falling.

i didn’t even realise that i was so busy and caught up with doing the stuff for ms ng last night that i clean forgot to perform my near-daily ritual of blogging. sometimes it feels almost obligatory, but i guess it’s another way for me to relax and destress.

but honestly, what stress? i’ve still been slacking like mad these few days, and quite inexplicably so. i usually retain some degree of self-control when it comes to dividing my time between study and non-study, but it feels like i’ve gone a little out of control.

which is not a good thing, and which is what i’ll be trying to rectify before the september holidays start and signal that i only have seven days to cram in three different syllabuses in my head.

i don’t see why i don’t ever learn from my mistakes and start studying earlier, sometimes. and sometimes i hate the fact that the word “studying” dregs up memories and thoughts that only serve to distract me from studying itself. but i guess i’ll just somehow force myself to concentrate on studying, anyway. not like i have a choice. i can do it. i must do it.

am now wondering if the idea of basketball after the gp prelims on friday is a good one. i don’t particularly care if i’m playing on my own or against people, but i’m just concerned about the time i’ll “waste” playing basketball. but i just need to play one last satisfying time and get rid of any basketballing notions that may arise in the course of my attempts to study.

and i’m awfully sleepy now. i fell asleep at the computer earlier, until the maid brought in my lunch of macaroni&cheese. which unfortunately is the mix with the terribly bland and almost tasteless sauce. i had to force myself to down it, washing it down with mouthfuls of just juice apple. terrible.

teachers’ day in school today was okay. last year was a bit more exciting, so i guess this year was a bit more… touching? ha. we’re a lot more subdued now, despite teachers like winnie tan expecting us to spring some drastic surprise or prank on ms ng. nah, we’re a lot nicer this year. in addition to an extremely bright banner we displayed for the whole of aj square’s inhabitants to see, we gave her a survival kit for her next few classes. it had stuff like axe oil, panadol extra, instant coffee packets, a stress ball, a diary, the handi pen with the f-you sign, poser bands that said “it’s all about giving”, a joke book compilation from everyone in class, and a little list detailing why her future classes will never feel that bad, as long as she looks back on 3404. for example, no one else will fall asleep as much as me in class, or mumble incoherently as much as dwayne, and the list goes on, for everyone in class. so i guess we are mighty nice this year :)

we gave maths tan a clear plastic bottle with our messages scrawled on it, and filled with a 7-up/sprite mixture with red colouring, a representation of the blood she’s supposedly given us in the course of teaching us. ms lee and winnie tan both got handi pens and cards signed by everyone in class. not very much, but i guess something is better than nothing, right?

am supremely sleepy now. can’t decide if i should just take a nap, attempt to do some work or allow myself to relax one last time before embarking on the journey that is studying for the precarious prelims.

hmmm. think i’ll go take a nap after all. am barely even conscious now…

all talk no action.

i guess that describes me quite well.

am not doing the maths timed practice until i feel sufficiently prepared (which might be never) and i technically haven’t done anything apart from write out the question for tomorrow’s lecture (in what ways and to what extent was urbanisation a force for change in colonial southeast asia?), determine the subject/focus/timeframe after wasting two pieces of foolscap paper by changing my mind about what the subject and focus was.

am now sucking (and trying very hard now to chew on) a mint humbug after flipping through the notes in a vain attempt to try and answer the darn question, with a bit of rigour this time.

and prior to this i was downloading and watching butch walker videos and marvelling over how much better butch walker looks like when he’s clean shaven. and of course, melting over his fantastic voice. butch walker is undoubtably my best music find ever. it wasn’t a recommendation from a friend or a listen on the radio. it was a download of “mixtape” after seeing it clinch the #1 spot on alternative addiction. and the rest is history.

i should be thinking about how i can extricate myself from the mess of procrastination and a general lack of content knowledge for my syllabuses, but all i can think about is basketball tomorrow. sigh.

empty/hollow

reading jy’s blog about it being her last day of school made me realise that 3404 doesn’t exactly have that much time left together. there’s tomorrow and wednesday, then the gp prelims on friday, then the hols and the prelims itself. and the many gaps between our different papers mean we don’t get to see each other much, either. and then there’s post-prelims and that’s about it. the next time we’ll all gather together would probably be the a’s itself…

and i don’t know what to say, except that i’m sure i’ll really miss the class. plenty of friends, plenty of good humour, plenty of fun… plenty of everything :) even if we’re only a tiny class of sixteen. plus our evil but (usually) beloved form teacher we make seventeen, and two years times seventeen people equals 34. don’t you just love how the maths works out?

we’ve come a long way since we all first met after march. from loners and pairs and tiny groups to one big happy class. and no matter how many times we wonder and talk about it, we still can’t figure out precisely what happened to make the class just suddenly click together. it just happened, and i’m glad that it did :)

okay i’m getting a bit too reminiscent for my own taste. just wanna let any 3404-er reading this know how much i love the class and being a part of it. if it wasn’t for 3404, aj would really, really suck.

and in my semi-moody mood about how little time 3404 has left together, i clean forgot about my disastrous un source-based timed practice, until i popped by maryam’s blog. i got a grand total of 9 out of 25 or a low level three, a very far cry from my almost consistent level 5 and 18 marks. i was obviously quite upset. in fact, i could scarcely believe my eyes. i looked at the L3 and wondered briefly if my eyes were bad and if it was actually a L5. but no, my eyes did not deceive me. i flubbed because my arguments were way too off and because i had no background knowledge. which puts a huge dent into my hopes of relying on my source-based question to pull up my history grade, on account of my less-than-stellar essay scores.

which does make me very worried about my history, really. like mrs woo has mentioned (and which ms ng has so kindly repeatedly reminded us), we lack rigour in our essays. or i shall not overgeneralise and place the emphasis on me. i lack rigour in my essays. badly. the word “elaborate” and its various forms featured in all the comments for my common test essays. not a coincidence, i believe. i guess that’s the problem with me. i always go for tests with half-baked knowledge, enough for me to formulate topic sentences but not enough for me to bolster my arguments with. and i don’t know if it’s just me but i just have this feeling that my powers of analysis have actually improved, at least marginally. i think. i hope. so i guess it’s up to myself to cram all the details in my head.

which means i have to stop being so lazy. how in the world i can still be procrastinating and slacking off at this time actually sort of befuddles me. i don’t even feel like touching the maths timed practice until i really have sufficiently revised my syllabus.

i guess i’d better start planning what i’m going to study soon. very soon. i have to figure out how to allocate my precious time to all three subjects. i need to spend a lot of time on maths and history but i can’t exactly neglect econs either, despite most of the macro details floating around in my head most of the time. i need to do all the mcqs in the tys until i get the hang of the question formats and all the little details and required calculations or whatever. i need to make sure that my concepts are well-grounded. and most importantly, i must make sure i know precisely what to write for what essay, and that i can actually write fast enough to write whatever i want to write.

but i’m afraid, even for econs. i’ve not scored anything above 20 for any of the prelim mcqs i’ve tried, and i haven’t actually sat down and written essays in 45 minutes. essays that would at the very least net me 15 out of 25 marks, although i must admit that i am actually aiming for and greatly desiring 18 marks an essay.

what i need is not time, but rather, time that is well-spent.

and of course, i need to focus. and not think about other things. but easier said than done, eh.

stuck.

don’t you just love mint humbugs and the way they stick to your teeth in a toffee-like way? i do. (:

feeling somewhat blissfully content even with the prelims in two weeks, a maths timed practice tomorrow that i have not studied for and two history essay outlines i have to do. i just had a late lunch/early dinner of one of the nicest fish&chips i know, my hair is thankfully short again, i’m in my favourite nwo newbie tshirt and am smelling of marks&spencer’s aloe vera shower gel, which is one of my most favourite scents in the world, despite it having cucumber in its composition. and of course, i’m sucking on a mint humbug. all this after a bit of retail therapy. it doesn’t really take much for me to be happy, sometimes.

things i got:
sports bra
sports towel
twinmark marker
green handi handphone accessory
m&s mint humbugs
new socks
sweet home farm maple pecan crisp (but i’ll have to finish my banana nut crunch first. bah.)

things i want:
nike handphone pouch armband + towel set (36 bucks! yikes.)
basketball
more sports bras
more m&s sweets (butter mints and mintoes, etc)
sweet home farm vanilla crisp (because i like both but my mum obviously wouldn’t let me buy both)

and i went all stalker on mark this morning. maria messaged to say that mark was sitting in the serangoon gardens macs next to her (i assume at the next table, of course) so i messaged him a stalker message. lol. such silly fun, really.

sigh. back to maths. not that it’ll increase my chances of remotely passing the timed practice, anyway. i’m just reading through concepts in my red book. i might be better off doing my history, actually. and i’d better come up with a study plan soon or i’ll just end up wasting my september hols. sigh.

in a moment i’ll be gone

the best thing about weekends is that you basically can go and sleep whenever you want, without having to worry about where you going to wring out some time to finish that bit of history or maths the next day. my recent bouts of sleepiness have been feeling somewhat weird nowadays. i can’t explain it but it feels different. it feels heavier, for lack of a better word to use. it’s harder to shake off, and when i do eventually succumb to sleep it’s quite a deep, dead sleep. scary.

had a most delicious lunch today. herb&butter rice-a-roni (an instant rice mix thing you can buy from liberty market at j8) with new england clam chowder spooned over it. the rice thing was okay but the clam chowder made it absolutely delicious. i’d have to experiment with clam chowder and baked rice someday. don’t you just love the creamy taste and texture of clam chowder? if only i knew where i could get good, restaurant-standard chowder. maybe i’ll go around looking for it. after the a’s. ;)

sat at the back of the classroom during econs tuition for the first time, after two weeks in the second row. i prefer sitting near the front, actually. sitting so far back made me a bit distracted and disoriented so i couldn’t pay the fullest of my attention at the beginning. and i guess the extent of my attention span is about three hours (with a short break in between) because i was, for the first time, falling asleep towards the end as we were going through the last essay. terrible. but at least it was only for a while.

and i really must complain about gayle’s tardiness! i called her at about 1.15 or 1.20 to try and make sure that she was at least getting ready to get out of the house but she happily left her phone in another room. when i called her house at 1.45 (aka the time we were supposed to meet) she was still eating or something. sigh. is there really no cure for tardiness?

and i must say that the aj blue-and-yellow is really very good at grabbing one’s attention. was on my way to popular to buy my calculator and stationery when i spotted a blue-and-yellow person selling flags. i wasn’t about to buy a flag, but as i approached the blue-and-yellow, lo and behold, it was kangwei! so i just bought one anyway. though it does strike me as weird to be doing cip this close to prelims. i have 26 hours and i really can’t be bothered to do anymore. it ultimately depends on my a level results, anyway.

and sigh. maths beckons (or rather, it threatens) and i guess i’ll be heeding its dire call.

but before that. a song featuring butch walker’s excellent vocals. i just love the way the chorus is sung. the lyrics are quite suicidal and sad, especially the last bit – thinking of you with my last breath. and strangely enough i have the song from the copy of the album called letters i obtained through not-so-legal means, but the official album doesn’t have the song. i guess some things got changed. need to head down to borders and get that album one day.

seven hours till the moon sleeps
i lose my mind as i drive away
your cigarettes are in the back seat
i can’t bring myself to throw away

all of the film from the camera
i took all the pictures of the images in my mind

so i’ll drive a straight line
when i cross the stateline
out into the ocean
in a moment i’ll be gone
you won’t have to feel torn

passed the churches full of guilded faith
nursing their hangovers from last night
it won’t do me any good to pray
cos even god knows that you were right

and i was wrong and yet it kills me
when my kid will never know me
with another man by his side

so i’ll drive a straight line
when i cross the stateline
out into the ocean
in a moment i’ll be gone
you won’t have to feel torn

so i’ll drive a straight line
when i cross the stateline
out into the ocean
in a moment i’ll be gone
you won’t have to feel torn
you won’t have to feel torn

thinking of you with my last breath…
[butch walker: stateline]

forgotten.

gah. how stupid can i get? the maths timed practice was mercifully postponed to monday, and what did i do? i happily left my calculator in school.

it wouldn’t be so bad if my now in-a-perpetual-bad-mood sister could find the spare calculator i loaned her ages ago, but it seems that the spare calculator is gone for good. bah.

today was a good and bad day. good because the maths timed practice was postponed and because gp was more or less quite relaxing. but bad because i think i screwed up the history timed practice :( for one i didn’t exactly study, but the question was such that not much studying was actually needed. but my trusty uni gp pens had to break down and on account of extreme fatigue last night i forgot to change the refill for my correction tape. sigh. half of my essay was irrelevant and it was too bloody short, as usual. sigh.

went home early and dropped by hougang point to buy myself a new pair of socks since i’m running out of wearable pairs and was looking forward to a clam chowder lunch when i reached home to realise we had chicken rice. not a bad option, actually. then i sat down to do econs and discovered the loss of my calculator. which was not exactly a loss since i can tell you precisely where i left it in 228, actually.

as the afternoon dragged on i got sleepier and sleepier so i succumbed to a nap, which was very weird because i was constantly drifting in and out of sleep, with episodic bouts of weird dreams. can’t really remember them, except that maria was peddling pirated ps2 games (at heartland mall?) as a part-time job and that i pissed her off by being late or something. and that gayle betrayed me! haha. that part was quite upsetting in the dream, but quite funny now that i look back on it. especially since i know that i can definitely trust gayle (:

but it’s all in my mind, really. all my depressive episodes, my mood swings… everything. and i really hate how i just can’t stop thinking. my brain does it on automatic and i can’t seem to find the switch to turn it back to manual mode so i can just shut it off completely.

and i feel like a complete weakling, because who the hell is unable to control their thoughts and feelings? but it really is one big struggle for me. and it’s something that’s quite completely unneccessary in view of the fact that we only have sixteen days to the prelims. bah. and i wish my thoughts didn’t conflict so much, either. it’s a little hard to concentrate on work when the two halves of your brain are duking it out and competing for supremacy to see which thought would prevail and dictate my life and actions.

but let’s talk about happier things. like how it feels like my swatch is growing on me. i put it on this morning and realised that it’s not that bad, after all. though i’d still like my nike watch back, of course. and how i have a most healthy-looking tan (on my forearms, at the very least) thanks to the hours of basketballing under the blazing afternoon sun. it’s quite a nice tan, i think. if only it was permanent.

if i could just stop thinking about it, i really would.
in the meantime i’m sorry if i’ve made you uncomfortable. or if i’ve made you hate me more :(

come back down.

staring right back in the face
a memory can’t be erased
i know, because i tried
start to feel the emptiness
and everything i’m gonna miss
and i know, that i can’t hide

all this time is passing by
i think it’s time to just move on

when you come back down
if you land on your feet
i hope you find a way to make it back to me
when you come around
i’ll be there for you
don’t have to be alone with what you’re going through

start to breathe and fake a smile
it’s all the same after a while
i know, that you are tired
carrying the ones you lost
a picture frame with all the thoughts
i know, you hold inside

i hope that you can find your way back
to the place where you belong
[lifehouse: come back down]

this is why i love lifehouse so much (:

stuck in reverse.

sigh. for once in a very long time i don’t actually really know what to blog about. i just can’t seem to sort through the mess that’s in my head.

had a thoroughly weird and somewhat morbid dream this morning, which didn’t help my mood much. although i must really say that it’s quite hard to stay depressed all the time when one is in a class like 34, because all the funny little things really do cheer you up, even if you do go back to feeling lousy after that.

first half of pe was dancing some cowboy dance. to think that dancing is actually more tiring that basketball… my hip was nearly cramping after about a period of dancing. tsk.

then it was netball versus the guys, who largely dominated the game through height and superior passing. i guess i still need to work on my nearly non-existent stamina, because i couldn’t find the energy to run around the guys and find myself space. but it was still fun as always, anyway. anything that involves a ball and some kinda hoop is fun (:

most of the class has finally decided to have faith in georgia and go for the prom after all. i am just loathe to dress up because that just isn’t me. and me being me, i don’t particularly like doing stuff that isn’t me. but we’ll see. who knows what’ll happen in a couple of months?

gp lesson was a drag. going through countless compres is really getting boring. i should be working on my compre since it’s pulling down my gp grade but i honestly don’t feel like caring. i’d rather save my effort for the prelim itself, because i just somehow sort of have faith in myself. that i’ll pull through somehow. i hope. i wasn’t paying attention to the lesson at all and my mood was on a downward slide again.

i didn’t go for maths lecture because i really was not in any frame of mind to attend the lecture. or do anything, for that matter. i really don’t get how i can just let myself sink in the mire of depression so quickly and easily sometimes. and it really sucks that i’m so down and depressed this close to the prelims and i can’t really do anything about it. or at least i think that i can’t.

there was a bit more basketball after that, before i got drawn into a discussion of who would be in what hogwarts house. i’d like to be in gryffindor because all my houses have been red, and probably because i admire the quality of bravery that i’d like to have. but i guess i’m more like a hufflepuff at heart because i can be almost fiercely loyal to certain things and causes, but i’m plenty far from the “hardworking” bit.

georgia’s definitely a slytherin, as much as she refuses to admit it. the way she snuck out from the gp timed practice was pure slytherin, really. her timing was impeccable – she left her bag at one door before going out of the other door – just as the teacher came into the LT. and speaking of which, the timed practice felt like a complete waste of time. i only finished the essay and about a quarter of the compre before i really couldn’t force myself to continue and plugged in the ipod and studied history instead.

tick, tick, tick. the only thing i don’t like about my new swatch (aside from the fact that it’s not a skin, like i really really wanted – i should have called my mum to ask!!!) is that it ticks a bit too loudly for my taste. in fact i think it does get rather annoying, especially in quiet situations like during a test. but i guess i just have to live with it, until my nike watch gets repaired. i really want it back. so much that i dreamt that i finally got it repaired. ha.

oh well. enough blogging for now. need to study for the history timed practice. i’ve more or less given up on the maths one. sigh.

when you try your best but you don’t succeed
when you get what you want but not what you need
when you feel so tired but you can’t sleep
stuck in reverse

and the tears come streaming down your face
when you lose something you cannot replace
when you love someone but it goes to waste
could it be worse?

that time.

i really hate it when i’m like that, but it seems that no matter what i do, i simply can’t shake off this feeling. or rather, this myriad of thoughts and feelings that are currently overwhelming me.

the main feeling is confusion, but it’s also twinged with flashes of stress, a rather large dash of regret and a dosage of sadness.

sometimes i can’t help feeling useless. flawed. ugly. worthless. stupid. pathetic.

because… if i were any good, then why is this happening to me?

why is it that no matter how hard i try, it seems that it’s not going to change anything?

and why are there tears, when all i am trying to do is to figure out whether the problem is me, or if there is a problem at all?

i hate it when i’m pms-ing so badly and become so emotional, for seemingly no reason at all.

all i want to do right now is to sleep. and hope that all these messy thoughts and feelings will just become another memory when i wake up in the morning.

i need someone to fix me.

sigh :(

burnt+battered.

am really quite badly sunburnt, but am not battered, of course. i just thought it sounded nice. silly old me.

basketball was fun, as usual. the beginning was absolutely hilarious, when poor gideon got hit down there twice. after a while it become a bit too crowded to play with nine people on a half-court so we tried playing full court for once, which added a whole new dimension (and lots of running) into the game. i think i still prefer playing half-court, because it’s more intense, requires a bit more precision, finesse and more dependent on skills than strategy.

and bah. forgot to bring sunblock, the result being a badly sunburnt face and very dark forearms. but i’m glad for basketball because as always, it’s so wonderfully good for destressing.

don’t know what was wrong with me today, because for some strange reason i just majorly PMS-ed during econs tutorial. PMS-ed in the sense that i had serious mood swings. i don’t know why, but i was just very upset and angry about my doing badly for what was an “easy” DRQ. and my emotions were running so high that one half of me almost broke down in lieu of prelim stress and the other half was so mad at my lack of aptitude that i just wanted to break my pen in two. i guess it’s PMS but it’s really way too early for that time of the month to be coming again. but it fits, because i’ve also been breaking out like mad, and i only break out when my period is near. argh.

yawn. am feeling really sleepy and tired now. but there’s still lots of work to go. sigh. the only bright spot is netball tomorrow. i surmise that it will be quite amusing to see the guys shoot for netball. haha.

and i finally got a new watch! it’s basically a silver-grey swatch with orange and pink vertical lines. it’s quite nice, although my heart was actually really with some of the skin swatches, but it was about 40 bucks off my mum’s allocated budget :( oh well. i guess you can’t always get what you want in life, can you?

the climate survey thing was quite hilarious. “do you really like your school?” it was so hard to decide between disagree or agree. i don’t love or really like aj but it’s not like i really really hate it anyway. and well let’s just say that 3404 cancels out most of the bad things in school. so it’s a bit hard to say, isn’t it?

going to get a drink. i’ve been inexplicably thirsty after basketball today. and then i’m going to take a 10 minute nap. am way too tired to do any work right now.

cos i am reaching for you
but my arms aren’t long enough
and i am running to you
if i could go a little faster
and i am crying to you
but i can’t hear my own voice
i am waiting for you

trying not to fall asleep now
cos i’m clumsily dancing away this fear
and i’m stumbling closer to you and i am
tumbling over my pride
i will be a fool for you