Calm before Storm

That’s the first bit of SPM over. I won’t call it the first half, since it isn’t. I’ll just say that the worst is over, and worse is to come. I had History today, and let me just say, without going into details, that what I hoped for wasn’t asked for, and what I passed over turned out important. It’s that whole cornerstone paradox again.
At least it’s raining. I could eulogise it in prose or verse (not, God forbid, FREE verse) for hours on end. But I won’t, since my eulogies usually come out somewhat grammatically questionably, and they tend to ramble on and on, non-stop, never-ending, ever-lasting, unto eternity and beyond (oh good, no hyphen here), forever and ever, time unto end. I’ll just super-simplify it and say that I think that those who don’t enjoy rain are idiots.
And at least I have the next 13 days off. Less about eight days’ study, I’ll still have about one week to unwind. Interesting that I need six days to unwind from four days’ exams, but then most strange things are. Which explains the gossip instinct—everybody likes to have something interesting to say, and what could be more interesting than, “The strangest thing happened yesterday…”? So that’s what those people talk about…
Today’s a paradox of sorts, anyhow. I had not enough time to do a decent essay in English 1 this morning (and the government expects us to get a good GCSE grade!!) but far too much time to do the English 2 paper. And, of course, way too much time during History 2. After all, when one hasn’t much to write, one doesn’t take long to write it down. And then there’s the speed reading factor: I read questions approximately two times faster than most of my classmates. In English or Malay, of course; my Chinese has backslidden to an appalling level. I’m pretty much as good as the average banana boy by now. (You do understand the expression, right?)
And yes, it turns out I am going to Shanghai after all. (Hereafter, I’ll call it the Big S.) I’ll be leaving on the 4th and returning on the 2nd, it appears. Wonderful, just wonderful…I’ll be completely absent from the MSN scene for nearly a month, and my email will probably get deactivated unless I convince my father somehow to let me access the Net from his laptop, which does not have Messenger on it. I think. At least it’ll be winter there, so I’ll get to go everywhere in five layers of clothing and need to bathe only once in five days. What, you think bathing in freezing cold water is a luxury? And I will have money, so perhaps I might buy a little something for the few friends I have. When your social circle is roughly the size of a pencil lead’s radius, you happen to value your contacts more. Trust me…take it from someone who knows. But then I’ll have no way to get it to them…so nah, I won’t buy a single thing unless I can figure out the transportation problem. So that’s nothing for Pig or charitable classmate or Kelvin or Jack or Wolf or Roger or Herr Robson. I think.
Incidentally, the charitable classmate, Herr Robson and Roger have gone into overdrive. I haven’t seen any of them since SPM not muttering something to their various selves. During English, it was: “The themes of X are Y and Z.”; During Malay, “”; During Add. Math, “y equals m x plus c”; and during History, “X happened during Y in Z”. I can’t wait to see what they’ll say during Moral Studies. And I’ve taken to telling them to stop studying because they’re way too good already. I think it is working; the charitable classmate said something decidedly uncharitable just now in response to me: “Sh*t __!”
Guess what she said?
Give up? She said “Shut up”.
So now I’ve got six days’ worth of stress coming up to study for. I wish the government didn’t have to drag these things out like this, but they’re the government, which means they’re not necessarily intelligent. And I also wish my year wasn’t always the guinea pig for whatever half-brained scheme the government comes up with. Altered formats, new tests, strange requirements, we’ve seen them all. We pioneered them, in fact, and failed terribly, upon which the next year learned from our mistakes and derided us to high heaven. Which act doesn’t do anything for the self-esteem problem we all have.
Nobody has been blogging lately but Meow and she just altered her comment format, which means that all my previous witty, pithy lines of wisdom have now been banished to cyber oblivion. Such is life.
In any case, I’ll blog later, after the SPM. (Meow has cleverly dubbed it the Scary Perilous Monster, and I don’t disagree.) And if by any chance I don’t post while in Shanghai, rest assured I’ll keep a diary and post the whole lot up here when I can. Stay tuned and see you soon.