New revelation: The world DOes revolve around me. ...actually...I'm getting dizzy.

Today's been pretty good. It's one of those rare days that I don't feel sleepy, and able keep ahead of everything going on in class. Chemistry's been a breeze so far (surprisingly), hope it keeps that way. So much so that in order to make my time more productive, I've taken to honing up my artistic skills during Chem. Just wait till you see my fabulous creations of blue-tack smiley faces and blue-tack melting snowmans. My fingers smell of oil or kerosene after that. We-ird.

What else?...Urm. I'm still getting used to the idea of drinking straight from taps. =P Remember how I told you about my Physics teacher who suddenly got all uppity and baked a cake for us? Well he PRINTed and DIStributed the recipe to us. So now I got this bit of paper titled Apricot Choc Chip Cake. Anyone interested? =)

Senior house debates! Put my name up for it. First round 3rd March. Something about windmills being the alternative to ceiling fans to promote air circulation in homes.

(*thwack. What the-?!) No...no, it's not right. Just be happy I got 'windmills' and 'alternative' correct.

Most IMPORTANTLY, HOUSE ATHLETICS people. 1st of March. I'm starting to get a bit wired up in the head with this day edging closer.

Chem class: 1 mol of athletes equals 6.02X10^23 people.

Physics class: A person running a 200m event in CHS's field will have a 0 displacement.

Maths class: If a person participates in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 4X100m events, how many metres would that person have run in total? Express answer to two significant figures.

Economics: An increase in demand of gold medals will not result an increase in supply of that product. Supply elasticity of demand is infinitely inelastic.

Maybe that's why everyone's been giving me weird stares lately.

House Concerts!!!

Now I see what's the big hype about the annual house concerts. They're an awful lotta fun. I was dressed in serious orange (the cool long-sleeved Nike that I got as a farewell present) in a fit of patriotism. Though I didn't know most of the house cheers, I managed anyhow to catch some of the simpler ones quickly enough. If you're wondering why I'm not wearing uniform, for the three days leading up to house concerts, they declared them free dress days. So we could wear anything we wanted to. Cool huh?

Before anything even started everyone at Wyselaskie was trying to drown each other's voices out with chants of the house names. Not to mention the deafening amount of stamping and clapping and screaming and spontaneous house cheers that was going on non-stop. Glamis (green house, pronounced 'glams' for some strange reason) was up first with uh...Volcanoes and Jazz Music. Every show starts with the orchestra and they're all really good. The whole stage was used, including the sides, kinda like Fame for those who have seen it in Istana Budaya last time...Glamis did pretty impressive freeze frames to switch between the real world (where one of the characters was reading a book aloud to another in bed) and the storybook world, the main stage and other side.

Next was Atholl (blue). Rainbows and Rap Music. Freaking good! They've got the coolest drummer and a really cohesive script. Everything flowed so well. Highlight was the way they changed scenes. And a cute leprechaun. =P They won a lot of the side awards, best this and best that, I can't remember anymore. Their costumes were pretty good too, all dressed like rappers, to quote one of them, "Yeah, I know. Our captains wanted us to look like drag queens so we did."

Recess.

Leven (purple). Pretty boring actually for a house who got a title with so much potential, The Solar Eclipse and Rock n' Roll music. I wonder why everyone depicts rock n' roll as the Elvis P. and the 60's. Why can't it be modern rock?! And of all things the main story was about this young Aztec boy who wanted to leave his tribe! WhAT in the WOrLd?! But granted, they did their research on the Aztec colours and what they wore at that time...and the judges actually pointed that out and were impressed by it.

Then, of course, the one and only Stirling!! Sand Dunes and Classical Music. Everything went pretty well, except for one time where the curtain opened too early and the music came on too late. Everyone loved the Tofu Dance, which involved blocks of tofu dancing to Beethoven's 5th. We have a really good song (in my opinion and in many others as well) that just involves vocals only, no instruments.

The highlight of the day: Staff Act. Invovles group of mad teachers dancing to a really dumb song. Last year it was YMCA, this year I don't know. But whoa...they seriously brought the house down...you can feel the hall reverberating with stamps and screams that went on and on and on...and on. I cheered till I was hoarse too. Hilarious!

Lunch.

Balmoral (white), had a stunning backdrop but less than desirable script. Pretty boring I daresay. They were doing The Four Seasons and Disco Music, and it's about this middle-aged man reminiscing about the day the Four Seasons Disco Club opened. Backdrop blended all four seasons and an element of each season, like leaves for autumn, butterflies for spring etc. and in the foreground black silhouettes of dancing patrons...

Rosslyn (red), champion of the 2004 House Concerts, did Lightning and Country Music. Their theme was about the cultural differences between Alaskans and Australians. First there's these four country singers from the outback, going to some city to perform, halfway thru the flight, lightning caused some turbulence and their flight had to be diverted to Alaska instead! What a stretch. Nonetheless, they had an exciting cowgirl dance, and and Eskimo dance...and subtitles that said:

"We r Australian."
"Y r u in Alaska?"

And they kept using Shannon Noll's What About Me in really ridiculously funny ways. Their trademark was rewriting humourous lyrics to well-known songs, and that worked really well to crack up the audience.

That's it about house concert day, albeit recounted in a horribly staggered and incoherent manner. I dunno, when I write blogs (or just write in general) sometimes the words flow easily, sometimes I have to wrest it out from my muddled brain.

This is one of those days.

Slow. Sluggish. Silent. Saturday.

Helped out at PLC's annual twilight picnic yesterday. It's somesort of a carnival thingy, just that it's held during the evening and into the night. In a fit of helpfulness, I signed up as a volunteer on that day. Well, I got assigned to the Parent Volunteer table. Really gripping job. Parents come. Hi. Tick their names off. Bye. Yay. Luckily I had a friend, for company. It's pretty good actually, the whole picnic, and at the end there were fireworks. Or at least there was supposed to be. Cause in my world, fireworks don't mean some sparks shooting out from the four corners on the top of the main marquee.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere was cheery and party-ish. The pipe and drum band from Scotch (our brother school) came. It's so funny, because they were all wearing kilts and big socks and hugging bagpipes. =P

Oh and Social's coming up. It's like a party/get-together for PLC boarders and Scotch boarders. I'm not too keen on going, but if they lock up the boarding house like they did last year so that everyone had to be there, well, I don't have much of a choice do I? Then formal later in August. Man they really make sure you get a chance to mingle with guys, unlike CHS... =) So stupid, if you wanna bring a date you have to pay for his ticket too (not a hard and fast rule, but obvious right? Basic courtesy.) Hahahah, I don't have THat much money to waste on other people...

Life's so slow moving here...i'm getting lethargic...and it's like a furnace outside, enough to melt you. We had our first full rehearsal (with everyone present, not full dress) for house concert this morning at Wyselaskie Hall, pretty good. The song and dance was cool...some was composed, the Tofu Dance was done to Beethoven's 5th symphony (can you believe it?! But they take off their tofus after awhile then put it back on after the dance) and the other is danced to Bring Me to Life, Evanescence. My house captain's really cool, she has big funky hair, but that's beyond the point. =)

Oh! One thing that I really find interesting here is the assemblies. The teachers are so sporting! Once we had an announcement by the school's Sports Captain who was trying to explain to us the different sports available each term and as part of the act, lo and behold we have Mr. Downie and some other guy onstage to play mini tennis. Hilarious. They were like exaggerating every movement and every now and then there were exclamations of "Uh!" "Ah!" as they hit the ball. Then Mr. Downie 'won' and did a double kick in the air and ran off stage.

Speaking of him, oh gosh, when he teaches, you can just feel his love for Physics permeate the class. He has an almost childlike excitement when he speaks about a topic. And he has this eternal look of "I am so so happy to be able to be imparting this beautiful knowledge to you". It doesn't matter that he was just trying to teach us significant numbers...And for the lesson on scalars and vectors, seriously, Physics with drama man...At the beginning of vectors he pulled out a lab chair, climbed onto it, then climbed onto the table and stood there while explaining vectors to us. For no particular reason but to emphasise and impress the point upon us. Maybe he thinks that we'll remember it more if he told us while standing on the table instead of the floor. And then there was him acting as an aeroplane but that's another story. Halfway through vectors class...

"It has come to my attention that...some of us are new here and not everybody knows each other."
(Class is bewildered)
"So we're going to have a party."

And he meant it.

He went into the prep room and brought out a cake (which we later found out, he baked himself) and some cordial. Then we stood around his table, and ate and drank and introduced ourselves to everyone. The cake was damn good too! Back home, I tell you...

Skalar: Kuantiti yang mempunyai magnitud sahaja. (Cth: suhu, jarak)
Vektor: Kuantiti yang mempunyai arah dan magnitud. (Cth: sesaran)

Finish! End of story! But sometimes, having learnt it before, I can't help wishing he'd teach more in class cause it can get quite draggy.

Nevertheless, an experience in itself.

Oh. And Happy Valentine's Day if it even matters. The day where shrewd people get rich and the rest get poorer. =)

In an effort to become more sociable, I accepted an invitation to go out for lunch.

*round of applause*

Thank you. Well, actually that's what I'd like to believe. It's more of because I've successfully finished every single question of my maths homework (after doing it nonstop for the last 3 days, seriously) and that alone is a cause to celebrate. And also cause we were having nachos for lunch. No matter, I have to fulfil *some social obligations once in a while for fear of being labelled as an antisocial freak. Did you know they actually have a rule in the boarding house stating that "Antisocial behaviour is not allowed". Ri-ght.

Anyway, it wasn't too bad. Turned out we went to some Chinese restaurant to eat dim sum. My biggest worry is the price. I came back earlier than the rest so I don't know how the bill is going on. I hope it's not too much. Money is the biggest factor that stops me from going out lah actually. Laziness to move is another. And it depends on the company too. And where we're going. And how long it'll take. And...

But whoo. The weather is murder. SO HOT. Summer has REally begun now. So I threw on a sleeveless shirt, for logical reasons and also so that I wouldn't get a weird tan. I wish I had a digicam...sorta. So I'd have some stuff to show y'all when I get back...

Guess I gotta get back to work now, still got some odds and ends from other subjects. LAter!

Irony is being alone in a sea of people.

It's been a pretty slow day today. Slow and quiet. Literally half or more of the boarding house has gone out. Being the loner that I am, I didn't go. Waste of time, waste of money. Soon, I'm afraid that they'll stop inviting me to go out altogether. Either way, I like it like that. Was the first one up this morning, had my breakfast alone, before the cook even laid out all the stuff for breakfast. So I just had some cereal and yoghurt. Then it's back to work. That's the routine I've put myself in. Homework, study, music room and the occasional coming out of my shell during mealtimes. Okay, maybe not that bad. I do communicate with people here, just not as much as everybody else. And I don't go out so often either. Only went out once in fact, to K-Mart, cause I was in desperate need for ring files and you couldn't make that out of bricks.

Looks like the bricks will be staying with me. Maybe I should start naming them. The bookends were too expensive to send from Malaysia, but the books and calculator are on their way. I wish I had my guitar for some solace. Too much idle time makes you think about certain things which I'd rather not now in case I start getting depressed.

Managed to borrow a not-so-good-but-better-than-nothing guitar from one of the blonde hair 'chicks' (as ex0 would say) (No...no photos yet =) but there's this really pretty Thai girl with a cool name, Book Ekkhosit. I find myself trying to stop staring at her during mealtimes cause we sit at the same table. I must be getting mad. *klunk* What am I doing? I don't usually admire females. It's the likes of Brad Pitt that keeps me going. (Anyhow, I'll try to get a pic for ex0 who specially requested pics of hot chicks, but I don't know whether he meant Thai girls =) Anyway, back to the guitar...yeah, I miss playing it so much. So I played today. Went down alone to the music room and lost myself in there.

Played and played and played. Hours until my fingers were hard and sore and red, and black from the paint that came off the fretboard of the old guitar. Here, it is a habit of a few girls to leave their radio on playing really loud even though they're never in their rooms. No matter, that's not the point. The point is that's when I first heard Behind Blue Eyes.

I learnt it on the guitar today. Simple but sweet. I'm in love with it. This beautiful and sad song. Somehow fits my current mood very well. The first time I heard it, I got one of those shudders. It makes me feel extremely depressed. Like Freshman under special circumstances. But one high today was when I found out a weird yellow and black spray painted CD had the song. Speechless. I should have realized everyone else is not as backdated as me when it comes to good songs.

No matter. I've probably spent too much time on the com than I should have. Better go back and make my new brick friends comfortable since they'll be staying with me for a long time now.

G'day.

P/S: Looking back on what I wrote, reminds me of the time when ex0 had weird tendencies of speaking to a brick. Worse still, he didn't realize it was invisible. *shakes head solemnly* The things people do.

Desperate people do desperate things...and I was desperate for bookstands...I tried to find alternatives for them, but nothing was heavy enough. I went down to K-Mart but they were clean outta bookends. Anyway, I bet if they had it, I doubt I would have bought em anyway cause they'd be so expensive.

So you know what I did? =)

Heh heh. I stole bricks from school. I was DESperate....took two big heavy hunks of brick. So heavy...and it wasn't easy to carry back, and sneak into the boarding house unseen so I wouldn't get any awkward questions from anyone. Too bad for the house concerts people who used those bricks to hold down the backdrop while they were painting it. But they can spare me, the poor unprivileged boarder, some right? At least until the bookends I asked my mom to send over arrives. Along with a few books and my calculator and some stuff...

And when I finally managed to lug them into my room, my arms were aching and if I held a hand up it trembled like crap =) But I wasted no time in my operation. I shoved them under the table and got my pair of scissors and cellophane tape from the stationery box and darted under the table myself. Oh and with 4 pieces of pink paper. (I hate pink, which was why I used it. At first I picked green, but I thought, what a waste of good paper) Then I set out to wrap the bricks up. Sooo stupid right? Hahahah...so now my study table is beautifully nice and neat with two pink (ugh) brick bookends to hold up the books. Yay! Mission accomplished and problem solved.

Lesson: When you are short of things, you tend to become extremely resourceful. =P

By the way, there is NO RIGHT CLICK button on the eMac's mouse! How am I going to copy and paste stuff?!!

Hm...today I've found a new respect for Mr. Rice. He's our Head of computing. Previously I got pretty annoyed cause he froze all usage of coms in the boarding house, but today at assembly finally he showed us how to use the eMacs, or more specifically how to save stuff onto your own server space. And he managed to make me actually half-like the Macs =) But most of all, he's the school's timetabler. If you ask me, making individual timetables for teachers and students is a very complex job.

Anyway, has anyone of you heard the way hardcore S(a certain country's people) and H(a certain country's people) talk? I know like quite a number S- in the boarding house, and if I listen to them any longer I SHALL GO MAD. I feel like cursing...must release some of my pent up temper here, couldn't tell them off cause 1. I don't want to make enemies so soon. 2. I'm not ex0dus =) Damn they get on my nerves. They talk like stupid crass, crude, uneducated people with every syllable followed by a LAh Ah MAh LOr or something else stupid. I mean okay, most people do that, but if you overdo it you'll sound like them. And not only that, they are so loud and noisy with no regard for anyone else in the room. And they read their mail out loud! Damn no one wants to hear it! Shut up! My apologies to any S- reading this. I'm only referring to this particular group, no offence to others.

I tell you. Everyday breakfast tea lunch dinner computer room I have to suffer through conversations that sound like:

"Eh my ma and pa osso send me mail lorrrr"
"Aieeyo don't listen to her laaaaa, so like a smelly poot-poot pig"
"O my goaaaad"
"Don't laaaaaaaa, I don't like it lorrrrrr"
"Aieeyo, I tell you aaaa"
"By the time they shake shake backside also out of the school lorrrrrr"
"Aieeyo, poot-poot leaaaaa"
(and you can imagine the accent they use lah, wait till I get back, I'll start ranting more)

And so much more. But I don't want to drive you guys crazy either. Somebody help me please.
*sob. H- just have the Cantonese styled accent when speaking English, but okay, I respect that. But oh goodness I expected S- to be different cause the people there speak English and emphasise English so much. I try not to make judgements on the majority of the S- people based on these few, but man it's hard.

That's all for now, I have a lot more to write, but I can't concentrate. Because of the above-mentioned. In fact we're all in the computer room now and I was typing down what they said as soon as they spoke it. So enough there of my duties as a scribe. JUst imagine having to listen to this kind of speech all day. Anyway, I think my grammar's gone all awry as well. My biggest and most inconvenient shortcoming, especially now that I'm in boarding, is that I'm absolutely unable to concentrate on anything I'm doing if there's noise around. Even slight noise.

And the thing is, it's close to impossible to find silence and privacy in boarding.

I hope I get a room of my own next semester. I hope. I hope. I hope.