Saturday 30 June 2007

Back to reality

Well, the holidays are over, but the transition back to school wasn't that painful. Had a slight problem when the school computers weren't advanced enough open my homework cause I saved everything in Office Windows 2007, but other than that, not much. Eric Lam was in an uncommonly good mood on Thursday. He smiled throughout the class, and even laughed a few times, which nearly never happens with him and our class.

Miss Matthews has left the school for some unknown reason (No teacher will tell us why), leaving 422 without a form tutor and us without a history teacher. Her departure has thrown the class timetables in disarray, as the school couldn't find a replacement teacher in the middle of the year, and they had to change teachers and rearrange schedules to fit. While I was rather disappointed to lose a good teacher like that, at least her stand-in Miss Lee is pretty decent herself, though she enforces a strange punishment of buying a pad of foolscap paper if one doesn't do her homework, and once 4 or so pads are collected, the foolscap is shared out with the rest of the class. They entrusted me with looking after the foolscap, though some are afraid I might eat it lol...

Also, the teachers in the English department have decided to swap classes temporarily, so now we have Mrs Ang for English as well until next Tuesday (wee-woot!!!). We spent today listening to U2 and Black Eyed Peas during English, and though we were only supposed to watch Where is the Love and Miss Sarajevo for their anti-racism and peace themes, we quickly convinced Mrs Ang to let us watch more.

Since we were doing PE in the gym today, I took advantage of the floor mats to learn how to do a bicycle kick. I have no idea why I have this sudden urge to learn Pele's signature move despite the fact Slummers are not very acrobatic creatures. After a few rather painful failures, I could pull half a decent overhead kick, but not very high. I don't think I'm doing it right though. Once I learn it though, I'm going to try and pull it off at every opportunity. Of course, as long as it doesn't leave friction burns the size of my palm like slide tackling, thats the last time I do one on the track. Everyone says my slide tackling would be terrific, if only I actually hit the guy. Just trying not to slice the guy down too bad, I could do some serious damage if I did it wrong on someone.

Some stepped on my hand in training. It hurt......

Saturday 23 June 2007

An Ending Is Normally Followed By A Beginning

With the school holidays ending soon, at least I can rest assured that I've finished all important homework is finished. I've just sent off the Humanities Project article, and I think Bryant and Sam have taken care of the A-Maths and Physics Bridge Poem, now that we've wrapped up Chemistry and I helped them out with their individual Physics homework.

Throughout the holidays, I've been listening to an old band called Bread. Many of the songs they've done are masterpieces and are simply beautiful and timeless like "Aubrey was Her Name", "Diary" and "If", more commonly known as "Picture Paints A Thousand Words". Most of their compositions have deep meanings, and without sounding too complicated, convey feelings very well. Their songs are slower than most today, and aren't hard on the ears.


Saturday 16 June 2007

Days float by......

Finally managing to spur ourselves to finish up the holiday projects, though Bryant and I faced more problems than we expected. Since the newspaper articles were all at Sam's place and he was in Amsterdam (Probably getting a LAP dance!), we had to go with the Physics projects instead. Turns out, Sam had already written all the questions for our Physics article, it wasn't hard for us to find a matching article for it. The bridge was another matter. Having three options for the bridge project, we could either

1. Write a poem about a bridge to a girl who crosses daily (Must contain Physics concepts)
2.Build a scale model of a bridge
3. Wait, I can't remember, but it wasn't viable anyway

Writing a few phrases seemed so much easier than the other two, but Wikipedia and Google had failed us for once, everything we found was either too simple or too complicated, and we could find nothing that could clearly state the concepts behind a bloody bridge, other than the fact that the forces acting on the bridge must be in equilibrium, and an arc bridge for some reason is more stable. In the end we gave up, Bryant recalling Sam saying that building a bridge was "The easiest thing in the world". We moved on to the online worksheets on matrices later on, only to discover what a lousy programmer Anthony Khoo was. I typed the correct answer which I was pretty sure of, and instead of showing -0.5, the worksheet mysteriously converted it to -1 and told me I was wrong..........

We stopped for lunch, which was a rather nervous affair for me. Meals at someone else's house has always made me jittery, as parents are usually present for them (How I'll face my future in-laws, I have no idea) , and the way one eats could easily cause a bad impression, so I always try to watch myself. I had the feeling that I needed to keep higher degree of formality than my norm around the Chans. As we sat down at the table I couldn't think of anything meaningful to add to the conversation so I kept silent at. Bryant's mother had fried up some cheese omelettes which were definitely good, and I was beginning to relax a bit until they brought out the salad. Now here I was in a real fix. Though I'm generally okay with most plants, I've always loathed tomatoes (They make me nauseous), trying everything from throwing up to hiding the mushy rubbish in my pocket to avoid consuming them in my younger days. With no way to turn the salad down politely, I had no choice but to eat it all while trying to hold back the wave of nausea, not easy when you're still sick. At least it was fresh, can't imagine if it wasn't. Wonder why all of Bryant's sisters mistake me for Sam.

Getting through that in one piece with hopefully a neutral impression, we got back to work. Or at least, we tried too. In the end we got lazy again and watched a few game trailers. Heavenly Sword looks like a likely champion for the PS3. After watching some nutter knife El Gigante to death in Resident Evil 4, I suggested we try to replicate it. Sadly, even with a pistol, shotgun and rifle, we were nowhere close to repeating his 133t feat.......

Things Done Since Last Post: -Finished off Chemistry and Physics homework

Wednesday 13 June 2007

Daze

As the third week of holidays begin, I began to realize I hadn't started any of my homework. Got started on my chem on Monday, which I just finished this morning, with a lot more still to go. Planning on calling up the rest of the group to try and get the Humanities done, I just excavated the rubrics from somewhere in my room. I lost plenty of vital worksheets in transit when I moved my things back home from my grandmother's house. To make matters worse, I think Sam still away (Canada I think). At least Bryant's back from church camp, should call on him later on.

Pushed Cooking and Fishing up to 80 and 78 respectively in an attempt to cook sharks and catch them faster, but at the rate I'm still burning them, I think I should stick to lobsters for now. Or I could get the cooking gauntlets from the Family Crest quest.

My mum forced my out of bed today to drag me to the doctor, convinced my cough was going to cause me to asphyxiate and drop dead on the playing field. Normally, I'm okay with visiting Dr Leong, mostly because he's really nice and up-to-date, despite the fact all his certs on his wall are all old, the oldest being an admittance to Mensa in 1986. I spent the whole time admiring his Apple Powerbook, until all of a sudden he proclaimed "I think he needs an injection". Thankfully, I didn't feel too much, though my arm feels rather numb, and I'm feeling rather drowsy.......zzzzz............


Things Done Since Last Post: -Finished Chem Homework
-80 Cooking
-78 Fishing
-50 Fletching
-51 Magic

Tuesday 5 June 2007

Don't you just love that freedom

Ah, the holidays. Beautiful times, despite the fact my parents are back. Days just float by, and one just wakes up at 10 or 11 in the morning..........


Went to Sam's place yesterday on the pretence of doing a project. Well, we did actually work on the Humanities article for half an hour or so, digging through newspapers. We've got a few articles for international, geography and recent events, but we can't remember what we were supposed to get for literature and history, and we don't have the rubrics. Bryant is in the capital of animae and sushi, so he's off the grid. As for Zhongxi, well, never mind. I didn't even know that he was in our group. Ms. Matthews dire warnings rings loudly again.....

Sam felt the best way to relieve our troubles was a few rounds of Gears. In the first match Sam decided to go with the Colonel Hoffman and I went with the Theron Guard. While Hoffman does look fancy with his jet black armour, it didn't do him much good in Gridlock. I camped out at the Longshot spawn, intending to try out sniping. Sam never gave me the chance to use it when he charged straight up with a Gnasher. Ordinarily this thing is Chainsaw Man's worst enemy, but by spamming the roll button, the Theron Guard leapt out of harm's way and countered quickly with a raised chainsaw. Old Hoffman didn't have a chance. Time and again we raced to the Longshot spawn, but this time Sam was more accurate with his Gnasher and the scoreboard showed 1-1 with pieces of Theron Guard rolling down the stairs in the background. I finally got to use the Longshot in the third round, but I soon learnt that I wasn't much of a head sifter. Standing up to fire at Sam, I took too long to aim, and soon my scope was filled with the smoke trail of a Boomshot round. 1-2

I caught Sam on a badly timed run twice, Colonel Hoffman being sawed on both occasions, thus resulting in my first ever multiplayer win. Sam looked mad enough to rip a phone book, and I lost the next 2 matches 3-0. We went on to campaign next, playing Act 2 with Lancers. We proved that the staple weapon of Gears is much more effective than just Torque Bows. Then again, I probably don't like the bows cause I never learnt how to fire one properly. Boltok pistols should be given more credit though, they aren't bad for mid-range firefights.

My preferred build of weapons would be something like

Boltok for the pistol
Lancer for short to mid-range firefights
Longshot for sifting heads at long range


Planning on doing Slug Menace so I can use proselyte armour, but the problem is one needs 30 runecraft to do it. I have never bothered raising runecraft, so its pretty low. Getting essence to train on is a pain too. I don't need pure essence, but that's all people sell.........