Saturday, September 13, 2003
how much is too much? how bad is too bad?
so let me clue you in.
too much is when you have no life.
too bad is when you wake up in the middle of the night and a thought springs to your mind,
"oh God, i have prelims tomorrow"
and you fall back and sleep.
too bad is when you wake up at 6.30am on a sunday, and you don't feel sleepy. you go to church and your least favourite priest(just so happens to be most boring and most likely to put you to sleep during the sermon) gives the homily and you don't fall asleep 'coz your whole life just flashes by during the mass and prelims keep you in cold fear.
i've had all that. when will it be too gone?
happy bdae cher! dear angel is 16 today. it's really a bad time to be 16 now. nope, should i say it's really a bad time to have exams now. no, scratch that, it's really bad to have exams in the first place.
i must remember to buy a calculator. considering it's me, things always go awry, must get a calculator. studied 4 chapters of ss today. it's really lousy. i mean. i was home THE WHOLE DAY! and only 4 miserable chapters. didn't help that i spent 2 hrs on half a chapter. really, sustaining economic development is not my cup of tea.
ooh. speaking of tea, i drank 6 cups of tea today. slouched on the couch and looked at the textbook and my mind wandered every 5 minutes. i'm not exaggerating here. daydreaming should become a competitive sport, then singapore will win a medal in the olympics with me as representative. dreaming is very entertaining.i thought of so many intriguing plots. 1. woman dies in war-torn country, passes me her daughter and makes me pledge to take care of her till the end of my days. 2. i adopted a kid. 3. i contract stomach cancer(was having a tummy pain you see) 4. i marry a new zealander and we do farming. 5. i take my parents to the countryside and they retire. i expand the fields and employ labour to till the lands. become filthy rich(where's the countryside?) 6. my family gets stranded. we try to escape and i build a raft made from wood and banana leaves(how so?) row on the big seas(i doubt my craft can weather that) and encounter storm, so we lie down. try to get into singapore but en up getting caught by immigration department. deemed as illegal immigrants. try to convince officer that we are citizens etc.
there were many others, but i can't remember that well.
watched 4 episodes of legend of the condor heroes! found out today that the aforesaid 2 episodes which i thought i had missed was showing again! so i watched, then studied and later caught the evening telecast for the newer episodes. they have a pretty cool ending song called zhen qing zhen mei. the theme song is a little tacky but there's one line which is quite cool. loved the show. i love tv. my mom saw me watching and coz i was laughing and all, she remarked,"how come are you so alive when you watch tv?" well, studying drains life out of you. the 4th episode which i caught ended off before they started the fighting and i was really exasperated, so i jumped up and kicked the wooden furniture and scraped skin of my heel by accident. sheesh.
prelims are soon. really soon. frankly, i just want it over and done with. i'm going to need a ranquilizer to sustain me through it. studying is one thing. since studying time is out. so i'm just gonna face the music and get on with it. just try to imagine it's another exam. but what i worry, is that somewhere in the middle o the week, i just cannot take the suspense and anticipation and i just go ballistic. i hate waiting. just eats you to the bone.
Friday, September 12, 2003
dang! 2 days to go. 2 days to study, to numb your senses. 2 days, to prepare your senior will. after 2 days? untimely death.
i sound bleak huh?
well, at least i won't feel so bad. i finished reading my physics. i intend to practise one physics prelim paper and maybe one more A maths prelim paper. finished reading ss txtbk for sec 3. actually, i only had to read the last chapter, coz i read the book 1 week back. but frankly, i can't remember. especially the part on err...singapore's industrialisation.
my mom left for work late this morning. then went to see the doc about her 'frozen' shoulder. for me, after breakfast, i'd read LOTR for a couple of hours(what a grand waste of time!). then today, SURPIRSE! the doc gave my mom one day sick leave to rest. and she came home. i was frantic, so stuffed the book under the couch. and started my revision. well, at least it got me doing a little work today.
last night, since my mom was on leave, my dad took my mom, feli and me out to dinner. went to novena square to eat at lao beijing. their dan dan mian and zhajiang mian is real good. not to mention, my daily dosage of tea. pu'er cha, bitter yet bland.
speaking of tea, as the week draws to a close, i'm just wondering how much tea i've been drinking. today i drank chrysanthemum, yesterday was pu'er, the day before bi luo chun, before camomile, and before that was citrus green and before that was camomile. hmm..tea is good. oh wait! why is it i can effortlessly remember what tea i drank a few days back and i can't remember the rules or facts in the textbooks? this dumbass question baffles me every time i'm studying for some exam. *shakes head*
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you know something? life looks less bleak. starting this week, it was basically dread at the exams and dread having to study. now with time running short, i need only dread the exams. there is time to dread studying anymore. now i just need to get the exams over and done with. easier said than done.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
studying is sooo underrated. our definition of studying is the zombie-like existence, caffeine-induced energy and killing yourself over laws on life and energy forces when in actual fact we are dying a slow self-inflicted death.
just read 4 chapters of LOTR. must not read anymore. tomorrow i shall go to school and study with min and eileen. the only remaining way to redeem myself and my results.
i really should enter myself for the guiness world book of records procrastination award. i'm sure if they have something called a procrastino-meter, i'd be able to prove my high-level competence and surpass all candidates in the qualifying round.
am officially 4 days away from the prelims. that sounds awful final don't it? that's real sad. i so loathe studying. really admire those who can force temselves to study. coz i can't. just can't. so honestly, the past few days of the holidays, i haven't done anything. that disheartens me.
something must be seriously wrong with my system. i'm this complete neatness opposite. i mean, i obsess about neatness and cleanliness(wo doesn't) but it's another thing altogether for me to keep my room clean and tidy. the fact that i considered cleaning up my room this morning seriously shocked me. i clean it up like once a year in december or before my relatives come visitng during chinese new year. but this very moment now, i'm totally game for a hefty spring-clean. the dust-your-carpets, clean-out-your-wardrobe sort, not just the careless-wipe-with-a-rag type.
and so, doing absolutely what i shouldn't be. i watched R+J this afternoon. the 2nd disc of the old version anyhow. some senseless impulse of mine. i should stop blaming myself coz i know that i wouldn't have touched my books either way. the show is really R(A). i never knew. her bosom and his ass is completely revealed in the show. but she's very pretty. the sweet, innocent look quite unsuitable with her name Olivia Hussey(like hussy you know?)
i'm going to stop pretending to study. tried myself at physics just now. tomorrow i'm definitely studying. who would ever have thought that home is the least conducive place to study? not when a hi-hi plays singable music, not when the tv plays dumbass shows which are still more interesting than industrialisation in singapore, not when LOTR threatens to overwhelm your being, not when a whole shelf of books which you'd never thought you'll actually read begins to interest you(no offence to jane austen fans here, but in this extreme period, i actually want to read her books now), not when sleep presents you with a choice between living hell and blissful escape to dreamland where nightmares of failing your prelims don't get at you, yet. so you kind of get the picture right? honestly, everything seems interesting when the only other option is to study.
what can i say? studying wroughts great changes in people.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
went out with cher to the library. and we did study. i sat and did the A math paper but considering that my math is bad, it was no surprise that i couldn't do like half of the questions. did scan through a little of physics(emphasize the little). to minimise on all distractions, we just stayed in the library. i mean it. i never walked out of the library once between 11am and 5 pm. we had lunch in the library. drank ice chocolate, ate this onion rings and wedges platter, ate chef's salad and apple crumble.
at about 5, we went to kinokuniya. cher's book was still out of stock unfortunately. but a lot of posters and books were displayed about 'turn left turn right'. the book is utterly adorable. the graphics are so cool cher and me bought a book each. also bought the soundtrack cd. they gave me this free poster. sadly, the one on 'turn left turn right' was out of stock and i was given some other poster of the author's works which looks quite gross actually, and i'll certainly not mount it anywhere.
came home and read the book. the setence structure is somewhat abrupt. and the repeated emphasis on how they walk in different directions, which i assume is to build muscle for the story, in actual fact just dulls the momentum. however, certain philosophical sentences really add thought, feeling and life to the story. also, the sketches of crowds looks very forlorn. but honestly, if you are buying for pictures, that's cool, but for say, fluent writing, then no.
the soundtrack is very nice, though most parts are either instrumental or musical. there are just 3 our ot 22 tracks which have lyrics, of which 2 is in cantonese. but they are lovely. and the lyrics are so beautiful.
finished reading 'just between us'. took really long. 6 weeks maybe? i think more. just stalled. like any other book, you can't read it slowly, it's gets kind of drawn out. and after reading about 4 books by cathy kelly, i still think that the first i had read, 'someone like you', was the best.
watched 'when harry met sally' last night. meg ryan looked quite pretty. better than now i think. quite funny. but missed friends coz of that. sigh.
oh. i forgot to mention. i think the movie for 'turn left turn right' isn't out yet right? well, i'm definitely going to watch it. definitely.
'two parallel lines will meet indefinitely one day'. a line from the soundstrack. sounds better in chinese though.
Monday, September 08, 2003
just went to the official freaky friday website. lindsay lohan's just 17 and she's done so much. aye. i'd rather act than study trigo.
i totally understand why people don't write studying as a hobby. it's energy-consuming, monotonous, repettitive, basically just warrants all negative connotations. didn't study any so far today. did filing. it's enough to give you a headache. that's what you get when you don't file for a whole year.
take me away is a nice song. i realise that i actually liked that before i liked ultimate you. i think i'm seriously getting crappy. went back to reading just between us. i feel really guilty for not studying hard enough and for abandoning lord of the rings.
going to the library to study tomorrow. for real. not kidding here. i have 6 days. and no real studying done. gawd, i even feel bad saying this.
Sunday, September 07, 2003
must try to save evry spare minute. not that it works, coz you know, penny wise pound foolish. i officially have 7 min to type this entry, so i can zoom off for 18min to bathe and do work etc etc. shall do math(whoah! shocking!) either that or filing the papers which are carpeting my bedroom floor. even maths sounds more interesting(i can't believe ii'm even saying this)
my cousin's a scholar studying in UK. he said they sell hillary clinton's memoirs for just 10 pounds! how cool's that? that's about $27 using the 1999 count rate. no matter how, it's still about $10 cheaper than in singapore. now, if i can just convince my dear cousin to bring it back for me during december when he comes back for a break...
my new phone's cool. but i need some getting used to. the number's different. still have my old chip, but sorta don't use anymore. my dad laid some rules. any extra cost incurred, i'm paying. if i lose the phone, gotta cough out 400 bucks to replace it(since i traded in the 8250). no fiddling with it must concentrate on exams. now i'm scared. i havr this habit of losing things. so i half incline to just leave the phone at home but what use is it? sheesh.
didn't watch my tv programme yesterday. my mom persuaded me to go for the dinner and dragged me. so i'm watching the followup episode at 2 am later. my new cousin is quite cute. was tempted to carry him. but you know, like how babies have this tendency to cry when i carry them or start screeching. or perhaps i am accidentally drop it or bang it's head against the wall. gawd the baby's lucky. it doesn't need to learn calculus. sheesh.
so anyway, when my mom dragged me to the dinner, we left the house early and went shopping at centrepoint coz she has vouchers. went shopping! mom bought a lacy spag top from mango and she paid for this $79 olive brown skirt from mango for me! she also bought me tea which i wanted. not camomile unfortunately coz she says i will sleep and she doesn't want me doing that, not when exams are here. so she got citrus green tea. sounds yummy. ooh, and chocolate digestives! yum. i should just say sayonara to my diet plans till the O's are over, or should i say, till i'm six feet under.
darned, i'm 5 min late. 20 min to surf the net just ain't enough.
