A Mishmash
The exams have been going on for a little more than a week now, but this is the first time I've gotten into the comp lab to tell you all about them. Count yourself lucky for this update, because I don't think I'm going to have much opportunity to do this much more often in the next three or so weeks.
I'm highly disappointed in the lab's current situation, though. I've been waiting for nearly three hours now for the Blogger page to download--I'm typing all this on Notepad while waiting--and even my Bleach forum keeps on coming back with a Page Cannot Be Displayed notice. It's been doing that for ages now. I think the staff are trying to reduce their workload by offering rotten service (the bag storage staff are getting slower by the day, I swear it) and by ensuring that the lab's computers are unable to access anything of even mild entertainment value. Like, say, Blogger and Bleach forums. The Coconut has said that they seem to have blocked almost all sites containing the words "Naruto" or "Bleach" in them--although this doesn't affect me since my forum doesn't have "Bleach" in the URL. Not directly, anyway.
They've already gotten rid of most of the online manga sites, after all. All they need to do next is block Friendster and I predict that they'll have so much free time on their hands that the lab will be rendered useless (and they'll lose their jobs. Cheers). I can understand blocking, say, hate sites or porn or illegal stuff. Unfortunately, they've gone and targeted... manga and anime. I salute their priorities--it's evidently a minor matter if somebody downloads a recipe for nerve gas or something, but it's big if you try to read the latest episode of Bleach. Because, I don't know, it wastes time or something. What are they, our motive filters?
It's very annoying. At any rate, I'm just trying to access a blog and a forum, heavens' sakes. Not running off into some of the sneakier sections of the Net. And they're still blocking it--or, at any rate, slowing it down till it makes no difference. It's annoying. They're supposed to be an Internet lab, not a minefield!
(And I would like to know exactly what words they programmed into the filter if it blocks "Bleach" and not "bleached", "Naruto" and not "terrorist", and "warning" and not "f***". I've already run most of my adult vocabulary through the thing and gotten through unblocked.)
Good grief. They're annoying. I bet they're behind the corruption of my mp3; there's no telling what they're up to.
Yay. My forum just managed to load. Now I'm just waiting to see if I can actually post a reply or whether it's just some vain hope or something.
Anyway... I might as well record some of my past week, or else I'll forget it and have to rely on my little sister to remember everything for me. The girl has one heckuva memory--it's as if she's remembered everything since birth. She even remembers faces and names that I don't remember existed in the first place, let alone how we met ot what we did. Like with some of our more distant relations, whom we never really knew anyway. She knows everything about them that she ever heard, including their current BMI and favourite foods and whether they brushed their teeth last night...
But I digress.
These are what's happened:
mp3 corruption
IKEA
Prestige
Cheeky's birthday at Thunder Flower's
Trying to study
Exams
But I'll try to go through them properly.
My mp3 is currupted, as you probably already know by now (I think I mentioned it before, but I can't check my blog so I'll mention it again). It got corrupted some weeks ago, along with most of the songs in it (which now never finish and keep playing back on an endless loop). I'm not sure why, but the warranty is still good so it's not much of a problem.
Plus since my sister is going to the Big S (where the warranty functions) for a couple weeks next month (that's in December), she can take it with her and come back with another mp3 full of Christian songs from my father. Plus this time I get to make sure that they don't send me a pink one. (At least, everybody says it's blue but I think it's pink. That's what you get for being colourblind.) It just means I'll have to start collecting all my songs all over again, especially the anime soundtracks. Those are rare enough.
The IKEA buffet is held every year during the fasting season before Raya, and let me tell you it's mega value for the cash. It cost about 17-something ringgit, and I think each person who went there forked down about 30 or so worth of food. More if they were porking out on meat. (The day I went, there was roast beef. Can you say drool?) Plus there were ice cream, pies, various little kuih (there simply isn't any English translation--the closest is "titbits", which is entirely different), and I really don't think the human digestive system is able to process the sheer bulk of the stuff we finished.
I say "we" because about 10 people from the church were with me (or maybe I was with them).
I didn't really get off my chair after the first few bites, because there was always somebody getting up for seconds, and there was always someone with too much pie/cake/kuih to handle on their own and requiring willing assistance. And, of course, with several hungry guys around, that was never in short supply.
We took more than an hour, I think, to properly sate ourselves, and we even left behind a large amount of unfinished food. Not because we didn't try to finish it, mind you. It was unfinishable. (Mrs. Gorilla said it was the most sinful meal she'd had in ages, due to the sheer amount of wasted food.)
We went to watch The Prestige at a nearby cineplex after that. It's a really good movie, one of the best I've seen in a long time. Better even than the movie adaptaion of LOTR or HP (although maybe that's just due to my expectations). When Jogger described it as a movie about magicians, I thought he meant a fantasy-style movie. Y'know. Fire from fingertips, rain of chaos, the works.
Instead, what it turned out to be was more of a psycho thriller. Two illusionists trying to bring the other down in ashes. Very gripping, if I do say so, and what's more it was interesting in its own right. Unlike book-to-movies, which are only interesting if the book is famous. Don't get me started on Eragorn, because I'll tear it to shreds. The author is an idiot.
I really liked the movie. And I highly recommend it, although the ending was disappointing (and very realistic. The bad guy often wins). It's even got bad science in it! And we all know bad science in movies is the best thing ever. Just look at War of the Worlds and Sound of Thunder and Day After Tomorrow and Armageddon and Deep Impact and... well, you get my drift.
Deepavali was last week. A bunch of us went to Thunder Flower's for a late dinner and to celebrate Cheeky's birthday. It was supposed to be a surprise, but he didn't look very surprised... anyway, we played Truth-or-Dare, and if I were to reveal anything we did, I'd be killed several times over, so...yeah. This is all you're going to know about that night. Apart from that I bagged some murukku for my sister (Thunder Flower's house has the best murukku we've ever tasted).
I tried to study, beginning last Friday (I spent most of the week watching people play DotA or N4S or some other acronym-laden game), and I found out that my brain has gotten extremely rusty. Metaphorically. Apparently, if you don't study for a very long time, like me, your brain gets used to the reduced workload.
Then when, like me, you suddenly flood yourself in formulae and past-year papers, your brain protests and goes on strike. What this actually means is that you get the most splitting headache of your life for the first three hours. After that it's just a dull throb, but you find yourself mysteriously unable to assimilate any information, while at the same time unable to solve the simplest of questions.
This was proven to me when Niche solved a problem I'd been trying to get at for the last half an hour--in less than five minutes. Did a great deal for my ego.
And then the exam was...today. Math, which is usually one of my better subjects, turned out to be panic-inducingly difficult. In fact I wouldn't have minded if they'd made it a three-hour exam just so I'd have the slightest, remotest chance of actually scraping a pass together.
It's Chem practical tomorrow. I oughta study.
I'm highly disappointed in the lab's current situation, though. I've been waiting for nearly three hours now for the Blogger page to download--I'm typing all this on Notepad while waiting--and even my Bleach forum keeps on coming back with a Page Cannot Be Displayed notice. It's been doing that for ages now. I think the staff are trying to reduce their workload by offering rotten service (the bag storage staff are getting slower by the day, I swear it) and by ensuring that the lab's computers are unable to access anything of even mild entertainment value. Like, say, Blogger and Bleach forums. The Coconut has said that they seem to have blocked almost all sites containing the words "Naruto" or "Bleach" in them--although this doesn't affect me since my forum doesn't have "Bleach" in the URL. Not directly, anyway.
They've already gotten rid of most of the online manga sites, after all. All they need to do next is block Friendster and I predict that they'll have so much free time on their hands that the lab will be rendered useless (and they'll lose their jobs. Cheers). I can understand blocking, say, hate sites or porn or illegal stuff. Unfortunately, they've gone and targeted... manga and anime. I salute their priorities--it's evidently a minor matter if somebody downloads a recipe for nerve gas or something, but it's big if you try to read the latest episode of Bleach. Because, I don't know, it wastes time or something. What are they, our motive filters?
It's very annoying. At any rate, I'm just trying to access a blog and a forum, heavens' sakes. Not running off into some of the sneakier sections of the Net. And they're still blocking it--or, at any rate, slowing it down till it makes no difference. It's annoying. They're supposed to be an Internet lab, not a minefield!
(And I would like to know exactly what words they programmed into the filter if it blocks "Bleach" and not "bleached", "Naruto" and not "terrorist", and "warning" and not "f***". I've already run most of my adult vocabulary through the thing and gotten through unblocked.)
Good grief. They're annoying. I bet they're behind the corruption of my mp3; there's no telling what they're up to.
Yay. My forum just managed to load. Now I'm just waiting to see if I can actually post a reply or whether it's just some vain hope or something.
Anyway... I might as well record some of my past week, or else I'll forget it and have to rely on my little sister to remember everything for me. The girl has one heckuva memory--it's as if she's remembered everything since birth. She even remembers faces and names that I don't remember existed in the first place, let alone how we met ot what we did. Like with some of our more distant relations, whom we never really knew anyway. She knows everything about them that she ever heard, including their current BMI and favourite foods and whether they brushed their teeth last night...
But I digress.
These are what's happened:
mp3 corruption
IKEA
Prestige
Cheeky's birthday at Thunder Flower's
Trying to study
Exams
But I'll try to go through them properly.
My mp3 is currupted, as you probably already know by now (I think I mentioned it before, but I can't check my blog so I'll mention it again). It got corrupted some weeks ago, along with most of the songs in it (which now never finish and keep playing back on an endless loop). I'm not sure why, but the warranty is still good so it's not much of a problem.
Plus since my sister is going to the Big S (where the warranty functions) for a couple weeks next month (that's in December), she can take it with her and come back with another mp3 full of Christian songs from my father. Plus this time I get to make sure that they don't send me a pink one. (At least, everybody says it's blue but I think it's pink. That's what you get for being colourblind.) It just means I'll have to start collecting all my songs all over again, especially the anime soundtracks. Those are rare enough.
The IKEA buffet is held every year during the fasting season before Raya, and let me tell you it's mega value for the cash. It cost about 17-something ringgit, and I think each person who went there forked down about 30 or so worth of food. More if they were porking out on meat. (The day I went, there was roast beef. Can you say drool?) Plus there were ice cream, pies, various little kuih (there simply isn't any English translation--the closest is "titbits", which is entirely different), and I really don't think the human digestive system is able to process the sheer bulk of the stuff we finished.
I say "we" because about 10 people from the church were with me (or maybe I was with them).
I didn't really get off my chair after the first few bites, because there was always somebody getting up for seconds, and there was always someone with too much pie/cake/kuih to handle on their own and requiring willing assistance. And, of course, with several hungry guys around, that was never in short supply.
We took more than an hour, I think, to properly sate ourselves, and we even left behind a large amount of unfinished food. Not because we didn't try to finish it, mind you. It was unfinishable. (Mrs. Gorilla said it was the most sinful meal she'd had in ages, due to the sheer amount of wasted food.)
We went to watch The Prestige at a nearby cineplex after that. It's a really good movie, one of the best I've seen in a long time. Better even than the movie adaptaion of LOTR or HP (although maybe that's just due to my expectations). When Jogger described it as a movie about magicians, I thought he meant a fantasy-style movie. Y'know. Fire from fingertips, rain of chaos, the works.
Instead, what it turned out to be was more of a psycho thriller. Two illusionists trying to bring the other down in ashes. Very gripping, if I do say so, and what's more it was interesting in its own right. Unlike book-to-movies, which are only interesting if the book is famous. Don't get me started on Eragorn, because I'll tear it to shreds. The author is an idiot.
I really liked the movie. And I highly recommend it, although the ending was disappointing (and very realistic. The bad guy often wins). It's even got bad science in it! And we all know bad science in movies is the best thing ever. Just look at War of the Worlds and Sound of Thunder and Day After Tomorrow and Armageddon and Deep Impact and... well, you get my drift.
Deepavali was last week. A bunch of us went to Thunder Flower's for a late dinner and to celebrate Cheeky's birthday. It was supposed to be a surprise, but he didn't look very surprised... anyway, we played Truth-or-Dare, and if I were to reveal anything we did, I'd be killed several times over, so...yeah. This is all you're going to know about that night. Apart from that I bagged some murukku for my sister (Thunder Flower's house has the best murukku we've ever tasted).
I tried to study, beginning last Friday (I spent most of the week watching people play DotA or N4S or some other acronym-laden game), and I found out that my brain has gotten extremely rusty. Metaphorically. Apparently, if you don't study for a very long time, like me, your brain gets used to the reduced workload.
Then when, like me, you suddenly flood yourself in formulae and past-year papers, your brain protests and goes on strike. What this actually means is that you get the most splitting headache of your life for the first three hours. After that it's just a dull throb, but you find yourself mysteriously unable to assimilate any information, while at the same time unable to solve the simplest of questions.
This was proven to me when Niche solved a problem I'd been trying to get at for the last half an hour--in less than five minutes. Did a great deal for my ego.
And then the exam was...today. Math, which is usually one of my better subjects, turned out to be panic-inducingly difficult. In fact I wouldn't have minded if they'd made it a three-hour exam just so I'd have the slightest, remotest chance of actually scraping a pass together.
It's Chem practical tomorrow. I oughta study.
Comments