I keep having to remind myself that my exams are NOT over, and that I still have one paper to go.

It's not easy. Especially since my three hard(er) ones are over with, and 6 days feels like forever to study for one unit.
Well, I only have two and a half days left now, but you know. I'll get it done.
That's the plan, anyway.


IN OTHER NEWS...
I am loving the amount of football that I get to watch on the box.
loving it.
Les Bleus have been less than stellar, but I'm looking forward to Oranje tonight :)

Life feels good!

so this is how it goes

you get to study break and it begins to dawn on you that yes, you probably should build yourself a cocoon and do that quality time thing with those notes that you've neglected all semester.

you try.

and then you start to realize that there are literally a billion things that you would rather be doing. and you start to run through them in your mind. and the act of just doing this takes up like, half your study time.

you wonder how you ever felt bored and restless all those weeknights, and seriously, who knew there were so many things you could do on facebook?

also, tv shows don't stop airing during exam period :(

so before you know it, you're halfway through the week with an exam in two days, and you've just watched three hours of television straight (which is more tv than you've watched in the last month put together).

then what do you do?

you write about it.

the things that happen

Funny things happen when exams come around...

suddenly, after weeks and weeks of staying up till past midnight every day, you believe it will be a good idea to go to bed at a quarter past eight. as a result, you get almost double the amount of sleep you regularly get. that's 12 hours spent sleeping, 3 of which could probably have been good study time.

facebook becomes a helluva lot more interesting.
think: hey, I wonder how *randomdude* is doing. maybe I should facebook him.
nevermind the fact that you haven't seen him for six years and you barely talked to each other back then anyway.

you read more FML in one sitting than you have in your entire life put together.

you rewatch sitcoms you've already seen. even the ones you didn't really like the first time round. and you try to justify it by saying "I just need the background noise" :(

the weeds growing outside your window intrigue you.

you have a nagging desire to learn every single word to I Got A Feelin' by The Black Eyed Peas. No joke.

the highlight of your day is deciding which packet of biscuits to eat next.

you actually sit down and BLOG.

...and all this in the space of 24 hours (12 of which you spent sleeping, remember?)

the sad truth

no longer with it

i had an insanely bad nap this afternoon.
i think the stress is getting to me.
i cannot be bothered to punctuate properly.

am wondering if i should spare you the details of my dream.
i think not.

cover your eyes, melissa.


the outside of my house is the one in pujut, miri. the inside, is that of the one over here, only more hotel-like (down lights in bathrooms, marble everywhere, etc).

apparently my family has just moved back to pujut, and i have this old neighbour who happens to be the blonde girl with curly hair from the new 90210. the looks, and the attitude that goes with it. she's like a dictator, making us do things with her that we really don't want to do, and to avoid her, sam and i had to crawl around the house in the dark, cause if we turned on the lights, she'd see us from outside. this happened for a very long time.

now that i think about it, it was very creepy. and very horrible. you never knew when she was gonna pop out with that evil smile and make you tea-party with her rabbit or something.

then suddenly, i was stalking the perimeter of my house with a head boy and a random guy, and when i peep into one of the windows (of my own house), sam's having a sleepover with the mel, sta, joy, tiff, jess, esther etc etc. i felt rejected.

and suddenly, we see a fire behind the mosque opposite our house, and our back gate is open wide for some reason, and a lorry comes in carrying michelle rodriguez, heading a team of armed guerrilas. and my family, and lots of my friends (from over here), are suddenly in the driveway of my house.

somebody says "i hope you have your mykad with you"

i'm at the back of my house, and while i'm groping inside my gigantic mimco bag for my wallet to find my mykad (which, in real life, isn't actually in my wallet), the guerrilas somehow don't find me. the two random guys disappeared rather quickly. everyone else is lined up in my driveway.

there is shooting.

from where i am (behind the house), i somehow see through to the front of the house, and see only one line of people left standing out there. just as the guerillas are about to leave, my mother starts crying, and i know it's because she doesn't know where i am, and she is about to ask them if they shot me.

i decide that if she does that, they'll shoot her. so i pop out with my mykad and say "here i am."
michelle rodriguez looks at my mykad, then says "well, looks like someone else will have to go since this little girl came out late".
then she shoots some random auntie (that i don't actually know).

someone says "OMG that's auntie jennifer."
i think: "they shot someone cause of me!!", then "omg... auntie jennifer!" and then i think "who?"

i later find out that it was some sort of thing to do with population control.

then i wake up.

joy and sam were in the line. the rest i don't remember.

but i know melissa was there at the start of the dream.
she wasn't there at the end.

//cry


here ends the story of my make-me-more-tired-when-i-wake-up nap.
thank God it was just a dream. really. really really. thank God ><

lardeedarh

I am still sore all over from that little bit of running around I did at basketball on Saturday. It hurts to walk. This must be how old people feel, except every time I go "ouch", I get this deep sense of satisfaction. Yeah, that's right. I'm aching from EXERCISE.

The basketball was great fun. Had an awesome time doing the Esther-wave on court, and even more cheering for everyone. IMC owned all (in my eyes). Great job, soldiers!


Lesson #4546 in winning at school:
If you have not finished doing your homework, do NOT do it in the class of that particular subject, on the day that it is due. It screams "I AM GUILTY". Instead, pretend you have everything under control and hope like hell the teacher forgets. Importantly, do not fear. If he/she actually remembers and decides to check - i.e. the "who has NOT done their homework" situation - be the first to put up your hand.
The others will follow.
I promise.


And it's your lucky day, because you get a double dose!


Lesson #3265 in winning at school:
If you are feeling extremely sleepy in class while the teacher is explaining something on the board, frown a little. If you're lucky, your teacher will think that you know something that they don't and out of pride, will not question you. At the very least, they will think you are just a little slow, but hey, at least you're making the effort. They will not tell you off.
Don't ask me why, but it works.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, do the eyes-closed, book-on-table, look-like-you're-deep-in-thought thing, no matter how awesome a trick you think it is. Teachers know this little tactic. They do it all the time when they're "marking the year 9 tests".


I used #3265 today. Except I think my Physics teacher knew I was sleepy, but he assumed I was still making the effort to understand him.
Importantly, I didn't get told off.
So there we go.


I really should study for my test and EPW tomorrow.
Time to go.

It's officially the first day of winter...

and I've just realised how the exams have been timed to coincide with the changing of the seasons. How symbolic. How bleak.

The sky actually started darkening while I was halfway through my Lit exam.
Train of thought: Shelley's Frankenstein reflects this aspect of society through the darker elements of her novel- oh HELLO, speaking of dark... come back up, Mr. Sun. Please?


I shall show you my fatpinkbull tomorrow, I think.


I also think I need sleep.


Happy 17th birthday to Casper Leow CJ. I don't remember what the Chinese names are. Chun Jin? Don't know.

But happy birthday anyway :)

birthday posts are becoming tools of procrastination

William!

I'm sorry it took so long for me to say

Happy Birthday.

I remembered while I was brushing my teeth.
Really.

But anyway.

Sometimes I want to stab you in Applic because you keep on making me play weird paper games with you. But you know that, and you still make me do it.
I forgive you though, because I keep winning the games (cow vs. robot much?).

stick to the stuff you know.

It's been a fun few years, and I think there are some things we'll never forget (like the time in year 9 when you laughed cause the bird shat on my hair, but you didn't realise it had shat all across your back).


Watching you get taller has been kinda interesting.
Watching your hairstyles change has been downright mind-boggling.

I have about 500 of these that you took on my camera because you kept saying "I look so shit" after every. single. shot.

Happy 17th, Will.
And oh, before I forget.
I have all the most embarrassing pictures of you.
Ever.

i keep hearing my phone ringing from the kitchen but it's sitting right next to me and not ringing. i think i'm going crazy.

i have been listening to a few instrumentals on repeat for the last couple of days.
it's nice sometimes to just listen to music, without words to distract you.

a few favourites:

Wing Stock, by Ashley MacIsaac.
apparently he's a bit of a weirdo in person, but a brilliant fiddler.

To Zanarkand from FFX by Nobuo Uematsu (who composes most of the SquareEnix game soundtracks). i know it's a little overplayed, but i still like it a lot.

Utada Hikaru's First Love (FFVII Advent Children) is also quite nice, but the build-up is a bit boring. once it gets to the - what's the equivalent of the chorus in an instrumental? - the middle part, i really like it.

but i can't get past River Flows In You by this korean dude called Yiruma (who IS this?).
it stays in my head all day long... but it's so pretty. one of the prettiest piano melodies i've heard in a while. i love it.


T-15 hours to the chemistry exam.
poo.



[edit] 9.32 pm
anonymous has very kindly corrected my initial assumption that Yiruma is japanese.
he is, in fact, korean.
they're everywhere.

how did tristan's hair get longer when the captain was cutting it shorter?

watched Stardust with the sister and the cousins yesterday.

it was funny, sweet, surprising, surreal...

altogether very nicely done, but still lacking the magic of Gaiman's storytelling.

i thought the cast was pretty good... and i will never, ever be able to look at Robert de Niro in the same way EVER again. michelle pfeiffer gave me goosebumps - her evilness! not HER her!!

it didn't follow the book exactly; elaborated more on some points and totally discarded others. but they didn't screw it up, and the ending was sweet but not terribly corny. i think i still prefer the book, but the movie was really not bad at all.



i was so bored, i joined Facebook.
crap.


HY: be wary of any sentence that involves "you" and "feel"
me: what about "how do you feel" when someone is sick?
HY: actually, i think it's only when "feel" comes before "you".

*pause*

HY: especially "i feel you"

bahahahahahahaha. i just found that incredibly funny.

if i could give a **** for 15 hours

5 english lit essays to plan
4 g&t exercises (9b,c,e,f) overdue
3 chemistry chapters to study
2 physics worksheets yet to be done
1 photog task for before the holidays

how much time do i have?

filler

it's me blogging this time, not moey.

really.

last year, i signed up for the 40-hour famine, which is organized annually to raise much needed funds for the poor and needy children in less fortunate countries. we collect money, and then we don't eat for 40 hours - something about empathizing with the hungry children of the world.

anyway, it was pretty painful for me last year. you don't realize just how much you normally eat until you're not allowed to. i went without food for just 40 hours in comfortable conditions on a weekend; those poor kids go without food for only God knows how long in bad weather and dirt floors.

i am blessed. i get really hungry all the time, but i'm not starving. thank God. i love my food.

which begs the question: why did i sign up for it again this year?

which leads to a very important realization: the 40 hours without food part starts tomorrow night.
that's really soon.
i haven't had time to prepare myself mentally.
no food from 8 pm tomorrow night till noon on sunday.

i don't want to think about it anymore.

btw, if any of you out there feel a burden on your conscience to donate money to the poverty stricken youth of the world, do feel free to approach me with money in your hands. all donations welcome, and gifts of over $2 are tax deductible.


there is a chemistry essay due for all Kingwell's chemistry students tomorrow. will, mo, albie and i are currently having a competition to see who finishes first. the word count is as follows:

mo: 270
albie: 217
will: 133
kim: 97

and here i am blogging.

i passed my laptop (you know, the one i broke... hur hur -_-) to a friend of mine whose dad is an engineer yesterday. the father said he'd try to fix it for me.

today, my friend came and told me quite cheerfully that my laptop is currently "in small bits all over the floor of the house ^^".

i feel reassured. this is not strange, because if the guy can take it apart, surely he can put it back together.
right?


been spending the last couple of lunchtimes watching the upper school three-on-three basketball tourney. yesterday's game was really great: one Ritz, some William, and a little Moey played against a couple of tall-blonde-aussie-netball-playing chicks, and a big Darrshan.

the little guys won it cause the other team couldn't see them XD.
ok, so ritz covered the court really well, william was damn fast (i want reflexes like his), and moey can jump surprisingly high. the three of them have good teamwork (played with each other for years), communication (the indonesians speak indo while moey goes "OI, english!"), and the thing that got them over the line: they just love playing the game.

today's game was... brutal. one side played really rough, and the other were NOT playing their best. totally didn't have fun watching it. it was, however, the only game with a respectable amount of spectators. asian power for the win!


had a formal assembly this morning.
semester one award winners acknowledged.
thank You.

this is all i want to do

killing time

was reading a post on andrew's blog when i thought it sounded awfully familiar. like, seriously familiar. like something my brain would come up with. then i got to the bottom, and totally cracked up. too good, man. you have to read it.



the little Me to You bear that i bought on sale and love so much.
but i bought it for wendy's birthday, and it killed me to put it in that little bag with flowers and give it to her. well, almost killed me.

said moey: why don't you just keep it, if you like it so much?
said kim: because it's Me to You, not Me to Me.

the lameness is spreading.

"sooner or later, television will have more resolution than real life"

KNJ
wise friend, a.k.a tofu.

i watched the first Death Note movie yesterday, and i quite liked it. it's clever, though there are a few plot holes and it ends just a little bit too neatly, but it makes me want to watch the second movie. which i will get around to once i'm OVER THE STUPID EPW AND PERIOD ZERO.

i like Death Note because it's terrible and original and because the character L is just so fun to watch.

and moey likes it because of this:

Hikari Mitsushima as Sayu

...as well as all the other girls in the movie. funny how all the females involved in the story just happen to be so attractive, huh.


four papers back, one to go. i hope it doesn't disappoint.



[edit] SOMEONE is dissatisfied that no picture of Misa Misa from death note appeared here.

this is the other reason people watch the movies.

how i spent the better part of an hour

my english homework this weekend is to devise a representation of what it means to be Australian. trying to concoct a coherent anything has been something of a challenge.

i just don't have enough of an affinity with the country to be able to spit out something that could accurately represent the meaning of being aussie. it's quite sad. i tried, i really did. but i ended up with something that...... well, it's the only way i know how to express it, but i don't think it's quite what my teacher is looking for.


What It Means To Be Australian

I am not an Australian; neither by birth, nor by nationality.

I am a Malaysian, born and raised for most of my life in Sarawak - the largest and most culturally diverse state in the whole of Malaysia.

We are 124 thousand square kilometres of tree, river and carnivorous plants which don't stop at the insects, but have been known to treat themselves to the occasional small mammal.

We have vast, untouched rainforests, a cave that can house ten jumbo jets, nose-to-tail, and the world's largest flower, which actually smells like rotting flesh [but this is a fact never advertised in the glossy tourist brochures].

We share our land with 28 ethnic groups - each with their own language, culture, and cuisine - living in harmony in a country that is defined not by our Gross Domestic Product, but by the people who make it what it is.

Sarawak is known as the land of the hornbills, though the only hornbills i have ever seen are the ones made of wood, which serve to distract drivers as they navigate the roundabout in the old part of town. Even so, we are proud to have that name, despite the fact that one in three children do not even know what a hornbill is.

The people of Sarawak love their food. Food is our reason for existing; it's the reason we get up every morning. The local food is fast, cheap, sensational for your tastebuds and damning to your cholesterol.

In terms of development, we are probably not the first. The opening of a Starbucks in one of our humble cities was the most exciting to happen for a while. There are people from other parts of the country who think we still live in trees, and we tell them that we even have elevators to get up there.

Sarawakians love Sarawak, but we are not so stupid that we cannot see its faults. We will complain about the litter while chucking an empty packet of chips out the car window. We will curse the heat one day and glower at the rain the next. But we will defend this place fiercely, and shamelessly proclaim it to be the best in the world.

Because we are proud of our place of birth; we have a loyalty that is so deeply rooted that we don't care how stupid we look when we say it will be the next Big Apple. Most of us move away, but we will go back to visit year after year after year because it has something that no other place does.

It's home.

And that is what i think it means to be Australian.

5 minutes gone

something amusing i saw on somebody's PM.

"I AM WAITING FOR A VERY IMPORTANT ANSWER TAT WORF TO WAIT FOR......I WILL WAIT TILL THE DAY U WAN TO TELL ;)"

i was once again gripped by the vice of procrastination, and could feel myself tumbling into the trap of play now, die later-ness, leading to the inevitability of a typical last minute work session when sharon said:

kim... get off your ass!! you're not doing anyone any favours like this. just do it. you can do so well, but by not doing anything, you're throwing your life away. time is precious; every minute gone is 60 seconds of your life wasted.

granted, it was a little intense for the situation, but it made me think. about what, i'm not sure. but i'm sure i will have a moment of profound realization later on tonight.

no man has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.

channing pollock

short? tall? brown, yellow, or black?

my boss told me something today that i found terribly amusing.

you see, he was a tour guide back in the day, and he's traveled many different places many times over, and knows a lot of things that normal tourists just wouldn't know. to share stories of past happenings is a favourite past time of his when there are no customers around.

today, he told me about a little experience in china many years ago. he had brought his tour group to a karaoke lounge in one of their town stops, and man... karaoke lounges there are "so technologically advanced".

you walk in and there's a big room with two live bands - one on each end of the room - and people can dance in the middle. you sit down on one of the comfy lounge chairs, and someone will come and wait on you hand and feet.

so that night, boss and a friend visited the place.

the first thing they ask you once you're comfortable is "would you like a girl to accompany you? to sing?". [when my boss told me this, i snorted]. well, my boss's friend said yes. and you know what happened?

out of nowhere this TV screen flips on, and the friend is handed a remote control. on screen, there are pictures of girls... lots and lots of girls [use your imagination].... change the channel and there's more girls. all for him to choose from -____-. all he has to do is press the remote control, and just like that, a girl appears. apparently there were about five hundred there for his taking. all with a price tag, of course. [HAH!]

but what is that? it's like shopping on e-bay. Great Selection & Fantastic Prices On All Items. Power at Your Fingertips. Delivery on click.

i've honestly never heard of this before, [have you?] but i just find it so bizzare, and consequently, so amusing.

i mean, can you imagine sitting there choosing a person like you're choosing wall colours? or like choosing live chickens in malaysia?

"how much for the brown one over there? no, that one too skinny. i want the fat one."

i could launch into a whole tirade against the objectification of women here, but i'm sure we've all heard that one before. and if you haven't, someone you know will be able to tell you. preferably not a male.

and besides, there's supposed to be nothing sleazy about it - it's purely professional. it''s like contracting an accompanist so that you don't have to sing your own harmonies; so that you don't have to be both aladdin AND jasmine when you sing a whole new world. that kinda thing. so i don't really feel a need to defend female rights.

i do however, get angry when i think about what Sheikh Al-Hilali [he of the comparison between women and meat] said in an al-Jazeera interview the other day. what he ALWAYS says whenever he's given an opportunity to slander the respectability of women everywhere. pisses me off. but that's another story. maybe tomorrow.

and for the record, my boss is the good guy. it was his companion who was the pervert.

too much phygntint

they've been found.

the physics book, and the pencil.

i'm glad the book hasn't been nicked by someone who used it as reading material in the toilet. but i'm really, really, happy that the pencil is back. it's a good pencil.

it's funny how many asian couples i've seen around, where the boyfriend actually carries the girlfriend's handbag. it's so weird to see a dude carrying around a girl's bag, even if it does belong to their girlfriend [they actually sling it on their shoulders like a girl would].

i once saw a guy carrying a handbag. and then i saw his girlfriend. who was also carrying a handbag. so does that mean the handbag the guy is carrying... belongs to...... nevermind.

sam said "it's a way of showing affection. you know, 'the more i carry your bag, the more i love you""

the bag-love equation is therefore such:

L = n(M/s)

where L is the affection shown [measured in $$], n is the number of times he carries the bag, M is the mass of the bag [in grams] and s is the size of the girlfriend involved.

beats buying flowers.

transcending stupidity

i wish people would stop saying

"but you're smart, you'll get good marks even if you don't study."

just stop.

stop assuming that i'm going to ace every test; stop expecting me to do it.

it's like i've got my own private group of stress givers. and yes, people saying that stresses me out more than actual studying - which should not be the case. i can generate enough stress on my own, thank you very much.

i am a very lazy person. it's not a hidden truth. i do not like studying - in fact, i really hate it. i like learning, but studying is detestable. it doesn't help that the last time i "studied" was at tuition back in m'sia. so i really have no idea how to do it properly.

i do okay in my tests. most of them, anyway. and it's really by God's grace because there is no way it can be anything else. it's not because i'm smart; i'm not genius, far from it.
you want smart? look at sharon fan, who puts in the work and gets good results. look at jessica ling, who uses her brains and makes the effort to achieve the scores she does. look at tze-chiang; the smartass gets full marks in almost every test. look at people like emily, nigara, mike; all naturally smart, all work hard to do the best they can and it pays off.

and look at the Leongs. i don't even feel a need to elaborate on this point.

i am not a smart person. what stands between me and that perfect score, is a laziness that transcends all stupidity. it's that simple.

the difference between me and all those people i mentioned, is that they'd all be studying their physics notes now, instead of wasting their time blogging.

so stop saying "you don't need to study. you'll pass anyway."

because somehow, it's worse when you know you can do it, but you just don't.