of the library to be welcomed by a cool breeze. Suddenly felt self-conscious. Was wearing a yellow hoodie, black tights, yellow shoes, and a yellow spongebob bag. Might as well have had a board around my neck saying “Mug me now!”.

Beep. Access granted. Safe in the elevator. Looked in the mirror – I had come back from the library with a new hairstyle. Going to the library for long periods of time is never good for my hair, my fringe especially. Have a bad habit of running my fingers through it when I’m trying to read or solve a maths problem. Always ends up sticking out at odd angles. Sleep tonight will fix it. Before you know it, I’ll have bed hair again. Admired myself in the mirror until the elevator reached my stop. Distracted again. Fumbled in my bag for keys. Found, instead, my wallet, a book, pocket packet of Kleenex, my wallet again. Got the keys, put them in the lock, twisted the lock, heaved open door, turned around, dropped my bag, walked right into the door. BAM.

I staggered on the spot for a moment. Both the tenant and my mum heard it. Poked their heads into the corridor, “What happened?” What did happen? I wasn’t so sure. Heaved the door shut, turned around and sank my weight against it. A dying thought crept into my brain. “The door is hard.”

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“Oh. Haha. My hair is too long and I didn’t see the door.”

The silence broke with their laughter and was filled with gnatty Shanghai dialect as they tutted in a flutter of “I always told her that a girl her age should pull her hair back-” “-aah yes yes but children these days all have hair everywhere. It’s the latest fashion-” “-but it’s ugly. Those children would look much better with hair out of their eyes. They will go blind if they-” “-ahaha she just needs a haircut-” “-and I have been trying to tell her that for some time now. She really needs a hair cut, but she insists on cutting it herself…”

Forgotten. Felt my way into my bedroom and collapsed on the bed. Checked to see that my nose was still there, that my head was still there. Don’t remember what happened to the stuff I was carrying. The pain gradually subsided and I realised with a bitter smile that I had accomplished an amazing feat today. Something unprecedented  and unheard of in the human world. I had walked into an open door and almost knocked myself out.

Sat up and decided that I needed to take my mind off the pain, or rather, take the pain off my mind. Called my mum to see if she wanted to practise some singing. Started off slowly, ended up with me teaching ‘Memory’ (from the musical, Cats) to mum and our tenant. It was somewhat disappointing. They couldn’t move their jaws fast enough to sing ‘falalala’ in one crotchet beat, so I tried some physical therapy that involved clasping your hands together in front of your face, and shaking them back and forth as fast and violently as you can while loosening all your facial muscles and letting the tension just ‘flap away with your skin’. They somehow made the exercise look stupid. And they couldn’t master it. I was disappointed. It was often hard for them to keep up with me, and in the end we sounded like a chorus of dying cats. How ironic.

Had dinner. Went on our new school forum (thanks to didi) and created yet another group. Formal Committee – committed to organising the formal. Maybe I should stop at two now, since there’s only a total of about 8.

Plan to end the day with some more anime. Oh hey, that rhymes kinda nicely :O

Please let Wednesday be more productive.

Syd~ wandering if anybody’s going to read all of this.

P.S. My head hurts… which reminds me, I read a pretty awesome quote on iGoogle once.

“Egotism is the anaesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity” – Frank Leahy

Now, I don’t know what ‘victor’s quote corner’ is about, but I would hope that you can all agree with me in saying that this quote applies to him :D

I’m joking, by the way. Nothing personal.

three days’ madness

by bezzle

TUESDAY:

I got up at BEFORE the crack of dawn to get to school.  Had to catch the bus to UWS.  Originally, we were all hardcore studying on the bus (which was quite empty), but I think we began to give up, mostly just due to sheer laziness.  Well, that was what I was doing.

Got to Granville station, picked up people and continued off on the journey to Campbelltown.  

Victor had gotten out his portable speakers, and was playing his music, when he went to the front of the bus to go talk to Richard.  Matt and Ben hijacked the speakers, with Victor still oblivious to the fact that Glee and Baby were playing at a rather loud volume…

The brain bee was held in the school of medicine on the UWS campus, and when we got there all of us really stood out – all the other schools had about three or four students, and there was this mass of about twenty people signing in and collecting free t-shirts :)

Went into the lecture theatre, and everyone did round one of the individual quiz – the questions were on a powerpoint, and it was over really quickly – about 20 minutes!  Forwarded out for morning tea with random tarts and fruit and sandwiches.  The bread is SOOO soft and tasty there.  And the tart had some sort of clear jelly on top that tasted like jam. 

Got some talks from a professor making bionic eyes and some honor/masters students about the joy of science, and then came the team challenge, where Richard, Beryl, Rachel and Vaish were in.  They came third, after the winners Baulko and the runner-up Presbyterian. 

Lunch!  The last third of the line (including me!) got vegetarian lunch boxes, but they were really nice!  The bread (and some Turkish bread too?) was really soft again…ahhh… and quiche!  I love quiche!  And some sort of caramel slice.   :D

Activity after lunch – shocking nerves.  Went into some computer lab, with massive HP touchscreen desktop computers.  Claudia fiddled with the tablet for a bit.  Ben volunteered to be the victim who got their nerve shocked with a current ranging from 8-20mA.  The transformer was connected to the computer, and all the data was automatically entered too.  Was cool.

After came the team challenge final, and the individual final.  The team placings ended up the same as what they were before, and the individual one was won by a Baulko guy, with a Presbyterian girl coming second and Jim coming third (good job :D).  Note the order was the same ==

However, the prizes were pretty neat.  Teams who came second and third got 2gb ipod shuffles, winners nanos.  Individual division third got shuffle, second nano and first a touch.  They all got a brain textbook too.  The poor guy who came first has to study this massive textbook for the next stage (nationals?).  Ahh, the price for coming first…

Bus home…

WEDNESDAY:

Science and Engineering Day!  Got to Macquarie Uni quite early, waited till the thing actually started (our school was the only one there in the beginning…wondering if we were gonna end up going against ourselves…) and off to activities!

I was in a full day activity – mission to Mars.  Involved building a ‘buggy’ that would traverse an extremely bumpy surface – the highest bumps were 4cm tall O__O  So that took the whole day, and we didn’t do too bad (Tree, Sandra, Steven Phan and me).  OOOOH orange tree!  TEEHEE SORRY.

At the end of the day, bridge tests!  Just at the end, our school got usurped by Roseville College in points, so we came second and got a glass trophy and a framed award that had a picture of some students from last year ==

I think it was cool how all of us joined together in playing a game of sit-down volleyball – even the scorers joined it :D

Caught a bus to Epping with Sydo.  On the way, a large group of boys in school uniform got on.  And then Syd noticed Timothy O_____O  He’s a former classmate, who I hadn’t talked to/seen since the end of Year Six.  We shiftily watched as he boarded our bus and walked past out seat, ending up just a seat away across the aisle (but people were in standing in between because the bus was packed).

So we both loudly debated whether or not to say hi – Sydo on the affirmative, as she’d feel ‘guilty’.  I thought he wouldn’t recognise/remember us.  Soon, Tim says hi to Syd, who he does remember and they start a conversation. 

Soon we’re at Epping, and we all disembark.  Timothy begins to walk away, Syd rebukes me about how I should have said something.  I say that he won’t recognise me.  So Syd runs up and pushes me over, and asks Tim – “Do you know her?”.  To which he goes “Errrr….”, and I helpfully supply “Hi, I’m *insert name here*.”  His eyes widen and looks shocked.  ==”

Syd cracks up.

So far, this fits in with my previous meeting with a primary school classmate.  Beginning of the year, I said hello to Annie and she didn’t know who I was either.  “You look familiar… do I know you? Charmaine?!”  I introduce myself.  “OHHH…!”  [note: not the Charmaine from our school]

I conclude my face is much different from my Year Six days.

TODAY:

First day of school for the term!  Started off with a nice 1.6km run in nippy noodle weather.  Urgh.  I should have known several weeks of inactivity would take some sort of toll.  Did some more fitness testing.  Had a sub for English and breathed a sigh of relief – I hadn’t finished the assignment.  Recess was intense – had to find Julia/talk to the head of science about the speech in two periods time/write the speech/fix up commerce project/do maths enrichment.  So was also very glad when we didn’t have to present our comm today, so spent the time writing a very hasty speech.

During assembly, sat at the front with Johnny and Rachel, who were talking about brain bee, and Tree, who was doing the speech about science and engineering day with me.  He’s awesome.  Talking in front of the whole school is a bit weird.

Today was such a horrible day stress-wise, so when I found out today is 7/11 one dollar day (Kettle chips, flavoured milk, mother, Cornettos, donuts and other baked stuff all one dollar!) I decided to take the opportunity to *reward* myself.  My normal walk to the bus stop (on which 7/11 is en route) was joined by a mob of people eager to get bargains too xD

By some stroke of luck, the counter had NO QUEUE when I got my double choc Cornetto.  Except for three Cumbo guys, who kept buying packets of Kettle chips ==  They kept taking armfuls of packets, and running back for more.

Got home happy as I ate my icecream on the way.  Except it dripped on my shoe.

MAJOR NEWS

ONE MANGA IS SHUTTING DOWN AS OF NEXT WEEK.  WHATTTTTTTTTTTTT.  IT’S MY FAVOURITE MANGA SITE!  IT’S SHUTTING DOWN!!!  WHAT.  O_________________________________o WHERE AM I GONNA TAKE MY MANGA READING OBSESSION?  BUT THANK YOU, ONE MANGA.

swashbuckle

by bezzle

After receiving threats from both of my parents forcing me to use only my government-issued laptop, I have begun to realise the stupidity of blocked websites.

Okay, no one likes the DET block.  I get that.  But I don’t get why stuff like email and blogs are blocked.  Especially hotmail.  Heck, I guess we struck it lucky that gmail isn’t blocked.  And blogs.  Even visiting one isn’t allowed. 

I never really cared so much, until the aforementioned threat.  HOW WOULD I BLOG TO YOU MASSES OUT THERE?  What is the worst part is the underhanded way our teachers, at the information night last year, planted the idea that these laptops would be enough for all our computer needs.  Please.  Filtered internet in our own homes? 

At my friend’s all girl school, the internet isn’t even blocked.  AT ALL.  My point is, I think we do need filtered internet, but some things should be unblocked.  For convenience.  Especially when it tempts people into the area of teachers’ accounts and stuff.

A random fact that shall be noted here: record time from getting up to leaving house is now fifteen minutes.

OOOHH there was a song I was going to embed here, but it’s not on youtube, so I will just tell you the name here:

Summer nights, by Vanessa Amorosi

It’s so nostalgic, I like the chorus.

This morning was weird.  Had to get up early to finish off a thousand words for ag assignment, so I set the alarm for 6:15.  Woke up randomly and decided to get up anyway.  Reached for the clock, it breaks as I press the light button to see the time.  I look at the clock outside, it says 6:16.

Today was beach excursion!  I didn’t get to touch the water though…PSSSHHH what is the point of going to the beach then?!  It was at Collaroy.  Very nice view on the walk up to the top, and a lovely refreshing cool sea breeze~  view up the top was great AND sydo has a new nickname – squishy?

Hehehehehe what an awesome nickname.

Our tour guide was pretty cool, did we even get to know his name?  Attempted to find our school on a massive map was very fail.  And then the walk down from the top was even more fun/refreshing.

Ehhh the rest of the day can be summed up with one word: SAND

WE SHOULD HAVE ANOTHER BEACH DAY SOMEDAY

– i shall try and get some photos from ben/make him post them up himself.  he definitely has a lot of them.

TIME FOR THE SHAMELESS PLUG/VICTOR’S QUOTE CORNER!

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
 – Bernard Berenson

DEFENCE! HANDS UP!

by bezzle

YAY WE WON OUR FIRST GAME TODAY~

playing against northmead – both of our teams won :D  our game seemed very short – i suppose 20 min is a short game.  we came into the school very shiftily though.  the bus stopped on the side of the school and we had to fence hop over.  and then halfway through walking chris and alex realise that it’s all muddy and squelchy and their pristine white bball shoes are all gross.  my throat is still dead.

after school, went to parra library meaning to do something important, but instead went and window shopped at westfield == in the end we went totally nuts in lincraft.  as carmen remarked: “if they had security cameras in here they’d see some crazy people.” 

THEY HAVE A WHOLE SHELF OF BUTTONS.  like thin jars of individual types of buttons.  several hundreds styles.  and the fabrics… THE FABRICS.  all three of us went crazy over all the different types and textures and stuff.  okay, maybe it’s only us who’re craft nerds.

managed to get a ride home with carmen, after remembering that i’d misplaced my bus pass and couldn’t get home.  it turns out the thing was in my blazer pocket.

tuned in to watch the plumpton babies thing.  they looked so…typical of people who appear on that show.  mum-ish?  anyway, i recognised baby!  and her son looks just like her O_O  i don’t watch today tonight usually because i think it’s a piece of trashy journalism.

that stuff above doesn’t really do our insanity justice.

 

something i was snacking on.  seriously?  disguising one fruit’s flavour as another?  it doesn’t even taste strawberry-y.

ok, another victor plug:

all brand and spanking new!  victor’s quote corner ~

[yeah he should get his own blog.  but this is a shameless plug to boost his tag count.]

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
 – Thomas A. Edison

a black comedy

by bezzle

this morning, i slept through my alarm (so what else is new?) and finally dragged myself up at 7:40, with bball training started at 8.  hence a lot of mental cursing, and rushed breakfast (thank goodness i ran out of that uncle toby’s stuff.  it doesn’t taste as good when you’re rushing).  made it on time.  phew.

had to watch a debate in period 3, so the guys’ bball teaching thing got cut short.  the debate was about streaming classes, alex, suraj, beryl and shaz against some very tall and buff looking stratfield girls.  our school lost.  has anyone ever noticed that debate adjudicators are always young women?  i’ve never seen an old man, or, even a male do the adjudicating.  hmmm.  i thought it was a close debate (although the stratfield girls’ arguments were a tad random) but i personally don’t like streaming classes.  maths class makes me miserable.  so i’m glad that i sit near funny and helpful people :)

commerce was amusing.  felt a bit dissatisfied with my own mark, but nothing there wasn’t anything i could do about it, so i just played mr squiggle with julia while everyone unsuccessfully scabbed marks.  it was very fun :D BUT BUT that chick was cute… [i mean the bird – oh wait that still means- the BABY CHICKEN.  geez.]

had physics again.  i’m still feeling ambivalent about it.  of course, finding out i got top in the class for the test i didn’t know much about and getting a block of chocolate from jowa definitely helps.  sydo joined our class yayayayayayay! 

remember when i mentioned the talkative dudes in our class?  yeah well today they were talking about farts and stuff (it varies from girls to other puerile topics xD) and they started talking about ‘sharting’.

yeahp.

if you don’t know what that means, i’m pretty sure you can guess.  anyhow, that word kept randomly popping up in my head for the whole of the lesson.  chris, i’m mentally scarred.  don’t talk so loudly ==’

a song i like:

AND HERE’S A SHAMELESS PLUG FOR VICTOR, WHO WANTS HIS TAG BOOSTED :D