Here Comes Treble

I wonder how depressing school would be if I hadn't chosen to do music. It's such an incredibly fun and relaxed class (probably because we just waste our time jamming to random songs and then stress to the max when our performances and compositions are due).There is such a diverse mix of people in the class and so many different personalities that I normally wouldn't mingle with. Everyone is so talented in their own way and everyone is so different in technique, skill and training. You have the piano players but even there, we are all different. There are the crazy classically trained people like Serena and Kishani and then you have Sylvia and Danny who are so amazingly talented at playing crazy scores from Final Fantasy and so forth. Then you have the mind-blowing guitarists like Tim and the community guys who rock and the singers who just randomly break out into song like Emily, Tony and Shana. Not to mention we have the coolest teacher ever as well! Lucky we don't have Ms Costa because she freaks the shit out of me and everybody else in our class too... No matter how shit the day is, music always makes it better. I love it. Not to mention it's expanded my musical mind as well, you will find the most surprising artists in my playlist now. My mum and I now listen to the same music. Ha. And to think that I wanted to do economics instead... Although it does have a much higher scaling. Ah well.

Enlightening My Seoul

Today, Tony, Tim, Alex, Anita, Sylvia and I went on a trip to Strathfield to eat Korean bbq among other things. I had never been to Strathfield before, only to change trains and stuff so it was all new. It's so cool! As soon as you step outside of the station it's like you step into South Korea, not that I would know because I have never been but my sister and dad are going sometime this year or next year, I'M SO JELLY (not really). It's like Cabra and Vietnamese people. Only of course this is way cooler because it's not Vietnamese. Don't get me wrong, I love being Vietnamese but it's just not fascinating. Anyway. We went to Strathfield Plaza first and we saw Mr Nguyen there. He fits in so well with Korean people. Then we went to the bbq place and it was so cool! They use lumps of coal underneath the bbq cooking thing, I think it was coal? I don't know. A few minutes into our meal, the bbq cooking thing stopped working so we had to move to another table. I think we should have gotten a discount for that but let's not get Asian here. Tony was very sad because he knows the manager of the restaurant and could have gotten a discount but she wasn't there today! Ha. Do people not like eggplant or something? Nobody would eat the eggplant side dish but I think it was delicious! After more than 2 hours at Korean bbq we went to karaoke! Woop Woop! IT WAS SO FUN! I love going into a dark room and just belting out songs at ridiculous pitches. Of course, Tony owned us all in the singing department but kudos to everyone for spirit and passion, eh? Hehehe. I feel so sorry for the worker there. Seriously. He has to endure so much terrible singing everyday. Oh, Sylvia sung a weird Jap song that just repeated 'Pon' over and over again and it sounded like she was saying porn and things just got really dirty from there. Ha! But it was very fun. Thennnnn, we went to Noggi and had to take away because our train was coming but then we didn't even get on that train because there were no seats for us to eat our yogurt so that was really pointless. ANYWAY. I don't really like frozen yogurt that much but I ate most of it because nobody liked Pom and plain flavour and I'm a fatty. Everyone got so full after today and I was like huh? But NOW I feel super duper full. Train ride was mainly just Anita and Tony taking their bajillion sky pictures and Tony spilling yogurt on his pants and stuff. Today was so random but it was fun, not to mention a very culturally-enlightening experience (or maybe I'm just a noob). A good end to the holidays!

Bored of Studies

My tutor told me that there is no point doing Extension 1 Maths and Extension 1 English because in the end, the HSC is marked in subjects of 2 units and those two would just combine to make a random, nameless subject with no scaling whatsoever. So what's the point of wasting so much effort in Extension 1 English and Extension 1 Maths? They are both a lot of work (especially English) and ultimately, you do them for the scaling, not for the fun of them. That's why I'm dropping Extension 1 English at the end of Year 11 to focus on maths and hopefully it will save me if I do crap as hell in one of my 2 unit subjects. I just thought I would share this with some of you because we are in the same boat... Not that I am encouraging you to drop it but yeah. It's just pointless. At least with the single Extension 1 Maths unit, the scaling and whatnot is still there.

Embracing Myself

Wow! It's my first post in how long? I don't even know. I got my braces off yesterday!! Man, it feels so weird. I've had them for almost two and a half years and I've become so accustomed to the extensive tongue exercises to get bits of food out of them. I kinda liked choosing from a wide array of colours to dazzle up ma teeth every month... BUT HEY! I'm not complaining now that they are off! I don't have to weave in between metal wires when I floss anymore. I won't get a million ulcers every month from the scratching of the braces against the inside of my mouth and I don't have to worry about elastics snapping in my mouth when I yawn or laugh. FREEDOM AT LAST. I went to the bathroom last night to brush my teeth and I just started laughing like an evil maniac. It felt so good to finally just brush my teeth without worrying about if I had gotten into all the nooks and cranny of the braces. I think I just blew this into a way bigger deal than what it actually is but I errrrno! I just feel like braces were a part of who I am (or was). I felt like I belonged to a group in society. Haha. Nah, everyone's gotten them (or getting) them off so I still fit in with society. A little.

Not So Objective

English teaches us about subjectivity and objectivity. How much of English is subjective? 110%. English is supposed to be an expression of our thoughts and ideas, is it not? I understand that particular responses like essays have a certain structure that needs to be followed but is the depth of analysis of one teacher the same as another? If I handed Ms Tishler and my English tutor the same essay, would I get the same critique? Would they scrutinise the same details? Would the same elements of my essay be picked at like a dead carcass? No bloody way. Different people look more specifically for certain structural or critical components and bypass others.

Teachers tell us that poetry and creative writing are way to express ourselves, with relevance to the topic being studied of course. Yet, when people hand in their poems, they receive Bs, Cs and lower. A poem is an expression of oneself, are the means of expressive techniques are not good enough? What if the teacher interpreted it wrongly? I understand that some people struggle in communicating their message in an effective manner but I don't know. I guess there is a higher standard for the A range, but who is to say what is an A?! My story is "poorly written"? What if I was doing that on purpose because of my character like friggen Suzanne Collins (or maybe she's just a bad writer)? It's so open and ambiguous. You never know if something you've produced is ever good enough. And who's to say if it is good enough? Do I sound philosophical? Or just stupid? Yeah. Stupid.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what kind of person is marking your HSC paper. If it's an English enthusiast that lives for the language, then congratulations, your work will be judged really harshly. If it's a middle-aged woman who is marking the HSC for the first time, the chances are that she will mark very easily and people that deserve band 5s will get into the band 6 range. If your marker is an old woman and your paper is in the last few hundred of the thousands then congratulations. She probably won't even be reading it properly. At least in maths, there is a wrong and right. There is an order of logic and a solid standard across the board. OR MAYBE THE STRESS OF THE ENGLISH ASSESSMENT IS JUST DOING MY HEAD IN AND I'M GOING CRAZY. Who am I kidding, I was always crazy.

Vietnasleaze

You think you're amazing because you stay up every night reading Wikipedia pages so that the next day, you can interject a random conversation with an obnoxious comment that is completely irrelevant to the topic being discussed? Moreover, you were not even originally a part of the conversation. If I wanted to talk to an asshole, I would have talked to my own. Ew... Anyway. Just because you are somewhat tall, it doesn't give you a status of superiority over the rest of us. It's quite humorous how you think you're so much smarter than everybody else when in actual fact, your low and poor assessment results are an obvious translation of your highly inflated sense of intelligence. Also, why in freak's hell are you hanging out with all these Year 7 and 8 kids? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them (but then I would be lying for the most part) but does it make you feel accepted, like you finally belong with a bunch of 12 year olds that might as well be your younger siblings? If that's what you need to sleep at night, I respect that (not really). And what is with your walk? You think you're cool because you walk with your arms waving around like you're one of those things outside car dealerships? If you're gonna strut, you could at least strut correctly. My gawd. The fact that you cried when someone called you 'Jenny' makes me cry. Grow a pair and learn to take a joke buddy! And don't patronise me with your "metalanguage" (if you even know what that is) BECAUSE BITCH I GOT TO GRADE 8 IN PIANO TOO ALL RIGHT? Don't call my friend illiterate when he is in the top advanced class and does extension English when you're in some low ass class. ALL RIGHT? Also, you're never gonna get school captain. Just sayin'

Still not over this bull shit.