hello, i'm in a particularly crappified mood now, which is partly due to school and partly due to a general feeling of pms. it doesn't help that i've been having this strong sense of deja vu involving somebody telling me how to read body language, and for the life of me i can't figure out where or when i've seen that scene before. few things can be more frustrating than knowing that you know something, but not being able to recall it when you want to.

also, i have been rethinking a few things:

1. on the makeshift dream analysis i posted the other day on me dreaming that a fountain of pineapple tarts and cream puffs appeared in my living room- i think that if i were to strictly stick to freud's pyschoanalysis, then it would follow that the dream, on a deeper level, signifies some form of sexual neurosis. this can be anything within a range of sexual insecurites and abberations, but the most striking conclusion is that: i actually really -do- want to eat the whole overflowing fountain of pineapple tarts in one sitting, but because i convince myself that i don't because i don't want to become obese, as this might prevent me from fulfilling my true sexual aims (in the future, if i might add :p)because presumably less people want to have sex with an obese partner. again, that's based on freud's assumption that everybody has sexual aims which they must strive to fulfil. which now that i've said it, actually sounds quite ridiculous no? so maybe freud is wrong after all. maybe there are just some things which can't be related to sex.

2. on my plan to exercise and be active on a regular basis. so far i think this is the only resolution i've managed to keep up with till now. others, like my resolve not to eat chocolate, have backfired, and as a result i have been having the grossest complexion ever in the history of my life. plus there's the whole caffeine thing, which is not working out at all. anyway, at least i've been keeping up with my yoga/gym/swimming sessions. although yesterday i again failed at getting a tan even though i swam when the water was practically lukewarm with the overhead sun. and so i have concluded that i am probably meant to stay pale like tofu for the rest of my life.

3. i want to be an investment banker. i've got it all planned out- i'll take people's money, invest it, wait for the stocks to go up, then sell them and run off with my commission. then i'll use those profits to invest in my own stocks, and become a millionaire when i'm 25. so, even if my husband refuses to buy me a porsche, he can go screw himself. (haha, this time the phrase 'screw himself' actually fits a literal context) either way, i'll become rich fast and then i'll quit while i'm still on top. and then i'll spend the rest of my life establishing myself as a fashion designer and opening my megamall with audrey and mandy. my mall will have continuous shopping space- there will be none of those troublesome doors and walls that take up precious shopping time. instead, it will just be football fields upon football fields of unobstructed shopping. and it'll be organized in a variety of different ways, so that you can go to one section and find racks upon racks of black straight-cut pants or another section with green sleeveless cotton shirts, just like the way any obsessive compulsive would like it to be. neurotics like me will be able to go there when they're depressed, and then kickstart their lives again without so much as a shot of prozac. laugh all you want, but 20 years down the road when my empire crushes all those useless stores like taka and metro which don't even COLOUR CODE their merchandise, you'll remember that you read all about it here first!

damn, i love this song.
--

Train- Drops of Jupiter

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere
With drops of jupiter in her hair, hey, hey
She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there’s time to change, hey, hey
Since the return from her stay on the moon
She listens like spring and she talks like june, hey, hey

Tell me did you sail across the sun
Did you make it to the milky way to see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated

Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were looking at yourself out there

Now that she’s back from that soul vacation
Tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey
She checks out mozart while she does tae-bo
Reminds me that there’s time to grow, hey, hey
Now that she’s back in the atmosphere
I’m afraid that she might think of me as plain ol’ jane
Told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the milky way

And tell me, did venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you even when I know you’re wrong
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had . . . and me

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back toward the milky way

--

yeah, isn't it a sweet song? and aren't the lyrics so fitting for so many times in life?

this is areligious, btw.
--

In this asylum,
Where madness mingles with curious consciousness
It isn't the devil on your shoulder
Who debilitates and obstructs
Lines of action and inaction--
Those remain, in our mental periphery
Sharper and larger than life.
Rather, it is the calculated
Censorship we force
Unto ourselves that
Categorically disables us
And drives us partially
Insane.

And then the other
One part reason,
Still awake and watchfully sublime,
Struggles not to drown its master
In a hopeless paradigm.

So desperate yet cautious
Is this paradox of wills,
Inadvertent misreflections
Of an undercurrent flowing still.

Perpetuated in this chaos,
We cross but never meet:
Uncatalyzed reactions mired instead,
In disjointed collisions.
Uncertainty rooting the ground
To our feet.

Make or break, this
Pathway to the future
Needs a ball from your court.

--

will you throw it? haha.

just got back from my first gym session in what's probably been like over 3 months, and i'm still high on the endorphins! you know how it's like slacking is this vicious cycle that eventually consumes you in overwhelming inertia even when you try to get over it? yeah, my ponning of gym has been like that. i mean, at 7.30 on a monday night, there are way better things to do. like sleeping/reading/watching TV and other stuff that doesn't involve getting off your butt. anyway, one thing led to another, and so before today i think the last time i did anything vaguely gym-mish was for the busking stint outside heeren. ie the completely and horrifyingly malu-ating experience. but anyway, the point is that i should have gone for gym earlier this year because it was funfunfun!

well actually it wasn't really gym lah. it was just me, soph, lizhen and samwalker playing around with our own 'fab abs' routine and stretching and whatnot. in fact we did all this on the dirty filthy RI track, atop generations of RI boys' sweat. i feel disgusting just thinking about it. but we were looking for somewhere where there wouldn't be people around to laugh at our attempts at getting fit, so the dark track was the place to go. at one stage we discovered we needed music to accompany our crunches so that we could keep to a beat, and that made soph and samwalker start singing the school song while contorting their stomachs into various positions. i would have joined in too except i'm not quite sure of all the school song lyrics. after that we bunny hopped and wheelbarrow-ed around the whole track. i'm sure we must have looked like a bunch of woodbridge escapees or something, but it was too dark for people to make out our faces anyway so it's alright. especially for lizhen, who was making these loud squeals that sounded like she was in labour and about to give birth any moment while we were doing our leg raises. i think it probably would have been highly embarrassing if we were caught there. so it's a good thing we weren't.

on top of that, today i also managed to injure lizhen on the nose with my toenail. but this wasn't my fault, really. i was happily balancing in a handstand against the wall, minding my own business, when soph came up and said 'look, sam has flab here!' and poked me in the offending region. so naturally i recoiled, and tried to get back onto the ground so that i could get my revenge on soph and also inspect the flab. unfortunately, i didn't see lizhen standing right in front of me, and in the process of kicking myself off the wall, i kinda kicked straight into her. and so now my toenail has inflicted this little scratch on the bridge of the nose, which she has become paranoid of and has taken to washing it every few minutes. i mean hey, i know it's a toenail and all, but i don't have like some infectious exotic bacteria growing on my toes or something. anyway lizhen says i have to pay for her plastic surgery if there is any permanent damage to her nose, so i'm licensed to whine about it here.

oh and my sister fractured her ring finger today playing netball, and had to have it bandaged together with her third finger to prevent the bone from moving about too much. so she was gloating about how she spent the day giving The Finger to her most hated teachers, and getting only sympathy and well-wishes in return. one of these days i should sprain my third finger too or get some other cool injury like that, so that i'll have something else to say other than 'really bad cramps' as an excuse for skipping PE. because i think that both PE teachers, although being the himbos that they are, are getting a bit suspicious of the excuse already.

my problem is: i need a perfect boyfriend. i have decided that everything that is going wrong in my life now is due to my lack of a male partner. but because bad things are reversible and temporary, this inadequacy shall not be for long. my perfect boyfriend shall be someone i can have deep, intellectual conversations with, understands why yoga and pilates are superior to jogging, is himself a semi-exercise freak who subtlely conceals rippling biceps and washboard abs under an amazing intellect, knows when to leave me alone and knows when i need to talk, and doesn't ditch me for a slew of his other moronic guy friends as and when he feels like it. also, one day when we are pondering the great mysteries of the universe, this perfect boyfriend of mine will get down on his knees, take out 5 carat diamond ring, and tell me that he never wants to be away for me and doesn't even mind if i don't want to have kids. and then he will present me with a set of car keys, and take me to a hot red porsche that's parked a few metres away. that, my dear friends, would be the perfect boyfriend.

and, of course, he will arrive with a ribbon around his head on my doorstep one day, and say, 'sorry it took so long, i got lost'. and i'll say, 'it's ok, don't do that again'. and that will be the start of more good things to come, if ya know what i mean ;)

yes.

well on hindsight i guess the whole engagement process bit might be a little off, but i think that otherwise my standard for the perfect guy is quite accurate. like i don't want some dumb jock or square nerd running around with his arm around my waist. because in that case i might as well go lesbian altogether, and pick from the most eligible of the smart and sexy chicks. i know we all have to make do with what we can get, but not to such extremes, yeah?

oh and i had the weirdest dream last night. i dreamt that as i was coming down the stairs one morning, i saw this huge indoor fountain in the centre of the living room. except it wasn't really a fountain of water. it was a fountain of pineapple tarts and cream puffs. and then my dad came into the room and started saying that he brought the fountain back from the office and that we'd have to eat quickly because the pineapple tarts wouldn't keep long.

now, going by freud's method of psychoanalysis, this dream is actually a fulfilment of my personal wishes. except a fountain of pineapple tarts and cream puffs in my living room isn't exactly my personal wish. although i like pineapple tarts, i don't think i'd want a huge overflowing fountain of them, much less want to eat them at one go. and secondly, i don't like cream puffs, because the cream tastes so much of egg and egg is my most hated food. so this doesn't quite make sense. the past few nights i've been trying to keep track of my dreams and psychoanalyse them, and they all sorta fit in roughly the whole wish-fulfilment hypothesis. maybe i should dig deeper into this one. or maybe i should finish up the pineapple tarts downstairs.

on a closing note, notice how i have put aside all self-denial to begin this post with 'my problem is'. this means that i know i have a problem and i'm not afraid to admit it. unfortunately i don't think this works all the time, especially not when you are a physics tutor who also says 'my problem is' and continues it with 'i don't have much time', and use it as an excuse as to why you are unable to mark a single one of your students' practicals before sending them off to take their A-levels.

it is not my fault i used a heater and a rheostat for thursday's skill A. whoever is the jerk who first speculated that it'd be the heat loss-paraffin experiment should DIE.

this week has been so full of draggy lessons and practicals that i thought i'd never make to friday. but guess what, here i am now, at 6.22 on a friday, and have 2 and a half full lecture-less and tutorial-less days to psyche myself up for another tiresome week. it's like as the days go by the hours get longer and longer, time just seems to slip from one activity to the next, and before you know it, you're down to 3 hours of a sleep at night but don't realise how tired you are because things just keep going, and you just have to keep going along with them. in fact, i think i've reached the point where i'm so exhausted on a regular basis that i've almost become immune to the fatigue. i think i was going on 3-4 hours of sleep consistently for more than a week (not that i'm doing anything that important of course, i'm just really good at dilly dallying) before the tiredness suddenly kicked in and crashed on me like a load of bricks 2 days ago. i was so tired i could hardly keep my eyes open, and it felt like there was this anvil weighing my head down. and so i slept at 9 that night. not that that helped my physics SPA the next day, of course. but that's quite a different story.

it seems kinda strange that only a few hours ago i was cooped up measuring the percentage purity of aspirin tablets in the chem lab, when mr lai triumphantly announced that 'it's only between [him] and the weekend now'. somehow, all our tutors seem to have this knack for sadistic humour, that isn't quite so humourous when you put it in the context of a hot friday afternoon after a sweatifying PE session.

anyway. i think i have to do something about my caffeine addiction. i don't think i will stop it altogether, but i think i will try to regulate it for better results. last month's national geographic ran a feature on caffeine, and i'm grateful to know that studies prove my caffeine consumption is not increasing my risk of contracting colon or stomach cancer, nor am i transferring any health hazards to my unborn child. not that i have an unborn child of course, but metaphorically speaking you know? although, i think that 2 cups of coffee, 4 glasses of black/green tea and 2 bars of chocolate everyday might possibly classify me as more than a 'moderate' consumer. but only slightly more lah. because i don't take double shots of espresso every morning or those other extremely highly concentrated caffeine things. but the problem with this addiction is that now, if i were to suddenly stop taking caffeine for a day, my neurotransmitters would function at a much lower rate, and mental performance could be decreased by 30%. and hey, looking at me, i need all the help i can get, so 30% really isn't a stat that i can spare.

and so i have come up with a solution. either i will buy caffeine pills and ration them in 50mg portions throughout the day, or i will cut down my caffeine intake by half. the former is quite attractive because that would allow me to dissolve the pills in any drink and take them when necessary. but i think it's a bit troublesome to carry around the pills, especially since they probably don't come in 50mg doses. plus people will think i'm some drugged out freak, and i don't need more evidence to convince people that i'm mental, thank you very much. then again, cutting down my caffeine intake by half is also quite ambitious, but it would be good in the long run since the effects of caffeine are completely reversible and will go away once you wean yourself of it. so i think i shall just take my coffee 1 hour before important stuff like tests or pracs (it takes 1 hour to enter the bloodstream and jolt your neurotransmitters) and maybe in the morning or something.

the rest of the time, i shall rely on the most simple solution ever: E X E R C I S E!! yup. exercise is really the solution to all problems, it seems. when you're depressed, exercise. when you're fat, exercise. when you want to pig out, exercise. when you're angry, exercise. and when you're tired, exercise. because you can't sleep when you're exercising, and only a really sick freak would be able to fall asleep after pounding the treadmill. there must be some bio reason for this, but currently i can only think of how exercising means your muscle cells respire more and so your heart pumps more blood to provide oxygen to them. but doesn't that mean that your brain cells, which strictly speaking consist mostly of fats, get even less blood diverted to them and therefore you won't be as alert? maybe adrenaline really is more powerful and potent shit after all. hmm.

this discussion is veering to uncomfortable intellectual territory.

oh- something happy. my mom found out today that she didn't get 12 demerit points for using an illegal bus lane 2 weeks ago, and was so overjoyed about it that she insisted it 'called for a celebration' when i came back from school. and, knowing only too well that 'celebration' in my mom's dictionary means either shopping or food, i was overjoyed too. in the end she took me for this huge waffle and ice cream sundae at a cafe in gardens. and, in the process, she managed to park without putting a parking coupon, and narrowly missed getting fined for it.

so you know what that means- another 'celebration'! :)

valentines' day is almost over, which means that starting from now, i have a whole year to find a guy to spend it with next year. or perhaps a girl. i'm starting to widen my perspective now, especially after seeing how my sister, who is like three quarters my age, is happily attached to this pipsqueak of a guy who writes her love poems about wanting to see the sun set with her. also, there's the issue of my hot red porsche which my fiance will buy me as a token of his everlasting love (i'll even exchange the engagement ring for it!) so that i can drive around with the top down, park at traffic lights, and have more biker hunks wolf-whistle and say 'hey, what a hot bod'. yes, nothing is more sexy than a hot red porsche!

let's all take a few moments to appreciate that carefully constructed fantasy.

ok. enough. i spent this morning wrapping bouquets of valentines day roses as part of my joint sales venture with bobo and joseph. i must say it was quite fun, but also extremely tiring. we got the flowers at really cheap wholesale prices yesterday, and then sold them at about 400% higher today. i feel a bit bad for ripping people off, but hey, they're paying for our effort in arranging and preparing the flowers. plus, outside florists are selling single stalks at $10, so really, we're doing everyone a favour by undercutting those prices. i guess the tinge of guilt came when people asked which charity we were selling them for, and we were obliged to mention that it was for our 'pocket money fund'. ah well, everybody has to be a sucker at least once a year.

the flower wrapping business was actually quite tedious, but i sorta expected it because i did the same thing for youth day 2 years ago in NY. and that was a major class operation, so at least the work load was divided by more people then. today there was only the 3 of us, plus 3 kind volunteers, chrees, wanling and steph. together we toiled away in the archives room (yes yes, one of the perks of being the chair of a nerdclub) at siberia temperatures. seriously, i had no idea the aircon there was so strong. so now my fingers have this weird smell, which definitely isn't the smell of roses, but i think is either from the metallic ribbon we were using or the rotting stalks. haha. the good thing is that we played safe with our capital, so everything we sold on the day was pure profits. not bad for one day's work, but i'll definitely think twice before doing something like this again.

today i also realised what a good thing it is that there are so few girls in class. it makes us a lot closer and also a lot more appreciated. the guys bought a bouquet of 7 flowers for each of us, which was unexpected and well, sweet. chrees and wanling bought 7 pairs of shoelaces for us, each a different colour as there are 7 colours to the rainbow. so i got a stripey pink one, which went perfectly with the striped pink socks i happened to wear today. don't get me wrong; i don't always wear pink. but i like shades of red a lot, so it really suited me. plus there was chocolate chocolate and more chocolate. i thought it was a overload in school, but guess what, when i went home i started pigging out on the ones my mom gave my dad. and in the spirit of 'one more can't hurt', i washed it down with tiramisu. it was the best tiramisu i've tasted in my whole life, i swear. i don't care much for it on normal days, but this tiramisu was different! it had just the right texture and softness, and melted in my mouth instantly like the way it seems like in TV commercials when the stick-thin model stuffs a spoon into her mouth, closes her eyes and lets out an orgasmic 'ooooh, extrodinaire'. yes, it was good tiramisu.

marcus called me just now to wish me happy V day, which was kinda sweet of him. it doesn't help though, that apart from remembering my face and my name, he doesn't remember anything else. also, something very disturbing happened yesterday which involved an hour long phone call with him and some other things which i wish i didn't hear. it upset me for a bit but i guess it's also quite funny when you come to think of it. i was talking to francis about this (and other things) till really early this morning, and i'm glad for it because he cheered me up a bit and we both had a laugh about it. plus it allayed my guilt a bit, what with today being valentines' and all. i guess 'we'll see' is really the operative term here.

oh, and i'm beginning to see a trend in the sort of people who go to the gym- they're all mad freaks. just now there was this guy there, who weighs 80 kg (i know because i sneaked a peek) and who was running like mad on the treadmill. like he was sprinting for his life or something, only he wasn't sprinting because he was running for almost 45 minutes at that speed. my mom was very disgusted with him. when we left the gym, she was like 'i thought he was going to die in there... in fact i was hoping he would'. and then she was like, 'i don't get all this mad freaks, like what's the point in doing that? and he's ugly too!' hahahaha! my mom always makes me feel better!

i guess you know where i get my genes from now too :p

so much to post, so little time!

finding neverland. in case i haven't made it clear enough in all previous blogs and posts, I LOVE JOHNNY DEPP. and no, i don't have bad taste, neither am i delusional- i don't think he is exceptionally good looking or anything, it's just that he has this certain charm about him that makes him absolutely irresistable. it's like charisma with a capital C. johnny johnny johnny! *dreamy look*. and i've figured out what exactly it is about him too- it's the way he tilts his head downwards, and looks up, with his huge soulful eyes and chiselled cheekbones. it just kills you, i swear. and he has this way of being both boyishly vulnerable and yet steadily mature at the same time, which i thought was what really anchored the movie. finding neverland, btw, is an almost perfect movie from start to finish, not only because of johnny, but the way the figments of his imagination are interwoven so smoothly with reality. and the costumes and colours were gorgeous, the way only period dramas can be. me and aud were watching it in the cinema with like only 4 other people (on tuesday, when we ponned the CNY celebrations in school to hop over to j8 for our johnnyfest) and it was a really good thing there weren't many other people there because we were crying our eyes out from the halfway mark of the movie. and no, it wasn't just because johnny was cute and made me cry the way ben affleck did in pearl harbour. it was the movie. seriously, if you have time for only one movie, watch finding neverland. it's excellent! (and, it's johnny depp!)

reunion dinner. as expected, the cracking of the raw egg began the moment the steamboat water started boiling, which almost completely put me off dinner altogether. in fact this year was worse, because my dearest-est cousin alvin decided to mix THREE whole eggs with the raw beef, and then spent the rest of the evening watching me grimace whenever he piled the beef into my bowl and compelled me to eat. 'twas absolutely disgusting, i tell you. only good thing was that i managed to salvage some un-eggified soup from the pot, only seconds before the eggs went rolling into water. so the gross-out factor was only 9/10 and not 10/10.

CNY visiting. this year visiting was pretty bearable, albeit boring. in 2 days i went to my paternal grandmother's house, my auntie's house, marcus' house and vanessa's house. which means pretty good angpao collection :p meeting the relatives was tiresome as usual, but the miracle was that my parents didn't have the traditional CNY argument that inevitably erupts when my dad accuses my mom of not being enthusiastic about his chinese customs and blah blah blah. which was also because this year, he decided to blame it on me and my sis for taking half a year to get ready and making everybody late. but that blew over once he was surrounded by bak kwa so i guess it was ok. and surprisingly, the food was pretty good too! oh oh i love 8 treasures glutinous rice... mmmmmm! and marcus is a lot better! he can talk and almost walk by himself too... i was playing connect 4 with him and derek and fabius at his place, and he kept telling me that i looked the same and that he remembered me. haha, good to know that, no?

currently. thanks to all the new year's goodies, my stomach is on fire. it's like it has a life of its own. and i have a migraine too. so i spent the morning either bending over trying not to puke or lying down with the blanket over my head. ah well, that's the price you have to pay for a few days of indulgence. since today's the postponed ash wednesday, it means fast and abstinence anyway, so maybe it's a good thing too that i have to limit my fatty intake today. yes. and later i have to go to church too cos it's a day of obligation, so i guess i better try to start doing some work now before the puke feeling comes back again.

happy CNY!

tomorrow is CNY eve! which means you know what! it means more bak kwa and kueh lapis and pineapple tarts! mmmmm deliciouz! anyway i dunno whether im looking forward to reunion dinner in the evening not, because i always end up having to eat the disgustingfied pig's intestine soup and my cousins crack the raw EGG into the steamboat pot like right at the start of dinner. so i have no choice but to ingest egg for dinner. and i HATE egg. i hate it i hate it i hate it. it's ok if it's with other things, like pastries and ice cream and cakes and stuff, but egg by itself is just GROSS. nobody should eat egg. plus it has high cholestrol. which means i will live longer because im not subjected my arteries to deposits by high density licoproteins. yes; the advantages of learning bio!

the only downside about CNY is that your face suffers. cos firstly you get fatter and secondly you get more pimples. it's like today you eat bak kwa and tomorrow you'll see it on your face. i can already count the number of stupid little spotty protrusions all over my face. which is bad because i will have an acne-fied face when i bai-nian, and you always want to minimise factors which might make aunties/uncles be less generous with the angpaos! :(

am in a rather chatty and happy mood now in fact- just got back from a charismatic praise and worship session at my church. i think that since i've started attending these and being more spiritual, i've not had a major depressive episode and i've been on the whole a lot more happy. it's like my whole life has changed suddenly and i don't even know what i did for that to happen, but it just feels really good. it's like i've found one of the missing parts i've been searching for for so long, you know? i don't want to sound preachy or hoity toity evangelistic, but this experience has been a major turning point for me, and i can't help going on and on about it. i guess everything happens for a reason, and you just have to trust that the reason will be revealed to you someday. yesterday during the 2nd reading of mass, i found the answer that i was looking for:

"your faith should not depend on human philosophy, but on the power of God". Corinthians 2:5

for all its moral inconsistencies and injustice, maybe the world isn't such a bad place after all, yeah? ;)

yesterday's post:

today i clinched a new record- the 2/24 SPA F*ck-up Record. as the name suggests, it is only for those who bomb through 2 science practical assesments (which incidentally, count for my A levels, too!) within 24 hours. i am proud to belong to this elite club.

now that i have established what a loser i am, we have got to the part where somebody (preferably a tutor but that doesn't mean i don't value -your- opinion just as much) pipes in and says 'hey, it isn't so bad! stop exaggerating!' except that this time, it -is- so bad and i am not exaggerating. but go ahead, don't take my word for it:

let's start with chem. we had to do this gas collection thing for SPA, which involved decomposing hydrogen peroxide in a conical flask and delivering the oxygen gas into an inverted burette, so that water in the burette will be displaced downwards allowing you to calculate the amount of gas evolved. anyway. that part went smoothly. in fact, i was actually really pleased with myself because i mixed all the reactants very neatly and stoppered the flask almost immediately after that. the last few times i kept forgetting to insert the rubber tubing into the burette before the reaction, and ended up frantically squeezing the tubing in attempts to stop the gases from escaping. so, when no such incidences happened, i thought that everything had to be going well this time, right? wrong. like after the paper, when i was still buoyant from the successful gas collection, a quick poll proved that everybody got results that were directly opposite to mine. like me, they got 2 curves, but unlike me, their 1st curve was significantly higher than the 2nd. and there i was happily plotting the stupid graph, all the time marvelling at how gorgeously the points fell on the curve. really. my graph was so perfect! it's just sick that that it had to be wrong!

and then, there's the physics exam, which really merits a blog of its own, but since i can't be bothered, i'll just relate it here:

for physics this time, our level had the obvious disadvantage of taking the paper all at once, meaning that there weren't classes which got to take it later on in the space of the week, and, you know, be better prepared for what killed the earlier classes. anyway. apparently i underestimated the power of my classmates to get inside information, and when they were all desperately mugging the set-up of this weird test-tube experiment mintues before the paper, i dismissed it as baseless speculation and decided not to worry myself with it. as luck would have it, that EXACT thing came out for the paper, so when i saw the question you can bet a major swearfest went off in my brain. of course that wouldn't have been so bad if i had thought through the question logically and got down to planning what really should have been an easy peasy experiment. but no. somehow, five minutes into the paper i just felt my braincells shut off, and i had a major case of mental block. this led me to decide that in order to investigate the oscillation of a test-tube bobbing up and down in a liquid, i would have to vary the force applied to the top of the test-tube. like any sane asshole would have thought to vary the mass of the test-tube or the mass of the weight inside the test-tube, but not me. oh no, not me. instead, i come up with this super elaborate set-up which involves a pulley system releasing a brick onto a horizontal plank of wood, which (get this!) is balancing in equilibrium on top of a (get this!) test-tube. like what the hell was wrong with me??? how can a brick balance on a test-tube, and how can a pulley system remove the weight once the initial force is applied? i didn't realise the former during the paper, but i did realise the latter, though that hardly made a difference. because my brilliant solution to that problem was to have the person conducting the experiment MANUALLY and "rapidly, taking care not to disturb the oscillation" REMOVE the brick from the plank of wood. and where does the plank of wood go? it is retracted by the retort stand. yup, that's what i wrote in my A level script!

like i said, i deserve an award for that. and 100 marks for novelty. maybe they will send me back to primary school after reading the script, as i'm assuming any primary school kid would be able to tell you that you can't balance a brick on top of a test-tube.

anyway, that explains why i was in a completely shittified mood after school on friday. but my day improved exponentially when my mom picked me up, because she identified that i was too stressed and "needed a break". and so, she brought me shopping in orchard! specifically, shoe shopping, which is like the best brainless activity any girl can do when she's depressed. plus, i had a fantastic brownie-and-chocolate-chip cheesecake with vanilla ice-cream from NYDC, which i had been craving the entire week. so that successfully replaced my depression with fats and sugar instead. after that, we went home and i slept for three hours to let the fats congeal, then woke up feeling slightly sick, had dinner, and did an hour of yoga.

any girl who is depressed should do just that- go shoe shopping, eat cheesecake and ice cream, sleep, eat again, and then do yoga. it makes the whole world better, i swear!

having completely and royally screwed myself over for physics SPA skill A today, i was feeling rather crappy and depressed for the most part of the day after the paper. i don't really know what happened really; suddenly i just sort of had a mental block during the paper and took like half the time trying to figure out how to conduct the stupid experiment. although of course, that was in vain, because i picked the wrong variable to vary right from the start, but since my IQ blockers were on full-force during the exam, didn't suspect that at all even though i couldn't come up with any decent procedure after 20 minutes. yes; it is not humanly possible to regulate the applied force on an oscillating system, especially not when all you have are standard masses and retort stands.

anyway because of that burst of stupidity, i ended up with 15 mintues to complete 75% of the paper, including the detailed experimental procedures and precautions. so my handwriting degenerated into a doctor's scrawl and my diagram looked more like the sort of kiddy drawing you see tacked up on the fridges of proud mother's ('would you believe that my little danny can draw stick figures?! any child who can draw stick figures is going to be the next picasso! i have a prodigy on my hands!'). anyway, yes, it was a complete disaster. i doubt i can get more than 4/5 marks with the flawed experiment, and that's being wildly optimistic already. but my consolation is that there's another test for skill A 2 weeks from now, so my screw-up today may be inconsequential after all if i do well in that, since the better 2 grades are taken from 3 assesments. and i recall the first assesment last year went pretty well; what with the rapid and efficient system for information dissemination that RJ science students have in place.

oh well. better luck next time i hope :(

parents' anniversary today, and for the first time in many years, me and my sis conspired to do something for them at the last minute. of course this was mostly to save our sorry asses because we only remembered two days ago, and from experience we know that my mom will never let go of it if we forget her birthday or any other significant occassion. like there was one year she *told* my dad not to get her flowers for their anniversary, and then when she really didn't get any by the evening, she got real sulky and refused to talk to him. and she only called off the cold war when she received an apology in the form of 2 dozen red roses the next day.

so you can guess why me and my sis were eager not to make that mistake this year, and determined that 'don't get us anything' was certainly not to be taken literally. anyway we managed to make a quick online order for an anniversary cake, and, after a few assertive and desperate confirmation phone calls, got it delivered on half a day's notice. thank God for the internet and the wonders of modern technology.

anyway now my parents are extremely pleased with us, and i think i can safely say that all previous debts and grievances have been cancelled out. which is very lucky for my sis, since just this morning they were majorly pissed with her over something, but have now happily forgotten that the morning's lecture ever occured. i'm trying to think of what good -i- can get out of this, but i am currently not in trouble for anything so it is quite wasted really. maybe i can get them to write it down as a voucher or something, and then the next time i land myself in some screwdom i can like produce the voucher and all will be well.

capturing the moment was essential because photographic evidence is now all that is left of our very expensive and useful cake, so you can bet i took a whole lot of photos like the one at the start of the entry. i thought the pink cream was way too gaudy, but hey, when you order online you can't complain about colour specifications ;)