Ridiculous looking hat = good luck?

Anybody who's ever been to the Royal Easter Show will be familiar with the jester hats that come with some of the showbags. I've got one of those things from a few years back. It's red, white and blue (yes, the Americans are clowns) and makes jingles everytime i move my head. I just found it under my bed the other day and decided to wear it for my own amusement. As ridiculous as it looks, it is actually quite warm. Anyway, that was sometime about Saturday. I've been wearing it every night since then (don't ask why) and i've pretty much coasted through all of my exams to date. Minimal study. I love my lucky hat ^^

Rain drops keep fallin on my head...

...but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red.
Because I'm free.
Nothing's worrying me.

I've got that song stuck in my head for some reason. I didn't hear it on the radio or see it in an ad or anything, it just popped into my head yesterday and refuses to leave. Oh well, at least it's a nice song. *whistles tune*

Exam progress so far has been pretty good. I've got English Advanced paper one and two out of the way. I'm glad they were both pretty straightforward and simple. Didn't write as much as i would have liked to but that's what happens when you rely on bullshitting instead of actually analysing the texts. Of the three extended responses i had to write only one was damn boring (Emma and Clueless = yuck). The other two were transcripts of a TV interview and a conversation between two friends which did leave room for some creativity and humour (both of which there isn't nearly enough of in exams).

Tomorrow will not be so pleasant or as funny. There can only be so much humour in a maths test. Three hours... conics... complex numbers... graphs... Just thinking about it makes me want to scream and cry at the same time. Hopefully, i get a better mark than i did in the last 4u maths assessment (trust me, it couldn't get much worse).

After that, i've got Physics on Friday, 3u Maths on Tuesday and Extension English on Wednesday. I should be able to coast through those with minimal trouble and then i can take a nice (un)earned 2 week vacation.

As of now, i am feeling both stressed and happy at the same time. Happy because the holidays are almost upon us again and because i have a nicely booked up holiday timetable. Stressed because of exams and because everybody else is exuding incredibly negative energy.

Study hard and try not to stress too much cause you lose sleep, grow pimples and become wrinkly. Doctor's orders.

F*cking Exams!

I am stressed to the point where i'm about to pull out whatever hair is left after yesterday's haircutting disaster. Curses to the shitty texts we have to do for English advance. Emma = boring. Wild Swans = anti-communist propaganda + boring. Physical Journeys = boring to the nth degree. English = Emma + Wild Swans + Physical Journeys. Therefore, English = fascist + boring (2 + boring^n-1). Even 4u maths is more interesting, despite conics which is the ultimate test of patience. One million pages of working to find that the line PQ passes through (0,0).. would like to impale the impotent fool who came up with that topic (he is now on my 'to impale' list, which has grown almost as long as my 'to crucify' list).

I can't study because i am bored. I am bored because i can't focus on studying. It's a bloody vicious cycle and i swear i should have picked more interesting subjects *glances sideways at parents*

Anyway, i should get back to studying.

Wait, scrap that thought. I should get back to trying to study.

Sardines

You may recall that one of my posts earlier this week had a bit of a bitch about being sick from walking around in the rain. To elaborate, i was walking around in the rain on wednesday because i (along with 3 of my friends) was stupid enough to get off the bus before our stop. If you saw the houses on that street, you would understand exactly why. They all look exactly the same. No problems, we'll just follow the street until we see a sign pointing us towards OHS. It shouldn't have been a problem, but oh hell was it a problem. We ended up walking past the aforementioned sign, well past OHS. When did we notice we were lost? When we saw a sign pointing us towards Manly beach. So we went and rang up OHS and they gave us directions to where we were supposed to be. Amazingly, we still arrived before the exams actually started. Keep in mind that all this was happening in 90km/h wind and heavy rain.

"...late showers on Wednesday".
It was only nine;
we already carried the stench of rain

The bus offered some relief
for sardines out of water.

Early alightment:
Now begins the adventure.
Lost in Autumn rain

like a frenzied tsunami,
never running the the right way.

Dampened and windswept
umbrellas, water logged feet.
These were out tattoo.

The bus stop offered shelter

for sardines sick of the water.

We never saw the coast;
only a thousand ships; black sails
raised in mock salute.

You-just-got-raped-by-Cadbury-month

I'm sure Easter has some sort of significance to most people, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just another day of the year where we are compelled (coerced?) into buying stuff we really do not want or need. Easter eggs. Millions and millions of them further than the eye can see, all wrapped in shiny foil, awaiting melting and mould growth in your cupboard. And if they're not becoming breeding grounds for all sorts of biological WMDs, they're turning children into little terrorists. Okay, admittedly, little kids are usually horrid little beasts (i speak from experience) but the last thing anybody needs is an army of hyperactive demons frothing at the mouth (and runny brown froth at that). If they're not going crazy from having too much sugar, they're going apeshit because parents are refusing to meet their terrorist-esque chocolate demands.

This zombie like frenzy (think Dawn of the Dead) would all be well and good if we were consuming monolithic piles of the stuff for something that remotely resembles a purpose. If Easter really is about Jesus being crucified (I love that word) and coming back to life, shouldn't we all be eating chocolate crosses instead of eggs? "But eggs represent new life and birth, just like the rebirth of Jesus". I must have missed the bit in the Bible that said "and so Jesus popped his head out of the egg and said to mankind...". And this business with the Easter bunny... once again, "Rabbits breed fast and are therefore representative of rebirth". Is there anything about Easter that isn't symbolic of rebirth? Once again, with the Bible as my reference, I'm assuming that the Virgin Mary was indeed a virgin and (hopefully) a human. Rabbits, on the other hand, are certainly not human and the phrase "breeding like rabbits" does tend to suggest that they are anything but virgins.

So then, why do we consume eggs at the same rates rabbits fornicate? One word, "media". The media make us do all sorts of incredibly dumb things, mostly buying stuff we already have or stuff we do not have because we do not need them. This includes chocolate by the truckload. The media and it's ugly cousin, commercialism, are to blame for the demise of Easter. Instead of going to church for Easter Sunday mass, we go to the Royal (pain in the ass) Easter Show. Instead of fasting for lent, we stuff ourselves silly.

What I find most disturbing about all this is the apathy with which the Church is treating the matter. Instead of fending off the crass commercialism of their most important celebration (after Christmas because you can't have rebirth without birth), they are sitting by and watching as the sheep follow a new cult. I passed a Church the other day and noticed that there was a banner out the front informing people of the times for Sunday mass. Sure as hell, there was the Easter bunny's face all over the banner. Has it really reached the stage where we're worshipping a bloody rabbit? If you want to bring conspiracy theories into this, i might say that the Churches started this whole religion knowing full well that it would be commercialised and their apathy stems from the deal they cut with Cadbury, Darrel Lea and company.

Conclusion? Easter isn't about the crucifixion (love that word) of Jesus and his resurrection. It's all about chocolate, blood thirsty children, the birth of chickens and the breeding season of the humble rabbit. Considering how much Easter has changed over the years, i think it is only appropriate that we change the name. Happy You-just-got-raped-by-Cadbury-month!

*sniffles*

If there was one word to describe how i feel right now, it would have to be "shit". Shit because i had to walk through rain two days in a row (forgot umbrella yesterday, 90kph winds today). Shit because, as a result of the rain hiking, i now have a runny nose and a really annoying itchy throat. Shit because i so massively botched the roleplay bit of my jap half yearly. And shit because i didn't get to do my crossword today!

Sometimes you just know when somebody is lying to you. "You did very well" said the teacher who i did the roleplay with. Sure, any other time i would have believed it, but considering she spent more time going "eettooooo..." than i did, i don't. She looked kind of disappointed especially since I blew the prepared report out of the water. But she was soo ultra nice that i couldn't just say, "Stop bullshitting me woman. I know i f*ked it up". Although by that stage, my throat was so dry from the stress and oncoming flu and i was feeling so demoralised that i could barely speak at all. But you know what? The sun was almost shining when i got home. Mayeb the sun was trying to make my day some what less miserable.

to find 18 down,
sit at Jesus' table
and learn origami

left eye needs scratching;
allergic to my right.
One of them has changed.

Stuffed

I should be studying for my Jap assessment instead of sitting in front of the computer. In fact, i should be doing anything BUT sitting in front of the computer. So why am i sitting in front of the computer? Because i am a damn lazy fool.

Or maybe i'm waiting for something... someone... elusive....

Yesterday - a dream that makes you wonder if it was a dream
Now - the collision of the unchangeable past and the unknown future
Tomorrow - something that doesn't exist

Hatred - the only thing that doesn't need to be justified
Love - the only thing that can not be justified

Fascism - crazy in theory, but wonderful in practice
Communism - wonderful in theoy, but immensely flawed in practice

Clown - somebody that entertains people through the use of stupidity
George W. - the proper occupational title for 'clown'

Bitter Coffee

Why did she leave me
a note, "i love you so much...",
bitter coffe; cold

When you get incredibly bored, your mind starts to wander around and all sorts of odd thoguhts come to mind. Like today, i was sitting in a lecture about writing poetry and it was damn boring. First thing that comes to mind is the copious amounts of crazy things i've said in debating. And i have asid some very absurd, cynical and unrelated thigns before. Beloew is a sample.

• Topic: That we should legalise euthanasia (negative)
• Quote: "Where the hell in the Bible does it say 'thou shalt choppeth of thy neighbours head to end his suffering' ?"

• Topic: That education is the key to success (affirmative)
• Quote: "An educated person would look at Hilton hotels and think, 'Wow, how am i going to make the most money out of this?'. Paris Hilton, being the ditz that she is, would look at it and think 'Wow! 300 rooms... that's a new room every night for one whole year!'"

• Topic: That government advertising is hidden electioneering (affirmative)
• Quote: "The key word here is 'hidden'. Electioneering is not like ordering a pizza where you have to tell the guy exactly what you want"

• Topic: That parents should be held responsible for the actions of their children (negative)
• Quote: "I'm sure Sef's dad didn't come home one day and said, 'Son, i want you to pick up that knife and kill us all'"

As you can see, i am quote unstable and prone to erratic behaviour during debating. If that wasn't enoguh proof, just go and ask anybody who's ever done debating with me.

Weird and crazy day

Crappy cold and wet day today. I was stupid enough to go and play volleyball in the rain too. First on concrete and then on a poorly maintained grass court. Great stuff, especially for the carpet in the classrooms.

Ummm... i got my 4 unit maths test back and i did about as crappy as i thought i did. (I must be gaining some sort of premonition skills). The word "failure" is beginning to mean something to me now... Ah well, just goes to show that deviating from orthodox methods doesn't really do much to impress the teachers. Not that i had any other options, i didn't exactly know the orthodox methods in about 90% of the instances.

Also pretty much got evicted from the school library today during my free period too. To elaborate: Thuy, Lawrence and myself were practising for the role play bit of our japanese exams (coming up real soon). Somewhere along the lines, Lawrence mentioned something about a cute chick and our study session turned into a giant therapy/gossip session. The group therapy eventually turned into something that must have sounded like a football match because the librarian came and told us to keep the volume down. "sorry sir...". 15 minutes later the footy match kicked up again and we were told to vacate the vicinity. I am currently plotting revenge.

random haiku:

when speaking of man,
one does not say "who the hell..."
we say "what the hell..."

These pages echo
the silent screams of madness
and falling of leaves

Un-Australian timetables...

I hate exams. I hate the way exams are run. I hate the people who run the exams. I hate the stupid rules that exams entail. Most of all, I hate exam timetables. Always, exams are placed at the most inconvenient times with all my days off conveneiently situated between exams so that i can't take a day off and always directly before some piss easy subject that i can bullshit my way out of. But not this time! I've got a packed timetable the first week (much studying requierd) followed by a pleasant three day weekend (monday second week off), two exams that i should be able to rip through with little trouble if i'm having a good day and then a two day headstart on the school holidays. *smiles and pops open pre-celebration celebratory champagne*

Also, all of my exams start at 9 o'clcok which is bloody brilliant since my brain tends to shut down after about 12. So with my brain in (almost) optimal operating conditions, all the is left to be done is to do a lot of revision, especially for 4u maths (god knows how much shit i'm gonna be in for that exam) and english advanced (in retrospect, sleeping in class doesn't help the cause). Besides that, i'm ready to give these exams a swisft kick in the nads.

Did anybody else read the article in the SMH about being 'un-Asutralian'? It was quite an amusing article that pretty much rambled on about changing social values the whole way. "It's un-Australian to not eat lamb on Australia Day", reads an advertisement. Meanwhile, people are calling each other un-Australian for all sorts of things from cutting queues to not having a footy team to (not) supporting the British monarch. It's become a sort of catch cry for the modern Australian. Instead of calling each other boofheads and the like, we've resorted to insults based on cultural background. "This is un-Australian!" i hear you say? Well, I'm technically Asian so that would make me quite un-Australian.

Apparently, the only two countries to have "un-national" terms are Australia and the US. Given the current political relations, i'm inclined to believe that 'un-Australian' is just a euphemism for 'un-American' (or is it vice versa?).

more random haiku from 'the archives':

knowing i should not
i laugh at the one legged man
glued to bus windows

i see graffiti
on the desk: "sticky fingaz".
Underneath, the same.

the moon in my mug.
smiles its rehearsed smile,
disappears in wisps

word of the day: defenestrate (look it up, i garuntee you'll get a laugh out of it)

A personal public holiday

Like all Sundays, this one was also incredibly unproductive. Woke up at 9:30 because my brother was banging on my door for some reason and spent most of the morning just sitting around listening to music. After lunch, I read about 12 pages of Wild Swans (which i swear is almost as boring as Emma) and wrote the chapter summary that i was assigned to write. The book is supposed to be the story of three generations of a family but reads like a damn textbook with anti-communist propaganda thrown in for good measure. It was positively mind numbing... Anyway, went for a 2 hour bike ride going nowhere in particular, got home and watched the football. Broncos won... how pissy...

About 15 minutes ago I was having a talk to Regina and it seems she's having an equally unproductive day. So we decided to make an occassion of it. From this point on, 13 March will be known as "Alan and Regina sit on thier arses and do nothing day". If you would like to take part in this inactive activity, please leave a comment so that the name of this day can become even more stupidly long.

random haiku for today (all untitled for various reasons):

blossom and perish,
that will be my exodus
there is no other...

this new age surfing
(no water or boards required!)
makes lazy men fat

Old Man on the street
cold, hungry, yet happy. why?
no Misses Old Man

*Smile!*

Oh my gosh, it's been so damn long but i think i may have actually smiled for the first time in my life (no, my cynical smiles and smiles induced as a result of humour do not count). I just woke up in the morning and everything felt so right. Physics assessment was way too easy which scares me for some reason. I'm always worried when an assessment task seesm too easy, almost always means the marking criteria will be something completely and absolutely insane.

Anyway, besides that, i've had a pretty damn good day. Thoughts came in nice progressive and logical sequences. No jumping around from astro-physics to soccer to japanese. No self-induced psychological mind games.

Life is wonderful (for the time being anyway)

HTML illiterate...

While attempting to add a chat box to my blog, i somehow messed up the HTML coding. This resulted in the text being off centre as well as the archives, profile etc. ending up on the bottom of the page. Since i have no idea what the hell it was i did, the only way to fix it was to reboot the template. Since i was rebooting it anyway, i figured i may as well change the colour scheme. As for the aforementioned chat box , that will be up as soon as i get someone to show me where the coding goes.

Any comments on the new colour scheme?

As promised...

As promised yesterday, a recount on my 'adventure' to OHS. Met Thuy-An and Lawrence at Regents Park station at the stupidly ripe hour of 7:40. However, the train that was supposed to arrive at 7:48 did not arrive until 7:54. Which would not have mattered if it didn't also take its sweet damn time getting to Central station. Arriving there at 8:35, it was pretty much a sprint to the bus stop. Not that we knew where the hell the bus stop was. So Thuy hopped onto a bus and asked some guy where we had to wait. "Just wait here" the guy says. 2 minutes later we see our bus driving right past. I mutter a vulgarity to nobody in partiocular and chase after the bus. It stops and i ask the guy if he's going our way. "Sorry mate, you've got to wait on the other side of the road". I mutter further curses at nobody in particular.

The bus that we were supposed to take was about 4 minutes late which was damn lucky because the next one didn't come for another half an hour. Somehow we still managed to get to OHS before the 9:30 deadline. Whether it was due to nice traffic conditions or whether the bus driver was speeding, i do not know. OHS is effectively a single building with corridors going in every direction possible. Kind of like Sefton High but considerably smaller. We got bundled into a classroom and our first damn activity was to "go and meet at least 5 people and find something distinctive about them". Would have been damn good if all the guys there weren't snobs and a half (I swear, Cher Horowitz made me do it). Then these crazy looking Korean guys walk in about an hour and a half late. One of them is sporting affro-esque hair, dyed red just to make sure it's noticed. For some reason, i found this to be tremendously humorous.

Although i said all the guys were wankers, there was this guy named Tom from Katoomba that was pretty cool. He had ultra funky hair, ultra funky clothing and a seriously kick ass looking guitar that he modified and painted himself. Basically everything about him was ultra funky. It was fun talking to him (especially about frozen chickens falling out of the sky) and i'm looking forward to catching up with him some time.

Anyway, students aside, the teachers were all a bit weird. The one we had for the first session was an old-ish Euro woman. She was fine except she seemed way too happy and chirpy. I tell you, it was creepy. The second woman was a fascist dictator. She kept yelling "shizuka ni shite kudasai!" (please be quiet) in a Yuen voice. She had the whole thing down pat, even her extreme lack of height. The rest of the teachers were relatively normal, including my teacher who is just so nice. Ariagato Takahata Sensei.

Trip back? Pretty uneventful. I mean, my train directly from Central to Fairfield got terminated but i've coem to expect that sort of stunt from City Rail. Got home at about 4:40, had a shower and spent the rest of the day writing up 3 essays and preparing a presentation. Somewhere in between all that was dinner.

What i should have done...

What i should have done was to spread out all this work over the last week. What i did was to leave it all to the very last minute. What did i leave exactly? Well... i've got a 2200 word essay comparing Emma and Clueless (the most boring book and movie in existence), 2 phsyics scaffolds i have to do ( one on a topic i know nothing about due to my lack of attention during class) as well as a 10 to 15 minute presentation i have to prepare about my english extension 2 major work. Given all that, i did pretty well to get most of it done in about 6 hours. I say most because i'll have to go and copy that phys essay i know nothing about from a friend of mine. Anyway, it's all done to a fairly satisfactory standard. And i managed to bullshit my way through both english tasks. Here's a sample:

poem:
A manifesto,
A poem or a letter.
How do I write life?

analysis:
Questions how multilateral and confusing life can be. Life is sometimes beautiful and meaningful which is represented by the poem. The letter represents the social interactions that exists between people which is also a vital component of humans as we are, by nature, social animals. Manifesto is a set of rules and principals and this shows that life, although precisou and beautiful, is also dictated by the rules and structures of society. The fact that it ends in a question emphasises that we are all confused as individuals and about the meaning of our existence.

anyway, that's all for now coz i'm tired and i need some sleep. I'l write about my adventure to OHS tomorrow. Oyasuminasai!

Tiny spark...

All it takes to start a fire is just one tiny little spark. Perhaps i should be a little clearer as to what i'm on about. Yesterday i dropped into Woolies to pick up a pack of batteries for my ever battery hungry MP3 player. When i joined the line, the lady in front of me had like $200 worth of groceries and offered to let me go before her because "[she'll] take a while". Naturally, i refused but she insisted anyway. So i refused again and she went to pay for her stuff. I know i should have taken her offer and gone first because her stuff really did take quite a while, but just knowing that people out there aren't always out for themselves makes me realise that life isn't quite as screwed over as i've been making it out to be.

So thanks to the Woolies customer from aisle 9. Even though i don't know you and i'll probably never see you again, you've really helped me put things into persepctive. Hugs and kisses! ^^

Crazier by the minute

Sorry for all the typos in today's posts. I'm just feeling so out of it right now, like my head is floating around in a foreign country. Anyway, i'm bored out of my mind so i'm just posting nonsense for the sake of posting nonsense.

Quotes and song lyrics reflecting my current mood:

• "i don't wanna believe in love anymore", initial d - Killing My Love
• "f*ck what i said, it don't mean s*it now", Eamon - Don't Want You Back
• "i know i can stop the pain if i will it all away", Evanescence - Whisper
• "i'm damaged, so how would i know...", Plummet - Damaged
• "if i could find you now things would get better...", Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue
• "Men are more moral than they think and far mor immoral than they could possibly imagine", Sigmund Freud
• "i'd give it all away just to have someone to come home to", Linkin Park - My December
• "Behold the ego, set in glowing emptiness, on the edge of time", Noel Kaufmann

Random words: milk, demolish, pride, bink, laughter, lame, depressed, pills, addicts, coffee, cola, coke, global take over, microsoft, dignity, love, hatred, non-existent, religion, questions, answers, more, less, graphs, gay, red, pink, government, politics, factions, fractions, distillation, alcohol, drunk, vomit, womit, cocktail

random poem:

Will I walk again,

knowing that i can not run?

Or will i run once more and never look back?

Cause for a smile

While browsing some random blogs, i came across this nifty little poem that really made me smile. Not sure who it's by, but i thought it was nice ^^

Small Towns
There is a little town called Me
Where things aren't what they used to be
And nearby is the town of You
Which is getting tired too.

But we can take the morning bus
And travel to the town of Us;
A larger, louder place with bells;
With parks and schools and wishing wells;
Churches, restaurants and shops;
Potatoes, pumpkins, peas and chops;
Some ginger sponge, a cup of tea,
Then back again to You and Me.

Life is...

...supposedly like a box of chocolates. To which i would reply, "only if you're allergic cocoa and break out in hives". That's just the way it is. Life obviously wasn't made to be a happy thing. If it was, there wouldn't be famine, war, corruption, stress, politics, etc. or people telling us about these things and how to deal with them. The sooner we come to realise that life is about getting raped with a cactus the less painful it gets right? Well, apparently it doesn't. The more i think about how imperfect my existence is, the more depressed and angry i get. I can not believe that any god (real, false or otherwise) so cruel could exist. Which is why i'm an atheist. It's not just because i like to have a logical explanation nor is it because i lack faith. I just lack the vision to see that a 'greater being' could possibly be such a spiteful bitch.

And this is the bit where the, "there are so many people less fortunate than you, you should be grateful for what you have" crap kicks into effect. Yes, i acknowledge that i am one of the people lucky enough to lead a fairly comfortable existence. But i don't find this thought to be comforting at all. In fact, i find this to be a greater cause of vexation. Given all the luxuries of living in Australia, i still find both my friends and myself in stressful situations, i cometimes can't put my emotions into thought let alone words, the school i go to is run in a draconian manner and so on and so forth. And yet, i'm one of the more fortunate ones, which really makes me wonder, just how unfortunate does life have to get before we cease to consider ourselves to be fortunate? There's no such thing as a fortunate life or a more fortunate life, it comes only in many different types of f*cked up.

Of these varieties of f*cked up, the worst of all is known as 'being a teen'. Old enough to know that there are many problems in the world that can be fixed but still too young to do anything about them. Our parents keep telling us that we're old enough to take responsibility for our own actions... and then go and lecture us as though we were 4 year olds (yes, i realise that we do occasionally act like 4 year olds). What are we to think? Is this what responsibility feels like? Being told what to do, how to do it and when to do it? I always feel as though i'm powerless to control my own destiny because as of this exact moment, i feel like i'm out of control, as is my life. Spiralling towards some unseen but imminent doom.

So that's how i think of life. It's just one great big labyrinth that we all have to get through to find nothing but misery. On the other hand, i've also realised that it's not about how many times you fall over but how many times you can pick yourself back up.