Everything will fall into place

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Prelims have finally ended! Well not exactly, but we only have MCQ left. I guess my Chemistry MCQ is going to go much better this time then it did before since I am going to have more than a measly minute to do all the questions. Of course an expert mugger once told me that MCQ were the hardest to master, but screw it, it is just shading ovals too me.

My handphone also managed to disappear today. I was eating at the Subway in Junction 8 before marching into battle for my last (technically third last) paper. I must have already been on Meditation Mode (which is this state of tranquility I go into right before a paper), because I just left my handphone there, crying for help as I left for the physics paper. Of course when I went back, it was no longer there, and the staff said that they did not see it. So now I have no handphone, and that also means that I lost all my contacts. My mum is going to rage me when she finds out.

The following paragraph is going to be a quick summary of how all my papers went. Chemistry paper 3 was really exciting, as it was the first paper. The elucidation question was disappointingly unchallenging, but I still did not do it as I already decided to skip the elucidation even before reading it. Physics paper 3 involved some confusion about what the first question was all about. I had lots of time afterwards to come back to that question, but unfortunately, the confusion did not clear. Math paper 1 saw a little time crisis where I could not really finish the last question. Time to work on my speed. Economics went pretty well in my opinion, but since I do not write a lot of economics essay, I do not really have any basis of comparison on how well it actually went, so this could be my optimist speaking. Math paper 2 also saw a time crisis, except that instead of having too little time, I had too much time and ending up drawing Pokemon on the question paper instead of checking. Which is just great because I later learnt that I made a pretty idiotic and costly mistake. Oh well, A should still be in the bag for Math. I hope. Chemistry paper 2 was normal. Planning was surprisingly manageable though, I was expecting a little more since I did not really prepare for it. I guess I got lucky that the type of question my group chose during class work came up. And last but not least, Physics 2 was also not too bad, except I did not really know what was going on towards the end of the data analysis part.

Now that we are done with that, I am going to have a couple of days of breaks, before the last 2 prelim papers starts. Hurray for the end of prelims. I do wonder how long I can hide the fact that I lost my phone from my parents though. But I do know for certain that I they read my blog, its not going to stay hidden for very long.

xw 3:49 AM

Monday, September 13, 2010

HELP HELP ITS GOING TO CONSUME US ALL!

xw 7:19 AM

Yay the first science prelim paper is over! Nothing much of it except I think paper 2 is going to be insanely hard. Anyway tomorrow is going to be a Mathematics paper and somehow I am getting the same feeling of doom that I got for CT2. Seeing how badly I scored for the last CT, and making a giant false association, I am guessing that tomorrow is going to be explosive. If you hear about the explosion in the multi purpose hall, it is probably just me.

Oh yea, I decided to rest after doing one paper 3 of Chemistry yesterday, to make sure I am mentally ready for today's paper. Of course I got bored of resting and ended up watching a Pokemon movie. Yes they have movies too. The plot was strangely familiar, involving Team Rocket being stupid and threatening the heroes. The only different was that they had more competent members of Team Rocket instead, and this time they are planning on blowing up the whole town. The rest of the show was about Latios and Latias protecting the town, while there was a little, tiny, minute, morsel of romance in the story too. Of course it was done so badly (probably because this show was meant for kids after all.) that it made me appreciate standard Korean drama love scenes. Please do not watch the Latios and Latias Pokemon movie if you are not below 12. Spoilers: Latios dies. There I ruined it for you. Now you do not have to watch it. (I am really sorry if you are a kid below 12 that really wanted to watch this. I do not think my blog has any kid readers though.)

Okay I guess all there is to do now is to sleep really early (i.e. now) and get ready to do tomorrow's Mathematics paper to the best of my abilities. Please let me be able to do this one properly.

P.S. Does any one know what "i.e." stands for? I am pretty sure it is the short form for something.

xw 6:52 AM

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

When the most blog worthy thing that happens to you has something to do with a Chemistry paper, you know that your life is exploding.

Today, while I was doing a Chemistry paper 1, I noticed something at about question 20. I realized that they had a little asterisk beside the second option. After doing that question, I was pretty amused that the option with the asterisk was the right answer (Okay fine, it was my answer, which happens to be right). When I moved on to the next question, I was horrified to see that the evil asterisk was still there, except it has moved to the third option. Wonders of wonders, the answer was the third option. I quickly flipped back to see the previous questions. The asterisks of evil were there the whole time! The worse thing was the once you saw the asterisks, you cannot unsee them, so there they were, one for each question, completely ruining my practice. Why would anyone print this, seriously. I am not going to spoil the paper for you guys, so I will not tell you which paper it was. Seeing that I got to question 20 before my blissful innocence was shattered, I think that it is possible for one to finish the entire paper before realizing that the evil asterisks are there.

If I was a philosophical person, I would feel that this event draws a very meaningful parallel to real life. There are some things that are better left unknown, for it might change us and change our lives. Innocence is bliss, and the more you know about this world, the more you wish you know less. But as I am not such a philosophical person, I just feel really annoyed about this event.

Oh yea, I got around this problem by closing my eyes before flipping the pages, and covering up the page with a sheet of paper, then opening my eyes and slowing sliding the paper across the page, such that I can see the questions and options without seeing the asterisks. Ingenious plan, no?

xw 10:26 AM

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

I lost my ticket for prom. That is right, they give tickets for prom. The worse part of it all is that anything that gets lost in my house will never be found again, until at least 5 years later. This does not bode well for me, taking into account that prom starts right after A levels.

Somehow, I decided that the best thing to do was to try and find the ticket. I know that I am only going to lose it again, but I guess it makes me feel better for the moment. Maybe if I lose and find it enough times before the prom, I will clear a little spot on my desk (Which by the way, is to buried in mess that I cannot even use it to do any work) and keep it there. Under a dice or something, as a paperweight. There. It will never disappear again. But for now, it is still lost in the mysterious mist that shrouds my house.

In my frenzy to try and recover my lost ticket, I discovered something really strange. All the places that I do work at home has a black G2 0.7 pen on it. These where part of the millions of pens that I bought during the days when I still did not know what a refill is. These few lucky pens did not go missing, and would now occasionally be picked up by me and refilled to be used. More often then not, they would just be used to help me unlock my phone. This is the reason why they are scattered so evenly, instead of being packed neatly in one place. The other possible reason could be that I am just to messy to bother putting them aside neatly. Of course I will refuse to believe the latter.

Okay it looks like I am still unable to find my ticket. I guess I will have to pull off some moxie to get in on the day of the prom. Seriously, why the hell am I thinking about prom when the prelims are just a week away. Back to work!

xw 9:43 AM

Friday, September 3, 2010

The first two papers are over, finally. I have to say that the General Paper paper was some disaster. This Oscar Wilde dude came and entice me with his wise sounding quote, something about how making children happy is the best way to make them good. Halfway through the paper, I realize that I had nothing to write about. Nothing at all. Of course I had to choose between writing nonsense for the rest of my time and writing a new essay in 45 minutes. Being a sane person, and equipped with the knowledge that sometimes teachers can be tolerant of nonsense if you smoke well enough, I opted for the former option. It felt horrible, and instead of the usual optimistic outlook that I have after every GP essay I write, I actually know that I have defeated myself this time. Time to get a real specialist subject, specializing on "superstition" just does not make the cut.

The economics case study was much better though. I was actually able to approach the questions and hit all the key points (so I think). I started off at lightning speed. Seriously I have never written this fast in my life. The first word that I penned down was perfect already. It was bordering on illegible, just good enough for the teachers to make out what I am writing, but not neat enough that I need to spend time defining every curve and pointy bits of the alphabets. Okay, I am getting the feeling that no one can understand what I just said, so let me try again. When I started writing the essay, I was already using my "15 minutes left" hand writing. It did not degenerate when there was really 15 minutes left, thankfully. Any worse and the teachers would just throw it into the shredder. However, it was pretty surprising that I still did not make it to the last question. I left 10 marks blank, but I am still pretty confident about this. Come on what is 10 marks huh? I can still get a good grade if I nail all the marks that I attempted right?

xw 9:49 AM

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

It is here! The prelims are so soon that, well, it is tomorrow. Need I say more? Doom upon us all! Am I going to be able to impress the examiner with my excellent language skills? Only time will tell. I am really starting to melt with a weird mixture of excitement and dread. I guess anticipation would be a good word. If they started with a science paper, I would totally be freaking out now. Oh well, I guess preliminaries are here to get us used to all the weird jitters and stuff. I have to say I am not liking it though.

Anyway, I just came back from my annual Smokey Dinner. It actually pretty good, considering we got a nice little corner, away from all the incense burning and fortunately we were not sitting in front of a speaker like last year. The catch was that we had no one at our table, so it was just the four of us, my mum, my sis, my aunt and I, sitting and eating an eight course dinner for a table of eight. This means effectively twice the amount of food. It was really good at first, not having to share with four other people. We could seriously eat all we wanted, and we did. However, after a little while, I realized that I was not going to make it past the fifth dish at this rate. Heaven knows that I am no eating champion.

It was about the fifth dish when another random family of four came to join us. That really helped us look like we were not wasting food, as we were already beginning to feel full. The auntie tried to teach me how to use a pair of chopsticks. Apparently I was holding it wrong. Perhaps I should have told her about the time when I ate a plate of rice using only a pair of chopsticks (and the power of my awesomeness), down to the last grain (Okay fine I am lying about the last grain part, but I did finish a good portion of it). On a separate (aha, spelled this word right, and will be able to spell it tomorrow too) note, my mother won an auction for two bottles of red wine. I knew bad things were going to happen the moment my mum and sis went off to sign up for the wine appreciation class.

This is the worse of times to be waiting. I should go to sleep now.

xw 8:45 AM