Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Hemidactylus frenatus
Yes, is it not totally hilarious, the way the Hemidactylus frenatus, known as the House Gecko, or just a normal lizard, such a tiny, ubiquitous little critter drives me to my knees, gut pulverizingly ugly as they are? From the beady black eyes, like caviar (black fish roe) bloated from inner decay, to skin the colour of bread mould, to the tapered bald tail, and worst of all that jerking side to side gait when they move, everything about the house lizard screams repugnant, nauseatingly hideous. I'm not sure of this innate loathing for the apparently friendly mosquito eating house pest, but it could stem from the baby black lizard that dropped onto my shoulder and crawled all the way down my arm when I was a kid. Once bitten, twice shy...or in this case, once scared, forever terrified.
Back, and I've never felt more like a fool armed with a bottle of fly insecticide and a rolled up wad of newspaper in each hand, standing outside the toilet, debating whether or not to whack outside the door - what if I chase the lizard further into the toilet? - or to spray it with the insecticide - what if the insecticide, which is not meant for lizards anyway, proves ineffective and the lizard is only partially inebriated? And what would I do if it fell down dead? What if it runs out towards me? - I'd get a heart attack and die. At the very least I'd get a seizure of gut busting proportions, and will end up on the floor with fresh blood spurting like free for all liquidated fireworks from my jugular.
Decided that to live with my dirty self for a night is way better than perishing in this unglamorous manner of death-by-lizard-scare. And anwyway, I bathe everyday, sometimes twice a day, so what's missing one bath in the long run? Bit of dirt never hurt anyone, it's in fact been proven to raise immunity and reduce allergies. Nothing like a childhood phobia to put things into perspective.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The second start
Chemistry lessons are by and large an amusingly bellyaching affair, what with our scrawny teacher, affectionately christianed 'Cheeks' by Virunardu, tottering around the science lab, blinking his eyes and lamenting over our student quality. Take this week's chem practical.
Cheeks (exclaiming to ZY) : Hey! You! I wrote your sister a letter of reccomendation to the college she was applying to. But for you, I'll make sure to write a letter of complaint!
ZY : But, sir!
Cheeks : 'Dear college! Please do not accept any letter of application from this student! No good will come to you and only harm will befall you!'
ZY : Hey!
Cheeks : Complaint number 1! Handwriting is too big!
ZY : No lor!
Cheeks : (Absolutely in his element, and therefore showing marked enthusiasm) Complaint number 2! Does not differentiate bench top from chair top!
ZY : (hardheadedly unrepented) But that's what you advised us to do!
Cheeks : I adviced some people to do it, not you, I was referring to those who are -
Hamtaro : Vertically challenged!
Cheeks : - Hey! That's mean and insulting! (Turns to Gilbeh) By the way, I saw your birthday ccard going around, and your friends are all signing it now. Don't expect too much, it's only handmade.
(Collective outcry of indignation from Chloe and I, referring to the comment about short people and handmade cards respectively.)
ZY : (looks at me in amazement later) He has a son! I can't believe he's still acting like this!
Boys (dogs) will be boys (dogs) even over biology MCQ marks.
Vic Dog : I didn't do that badly for bio! I got the same mark as you for the structured questions!
ZY : Wahaha come on! I totally owned you for MCQ
Vic Dog : (defensively) You think so?
ZY : Of course!
Vic Dog : Yeaj? What mark did you get? ( Looks ZY up and down, as though sizing him up )
ZY : (Returns the gesture by eyeing Vic Dog up and down) I got 19 marks. (Smirk).
Vic Dog : Wha-? 19? Really? ( Sizes ZY up again )
ZY : (smug smile) Yep. You?
Vic Dog : ... 15...
Elang : Dudes? Why the need to look each other up and down?
MJ : Sizing up something other than MCQ marks, of course!
Math tutorial today was no less wild, perhaps because MJ and I weren't sleeping as per usual; MJ was infact clutching my arm and squealing nonsense into my ear. LZY assumed his supposedly stern face.
ZY : (sounding remarkably like Mr Ngan) MJ, why are you being so distractive? Sit down!
MJ : THIS FROM SOMEONE WHO FALLS ASLEEP EVERY LESSON!
ZY : At least I'm not disturbing anyone. Be quiet and concentrate.
MJ : (laughs)
ZY : Shh!
Later, ZY is called to present his answers on board, which he does so with neither flair nor aplomb, but determination all the same to take up as much space as he can ( as usual ).
Me : Whoa, write bigger abit, bigger abit!
MJ : Yeah, abit small leh, we cannot see!
Vic Dog : Wow, look at him, just conquering all the territory!
MJ : Yep, he took up 4 fifths of the board and left that puny space for the other two answers and the teacher!
Elang : All the land just kena bomb by his writing! BAM BAM BAM!
MJ : Yeah, he's so possessive! VicDog, you better be careful not to mess with his things!
(time passes, and MJ notices the state of ZY's brackets on the board.)
Vic Dog : Why, do they look like phallic symbols?
MJ : Hm. Nah. Nobody has legs that stubby ( I shall upload a photo of the brackets as soon as I can find one)
Elang : (Starts guffawing uncontrollably into ZY's face.)
ZY : (gives us all a look of insufferably exasperation and intolerance. Assumes reprimanding tone and face) MJ, they are just brackets. For goodness' sake, what is wrong with you. Elang, stop laughing. (He take Elang's shoulders and turns him around completely so that Elang doesn't face him anymore. Elang is now laughing to MJ's face.)
Funnies from the LZY
1. "...Laser printers don't use ink! It just 'iiiiiiinnnnnggg' come out of the printer..."
2. (Typo on PW notes) "Zog Yi"
3. (From economics essay) "...in a large company, researchers feel like they are small dogs..."
[I'd love to comment on the sheer (unintentional) ingenuity of this statement, the fact that it implies so many things on so many levels, but wouldn't that take all the fun out of it! ]
4. "You should try combining names together, it's damn fun. Like for example, Chelsea and Wilnard will be Chelnard! Or maybe Wilsea. Or like, Emma and Wilnard - Emnard. Hahaha! Oh wait the best will be Peter and Bernard! Penard!"
5. Wilnard : I can't be going around holding a bow and arrow...people would arrest me for being a terrorist.
ZY : Nevermind, you can just say :"I am Wilbin Hood!" (Wilnard + Robin Hood)
6. "Gay dogu chou hentai! Tessa hoshi?" (Gay dog pervert. Wish for Tessa?)
7. (While in KL)
ZY : "I'll buy some muffins for Dogtor...you know, the kind that dogs wear on their feet..."
Me : "...huh? Muffins?"
ZY : "...Uhm...yeah...I can't remember the correct word."
Me : "Do you mean mittens?"
ZY : "oh! yes."
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The first start of Term 3
I rushed from the block B windy benches to Block H general office area to meet Haran Shiv Kumar and Sheryl Ang Wei Jing, both of whom were waiting with a surprise for me - belated birthday presents! Yep, as if a beautiful card and 143GB of high quality anime/scanlations/movies weren't enough, they'd insisted on getting me another present, the silly, lovable things. Hence the Legolas action figure posing proudly on the only non cluttered area of my desk! They'd spent the whole of yesterday shopping for it, even though I remember explicitly saying I didn't want anything!
Love makes the world go round, really.
First lesson in the morning, and 10s03N was already dogging away with its usual nonsense. I strode into LT5 with open arms to welcome the long awaited blast of aircon; unfortunately, all I got for my efforts was a sultry roil of moisture laden air, sickeningly warm, and a couple of sub-height beings (Chloe and Rachel, I realised upon looking down) barging rudely past me muttering "it's too hot! Let's get out!" with narry a greeting.
I could feel Elang's presence with every step into the LT, making up for the last cool weekend of the June holidays with an extraordinarily vehement radiation of heat; Zhe Yan's voice called my name with the usual Japanese inflection and before I could reply, MJ shrieked with the usual lack of propriety - upon which I was reminded of the fangirl-ing SMS I'd sent her two nights ago:
Grimmjow Jeagerjaques comes scarily, dangerously close to displacing Nakago from his throne, which I had never believed possible...
But nobody messes with the sleek, serpentine shogun of Kutou. Nobody.
Back to school and the sad reality of non-spasm inducing bishounen, ZY and Vic Dog were having a typical husband-and-wife conversation over money.
ZY : Eh VicDog, you said you need how much? Eight hundred and seventy dollars is it?
Vic Dog : Yeah, but it's ok, I don't want it now you hold on to it first...
ZY : What? No la! I purposely bring so much money now you don't want to take!
Vic Dog : You hold on to it first...I just want fifty bucks, you hold on to the rest first.
ZY : Fifty? Just take everything!
MJ : Wow wow wow! Look at this husband and wife squabble! So typical! Like 'Dear, let's take out our assets and managing properly-' 'Huh? But why, I thought my money is your money and your money is my money-' 'ok, you take this amount first-' '-huh, don't need, you hold on to it, you hold on to it!-'
Tryphe (typical bluntness) : Where is Mrs Shen? Why is she so late? Don't tell me she's giving birth now.
The rest of the days passed in relatively tumoultous hours as the papers were returned to us - chemistry CT, a time challenge for everyone, including the imba pros like Elang and Shaun. ZY's testimonies to the lack of time :
1. Progressively larger handwriting as one flips through his answer script, from like font size 24 to 32.
2. A graph with the correct axis but a random curved line which makes no sense whatsoever in relation to the factors - evidently he had memorised all the graphs LCK had given us but didn't have time to think which the question was asking for
3. Two whole pages, blank, with the answers o.900g (when the question stated, specifically, the maximum amount as 0.02g) and 50.0cm^3
While queueing up to check chem CT marks -
Elang : Wah, ZY! You very angry ah! Write so big and so hard.
ZY : No la, I was rushing for time -
Me : Wah, ZY! One whole page you only write like that, expect to get marks!
ZY : Of course not, I had no time to think it through, just tikam tikam mah! -
Vic Dog : Wah, ZY! Why your graph like that, makes no sense -
ZY : (pissed) Told you all already la! I had no time!
Cheeks : Eh, you! Come to fight for marks ah! Confirm zero la. Go go. Next!
ZY : (sputtering) eh, 'cher, but...! (Cheeks turns to JJ. ZY is dejected.) Aiya, jidan... (mandarin for egg. His favourite vulgarity. Don't ask why), cannot believe my marks so jia lat. I last time chem full marks one lor!
Vic Dog : Wow, really?
ZY : Yeah. Secondary school that time, chem and maths both 100%!
Vic Dog : Wow, eh that's damn pro man.
ZY : Yeah, big deal. As if I next time apply for job that time : "sir, I got a hundred percent for mathematics and chemistry in secondary 3, please employ me!" I'll get punched in the face.
Elang : Yeah. You can also go :"sir! When I was in kindergarten I aced every single subject! English Chinese Maths all hundred percent! Please employ me!"
Elang is a howl.
Shall continue after getting Literature CT tomorrow, although it looks set to be my first and only fail.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Blitzkrieg
Looking, really looking, up to the celestial constellations, mankind's failed endeavour to name and discuss deity; sinking, up up and up into the swirling, floating avalanche of sable velvetine and silver peaked pinpoints, each of them having spiraled and shot through lightyears upon lightyears of matter and not-matter ; hearing, for a split second, a vibration of an echo of a the sky's endless song - the reverberation of joy and fury primordial, unadulterated, a moment of which has been distilled - attenuated, like the spreading heat of a glowing cinder to warm frigid Siberia -
Allow the human mind a paltry hazard at comprehending the futility of one's attempts to comprehend -
Rhythmic drive of blood in your ears, ruthless, roaring, reckless and relentless as the katabatic winds; unshackled, unbridled strength - scream, howling, your throat rips to shreds, sprint till lands run out, and then fight and brawl till your jaw is split and your knucles shattered, anything to fuel the fire in your limbs, anything to calm the blood threatening to spit - viciously, red hot and wanton, through the jugular - regardless of rules, heedless of expectations, mutinous, rebellious, breakneck feckless breakneck feckless breackneck feckless foolish foolhardy DAREDEVIL - DEFIANT -
Spirit be desertstorm determined, heart be labyrinthine; ten thousand thundering typhoons and passion be a holocaust of sense and sensibility; love be hellfire and vengeance be smouldering brimstone -
Golden resonance of the alps and silver sliding scale of the wild, the red the blue the yellow the purple flowers and their fresh white blossoms like so many tiny pearls, embedded in green -
A million mongrel sons cannot give a pedigree -
So many droplets of so many moments, bombarding the boundaries of language, leaving it a fluttering penant of defeat -
Blitzkrieg.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Kicking Butt
I henceforth celebrated Independence Day at 12.15 am in the morning by kicking spectacular butt in Little Fighter 2 Stage 5 Crazy mode!
Firzen, my character, was an absolute demon, I tell you, pure power unleashed. Inspired by Bleach videos and fanfiction and harbouring newfound aspirations of being Espada, I was Fire and Ice incarnated, none could stand against me! I was epic, the maniacal channel of the elements, exploding into Arctic Volcano in their midst and wrecking sheer havoc with the fury of my cannon blasts! All fell back before my might and power! The battlefield was my stage of glory and adrenaline - and the arrival of Julian, stage 5/5, was a welcome challenge!
Julian's soul shields folded like cloth before my spells, and his his soul blasts were weak, ineffectual to my shield of ice. None could withstand the Master of Fire and Ice - I roasted the knights in their own armour and froze the sorcerers in their own robes. Julian's warriors and minions went to their deaths writhing in a cosm of flame and pain.
We were victorious, of course; the remnants of twenty-man army consisted of LouisEX, Bat, Jan, Jack and I, Firzen the Great (of course.)
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Over-ripe bananas
And I can testify to the accuracy of my gut feeling, borne of 16 - no, no, 17 now! ARGH the inexorable passage of time - 17 years of critical judgement - because something told me to mug for chemistry, not biology, even though I have been consistently doing worse in bio than chem - and tada! The test papers proved it, there was no need to mug DNA genomics like everyone else did, hee hee.
Biology, for me, turned out to be the trickiest paper. Greasy bag of fries!
There's nothing for it, exams are all over and done with for now, and I actually felt HIGH after finishing the exam. It's something I haven't felt since sec 2...since exams in KL were never a challenge anyway, I didn't need to work and thus they didn't matter.
Our impromptu class outing went from two people - Tryphe and I - to 5 people! Hamtaro Virunardu (sorry, Zan and I came up with this cool jap name for you. Sounds like a dungeon warlord!) Zhilbe. We asked the other guys, but = shrug= they left, the Dog to mug in the library! 'For end of year promos!' he protested when we laughed him off. Continue dogging away like this, his ears will just grow longer and hang down like a labrador retriever's - he already has the side burns, the face, and the doggy mannerisms.
Elang just went 'nope', inciting some perverted soundling laughter from Shaun. He's epic, I tell you. He kills people by stripping. JJ and ZY disappeared.
Keh! Well, we didn't need them anyway, we plopped our noisy selves down at Swenson's and the five of us laughed ourselves sick at Hamtaro's shameless posturing about his PW group member (one of them, specifically) and the inevitable expansion of his stored triglycerides.
Hamtaro : Now, which lucky girl gets to sit beside me?
Guys : ...BWAAHAHAHAAA
Tryphe grabbed the seat beside the Dogtor
Me : (sits down besides Hamtaro with ill grace) Hopefully some of my stuff...my..sense...and morality...will diffuse over to him.
Hamtaro sat down, taking up nearly two tables' worth of seat space!
Me : Eh walau move la, I got no space...
Hamtaro : Please, not me! It's our bags...
Me : Yeah...you eat abit more, those bags gonna be like the size of your expanded triglycerides...
Hamtaro : You know, in primary school I was a prefect!
Me : Wow, the tie musn't have been able to fit around your neck...
Virunardu : Yeah man, especially (mimes a giant swell in front of him)
Hamtaro : Oi!
We were appropriated outside Swenson's by a buxom wench, who fast-talked her way straight through two dozen bushes to tell us that people all deserved a chance to study, including those that, like her, can depend on neither parents nor government subsidy to pay for school fees; and that we, as students ought to show our support of this by donating money which would go to herself for furthering her own education (I think).
It was rather affronting to be confronted with a statement like 'So you guys can't help me out here? Not even by giving a dollar each?' in a tone of incredulous digust - polite and polished, but incredulous disgust all the same; and after Virunardu and Hamtaro gave in and chipped in a dollar each, she gave the customary 'thank you', thrust a pen at us and whirled off to approach another, preferably wealthier and looser-handed person.
Really, what brazen, unabashed cheek! The cut-to-the-chase of it is that she wanted money from us!
Virunardu said, after giving her the money, that he didn't think it was legal to go around like that, and I agree, although it didn't hit me till after we'd walked away. I would have pointed it out to her and to heck with the 'not nice-ness' of it! The way she larked over it, you would have thought she completely deserved the money because she was disadvantaged in terms of financial support, and that we should have supported her because as students it's a common interest.
Of course, everyone does deserve a shot at education, but if they don't have the money, demanding it off random street people definitely isn't the way to do it. I'd like to commend the novel idea of selling this 'education for everyone' slogan as a means of 'earning' money off passers-by, it is rather innovative - but I can hardly approve of it. Strike me down with lightning and thunder, but if she had the looks, the voice, the temerity and the confidence to approach strangers like this, the intelligence to come up with such a marketing strategy - there were other ladies like her, all doing the same thing- then she's far from helpless, and there are better, more reliable and less controversial ways of earning money - such as getting a job.
'I'm gonna be frank with you guys...the money will go to me for my studies", my overripe black spotted bananas! It was nothing short of shameless, if eloquent, begging.
Photograph upload is still not working!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Error Carried Forward
AND the whole of tomorrow morning! Joy!
Today,
Something happened.
I thought it was dejection,
But there wasn't even a twinge of gloomy resignation.
Baarh is a small red fruit. We guard our hearts.
Not, of course, that I used 'Girl Talking' as my poem today. Nope, none of CAD's angsty word clunking rubbish, I used two of my favourite poems - 'The Virgin Punishing the Infant,' and the infamous 'Warming her Pearls.'
'All day I work willingly...slack on my neck, her rope.
Her pearls, her milky stones...(she is) puzzled by my faint, persistant scent."
Suggestively put, I say.
Well, I'd hardly done justice to two of the few poems worth a second look in our silly 'women in Literature' anthology, but but it was otherwise the best I could have done given the circumstances - nil preparation and scant practice in expressing myself over paper, amongst the other crucial things, such as the lack of a gel ink blue pen -I had to make do with a ballpoint black, which affected my writing speed.
Well, it's good to save money.
[Nobody can be blamed I supposed, for our inexperience - CCC did do his best to give us a detailed analysis of where we'd gone wrong, after all, and he did present whole afternoons to be at our disposal. The point of contention is whether a certain two someones could (or couldn't in in this case?) have been any less suited to the task of -
- but nevermind, this is not a place for spite and contempt; I shall stop here.]
After literature exam, there was some free time before mathematics. I had an adhoc math tuition with Lee Kwok Hao and Shaun Ee in the library, during which I covered a grand total of 4 subparts! of one question!- pertaining to linear regression. Sorely reminded, once again, of my inadequacy as KH and SE debated about physical chemistry theorums, one involving a dude named Clementi.
Anyway, after much floundering unsteadily after my impromptu tuition teachers' train of thought, it was the Mathethematics exam!
For which I was all geared up and raring to attack!
Face my impunity and cower in terror, o heinous permutations! To the abyss with probability, and hypothesies be utterly damned!
Turned out to be less of the oily vixen it usually is, more the irksome scutwork of retrieving half forgotten GC notations and functions, which I remembered by trial-and-error. I DID manage to do the linear regression question; however I forgot to 'Diagnostic On' the GC, so I had no product moment correlation coefficient to begin with. BlAH!!!!!
I sallied through the rest doably, with the exception of being unable to find the variance of one question, I conjured one out of thin air and used it in the further calculations.
Error, please be carried forward!