Ask, and ye shalt receive

I got my file back.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

It was in the auditorium! It had fallen inside a seat. You know those cushy kinds which sort of spring back into storage shape when you stand up from sitting down in it. A nice person with an enormous bunch of keys, kind of like the dungeon turnkeys of elder legend, opened the room for me.

Anyway, I probably wouldn't be failing the next Emath paper, since Mrs Koh decided to be kind and not give us the surprise test today.

I have been spending far too much money lately. I must stop eating lunch.

Good thing the O level preliminaries don't count this year. I'd always thought it was a stupid system. Preliminaries are, for the sake of all that is good, practice. One good example is my senior, who got a C6 for Chemistry in her prelims and A2 for the O levels. Anyway, the level of difficulty of the papers across schools varies. I can seriously guarantee that Raffles Institution people get tougher questions than people from neighbourhood schools. This makes this more than slightly unfair to judge people by such sad rulings. In any case, the prelims come a month before the O levels themselves. I don't want to suffer a burnout before the real thing, and then have to switch schools just after having assimilated.

Horror.

Concerning Cantaloupes

The office people aren't very helpful. They show you the special Book To Write Lost Stuff In and then tell you that you can wait till Judgement Day and still not get it back. Then they look irritated when you attempt not to look irritated.

I don't blame them for being unwilling to open the auditorium just so that I could poke around inside for a file that, although MOST likely there, is not guaranteed to be worth their while. They reason, and rightly so, that the eternal gratitude of one adolescent won't account for a lot in their sorry lives. It's not as if I'm going to sneak them fifty-dollar notes. However, my O level Chinese credentials AND my O level entry proofs for this year are in that file and I WANT THEM BACK. Not to mention my notes, the homework due today, the homework due yesterday, the homework due last week and, yes, even the embarrassingly stupid sketches. Understanding their boredom of sitting in a silly office day after day pandering to the whims of Heads of Department and other demanding people doesn't make you feel appreciative to be at the receiving end of their bloody indifference to your needs.

They'd better be receiving a pay cut sometime soon.

Can't bestir yourself over one measly student? One less reason to love Dunman High. In any case, if i don't get my O level entry proof back, I wouldn't be able to take the exam. They'll never be able to get rid of me. If i die of shame when I see all my classmates graduating a year before I do, I will make their remaining lives, very shortly to be cut short, a very inventive misery. They'd be wishing they'd gone to the Abu Ghraib instead.

Does this sound whiny and teenage enough? When I do use the word 'teenage', I use it as a swear word. Anyone calling people of my age group teenagers (except some people, who really ask for it) deserves to be transported back in time and made to relive what he/she did back in the rock'n'roll era where they'd wear impressive afros, elvis pants, shoulder pads the size of cantaloupes (I mean nothing against cantaloupes! Self-sacrificing like their orange-fleshed cousins, a wonderful sources of beta-carotene, high on water and low on the calories, I've always said) and CLOGS. I'd love to watch them squirm.

The next time I'll probably enter the auditorium is for that pointless ceremony on Friday. Which means two agonizing days enduring lessons and surprise tests without my notes, vital examination rubrics, worksheets, or the homework that was due last week. I'll even have to buy more foolscap, because all I had was in that damn, damn file.

Please let my parents understand why I will be failing the next Emath paper.

Damn.

Speech day rehersal
1. I'm receiving a Colours Award for contribution to CCA, and I have no idea why.

2. I've been slacking too hard. I haven't gotten any academic award. (the MC nearly said 'academy award')

3. Because Speech Day is on the same day as the 3rd preliminary round of the Julia-Gabriel debates competition (whatever) thing, I get to miss it in favour of sitting in a freezing room receiving bloody useless medals from boring people while the academic award people get happy kinokuniya vouchers, and read the strange grammar errors on the banner behind the stage to distract myself from the possible 45-minute speeches made by the various boring people. Dignitaries, they're called.

Oh, but this has to take the cake.
4. I left my homework file -- a whole bloody term's worth of work, notes, unfinished worksheets and embarassingly stupid sketches -- SOMEWHERE which I can't remember. My hopes are on that I left it in the auditorium, because then it will at least be relatively easy to retrieve. The same goes for Popular bookstore and Fairprice supermarket, or Cheers at Kalling MRT, all of which I visited on the way home (albeit slightly less so). Unfortunately, if it's the BUS I've left it on, I've got hell to deal with. (It's going to be like that wild goose chase I went on when I discovered my wonderful mounted Chinese painting was missing halfway into my Creative Arts Programme reunion last year. Spent two hours running all over Orchard Road looking for it, and eventually discovering that I'd left it, of all places, in the LIBRARY. Only this time it will probably be enormously worse.)

5. I only realised this fact at 9 p.m., three and a half hours after I arrived home. This arose from the fact that I spent the entire day being half asleep.

In that case, all I can do is have an extremely early night, since there doesn't seem to be any homework that i can do.


Done ranting. Still fuming.

Will not talk about Sports Day, apart from a special mention to my school principal, who really is quite a good sport.
No pun intended.

Spreading the gospel

Word about my wonderful new blog is going far and wide. My parents had just better not come here by accident.

Spent the day looking for beads and things with the Crafts people for the Carnival on Arab Street, and then went to Qing's house with them (the Crafts people) all to do silly things with them (the beads and things).

Mwina: I'm bad at crimping. [correct term]
Faye[10 minutes later]: I'm awful at scrimping. Look at this! It sucks!
XT [30 minutes later]: Qing (our teacher), is my creaming okay?

We added up our intended selling prices and found out that if everything went the way we want them too, we'd be making a 100% profit. Yay.

I made a bookmark. Was feeling bored yesterday night and so made the cutouts itty bitty.
Mwina swore that one day if I ever opened a bookmark shop she'd rob me. I consider that a compliment.
Ate ban3 mian4 for the first time in my life. $3.50 for a big bowl.
I'm happy.

I found a little store in bugis that's selling the most truly and breathtaking Totoro stamps. Being made of top grade materials, however, they're all truly and breathtakingly expensive. Everything, I am told, has a price.
Couldn't afford anything, having spent most of my money on beads and things.
Still not sad. This is what an afternoon in the company of crazy classmates can do to you.

Am currently reading Le Morte d'Arthure. I spent the entire bus/train journey home laughing about it. If only poor Thomas Malory had intended to be so funny.

Oh, and I stuffed myself on chocolate today. First the legendary eclair that Bead Papa was reputed to serve, which I absolutely had to try today from the Bugis Junction outlet, which was not only crammed to bursting with chocolate creme but also annoited with pure sin. Then the bar of cashew nut Cadbury's that wonderful Deborah brought along to Qing's house, which all of us but wonderful Deborah decimated, of which I probably took more than my fair share of. And then when I reached home and dragged out the weighing scale I noted, with some degree of stupified surprise, that I had in fact lost HALF A KG.

Now I'm really, really happy.

...'holidays'

What's wrong with Ragnarok Online?
Not only does their english suck, but their server upgrading is also messy, unecessary, and uncoordinated. And they can wonder why people run off to private servers, where they can enjoy the same things for FREE.

They tried to murder me today. I now have a headache.
Hooray for tech-savvy brothers! This has nothing to do with that stupid chauvunist stereotype about females not being able to cope with technology. I just haven't the patience for trawling through countless files.

A friend keeps asking me for name ideas for his adaptation of warcraft or whatever it is. I feel flattered, but somehow exploited.

I am bored. There's nothing to do but homework. Do I feel like doing homework?

WACOM bullied me.

Went to the anime convention at the Asian Civilisations Museum yesterday and saw ALL THE COOL DRAWING EQUIPMENT THE MANGA ARTISTS WERE USING.
Look at this. Just LOOK at this!
http://www.wacom-asia.com/products/cintiq/cintiq_index.html

It's got an interactive digital pen-to-screen display! i.e. you can draw DIRECTLY onto the screen. No more mouse or confusing tablet. (Not taht I can even afford one of those tablets.) I've been looking forward to this for years.
And how much does it probably cost? 5K.
WACOM is evil.
At least now people know what I really, really want for my birthday.

On the other hand, there's this really wonderful anime/game/movie shop right next to the escalator across the road from the main part of Raffles CIty, directly in front of the escalator I usually take when I want to reach the MRT station from Singapore River. They've got the WETA figurines for ALL the LOTR chacacters, the swords (!!!!), the jewellery (!!!!, except that I still couldn't find the Fellowship Brooch -- nowhere seems to sell it!) and the miniatures. Oh the miniatures. They also sell FF stuff I've never seen anywhere else besides online or Comics Connection, which overprices it even more than that shop does. They're selling the Griever ring for $7.90. Should I get it?
The Nenya ring looks really good. Of course, it's also really expensive. I'll see what I've had left after I've got my LOTR DVDs.

Back to Anime convention.
There were cosplayers all over the place. There was one from Chobits and two from Full Metal Alchemist (Edward complete with the metal arm), a photographer in the costume of the main character from Samurai X, someone who wore a rather badly made version of Lacus' blue outfit from Gundam Seed and was holding a little pink ball which was supposed to be Haro, and others whose clothes I didn't know the origin of. And an Aerith from FFVII! None from Inuyasha or the other FFs though. Not that I'm complaining.
Was watching the screening of Ghost in the Shell. The artwork and animation was exceptional, especially for a TV series, where it tends to be shoddier. Am in love with the opening theme, but not sure what it is with the main character's rather revealing outfit. Swimsuit not the best thing to wear for potentially abrasive combat.
They showed it in the english dub, and I HATE that voice actress! Her inflections are mostly wrong and she is so SMUG. And rude. And snide. I know the producers were probably looking for the femme fatale stuff when they chose her and they were half right, she's sneery and she's cocky, but she irritates the hell out of me. If I were one of her superiors or surbordinates I'd be irritated to even lower hell. If I'm at the 18th level hearing her already I'd be reincarnated immediately if I were one of the characters in the show every time I heard her talk. Why can't they just stick to the original and add subtitles?

I went to LaserFlair before going to the anime convention and they were showing Spirited Away on one of their little screens. In English dub. It wasn't as bad as in Ghost in the Shell. But it was close enough. Chihiro was so whiny. And it was near the end, for goodness' sake, where she utterly wasn't supposed to be.

Shall stop ranting now to go and eat lunch. Mother's cooked ginger chicken.

Hairy mountain

I've changed my mind about the template. This is nice and minimalist enough. Until I get bored of it.

Now, for those who care to insult me enough as to suggest that I cut my hair simply because Yongqing did (sorry Qing, people have really said it, especially some AC buggers), I belatedly give seven valid reasons as to WHY I did it. Grace and other sensible people, please ignore this.

1. Sports day soon. We're expected to dance around, do silly chants, and not bring umbrellas. Ideal heatwave conditions.
2. My hair was falling out in clumps. I'd rather have people making jokes about static electricity than about cancer treatment.
3. I get to wake up 5 minutes earlier in the mornings so that I don't have to tie my hair for school. Let me tell you that 5 minutes can mean the difference between catching the school bus or failing to. Those who can't relate to this should shut up.
4. My mother wanted me to. My mother can be very insistent when she wants something. That's why she usually wins. (She thinks I look like a pontianak from behind with my hair loose)
5. Not having some heavy flapping thing following behind me when I have to run for P.E., which not only distracts me and makes me irritable, but presents an ideal opportunity for more hair to fall off.
6. Not having to put up with my more squealy classmates' inquisitive hands doing strange things to that tempting ponytail when they're bored, as happened on the day of the last Julia-Gabriel debate competition preliminary (or whatever it's called).
7. Not having to break every comb I possess wrestling with the six thousand or so little wormy things after a bath.

Ha. This was for lack of things to write.

On a more serious note, the teachers have piled a veritable cliff of homework onto their poor victims this week. They talk brightly about 'holidays', hand out bad marks in one hand and hold their main offensive (the deaded RED PEN! Gaaaaaaahhh!) in the other. Then they give us homework. And it doesn't help to know that since this is our batch's O level year they're probably right.

Still gunning for 6 points. Without all the attachments of CCA and HCl marks. It's the least I can do. My elder brother, damn him, very nearly got 11 A1s. And bless his soul, too, because he didn't. I don't think I can imagine how bad it would have been if he HAD.
Thank goodness for HCl. I'm being an evil person. Would anyone like to stop me? Write me and unhappy tale! I dare you to make me cry.
I'm going to A1 给杨老师看。If I don't I'll commit suicide by chocolate. All the ignorami can go read 'Thief of Time' by Terry Pratchett.

I got a form saying that I'm getting both the 'Colours Award', which is pretty interesting, and the 'Award or Services to CCA', which is pretty stupid. I'm not sure what I have done for the CCA. All I've been doing for the past three years half is grumble about interactive orientation games, read illegally when there's nothing to do, and doodle.

n00b

NOTHING until I get a template!

Patience.