Leading the Way

This week saw the school captain elections for 2013 and my oh my, was it a sight for sore eyes! The heavily anticipated Monday morning arrived and not to my dismay, when I arrived at school that day, the energy was buzzing. The walls, corridors and walkways were plastered with peoples' punny posters (some very awesomely photoshopped too, no thanks to Richard and Sanjay and Raymond G or anything...) All the candidates were helping each other with sticking up posters and it was such good sportsmanship! Then came the morning of the speeches. When I got to school I saw everyone in their little corners practising their speeches and it hit me. My friends were going to be those seniors that I have been forced to watch and listen to for all those years and I'll admit that I never really cared who was captain before but this year was so weird cos I actually knew them and I'm sure everyone else felt the same way during Wednesday's assembly. Wow that was a very long and "bumpy" sentence as Ms Tishler would say.... Speaking of Ms Tishler, I should get back to the essay hey? Whatever. Typical Yvonne decided to cry whilst giving Krishna a pep talk before his speech due to her overly hormonal pms-ing habits. Why the hell did I just refer to myself in third person... Anyway.  Everyone was so well spoken... Except Sachin who forgot his speech. Anita didn't turn red like an overly ripe tomato and Alyssa actually sounded formal for once. Now I'm tired and forgot why I wanted to blog about fricken captaincy. I blame pre-prelim brain :-( It was such a happy week... For the most part. Do the other grades think we are retarded because in all the years, none of the other grades have campaigned so crazily! I only remember the iconic AT4SC (which still hangs in D block,  miraculously) but other than that, our school captain elections have been the most elaborate. In a good way. I reckon we are the best, seriously.

A Worldly Ask

I can't wait until I'm able to save enough cash to visit just a minuscule fraction of the marvelous wonders of our world. Too bad that's going to be in a really long while :( I shall leave you guys with some of the places I fantasise about visiting, just so that I can look at them some more. 

 Camp Bay, South Africa

Panorama Bavarian Alps, Germany

The Great Sand Sea, Egypt

Similan Islands, Thailand

Santorini, Greece

Positano, Campania, Italy

Peerenthood

After almost two terms of fortnightly meetings (more like bludge sessions), peer support came to an end. BOO. To be honest, I wasn't really keen in the beginning because the group was really restless but as peer support progressed, they all became really close (or so it seemed anyways). I remember the first session... It was so freaking awkward. They were all just standing around awkwardly, put off by being thrown into a random group and not sure of who to talk to and we were equally as confused, not sure if we should lay down the foot or just be chill. There were the typical extroverted community students (which I grew to enjoy the company of) and the introverted selective kids, I'm just making that generalisation because that's how it typically is. I'm so happy that the community kids, as crazy as they are, were really friendly and open with the selective students. Even the shyest ones broke out of their shells and it  felt like maybe peer support wasn't a complete waste of time afterall. They are all so different and yet they all manage to get along well... But after peer support, they will probably never even talk to each other and be as segregated as our grade, along with every other grade at Mac  Fields... Or maybe it's just us? I don't know.

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.

The Power of Power

Jim Jones was a charismatic man who held loyalty and sacrifice close to his heart. He created The Peoples Temple as a church to help the elderly, homeless, addicts, foster children and those of the like. He believed that a capitalist America caused an unhealthy balance in the world (rich people are too rich, a.k.a communist) and established The Peoples Temple to alleviate as much unfairness from the world as possible. The Peoples Temple seemed like an amazing feat from the outside but on the inside, it was transforming into a cult centralised around Jones himself. As the number of his followers increased, he became infatuated with power and forced everyone to call him "Father" or "Dad" and soon believed himself to be Christ and later proclaimed himself God.

He convinced his followers to move into the remote jungles of Guyana where his "temple" became a place of politics rather than religion. His control became extreme, the living conditions horrible and the people forced to work long hours. The rumours of these conditions reached home and the public rallied for the government to investigate Jones. The government body took a trip into the jungles of Guyana where Jones, heavily induced by drugs which caused paranoia, saw as his demise. He launched an attack against the government and influenced all of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape juice. He died from a shot to the head, but people aren't sure if it was his own doing or a murder. But this travesty was the largest massacre in American history (not due to natural disasters) until the events of September 11 unraveled.

It really puts power into perspective, huh?

Onions make me cry

You will never know how I feel. How I've been feeling for the past few weeks. I feel like I have to put on a facade of  happiness at school just to show you up. I'm repeatedly forced to adopt a "mask" and my identity is in a constant state of flux. Obviously you in conjunction with Ms Tishler have gotten the better of me.

Perspective

A foggy Dubai taken from the top of the Burj Dubai 829.84m from the ground. It really puts things into retrospect. Individually, it may seem that humans are irrelevant and insignificant bodies of life but collectively, humans are able to build magnificent structures such as the Burj Dubai and even create man made islands. What the actual hell?!

Year 11

This post is long overdue but because I refuse to do any homework tonight due to the fact that I am completely buggered to hell, I shall blog about how the "business end" of our high school life has been for me these first few weeks.

Wow. I did not expect Year 11 to take me off guard the way it did (or has?), I don't even know how to speak English anymore. I received an insurmountable amount of lectures from my teachers and parents ever since I finished SC about how Year 11 would be super hard work, but little did I know that these lectures (for once) contained a large percentage of truth. Day one and we were exposed to the notion of identity, expressive realism and traditional criticism (still don't know what the freak Catherine Belsey was on about but that's another matter) and all this other crap. We were given homework from the get go. And it wasn't even a mere few questions from the textbook. It was "do this whole exercise from what you remember from Year 10 and if you don't remember, too bad, I'll pick on you the next day to answer the question in front of the whole class and if you can't, I'll give you detention." I don't know about everybody else but I remember jack from Year 10 after almost 8 weeks of frolicking around in freedom, NOT thinking about maths. Sorry, Ms Chand. Allocating whole exercises to be completed for the next day is a bit extreme. But that's how every single day of my life has been this school year :( And that's just maths.

Music, SAC, Earth and Env. Science are less intense but still lots of work nonetheless. People think that subjects such as these do not require "hard work" but every single subject in the HSC is equal in worth. I may not be balancing covalent compounds or some shit because I'm practically incapable of doing maths outside of maths class but that doesn't mean that my HSC will be a breeze. I just don't like the connotations that they bring to the table, that is all. But I don't really care.

Everyone's staying up into the wee hours of the night to do homework (not to skype and msn and facebook stalk like the old junior days, sadly) and coming to school, completely drained of life and energy. And it's only the end of week four. Maybe it's just my inability to cope with stress and pressure, but I don't see these years as being very enjoyable. My migraines and all the physical shit I had last year are already beginning to resurface if I don't change something. I think it's time for all of us to grow up and realise that our future is completely and entirely dependent upon our decisions of the now. You will not pass anything if you don't study and work really hard for it. I'm already fretting for the upcoming trigonometry TOPIC test. I never studied for topic tests last year, they were the last thing (if ever) on my mind at all.

The gulf between junior and senior school is incomprehensible, but my friends tend to tell me that I make everything into a melodrama.

Tribes and Traditions

Easter Island, Ahu Tongariki, Polynesia 

It's amazing to think that an ancient civilisation built these totems and hoisted them into this upright position. A group of anthropologists and other people from Japan tried to manually lift these and it took them a few months before they gave up and just used a crane instead. We are such a technologically advanced society with a lot of tools and implements and yet we still couldn't do it. How the heck did ancient tribes build things like this and Machu Piccu? Mind-boggling. Just a fragment of the super interesting things I have been learning in Society and Culture, I'm so happy I chose this course, it is so bloody interesting. I literally learn something new every lesson (maybe I'm just stupid). But to learn about ancient tribes and even current tribes and their current practises is awesome. In some tribe (forgot their name) when the girl has her periods, she is forced to wear this thick ass potato sack over her whole body and stand in the middle of the bush with whoever else has their periods until they are finished. No food or water! I don't know how they do it... 

Planet Earth

Today is swimming carnvial but most of the grade is probably at home sleeping, gaming, and doing other mindlessly, time wasting things. I woke up this morning and decided to watch a documentary series that my dad bought because it was cheap? It has around 10 or 11 episodes, each 40 minutes (give or take a few minutes) long. The series is called Planet Earth and it is absolutely amazing. It's different to other documentaries centralised around earth and it's environment because they use aerial shots for everything which means that the animals and ravishing landscapes can be seen in their natural context. The camera is attached to the bottom of the helicopter and it can zoom in from one kilometre away and it is truly amazing. It's the first time that this kind of technology has been used for a documentary. I can't even explain how mind-blowing the video capture is.

The content of the first episode is amazing. The first time that a mother polar bear has seen sun in four months in the arctic is so heart-warming (even though it is still -30 degrees). She is so happy that she just toboggans down the mountain side, absorbing the sun's rays for the first time after four months of total darkness. Following her are her two baby polar bear cubs which see the sun for the first time in their entire lives!! It's so cute and kejrhwkejhraksjra. That's just the first 5 minutes of the whole series. I'm so excited to watch the rest of it but it will probably take me ages with all the homework we have ):

It's funny also! There is a group of baboons in Africa and they have to tread through rivers and they walk like humans and they act exactly like prim, princesses that are scared of water, waving their hands around and everything. Their behaviours are almost identical to those of humans and it is super fascinating. UGH THE WHOLE EPISODE WAS AMAZING. I learnt so much!

It's funny how oceans touched by millions of animals remain so pristine and clear. They don't destroy the Earth like humans do and yet they are deemed inferior in terms of intelligence. I really don't believe so. They are much smarter than humans, they can hunt, keep themselves warm and they don't cause any damage to the physical state of the environment (not all that much anyways). But maybe they are just oblivious. Not knowing is better than knowing, right?

bye bye

not that anybody would notice. The workload of senior school is so hectic and it's only been the first week so I don't think I'll have the time to blog regularly anymore. I'm not gonna close it down because I might be super stressed out or really pissed off at a stupid bitch and might need this space on the internet to vent my feelings. But yeah, don't expect too much from me! And as for my 365 project... LULZ

Not Fare

Today I went to Liverpool Westfields with my mum and sister and we had to catch public transport because our car is still out of action. The insurance company still hasn't made a decision as to whether they will compensate us or fix up our car. Anyway, turns out that we spent $20 on our bus and train fares!! That's freaking crazy. How does a continual rise in the cost of public transport encourage people to use the services provided? The government and environmentalists are always telling us to leave our cars at home and use public transport because it reduces our carbon footprint. Yes it does reduce our collective impact on the environment but that's not the only thing that is reduced... I'm not being a cheap Asian, I'm just trying to see reason. How can they expect us to want to use public transport when buses and trains are almost always late, sometimes even delayed for several hours? In addition to the government's obvious lack of timing, the peak hour congestion on a train is seemingly on par with peak hour traffic in a car. Except that in the comfort of your car, you have a respectable boundary between you and the next Sydney commuter. Whereas on a train, that is definitely not the case. I hate getting on a train that is already beyond packed and you have no choice but to rub up against a stinky laborer coming home from the job. It's too close and tight for my liking. Does this make me claustrophobic? Wow, off topic much?! I forgot what this was even about...

Ngaw

Little cousin: You would make a good teacher.
Me: Why?
Little cousin: Because you're mean.

The 'ink' in think

I drove past the school the other day and I noticed that our school notice board had graffiti on it. What's worse is that it wasn't the usual illegible graffiti. It read "Fuck You". Clear as day. What kind of person would have such little respect for themselves and their community? First, some uneducated pyromaniacs decided to torch the school hall and history block, which resulted in more than a year of agony of not having a school hall. Whoever burnt down the school hall is quite an idiot because it just brought disadvantages to themselves and their peers. If you're going to send a message, why don't you burn down the entire school? Oh that's right. That would require planning and the use of a brain, yours of which must have been misplaced or it's just super inferior to that of a "normal" person. But let's be clear here, I'm not encouraging it. I'm just saying, why burn down the school hall? And why the hell would you  graffiti on the school's notice board? What could you possibly achieve? There's a reason as to why the area is so stigmatised and the continual acts of disrespect and complete stupidity seem to justify the negativity of the name "Macquarie Fields". It pisses me off to see such inconsiderate morons defacing school property or any property for that matter. A kid was killed by a train upon some graffiti work in a tunnel, of course there will be ramifications for this. Ugh. I hate stupid people.