Peo

I survived! Most of the guesswork worked out. I scarcely had time to even recite in my head how I would begin during preparation, was more afraid I would run out of stuff to talk about. The latter happened, but it could have been worse.

May I present, the extract I did not get.

Telephone Conversation

Haven't really splurged on the charity cafe, I do not eat before exams for fear of falling asleep. So much for charity, some got tired of the crowd.

Kidding, managed to get right subjects for sepia with this camera for once. The real kiddies brought in the ice cream trolley.

Bleuprint

Effectively, I have been zombified much like the ones in Owen's Strange Meeting. Am awake, due to inlet of caffeine. Ingesting essays but functioning remotely to any form of critical thinking. And all these will be over slightly after noon on Monday. Of which I had to forgo today's matinee out of practical reasoning. I needed some analytical material this morning, and a friend whom was responsible for its proliferation refused to return the favors I had obliged him on before. Its not that people like these do not exist in my circle, but a pity it has to take years to be discovered. Well, I would like to look on his better side. Saturday and refusal to help, put the two together, it can only mean the girlfriend. Fine.

Merdeva

Haven't had any chance to do photography lately. Ahead in the week, stands the mighty Goliath of World Lit and IOC. A message of courage against oppression, we need more of these.

Fintio!

Reaching the brief closing lines of the epic tale of our times left me with a chuckle. Done and in totality, no more no less, no spoilers. At it proved that some of the spoilers I heard yesterday were completely warped out of good fun to torture people. Dear Rowling, the magic of your pen will be missed!

In another slight moment of magic, I happened to catch a segment on Animal Planet with a special appearance by Julia Roberts exploring the orangutans in Borneo. She was in close proximity of this large male one that had been lying still for few minutes when he unexpectedly grabbed her hand and gradually hugged her. He didn't look threatening but the camera crew seemed alarmed and couple of hands were trying to get her released. Moments later in an interview, she was visibly shaken. Don't think there can be any more lasting impression than that.

Deadly Hallows

Tomorrow, I will be wanting to kill someone. That person will be myself, right now, for downing this can of Red Bull, to deprive myself of sleep and hence perform more bullish work. Been a rainy weekend with refreshing drafts outside the window, I have no idea why I'm doing this. Call it instinct. After ardous periods of bumming, I have successfully completed by CAS File, well bounded and abound with humbling hyperboles about my worldly enlightenments. Followed by minor font enlargements of my Business IA. The only 2 real deals left are World Lit and CS Program Dossier. Cranky, these duo are the real villains.

I actually wrote a long entry on Friday, but I'll post it when its right. Not to forget, there's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that. I need to read fast before some idiot comes along and spoils everything. Please do not try me.

This is random. The activist side in me surfaced yesterday with new insights about a meal I had at a Chinese restaurant some months ago. Shark's fin had been served. Horrors! Images of mass murder and genocide in the ocean. Despite being outspoken about most environmentalist matters, in practice I do not abide by boycotting this delicacy if its already on the table. But given a choice, I would not order it from the start. There was this friend of mine at the table who voiced her stand against consuming it. Well then, what's to be done of a serving you are not going to consume? It was hastily passed on to another eager spoon swishing friend by the side. If you asked me, I believe the right course of action was to actually ensure that the serving went down the drain or the bin, and not for another's enjoyment. Alright, enough of this high and mightiness, I didn't say anything at that time and I downed mine anyway. To save one from such explicit anti-social behavior, I suggest you make sure what went into the order beforehand, or you can just silently feast on the outrage.

Targ

Targets, I have always viewed these as a means of approaching an ideal score that cannot be achieved. If a student were to set his sights upon 90, he would realistically be achieving 80+. As I'm concerned today, I never actually formulated a goal in this round, the closest I had of one was the hope of garnering all 7s for my HLs. To that intent, I threw everyday of 2 weeks at my 2 weaker HLs. Evidently, in ranting, that has not materialized. But for once, I can admit there are shortcomings in content I did not cover that rigorously in practice for Math. I scored one point lesser than before. No, it doesnt mean I'm consistent, but just that the same tricks work effectively each time. Deja vu, much like last year, I am 2 points behind D. Problem is you don't target who you are trying to overtake or match. Very well, I have decided that if there's any one big obvious bullseye, its got to be the Eagle. Darn ya, 41 eh!

Despair is a sin against imagination. End the clout.

Hallows

I'm slightly going blind over World Lit rewrite. Never mind that I haven't caught Harry Potter in all its tell tale lacklustre, please don't spoil it for me. Need to find someone who will be done with the upcoming book in a day to lend me. Anyone? I promise I'll be done in a day too.

One of those stupid quizes again:

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

Your in-depth results are:

Gryffindor - 12
Slytherin - 12
Ravenclaw - 9
Hufflepuff - 7

LOL, stuck between Gryffindor and Slytherin!

Chevaliers

This looks to be my 400th entry here. Wow, that roughly makes an entry every 3 days for the past 3 years. The role of this place, along with the design, has remained largely unchanged. I sound cryptic as ever, only occasionally ranting with a dissenting indistinguishable discourse. Truth be told, I have flirted with Wordpress, and the not that pleasant stuff can stay there.

There are only that many things accomplishable within a limited timespan. Up till this weekend, I still have a knack for under-factoring time wasters, meaning my work won't be finished on schedule. Today was rather ungloriously thrown at programming a new program for my computer science IA. Cranky! That's like 2 months left to start from scratch. The 7 point for this subject is automatic as long as this aspect is not taken into account. My previous scenario that I had spent a week of last December coding away, had terrible complications involving timestamps. With stark lack of progress and no further vision, its a dud. New on the drawing board is the all so often scenario during the exams of allocating the hall sitting plans by subject. This appears to be a genuine problem in real world, and so with 2 hours, I coded the logic from checking if any candidates would be sitting for 2 clashing papers and assigning them sitting rows and columns. Cool, did I mention it took another 3 to figure out what coding errors or bugs were inside that. Not finished, but at least main logic is there.

What a bloody weekend. I'm just picking back off from where I left before CTs started. There's still a World Lit rewrite to undertake. I haven't caught Harry Potter yet, it sounds overblown in any case. Did catch some excellent stuff like "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" as well as "Da Vinci Code". So it shall be, hope everyone doesn't go wild eyed this Monday. There's council investiture, making due note to bring camera.

Right

Everyday, the same forceful scenario re-simulates itself in my head. An incessant chatter, blanks that I struggle to fill.

And finally I throw in the towel, to say that I'm exhausted. I didn't really have enough sleep this week, but it doesn't appease the monster.

The kind of disengagement I'm deriving from art is having an exponential decline.


Thank goodness for Eagle lending me a book. I shall be dwelling away on Glasshouse if I can.

Alaroos

Term finally feels as it has started. Excitement of various projects and intention piles on, along with contentious execrement called internal assessments. World literature has been painstakingly resolved for the time being, turning my attention over to other vulgars such as the Program Dossier for computer science. Realism takes a cap, I know I won't be getting 7 for physics, maybe a 6. But there's still hope for the lucky number in math.

Squeezing time out of Monday, I managed to rack up a new mini media rig. About high time, since storage is relatively cheap now, and there are considerable projects at the end of the year that will be needing the extra capacity. A dual core setup with 640GB set me back about $570, comes with HDMI too.

There are actually 2 projects in the roadmap, one mine and another scripted by Mc, D has agreed to work on one at least, despite having had our fingers burnt once. Its a larger ship this time, but with too many hopefuls, will a Titanic be any more dramatic?

Here's a surpisingly honest but amazing ad:

Red Draw

How peculiar. There are songs which don't strike any chord with me at all, until I actually hear them in some feel good context like Transformers or Live Earth. That did be Linkin Park's What I've Done and Madonna's Hey You.

Friday was bad. It started after Math paper, cos everyone was leaving school already except for the few idiots doing business paper. Left badminton halfway as I was terribly annoyed over not having lunch, since everyone had theirs hours earlier. Spent the rest of the day distracting myself, including rivetting in my seat over John McLallen in Die Hard 4. Oh yes, for once I smuggled KFC into the cinema.


Dealing with ACS people, you can never expect them to be punctual. Riverwalk wasn't all that good as the last time, Eagle brought the OMers down yesterday with much fuss, and we got lost again. Came across the pasta outfit of Waraku restaurant at the Central. In typical Japanese fashion, there were like 3 more shelves of these plastic displays along the restaurant exteriors. Probably worth a visit in future for the elevated view of the river and Japanese speaking chefs.


Not complaining much about Riverwalk since they gave us a discount, except that I doubt fish is their speciality. We had another try at the sinful Gula sweets that had to be split into 3 for decency's sake. These are not like your normal sweets, its like they compressed a whole box full of glucose into that little ball. Horrors from orientation over the 5cm radius upsized version that we each had to eat for one of the stations.




Scholarship talks after that. MFA sounded really attractive for $5140 starting pay, wish I continued on Japanese. The rest were bummer civil administration jobs, I hope I never have to resort to any.

Pilk

I have a tendency to look down on others whom display sheer ignorance about world affairs that I now take for granted, failing to recognize the narrow-sightedness my bigotry had caused me. Its convenient to attribute it to the knowledge driven elitist education I once flirted with. In turn, the once haughty idealist in me sniggers at this current self-piteous state of acknowledgment, for I have fallen short of the ideals I once held others by. Don't we all eventually come to be accountable to ourselves? That's the idea of examinations that categorically decide what social strata your future holds in the mad race we call civilization. We uphold contempt and jealousy against those who excel better than us. Childish mindsets graduating from kindergarden to the workplace, when no one actually grows up all the wiser, you can't fault me for thinking that the world would be better without humans existing. Well, we would just be absent of the knowledge of the shrewd details that the animal kingdom has abetted in survival of the fittest.

This is a breakdown of a clash of civilizations, recommended for research.

I didn't mug much yesterday for physics. I came out of paper 2 feeling rather non-chalant about it. It wasn't a walk in the park like some Olympiad genius behind can close one eye and do, but I managed to finish it all with half an hour to spare for verifying through. There's only that many styles of questions a concept can be phrased in, I guess I'm lucky to recall most of them even though its been a week in between since I actually looked at any past years.

Sense of accomplishment? None, I have essays that are counted to final grades which I have left aside to mug for this, our priorities are totally warped by importance of the exam concept imbued through 10 years of indoctrination. I actually don't look forward to this Friday's papers at all, not because I fear being unable to handle them, but rather what lies after that. No celebration plans with friends whatsoever!

What's there to look forward to? My idea of post-exam never is to duck home and sleep, what a hideous way to spend a rightly deserved afternoon of freedom at long last. I feel invisible when I tag along with some people, have I lost my place? Yes, if I could I would crash elsewhere to be with the people who actually bother to listen to my rants. Therein lies a Catch-22, if they actually do, why the need to rant here? So much that is faucetted, at least I know why I'm broken.

Less is More

Behold that grin.. 

He's looking at my chatbox! 

Arghh!!! Horrors! 

That's it, we need to get back to intelligible stuff.

Scavvin

The past two days of the long weekend have been as tiring as the lengthy academic pursuit we are still in the midst of battle with. That said, Friday's papers were relatively manageable below what I expected. The boost of morale meant people could take time off from physics. The producers behind 'Transformers' have agreeably broken new heights in this excellently throbbing 'productainment'. You will know what I mean when you watch it. 

On hind-sight, the mission to capture Saturday's sunrise failed in large part to absence of meteorological intelligence. Never mind that, I met some familiar faces at the Shine festival. Some of my favorite shots:

Pristine but nothing out of this world.