Panthera Sapiens Ellipsis: The Blog

Gaaaah! Sometimes I just hate school life. ...Well, right now I hate it, anyway, because it's exams time again. And this time it's the finals and the trials for my A2 (in October). PLUS Gambler is extorting the bankdrafts for the A2 payment out of everyone and she demands that we have it ready by tomorrow... I suppose I'm sounding rather stressed out at this point. But the thing is, I've suddenly found myself with far too much on my plate, and I simply can't figure out a way to handle it yet. I've got exams every day until next week, I've got to buy that darned bankdraft, I have to buy a toothbrush (because I left it in So Hour--stupid me), I need new batteries for the mp3 (because it came to me with half its original battery life), plus I joined the church choir and we just began practice for Christmas. I'm not complaining about the last one, it's really enjoyable. I like being one of the few people in the place able to sing both bass and tenor part...

Yes, I know it's a lot more than one week since I last posted. Kelvin has said so most eloquently in an MSN conversation, and well, here's my reply. I spent the last week down in So Hour with my grandparents, which is my excuse for not putting up the usual update last week. Still, at least it gives me plenty of stuff to write about now. See, every cloud has a silver lining after all! (I've been reading my old posts, and I've noticed that the number of exclamation marks in my posts has dwindled alarmingly. Some of my earlier posts were practically overflowing with them--and most of my latest posts don't have anything other than commas and periods in them. I wonder if it has any significance.) So, I went down on Monday. Nothing much happened that day, except that I began eating a lot again. Of course, I began exercising a little more than before (specifically, cycling and badminton and twisting little cousins' arms), but not enough to balance out the weight gain. ...

I watched Click last night with my sister and a bunch of people from church: the Gorilla, Mrs. Gorilla, D-Kun, Claus, and a couple others I forgot the codenames for. It's a pretty interesting show, lots of good laughs (but dirty ones! Don't bring your kids there), and a few tearjerker scenes near the end. Basically, it's about some American guy with a horrible boss and a great family. Typically, he's a workaholic because he thinks work = money = happiness, which means he keeps on ditching family events to work on office stuff. Plus his neighbours are this super-rich family with a rotten kid who likes coming over and dissing everything he and his kids own. The kid, by the way, has a face that seems to be made up entirely of pimples although the voice is definitely pre-pubescent. Don't ask me how. It's called dramatic license, I think: the same law that says ugly = evil. So one day, he's driven mad when his remotes get mixed up (the American family apparently ...

I went down to So Hour on Saturday and Sunday--rather a hectic trip down to the place, but my sister wanted durians and I wanted to skip the extra class that my Chem lecturer was having. And then one thing led to another and suddenly I found myself on the bus down to the farm. Everything there is still the same as it was before: cousins swarming the place, grandparents lamenting our thinness (but rather halfheartedly, since both I and my sister have put on quite a bit of weight), aunts in the kitchen brewing lovely smells (and food), and of course, loads of fresh fruit hanging off trees and overflowing out of baskets. I myself don't eat durians. The family legend is that my mom ate far too many durians while pregnant with me, and so I was born sick of durians. It is therefore fortunate that this is also the season of jackfruits and mangosteens and rambutans and a tonne of other species of fruits that I only know the Chinese names of--cat's eyes and dragon's eyes and I haven...

The AS results have finally come out, after a few days' suspense when Cambridge supplied a bad password to my college and prevented us from finding out our results until a bit after 12 today (most other colleges got their results on Monday). I'm a bit disappointed in myself, actually, and so is my Physics lecturer: we'd both been expecting me to get an A for Physics, but I got a B instead. While still respectable, it's not what I'd hoped for; but since it doesn't require me to repeat the papers, I'm satisfied. Right now I can only supply overall grades, since my paper-by-paper breakdown will only arrive on the 17th, so here: Math... a Bio.... a Chem... b Phy.... b It's lovely symmetry, and it also provides me with extra gloating ammunition to use against my classmates, who (as far as I know) all scored lower than I did. Of course, since they don't give a whit about such trifling things as grades, these results aren't worth much. It's not like...

I forgot to post about this yesterday, but my roommate bought hamsters on Saturday and smuggled them into the hostel on Sunday night in a little box. The box is marked "These are not [Panthera Sapiens'] toys", and it's a reference to the fact that most animals who come near me seem to have a relatively low life expectancy. It's also perfectly unjustified. How am I supposed to know if lizards can swim unless I experiment with them? (For the record, they do swim, but weakly, and they usually drown around the tenth minute or so.) Anyway, Niche has pampered his hamsters to an amazing extent. Their little box is a nice calming shade of blue, and he built a mini tunnel out of Lego for them to run in. Plus he used more Lego to make a house for them, with doors, and it's even got a slope for a porch that can be raised or lowered (by us, not the hamsters). And the entire box is smothered in wood shavings. Plus he added a water dispenser and a food dish. I tell you, tho...

I jz realised how much tym can b saved if I were 2 post in SMS talk. I'm assumin, of cos, dat u noe how 2 read dis, cos otherwys u'll jz get annoyed n go read sth more grmmaticlly correct. I've been plannin 2 do sth like dis 4 qwyt awhile oredi, actually. It's much simpler n at least dis way I don't need 2 worry abt spelling. After all, in SMS-ese, everythin goes. It's only now dat I've actually decided 2 do it. ...I got my new specs on Sat. My sis sez dey look pretty good n dat dey complement my hair, altho how anythin could complement yellow-n-brown stripes is beyond even me. At any rate, dey're much lighter den my old wire-rims n I'm still tryin 2 get used 2 them. Besides, d frame is a bit wider den my old ones--not surprisin since d old ones were wires!--so now I'm developing a couple of sore ears. I'm hopin it'll get better in tym. D weird thing is dat recently I've been developin all sorts of illnesses on me. First, of cos, d ba...