i’m all as i’ve always been

it’s quite silly, really.

since my last entry i’ve wanted to blog twice. and i did, actually. probably more than a thousand words combined. but somehow i could never finish the entry, and i don’t want to particularly publish it, either. too long-winded and irrelevant.

so anyway, i’ve solved my problem of wanting to watch drive of life all the time (to the point of “purposely” eating so i have an excuse to watch. ha!) by finally finishing it. and yes i know in the middle of exams is not a particularly good time to chiong over 10 episodes (out of a whopping SIXTY) but once i’d started on wednesday, i just couldn’t stop. so much for studying hard and willpower, huh.

and okay here’s the exam update… 2 papers down, 3 to go. so far computing and intro to world history have been alright, although the latter was really threatening to drive me nuts because it was so utterly devoid of any overall theme and just plain weird that even after doing all the readings (which actually is an achievement considering i don’t remember finishing readings for any module before) i had zero clue as to what the entire module was supposed to be about. but still i somehow managed to churn out vaguely relevant answers in the exam and hopefully i will somehow manage to get my target grade for this screwed up module…

and actually i feel remarkably clairvoyant about my grades this sem. i mean, at this stage i usually have no clue but this time i have pretty good ideas of what grades to expect. i just hope i don’t inadvertently kill myself off with overconfidence and/or overly high expectations…

but i definitely am not expecting a good grade for total war. to be honest i’m very frustrated and annoyed by the fact that i feel, or rather i know that even if i study or try very very hard for this module, i’m not going to be able to do well enough in the exam to make my final grade anything beyond B+. in fact i don’t think i’ll even get that and i’m projecting my grade to be a B. if i’m lucky.

and alright to cover up the extremes of my ramblings, everything’s going under a cut (i.e. the “click here to read the rest of the post” thing). it’s me rambling about total war, a bit about europe of the dictators and gender studies, and there’s also a review thing for drive of life. so don’t say i subjected you to over 1500 words (!) for nothing – you have a choice! haha.

in any case, if you’re reading this and have the same fate as me (i.e. you still have exams left), all the best! our ordeal will be over soon!

this is the last goodnight i’m ever gonna waste

the music currently keeping me going are:
- the last goodnight’s poison kiss album
- the new songs on matchbox twenty’s exile on mainstream
- the movie songs covered by new found glory on from the screen to your stereo ii
- matt nathanson, 12 stones, hinder, rascal flatts, rilo kiley, kelly clarkson and even rihanna and beyonce are helping, too

the last goodnight is probably one of my nicer finds. they didn’t hook me on my first listen, though they did catch my attention. a few listens later, i was totally hooked. i was wondering why their sound sounded (for lack of a better word, haha.) so familiar at times, then i read a review which mentioned maroon 5 and then it was like OH yes one or two of the songs sounds like what maroon 5 might have.

and to reward you, my rare (and faithful) reader, here’s a listen :)

the last goodnight - poison kiss

Your eyes don’t lie
They give you away
You say, you say
Everything is different today
Your footsteps fall, all over the place
You’re up, you’re down
A butterfly caught in the cage

I don’t know why I needed you more
I don’t know how, you got through the door
I don’t know where you were
But back and forth, back and forth

This is the last goodbye I’m ever gonna say
This is the last goodnight I’m ever gonna waste
This kiss is poisonous
If you can’t control the way, it enters your soul

this is the last goodbye i’m ever gonna say

hmmm okay yes, that last post was supremely angsty. but i was stressed la huh. not that i’m not stressed now, with my exams starting in… argh, 11 days. but that was a period of such stress that it’s officially replaced the crazy synapse period in J1 as my benchmark for stress.

but well, at least it’s over. and well, i guess most things haven’t turned out as badly as i thought they would have. well actually i suppose i’m just mostly referring to my grades. i’m treating that awful B- for total war as an aberration (well, anything that’s B and below are aberrations, actually) because on hindsight it really wasn’t one of my better essays. conclusion, essays written in desperation tend to be kinda sucky. which also means, i need to stop doing stuff last minute or worse, handing in stuff late.

have learnt my lesson, though. got an okay but none-too-satisfactory 70 for the second intro to world history assignment… okay damn i just realised that it’s worth 20% while the first assignment was 15%. crud. oh well, all hopes on the exam now. hopefully i should at least be able to scrape an A- from it?

i’d better, considering that the best i can muster for total war is probably a B. intro to computing no longer looks like a prospect for an A, either. thanks to my terribly overdue individual assignment that left me with 70 out of 120. can you say OUCH. at least i have the option of S/U-ing it. which i probably am going to exercise, depending on what my other grades look like.

and well, at least i’ve rather enjoyed gender studies and europe of the dictators. or rather, my better-than-expected grades for them. haha. and yay for the A we got for the gender project! at least the rest didn’t put up with my nonsense for nothing. i suppose the only bad thing was that the reaction paper and the project were only 15% of the grade each…

thank goodness for them, actually, because they made up for my other disappointments. and because i don’t have to worry too much about them for the moment… though i think i can only expect a B+ at the very best for the second dictators essay, seeing that i was utterly unconvinced by my own essay. which has never ever been a portent for a good grade. oh well.

and the rambling begins below, so read at your own risk…