Backtrack November 26, 2006

It’s been ages since I’ve even clicked the link for this blog. My week has been packed full of shopping for formal and general going out. By the time I get home I can’t really be bothered to blog. I find that I only ever blog when I’m bored. It’s a source of procrastination that I can only keep up regularly if I’m studying – oh dear. So here’s the recap:

• 16th – Went ice skating @ Macquarie. Freezing cold conditions all of a sudden. Hurting feet afterwards. Had lunch before heading out to K at the new Chatswood Korean K place @ Tomato.
• 17th – Gigi & Zoe’s 18th @ Botannical Gardens. Met loads of new people. Had a picnic and played some random party games for a couple of hours. Crazy. Burnt by the end of it. Went to play pool and Daytona @ Galaxy and K at Gr33nbox Plus before trekking the whole of CT for dinner. Ended up burning my mouth with Takoyaki and then eating lots at Sussex Arcade Foodcourt.
• 19th – CPS Reunion @ Lane Cove National Park. Turn out was slow because Mai stupidly put “1-3pm” for arrival time! Interesting reunion, chatting and eating. A bit segregated though.
• 21st – Bought all my formal stuff after trekking through Chatswood AND CT. Haven’t walked around Sydney so much before in my life nor spent so much money in Sydney in the space of a day. Played the Wii Tennis with Ken and looked spastic waving my arms around in the middle of City Myer.
• 22nd – Packed day. AM: Went to get my Ls, passed with full marks. Wayne & Lanky’s 18th @ Bicentennial Park. Eating and lazing around in the shaded playground and had water fights because of the boiling hot weather. PM: Trekked back to Killara for Jono’s 18th. Met new church people and played Singstar & Animal Kingdom. Hilarious and fun filled. Sleptover @ Wayne’s and only got 4 hours sleep.
• 23rd – Slightly stoned for my (&Standee’s) 18th @ Manly Beach. Huge turnout for my side. Awesome weather for beach volleyball and general beaching. Thanks loads for turning up guys (and for the thoughtful presents!) Had heaps of fun and finalised my formal gear that night.
• 24th – Drove around with Shuyan and had lunch with her at the mall. Nice catch up time before my formal that night. It was an awesome night all around save some LATE people haha. Tight security, loads of photos @ my GFOTO. Lots of dancing and catching up with people. The dance floor was a tad small. Waiting for a taxi in the CT at that hour was kinda freeky. Afters were quite enjoyable, good chatting and eating times. Thanks for a great night Venus as my date and for all my friends who were there to make the night awesome.

And so leads to these past two days of calm uneventful-ness. There were photos taken but I can’t be bothered uploading. This upcoming week is relatively calm though still a couple of 18ths and outings before I leave for HK on 4th December. Anyone going to HK? Holla if you are!

End November 15, 2006

I have finished. Too tired to blog about anything of substance tonight. Got home at 9pm after a day at Bondi Beach, Boost Juice for lunch, takoyaki for dinner, shopping and K Square karaoke. I am now dead. My room is clean and empty!

the nightmare had ended.

 

Partay Time November 10, 2006

Well the title could actually apply to any date following the horrendous Extension One HSC Maths exam but it seems applicable to today’s entry too. Now that Chemistry finished today, I only have one more exam left and unlike Chemistry, the studying for Extension Japanese requires much less effort and stress. As much as Chemistry wouldn’t count for me, I still stressed a tad with the loads of notes I felt that I should study for, but now I feel free as a bird – a feeling which will undoubtedly be furthered by my official completion of the HSC next Wednesday.

After the exam today Wayne & I took a bus down to QVB with Vaishali, Hum and Pooja. We went and had laksa for lunch at the Malaysian place down there and met up with Ken and Shin. The girl who served us looked a lot like Emy? Afterwards we headed off to watch “The Departed” reviewed here, and ran into Venus. Due to timing issues the NSGs left us for shopping and we ended up running into another group of them inside the cinemas. Haven’t seen a movie in ages and a film spanning almost 3 hours was quite hectic admittedly, but good. Trip home was terrible…or rather, the process of waiting for the trip home. My 6:02 bus came at 6:35 because there was a traffic jam…AT the bus stops? I still don’t know what caused it but all the buses were stuck on the same street for half an hour almost. Terrible end to a perfectly good day out. I pre-empt average studying on the weekend and much fun once Monday arrives.

The Departed November 10, 2006

Personally, I’ve been removed from the film release loop recently due to the HSC and have basically not been up-to-date with all the anticipated movies of late 2006. Having said that, rumours of “The Departed”, directed by Martin Scorsese, as a Hollywood adaptation of my personal HK favourite, “Infernal Affairs”, had been floating around since the middle of last year. The original, directed by Andrew Lau and released in 2002 was an amazing piece of work, though the same cannot be said about the two subsequent sequels. “The Departed” adapts the trilogy into one film spanning almost 3 hours. Although it had the odd boring bits, it did meet my expectation of a brilliant film.

I’ve never been a big fan of Matt Damon and even less of a fan of Leonardo De Caprio (glued image of his Titanic debut with slick gelled-back hair – ugh) but both did good jobs in their roles – nice and natural, though Leo could have lost the beard…a tad outta character I thought. Best actor would’ve been Jack Nicholson – he’s a guy who can really pull off that villan act – followed closely by psychiatrist Vera Farmiga. First time I’ve seen her on the silver screen but definitely wouldn’t mind seeing her later roles.

It’s been too long since I watched the original trilogy so I can’t pinpoint any discrepancies but I did follow the movie quite easily so it wouldn’t have strayed to far away from the plot. It started off fairly boring but the midsection took off rapidly, if not a tad too fast as a result of cramming a trilogy into one film, and finished with an unexpected (oh-so-nihilistic!) climax. The light hearted humour left a good impression, especially any of the witty comments courtesy of Nicholson. For some it may be just a little on the gory and violent side of things, but it was a really enjoyable way to kick start my unofficial end of the HSC. Not much of a review but I’ll get better at this as I go along hopefully.

“Lies. Betrayal. Sacrifice. How far will you take it?”

In Limbo November 7, 2006

The days are counting down, with just a little over a week to go before all my HSC exams are over. But before that, I still have two exams to go. One of which won’t count towards my HSC while the other I wouldn’t really be studying for because languages you can’t cram – just a bit of revision perhaps. And so here in lies my dilemma – the situation of limbo where I have finished all my important subjects but I haven’t officially finished so I can’t party hard but I don’t feel like studying hardcore. As a result of this most annoying limbo that I am in, so to speak, I have resorted to half day study periods with fun in between.

Having studied some Chemistry in the first half of the day, a few of the State Crew met up with everyone who just finished Economics as well as a couple who had already finished, and headed off to French Riviera. We shared four ice-creams amongst 10 people – pretty good stuff! There were bananas in two of them! Oh precious bananas!

ice cream ONE

ice cream TWO

group photo & BIG HEAD ;]

Afterwards we disbanded. Some went shopping, others went home and 5 of us went to the new K place on George Street called “Greenbox PLUS”. It’s so much better than the original Greenbox and it’s cheap too. It’s a lot like the good ones in HK! Haven’t been to K for so long so it was good stress relief. Good day it was.

Titles are for Losers November 6, 2006

Everytime I type an entry, the large majority of time is spent thinking about a title which encompasses the essense of that particular blog. Well today, I can’t be bothered so that will have to do as my title. I opened up this window this morning intending to blog and then lost my train of thought. Half a day down the track I have become a very angry person. Asian parents frustrate me to no end and this is yet another entry about said subject.

I have a strong dislike for people who don’t keep their word. People who promise something and then pretend they never said it and often go to the extremes of accusing you of making it up altogether. My mother is one of these people. She’s done it all my life and I’ve always been irritated but only recently has it worsened enough for me to take full notice of it. In Year 4, I changed primary schools – left all my best friends – because my mother wanted me to do better at school and get into selective. It was only natural that I wouldn’t want to leave my comfort zone and she told me that she’d take me to Disneyland if I got in. Never happened. The fact that I didn’t get to go doesn’t matter so much, I hear that it’s not as awesome as it’s made out to be anyway, but more the principle of making promises you don’t intend to keep. I was young, it was a way of making me do what they wanted me to do – fine.

High school. You’d think that she’d realise that I was old enough to remember promises.  “If you do well in this exam, I’ll get you a new computer.” or “Wow, you did so well, I’ll get you something.” – heard frequently, but what are they? Empty promises. Year 10. No new suit, no new shoes for formal because no money should be spent for a kid who’s still growing, after all, it’s not like you were meant to go to the formal in the first place. But by the time you’re in Year 12, everything can be purchased since you won’t be growing much anymore by that time. Yeah sure. Come Year 12, “No, it’s cheaper in Hong Kong. Just make do with everything you have and you can get something in HK (AFTER the formal).” Some incidents are big, some are petty, minor concerns but accumulated, they are frustrating.

And even now she tries to pull it off. Yes, this is not worth getting angry about but it’s the principle and the attitude. I have a habit of going to State, I study better there. I didn’t go on Friday because I needed to take deliveries for my mother, “please, it’d come today and I really can’t pick it up myself”. Naturally I stayed. It didn’t come. “Don’t worry, it’d come on the weekend” It didn’t. “Sorry, but can you stay on Monday? I have an urgent meeting. If it still doesn’t come, I’ll be home on Tuesday to pick it up”. Come Monday, today, “You’ll have to stay home tomorrow. I have to go out early tomorrow”. Okay. It’s for your work. Once maybe. Twice, I’ll put up with it. But three times, you might as well be lying to me. What if I wasn’t at home? What if I wasn’t doing the HSC this year and I was at school?

I’m a high school graduate filled with rage. Nuclear Chemistry does not aid the situation. I really need to get out of here.

Un-logic November 4, 2006

Parents. Most of us have them and most of the time we are grateful that they are a part of our lives. Asian parents. That narrows down the scope and I, be it my bad luck, have parents with Asian traditions, personalities and inherited stubborness. Of course, they have helped me through life, raised me to be the person I am – which in some instances might not be a good thing but I would like to think that I’m not that bad a person. Yet there are times when they draw from the very depths of me, my anger and frustration at their obvious unreason and what Wayne might call “un-logic”.

Example being the purchase of full time contact lenses. You see, I have eyes which are quite different – even amongst fellow spectacle wearers. When I first found out that my eyes were “whacked” (harhar venus), it was the first day of Year 4. I was sitting at the back and I realised I couldn’t see the board and my attempts at copying my friend’s notes failed. Being the little boy that I was, struggling to comprehend the situation, I cried and for some reason every once in the while I could acutally see the board when I was crying. I later found out it was because when I covered my right eye, I could see long distance with my left eye since I was long sighted in my left eye and short sighted in my right. That said, my left eye has recently “worsened” to the extent that it has now crossed the line to become short sighted. My eyesight was always extremely unstable since that incident and it wasn’t until I ditched my normal prescription glasses and wore multifocal spectacles, did my eyesight stabilise and I have worn them ever since. On the side, I also wore contacts for sport and whatnot but only in my right eye seeing as my left used to be long sighted. So after a bit of history, here’s the crux of the problem. I knew that my parents have always been concerned for my eyesight and it’s instability but I really don’t like my glasses anymore – both aesthetically and practically. In order to satisfy their concerns, I asked my optometrist about the stability of my eyesight and he told me that they were stable – good enough for me to wear contact lenses full time. Any other person would say, “Yeah, go ahead” but no, my parents don’t understand the meaning of reason nor logic and proceed to blatantly argue their stance that I shouldn’t wear contacts.

“Your eyes aren’t stable enough!” says my mother, totally ignoring the advice of a professional and making up her own theory that my eyes aren’t stable until I’m 22 (I have no idea where that number came from). Then after a while she moves on, knowing that her logic has failed in her previous statement to, “They’re really expensive! Where do you think we get all this money from?!” disregarding the fact that my current contacts cost roughly the same price anyway. What annoys me isn’t just their stubborn attitude but their refusal to accept defeat in the face of all logic and reason. They refuse to admit that they’re wrong and just say sorry but do what my mother did today – force upon me some sort of retail therapy, in the hopes of getting me to forget about these contact lenses and randomly take me shopping for formal wear which she previously refused to do. I am at a loss at the pure frustration that Asian parents can expose within their children’s normally sane selves.

And with that, I leave you with overdue photos of the State Crew’s first outing to French Riviera:

look at that fobby shirt

 

 

franky & andy

 

 

amelia & andy

 

 

nessa eating lots :]

 

 

evan & andy

 

 

random asian fingers & trinh & andy

 

 

harry & andy

 

 

jezza & andy

 

 

photo shy clarise & andy

 

 

our ice cream

It’s Me…Again. November 3, 2006

It’s another new blog. I thought that I was beyond the childish realms of blogging but perhaps this is the new stage where I won’t just be whining so much but providing healthy and interesting insights into the life of yours truly. Let’s hope I keep to that resolution.

Why do I create another such blog? Perhaps it’s a response to my final high school English exam today. Extension One English has always been a favourite of mine, what with all the talk of Individuals and Society. I like English, just not the type forced upon us by the Board of Studies, so this blog shall serve to improve my command of the English language – I hope. I have seven days to study for Chemistry, a subject which does not count towards my HSC in any form, which is also a reason why I have been tempted to create this new blog.

As I have very few knowledgeable words left for this post, let me wish everyone – those of whom have not yet finished their dreaded HSCs (no, not you Trinh) – best of luck for their remaining exams!