Children of Tinsel Town

Ah! Finally finished typing out my BM presentation script -- 600 words of droning on and on about the factors of suicide!

So - a quick shout out to all my labourer-friends (hahaha talk about bad English so early in the morning - 3am - hehe well you get my point!) & a treat to all my friends who are tinseltown-fans! Here are some of my favourite-est stars!! :D

Ah.. there's a picture I've stolen from Man Yee (my classmate in college)... the famous Harry Potter heroes - Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) & Ron (Rupert Grint).

Now, I find Lindsay Lohan looks absolutely stunning in this shot... :) I've always adored her acting -- ever since I first watched her in the 1998 version of The Parent Trap!

From the Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen... which I liked quite a lot, considered its bad reviews (bad reviews from my friends, that is! hehe)... maybe I just like nonsensical shows or something... but her acting makes me laugh! :D

And this... ah... this is the man whom I have positively idolised for the past three years - Josh Groban. He looks much better smiling, but all my friends (and I mean ALL) insist that he looks like a geek, so this is the *coolest* picture I could find of him. Heehee.

And him. Wow. Don't even get me started. I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest dude alive. Check out that photo! 'Nuff said. XD

See.... I'm not all books, I do enjoy the occassional sliver of Tinsel Town waste-of-time! :P

Life-Changing Project

And I thought this was a little holiday for us!

I guess I was wrong, what with the two major projects I've got to complete within this four-day-holiday ... ESL Investigative Study (gotta do my Annotated Bibliography & final report, plus arrange everything altogether), & my BM Folio (look for sources, write a script, memorize it, deliver it this Tuesday/Wednesday). On top of huge projects, I've got to do my homework (Math, mostly) & revise for the upcoming midyear exam (which I was hoping would be the only thing I would have to do, but looks like I'm not even going to be able to do this at all! :()... sheesh, you'd think they'd cut us some slack, what with the suicide rates going sky-high and all...

Hahaha yeah, you're probably wondering why I suddenly jumped to the topic of suicide. It's the most interesting thing, really, haha -- my BM topic of choice is "Bunuh Diri", which is suicide. I've found the most staggering articles from Dewan Masyarakat, some local newspapers, and a couple of books. And although reading up all this information on death and depression is kinda bumming me out, I must admit that this stuff is really quite interesting -- mainly because I'm so surprised by the number of Malaysians who commit suicide each year.

Do you know how many?

2500!

Two thousand and five hundred of our fellow Malaysian citizens take their own lives each year. Every time we celebrate a birthday, wham! People are throwing themselves off buildings, popping pills in intentionally fatal doses, drinking rat poison, slitting their wrists.... aihh.

Don't they realize that there is always a solution? That there is always a better way to look at things?

Now I'm really, really glad that I picked this topic. Call me the drama queen, but I think this is going to be a life-changing project.

Side Parking

I had my side-parking lesson today! Yay!


Mr Chua says my 'otak karat' and I drive like an 'anak kura-kura' and like a horse (jerky gas control) ... but the bottom line is: side parking isn't as difficult as my friends make it out to be! Point 1: first tiang of 3-tiang-row (3TR) to reach centre of small back window --> Point 2: eight & a half tiangs of 9-tiang-row (9TR) to come into view from right side mirror --> Point 3: first tiang of 3TR to be aligned with passenger seat car handle on left side. 3 main points to remember.

Hmm how does it go again? Move the car until 3TR & 9TR are the same distance from the car as seen in the left side mirror. Then reverse until Point 1. Turn steering wheel full-turn to which ever side I can see the tiangs in the side mirror. Reverse until Point 2. Then turn wheel 2 rounds. Turn my head to see the back of the car & reverse until very close to 9NR. Turn wheel full turn to the left. Go straight until middle tiang of 3TR is aligned with the space between the two air-cond circles. Stick hand outside window & wave.

Examiner will say "Ah moi, keluar!" and Mr Chua asked me "That mean you keluar or the car keluar?" and I dutifully say "I keluar" -- and Mr Chua wheezes a laugh & half-shouts "No no! Car keluar! *puffy laughter*" -- then reverse, turn wheel full-turn to right, go out of cramped little parking space, and start turning the steering to the left when the first tiang from 3TR reaches the end of my dashboard. Don't cross the yellow line (in my practise area, it meant "don't go into the rumput"). And... voila! Side parking accomplished. Of course, I had to check the tyres to see if they were straight... and hmm... I guess I still need a lot of practice there! Haha!

On other news...

I received a conditional offer from UQ yesterday... I know I should be pleased that they've offered me a place, but I'm kinda bummed out that the 'condition' in my 'conditional offer' is that I have to obtain a minimum TER (Tertiary Entrance Rank) of 93.70... I guess I should've expected it, since I applied to do a Bachelor of Laws -- and they want only the top of the arts' students for that!

I don't know if I should rethink my applications, because I only applied for Bachelor of Laws & Bachelor of Economics. Both of them require painfully high TER, so there's virtually no safety net course if I don't apply for something lighter, like Mass Comm or Journalism. -_-" Mayb I'll just wait until I get my TER, then think it through.

Of course, I know that the most probable path I'm taking is going to Taylor's Law School for twinning with University of Reading (it's recorded as one of the top 10 law schools in UK, after all) -- take 2 years here, and the final year in Reading itself. Then two extra years in England, where I complete my chambering & London bar. That's done while I work... so that kinda means I'll be thousands of miles away from my family & friends, for two whole years.... makes me a little sad every time I think about it.

I mean, Australia's not so bad -- it's closer to home, for one thing. But if I go there, I have to be there for an even longer period of time. In comparison to 3 years in England, I have to stay in Aussie for a record 6 years -- then considering the Australian bar isn't even recognized in Malaysia, I have to return & take the CLP and Malaysian bar. It's almost another decade of studying! On the other hand, studying in England would save so much time & money. Also -- if I want to think about it simply, if I went to Reading, I would have a law degree before my 23rd birthday. Wow. And a fully qualified lawyer by my 25th! People can only plan, though -- fate decides the rest.

Besides dreadfully dull university babble -- I interviewed one of the foreign students on Thursday during my break-time! :D I decided to get the ball rolling with the Korean girl, Kim Hyun Ju. We sat in the middle of the library, laughing & annoying the bejeezers out of everyone around us. Hyun Ju (pronounced Hee-on Joo) seemed at first glance as Malaysian as the rest of us, but she is, after all, mixed Korean (dad)-Malaysian (mum). It was a pretty interesting experience, and I was so glad that I brought my voice recorder, so I was free to speak to her normally. :P I won't reveal the details of the interview here, of course, so I guess you have to wait until Winanga-Li is published later in the year!

Takeshi's going to be interviewing the Indonesians (Sherly & Windy), while Kang Yun & Ming Yuen will be interviewing Chanchal from India & Mohd Shieraz from the Maldives. I'll probably interview Takeshi (Japan) myself, as it's just going to be strangely amusing if he interviews himself. XD

The ESL lecturers informed me that the boy from Kenya has left the country already, and I was so annoyed at myself for not taking the project by storm and conducting all the interviews before one of the foreign students left. Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk.

Hmm... what else is new? Mrs Banu finally returned our presentation report drafts ... to my delight, she gave me a 9/10. Niiiice. Pity it isn't recorded in the Internal Assessment. And thank you, Shern Ren, for helping me out with my draft! :) I guess your panda eyes were worth it after all! And she detected the word limit explosion, too. :S She wrote "Are you sure? Seems like more" below my (fake) "2100 words".

Hahaha!

Pencil? Did She Say Pencil? But I Used Pen? So How? Pencil ar?

And I believe that's how the LAN 1005 Moral Education Final Exam began today.

Haha! Okay, you probably won't get that joke unless you were there yourself -- and you probably didn't laugh because I'm a really bad storyteller. Haha! Ming's popping noises were even funnier during the last 2 minutes of the exam -- I imagine how someone would sound if he/she were "apoplectic".... hahahaha some words are so interesting..... And today's Moral exam for my class, was at the narrow little miserable-excuse-for-rooms-without-walls flanking the MPH (Multi-Purpose Hall) called "Gallery"... the only fascinating aspect of having an exam at the "Gallery" was that it was called the "Gallery"... hahahhaah....

Did I just make myself sound like a mighty geek? Hehehe!!

Maybe I owe that to the fact that my schedule read like this for this week: Tuesday - Math CT2... Wednesday - Malay Mock CT, Moral Edu Final Exam... Thursday - Malay CT, M'sian Studies Final Exam. Then a short break from Friday to Monday, but even then, we've got to finish up the ESL project (Mrs Banu is only returning our report drafts tomorrow, so the real work starts then) & prep ourselves for the BM project (painfully similar to the ESL Investigative Study)... and while ESL's research tutorial is in the 2nd semester (after midyear hols in end May/early June), the BM one is next week. It's going to be a long 5 minutes for me this coming Tuesday, droning on & on about 'suicide' -- my topic of discussion.

At this very moment, I am supposed to be studying for my M'sian Studies Final Exam (tomorrow afternoon) & my Malay exam (marked for Internal Assessment summore! eek!), but I went through a dozen objective questions at 7-ish and got terribly bored ... decided to come online & blog about how disastrous today actually was!

And suddenly, I've lost my courage to blog about it. -_-" It was funny & embarassing at the same time, but I think it'll take me more than a few hours to get over it, and THEN post it on the Internet (sarcasm intended). Okay, now I've just resolved my will to refrain from blogging about it. Haha, ok you can ask me anyway! It's funny! Can't wait to tell Denise & Carmen hahaha -- will do that when we're celebrating De's 18th!

Speaking of birthdays, May 10, 1988 must be some sort of hey-I-think-I'll-have-my-baby-today day! Denise, Ming, Tasha, AND Mary all share that same birthday! Which just brings me to a little pickle about who I'm joining for celebrations? Hehe kinda like a DeeDee versus Taylor's College Subang Jaya wrestling match, if I wanted to exaggerate it.

By the way, I've put a comma in between "10" and "1988" because today, Mrs Banu taught in class that if two numbers are written consecutively when writing the date, a comma should be placed between them.

(silence)

I know! See what we learn in ESL classes! How are things like that supposed to be interesting? Only superstrange sapiens like me can even pretend to be interested in something as bland and as mundane as that -- if you've checked out my class blog (http://www.h1isrocks.blogspot.com), you'll have seen the Barney icon with "F*** ESL" plastered on it, posted up by one of my more humorous classmates.

You Caught Which Bug Again?

Down with the flu. Again. And I keep mispelling "flu" as "flue" for goodness-knows-what-reason.

Math Common Test 2, this coming Tuesday... it's driving me sicker than I already am. T_T Chapters 4 & 5... sigh... I hope I do better this this time than I did for the previous Math tests.

------

Working on my first Winanga-Li (SAM Yearbook) assignment right now, kinda regret leaving it to the last-minute like this. A team of us from Features Dept are interviewing about half a dozen foreign students doing S.A.M. at Taylor's with us. It's such a fascinating task, I simply can't wait to get started -- can't wait to shake hands with our friends from abroad, can't wait to sit down & whip out my pen & notepad, and fire away questions that will open our readers' minds to what life is like in Malaysia, from a foreign student's point of view. XD

A little anecdote, if you please. ;P When Mrs. Banu handed me the list of foreign students, I didn't realize what the list was about -- then we sat down for the meeting, and midway through it, she called out, "Sha-Lene, I've handed you the list of foreign students, haven't I?" and I immediately quipped, "Nope, I don't think so" -- and she goes, "It's that list I just handed you when we were outside.. right before the meeting........" ... and I narrow my eyebrows together, squint at nothing, then my eyeballs practically pop out of my skull as I go: "OH YEAH, yup, you've handed me to paper!"... I wish I weren't so blur sometimes....

Oh yeah, and I was saying, when I took a closer look at the list, then I got pretty excited -- it turns out we've got students who hail from all over: neighbour countries like Indonesia, popular pop-culture icon countries like Japan & Korea, even a lass from India & another lad from the Maldives ... now I must confess, I don't know anything about Maldives, except that it's a gorgeous little place that sits in a neat little passage in an O-Level textbook I used to have. Haha.

Shark Attacks

I realized something very fundamental to life today.

My classmates are crazy.

But then again - so am I! HAHAHA!! Today, Jilly threw on Mak's shark hooded-jumper and a whole bunch of them started playing an incredibly amusing game -- sort of a cross between pinniata & tag. I laughed until no sound came out of my mouth.

They jumped and kicked and punched around until somebody collided with the walls and made quite a commotion. Uh-oh. Ongoing class next door! Then, Mr Chong came knocking in from next door & shushed us with a more-wrinkled-than-usual forehead. XD Poor lecturers! What do they have to put up with, especially from H1?

My classmates are totally out of this world, but ... how I adore them! Haha! There isn't a bunch of teenagers who are more original, more spontaneous, more incessantly ridiculous, or more united... than the students who make up H1. :P

* * * * * * * *

This past week has been pushing me closer to the edge more than ever. Today, I had Economics Common Test 3, an exam on Topic 4: Macroeconomic Objectives. Not only is this chapter the craziest we've had so far, it gets really complex near the end. The test went better than I expected, but worse than I had hoped for. Probably not going to do very well this time. :(

While I'm on the topic of Economics -- the most common question my friends have asked me about the subjects I'm taking now, has consistently been: "So what's Econs about?" Well, that really got me thinking...

Now that I'm learning more and more of Econs, I realize just how similar the subject is to, say, Chemistry or Biology. Studying Bio for SPM included memorizing indicators that became fingertip-facts after a while, and the same goes for Econs. After learning Topic 4, we're supposed to be able to say, "Ho -- the indicator for Price Stability is the Consumer Price Index, target rate is..."... I forgot my percentages today, and felt really annoyed about it. Econs is also a fat lot like History -- where memory power plays an irritatingly incredible role in recalling effects, causes, cross-costs/benefits, Australian examples, calculation methods... as far as I know, studying Economics is a combination of studying Chem, Bio, History... and most importantly, a major dash of common sense really helps.

If you like any of those subjects, you'll probably enjoy Econs. :) Of course, it doesn't always ring true for all of us. I never particularly liked any of those three, but I enjoy Econs more than any other mugging subject I've ever taken up.

* * * * * * * *

Nowadays during ESL classes, we've been sitting around in groups -- assigned to discuss pros & cons of recycling; but really, we've been attacking every nook & cranny of everything under the sun that isn't related to recycling. My group's damn funny weih. Ming, Mary, Buf, Jet Xin, Hong Ting & myself... (star student Li Shan used to be in our group! But I'm afraid we may have annoyed the living daylights out of her that she abandoned us for another group, haha) ...

From palmistry (Mary started it, but then I joined in by telling everyone about my how-to-see-if-someone's-gay-by-looking-at-the-lines-on-the-palm theory -- backed up by printed evidence, really! I read that out out a book :D)... to discussing whether Mary & Buford are together (which the whole class reckons they are, haha, but it's none of my business, really)... we've wasted the entire week's worth of ESL hours with flotsam & jetsam. Aih. Oh well, it was fun! XD

Hmm.. on other news, remember the temporary tattoos I've been playing with? Yeah, now I've stopped -- it turns out the back of my hand isn't allergic, but the length between my elbow and wrist (the inside part) is.... now I've got a red pattern of the tattoo on my skin (and this is after I hurriedly removed the tattoo after realizing the allergic reaction)... and my friends think it's so funny, they want to take pictures of it. -_-" On the bus on the way back home, Steffie bugged me until I let her take one! Eeek!

Hahaha... bus ride home today was so fun! Stef & I made such a ruckus on the bus, I don't think any of the other passengers managed even a third of their hopeful forty winks! At first I told her about scary phone calls, then we played "expressions" -- a game where you try to make expressions. Her "pity face" and "sad face" has no diff ya! Haha! And her "surprised face" is surprisingly unsurprising. XD

On a final note, Ming is gallopin' fun to yakk with! We've come up with comic strips, homoglobins mistaken for hemoglobins, ideas for a joint-blog, and a lot of head-swaying laughter! :) Love ya Ming doll!

*New links to check out: Mel's blog at http://nowandforever-mel.blogspot.com and my class blog at http://h1isrocks.blogspot.com ... and Mary's is on my tagboard. :) Enjoy!

And They Had Humpty Dumpty for Breakfast

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

And all the king's horses and all the king's men,

Had Humpty Dumpty for breakfast.

Hola, dear friends!

Haven't been on the computer for about a week now, only used the library computer once to check my blog's tagboard; which Denise told me has been flooded by.. mainly, her. Heehornk heehornk! Time sure flies, though -- and yet another week has gone past!

April 10th: Monday's child is fair of face

It's so funny how Monday begins with Math classes. In my class, everybody hates Math; and Mondays -- well, Mondays are universally despised. Inspired by a grilling two-hour experience of Parent-Teacher meetings, I finished my Math homework for the first time in weeks. Not that I could answer all of the sums, but at least I attempted them. And first thing Monday morning, I asked Mr Chong about the ones I couldn't do. So, April 10th was the start of the Dawn Of Doing Math Homework, for me, anyway.

April 11th: Tuesday's child is full of grace

Public holiday. Yay!!

But I spent the whole day trying to prepare for Issue Analysis, and doing more homework. T_T

April 12th: Wednesday's child is full of woe

Had my ESL Issue Analysis first thing in the morning. Looking back at it now, I wonder why I picked tigers as my endangered animal to discuss. But I did, and that wasn't the reason I screwed up my IA so badly.

Mrs Banu said that the weaker the student is in the discussion, the more questions she asks. And she asked me a LOT of questions. I was so nervous and tense, I'm amazed I didn't just sit down and stare, open-mouthed, at her. I blanked out so many times and constantly lost track of what I was saying. Bottom line: it went badly. After the discussion, I was so disappointed in myself that I was this (> <) close to tears for hours after ESL period.

Wednesday sucked.

April 13th: Thursday's child has far to go

Merit Scholarship Awards Ceremony. I had to follow a smart-formal dress code. eek. Resorted to wearing a pyjama-ish flowy shirt & slippery pants. I don't know the proper terms for formal clothes, hahahaha! Ming said I looked boho, (her term for "Bohemian"), but really - I rest my case. I have absolutely no fashion sense. The ceremony was quite fun, got to hang out with Tse Mun & catch up on things... but other than that, I would have rather been in class. Haha! Luckily, didn't miss any lessons...

Moral Quiz 3 after the ceremony. New & very comfy chairs in the lecture theatre! With working tables, heehee! I really, really, really hope my classmates won't bounce on them & break any more..... the quiz was redundant, everybody cheated. The Moral Ed lecturer is a crap invigilator! Some of my classmates were sitting on the stage with pencil & eraser, changing their answers and the lecturer was right beside them, chatting with some other students. -_-"

Got back Accounts CT2 results! Made a big improvement from my 19.75/30 in the Class Test.. managed a 29.25/30 this time round! I had a big smile plastered on my face when I saw my score -- scored perfect marks on the ledgers & journals.. made a mistake at the short-answer questions.. but still, I'm really happy with my score!

Ee Leing got the top spot with a PERFECT SCORE (30/30)... omg hahaha, what an accounting goddess. The marks all came in pretty close -- Ming improved a lot from the Class Test too, she got 27.5 *hugs, Ming! three cheers for students who didn't even take accounts for SPM! XD*... Laura & Li Shan got 28-point-somethings... Buford's score is somewhere around there...

The thing about Accounts scores in my class is that they come in really close -- students like Laura, Li Shan, Jwu Wey, Buford & Ee Leing are the elite of the subject -- and I'm pretty sure they always were, especially in their SPM days. The competition is quite exciting, ya? Haha. Now Buf constantly half-shouts at me to stop studying. XD And then Mary tells me to keep studying. And then they bicker. Hehe damn fun weih.

Okay, Daddy's asking me to go out to practise my driving now.. gotta go. Aih.. btw, Parent-Teacher Day was pretty interesting... haha perhaps I'll blog about that next time. Take care!!

Randomness

Here are the photos from my April Fool's TGIF outing! :)

Went to the curve with De, Carmeny, Sara & Azrina.. met up with Cheryl there ... got my first tattoo set at the flea market! Yippee! Hehe! Cost RM5.90 at first, but we bargained it a little lower to 3-sets-for-RM14.

Haha, damn funny weih.. people keep coming up to me asking if the tattoo on my hand is real.. and I give them the usual I-think-there's-a-duck-growing-out-of-your-forehead look. XD

HEAR NO EVIL. SEE NO EVIL. SPEAK NO EVIL.

I miss hanging out with De so much, she is such a solid, original friend -- and we grew so close over just a span of 2 years. Had our ups and downs, sure, but we really clicked. There's so much laughter involved when I'm with De... T_T and laughter is the best medicine for a disease called SAM.

And through Denise, I met Carmen -- one of the best people I have ever had in my life. She's one of the few friends I really trust at college, and it matters so much to me to have people to trust -- especially when the corridors are lined with strangers.

And until next time, here I am. All smiles. :D

Panic Attacks, Anyone?

I haven't actually had a major panic attack since P.M.R., but S.A.M. seems to be doing a pretty good job at nudging me to crumble, literally, before exams.

And they're not even really exams. They're just Common Tests ('common' because everyone doing SAM who takes that subject, takes the roughly same exam at almost the same time). But why do I take them so seriously? Why do I constantly act as if Common Tests form, for me, the personal equation of CT = Life Or Death?

I'm not acting like how I acted while preparing for SPM -- hours of dilly-dallying, lazing around, not wanting to face the fact that I had to study very hard if I wanted to do well. It didn't even really bother me then, that I wasn't prepared for SPM.

But I cared less then. Now I care too much. Now every point matters so urgently to me, that every single time I make a mistake, it feels as if someone reached into my rib cage and gave my lungs a too-hard squeeze. I find myself no longer able to say, "Aiyah.. never mind-lah.. next time do better lah...". So when I do badly for exams, I feel so disappointed in myself.

The thing about S.A.M. that you have to understand, is that every point really does matter. Almost every test we sit for is taken into account for our final TER score. So every time I lose a point, I feel like I'm worsening my chances to get into a good university. Every time I look at a question in a test and am thinking about how to answer it, I think about how my answer would affect the rest of my life. And that, my friends, is what pushes me over the edge. T_T

So maybe it's just a phase. Maybe I'm still new to this programme (after all, it's only April), and I haven't learnt to take it easy yet. Perhaps maturity will come hand in hand with the ability to stay calm and keep my mind focused. :P

On a relevant note, I got back my Econs CT2 paper from Mrs Goh today... She was going to give them back to the whole class, but most of my classmates didn't want the papers just a day right before Parent-Teacher meeting (tomorrow morning) and less than an hour before a common test (Accts CT2, just). But I needed to take mine back (one of the few who actually wanted them back sooner than necessary, heh)... because if I screwed up my test, I would know that my method of studying for essays was wrong. And therefore, I would have to think of a better way to go about it, and not waste time studying the wrong way. And .... I was curious. ;P

My score didn't really affect me as much as I expected, although a 16.5 over 25 is concrete enough evidence that I really did screw up my test. My SAQ's was havoc, only 5 over 10. Half my answers were wrong, in that case. My essay was so vague -- but I was still lucky enough to get an 11.5 over 15. It turns out that I was supposed to heavily emphasize on the Trade Practices Act, which I didn't do. And I shouldn't have naively left a big blank in the middle of a jungle of words, where I forgot the words "exclusive dealing". Hehe. Mrs Goh did me the favour of filling up the blank in my sentence with: ??. Over 80% of my essay was completely irrelevant to the question posed. Ha, ha, ha. Thank goodness I wrote a full 2 pages, so I still got half a page's worth of marks.

And I had Accounts Common Test 2 today. We had a mock one two weeks ago, and I only managed a 19.75 over 30 for that; so I had to work extra hard for the real test. I feel quite happy with what ever I managed today -- my structure question was a little bit berserk, and my General Journal was definitely messed up (we weren't provided a multi-columnar journal, only the ordinary one, BUT I acted as if we were given a multi-columnar one... ish. Mistake. Wonder what's going to happen to those marks?)... but I was so happy when the total from my Debtors Schedule equalled the balance from my Debtors Control account. Here's to hoping for at least an improvement from my Class Test (Mocks).

P.S: Was so tense before the Accts CT today, I walked somewhere and tripped. Like twice. Haha. Brain didn't connect with feet anymore.