Of photobooth madness and spoilt kids

one School’s out. There goes another great schooling year.

(+) 4 Gamma ‘08. It’s been a fun class and I have lively classmates. Just about everyone in this class rocks (except for one literally stinky dude). All of us get along pretty well. Too well, in fact, we start to blend ourselves together.

League of the stretched faces

Something more appropriate

Our performance for Gema Merdeka
“Here In My Home”
(credits: Calvin Khor)

And of course, our very unforgettable drama, The Untold Story of Snow White

From stacking…

…arm wrestling…
[Facial expression of the year]

…to stacking objects on one’s head

Aaaand all of us will remain in 5 Gamma next year, which is something we can’t escape. Imagine all of the activities to come…we’d go crazy again.

(+) My maths teacher (Cik Umi) has to be the coolest and most unique teacher ever. She’s not married and has no kids, therefore she doesn’t have to handle much. She doesn’t drive either. She travels to Europe every year and she likes to visit mountains. Yup, she has definitely saved herself a lot of money. Don’t you admire a life like that?

(+) I forgot to stack a house of cards in school this year. It’s what I have always done for the previous years. This started since 2002. How could I forget about it this year?

two Looks like some people I know are looking for a part-time job. I would never be a waitress. My friends know me best and they know how afraid I am when it comes to approaching strangers. Another fact is that I sound quite bitter, sometimes. I think that the best part-time job for me is playing the piano in a specific area (not the streets) If only I knew how to apply for it…

three Sad but true, many kids these days are spoilt. I came across a 12-years-old girl’s blog, and my goodness, her wishlist is bottomless. I noticed that she has an iPod touch AND an iPhone (?!!!)

Oh my God lah. I’ve never come across anyone who owns both because they’re both pretty much similar and I would rather get an iPhone as it has more functions. I think it’s very ridiculous to own both (unless you won them, perchance) To make things worse, she’s a 12-year-old kid, darn it. Spoilt child. Mercy upon the parents. Stuff like this is hard to explain in words. You just gotta be in the right generation.

Don’t even try to say that I’m jealous. I’m happy with what I have. What more [objects] do I need?

four Do you have any idea how RARE it is for me to get involved with manga/anime-related drawings?

Click for the actual size!

Answer: Very X 10³ rare.

Just so you know, I DID NOT DRAW IT; I coloured it in only.

Little hamster, big adventure gone wrong

It may not be the end of the year yet, but I presume that Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love has to be the most irritating and over-played song of the year.

Keep singing, and my ears will keep bleeding too.

Actually, I’m serious. After listening to that dreadful song months back, I carried out my usual ear-cleaning duty (who doesn’t?) and found some blood on my Q-tip.

Sad to say, Leona Lewis is British. Most of you know that I worship British musicians. So let me rephrase that: I worship BRITISH BANDS, not solo artists. Yeah, even Shayne Ward is annoying to me.

Moving on to something else…
I got my best friend 3 hamsters (2 Winter Golds and 1 Syrian) as a birthday gift. The morning after, I found out that one of the Winter Golds escaped by chewing through a hole. I couldn’t find it for one whole day. Even the food I scattered to lure it out didn’t work. The next morning, my mom woke me up and said, “I found it, but it’s not a pretty sight. I’m afraid that you’ll be disgusted.”

And what do you know? It got stuck to a glue trap! Poor thing. It was stuck by its left side of the body. The eyes were stuck to the glue too. I thought it was dead.

How it looked like before it escaped:

Thankfully, it wasn’t dead. I took my unused paintbrush and poked it lightly and found that its heart was still beating. I used the brushless end of the paintbrush to slowly remove the furry creature from the trap. It wasn’t easy. Imagine how painful it is. I managed to save it, although it had lost some of its fur. I feel very glad. I’ve learnt that I could use vegetable oil to make the task easier, but I found out about that AFTER I rescued the hamster.

(Taken using my handphone, obviously…Looking at it in such a condition makes you feel like crying)

Don’t worry about it. It’s fine, clean and living with my friend now.

Cheaply. Charity.

The best thing I’ve said in this week:
“If charity is a religion, I’d be agnostic/an atheist by now.”

When it comes to charity, which the school is crazy about, I kind of refuse to play my part in donating stuff. Selfish? I don’t care; that’s only a nano-sized issue.  Everybody has their own opinion. I daresay, I don’t believe that the school donates every single cent to charity. You’ll never know..

I’ve never actually bothered to attend the annual Charity Dinner organised by the school’s Leo Club.

Sales for charity happens once in a while in school. Here’s an alibi: I heard that one of the parents who was helping out (and still does) took some of the money which we paid and sneaked ’em into her pocket without anyone noticing…or so it seems. Word on the street/anywhere else says that she’s money-minded. There are a lot more clues, but I shan’t say more. 

And now, we have the Charity Fiesta 2008 coming up, this Saturday the 12th. Every one of us are given 3 booklets of coupons (worth RM20 each) and we are expected to sell them to someone else or yourself, collect the money, and pass it to our respective class teacher. I’ve got no choice but to pay RM60, since I have to come on the 12th and I’ll be needing the coupons to purchase this-and-that. Just today, my class teacher informed us that the total amount our class paid was about RM1100++ (enough to buy a Nintendo Wii). I swear that he sounded as though it wasn’t enough. I was feeling rather sarcastic and said “Want some more, ah?”

Has charity become some sort of game?

Now you see why I’m a non-believer when it comes to this sort of thing.

Up is already down

This is coming for a person who is strongly right brain dominant. I’m in my right mind to speak.
Pardon the pun.

My Mid-Year exam results are pretty bad. Majority of my results range from 62-72. From that, it shows that my studies have deteriorated badly. It used to be 65-88.

Sometimes I wonder:
Why in the world did I take Accounts? Just because my parents told me to?

I really wished I took ICT instead, although most people tell me that it’s a waste of time.

To be frank, I’m not very useful when it comes to subjects which require confusing calculations, such as Additional Maths and Accounts. I noticed that all these Accounting stuff are 99.99% related to business. I, unlike many, am a person who has 0% interest towards business. You see, I plan to do Artsy stuff when I go to college, like learning how to paint like a pro and study those lighting which falls upon the subject. It’s not like I am actually going to record sales of one-of-a-kind paintings into some stupid book. I doubt any artist has done that.

If counting is my weakness, then this Count here is my greatest enemy

What if I were to be a musician instead of a painter? I bet that an accounting book (or whatever it’s called) isn’t necessary when it comes to PERFORMING music. Unless you’re some person who works at Tower Records or Rock Coner, I understand because you’re doing business. Strangest of all, I don’t know how I could apply graph functions and equations from Additional Mathematics onto paintings and drawings, let alone music.

The reason why I should have taken ICT is because it’s in English, lesser numbers, and I heard that animations can be learnt. I’m pretty good with computers (except fixing one) and I thought that it’d be great to learn more in detail. Besides that, I don’t think it’d be useless because the computer is something which is used almost everyday. *sigh* What more can I do now?

I can’t complain about Physics, Chemistry and Biology because they’re all part of Science and they’re generally important in daily life. I have to say that Chemistry is very interesting because of the experiments. Physics is probably the easiest out of the rest, in my opinion. Maybe it’ll be harder later on, I don’t know. Biology is my least favourite, for some reason.

To sum it all up, most of the things I’m learning today aren’t going to help me much in the future. It’s all about the good grades and only that. Just for show, eh? With talent, it’s much easier to get into the sector you want.

My friend wrote this awesome line in her English essay, and it was something like this:
“Creativity cannot be learned from a book”

Criticism giveaway!

After years of blogging and blog-hopping, I’ve encountered lots of problems. None of my problems, at least.

Ah grammar problems, yes. I don’t mean to sound like an English teacher, but sometimes the words get a little bit out of hand.

I’ve seen plenty of this one:
“…so, please bare with me.”

Gott, I can’t help but to laugh at that one because the phrase bare with me means undress with me. The right phrase is bear with me. Goodness!

Another one is:
“soar throat/loser”

Soar to heaven, ye would. It’s supposed to be sore.

Whoever committed the said stuff, you know who you are, because I don’t think I know you. Really.

Sometimes, blog-hopping isn’t so fun anymore because of the content. Things have turned less amusing these days.

Here’s a list of things which, I personally think, are not amusing:
1. Outings with friends at the mall; Extremely common, this one.
2. Small things which you have bought..especially clothes (because nobody really needs to know that, unless it’s a really cool gizmo or something)
3. Dozens of photos of the blogger herself [..usually], which look similar to one another, but their only difference is the “photo effects” applied..might as well get an online photo gallery, no?
4. Last but not least, extremely short content. It sounds something like “Hi, will blog later. Ta.” Seriously, what’s the point of that, then?

Besides blogging and stuff, I think that the Disney Channel is getting lamer and lamer each time. To me, it’s been happening since there’s shows like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Hannah Montana, and soon enough, Wizards of the Waverly Place (no offense to the fans out there). I believe that SpongeBob is much better. Also, I sometimes wonder why Mr. Bean is under Disney Channel…What happened to all the good stuff?

By the way, the only Thai phrase [not word!] my mom had ever taught me sounds like this:
Pood-Thai-may-dai

This phrase, my friend, actually means “I can’t speak Thai.”

Attaca subito?! Molto vivo??!

I watched American Idol just the other day. A countrified-version of Eight Days A Week? I could’ve cringed, really.

Simon Says!: “You sounded like Dolly Parton on helium.”

..but seriously, folks. Helium CAN alter one’s voice and the outcome is a laughing matter. Thank the Mythbusters for that.

I’m not rooting for anyone in Idol this year, I guess.

Lately, I’ve been having a terrible ear ache in my right ear. It took long enough for me to contact my father. Maybe more than 5 hours. The ear ache returns every 20 minutes, and boy, I could’ve kicked the bucket. My father has turned into some sort of nuisance, these days. He smokes, he’s barely at home and worst of all, he doesn’t even answer phone calls from the family. Things have become extremely inconvenient..

I hope I wouldn’t turn deaf anytime soon, either. Just last week, I was talking about Beethoven during my English Oral Test. That man had hearing problems and eventually turned deaf, yet he could still play and write music. Did you know that he died during a thunderstorm? You heard me, he did not die outside, IN the thunderstorm. Sad life.

My guitar-God, Mr McCarthy — Who’s yours?

I am thinking of getting an electric guitar. I’m looking for ‘64 Epiphone Wilshire (Vintage) but I’ve no clue where to find one and how much it costs. I doubt that the Yamaha stores has this one (duh?), and I’ve yet to check Guitar Collection. It looks like a lot of fun to do that strum-strum-mute-mute effect on the electric, rather than on the flamenco. Always in for new toys

My brother might be going for drum classes in the near future. I wouldn’t want him to play the same things which I could play. Variety, ya know?

A soundproof room would be essential.

On the 3rd day of Christmas..

In my life, the worst life experience, so far, is living with the most unappreciative people around this house: My parents

I have things to express about my family in this entry. Not that they even know of this blog. My relationship with them had never been great.

The PMR results came out today and as already predicted, I had 6As and 2Bs. If you don’t even believe that this was a prediction, you should check out my comment from my previous entry.

I knew that I was going to get B for my Bahasa Melayu/Malay Language and Pendidikan Islam/Islamic Studies, each. I’m weak in both of them, though I don’t really care much..

I’m already happy with my results, yet my parents still throw insults at me. At times like this, it’s always good to have very comforting friends. I appreciate them a lot, really. How could I live without them? I really want to thank those who have told me that I had done my best, for they were the ones who made my day pretty good.

You see, I did everything with my own efforts. I did not apply for any tuition nor additional classes. I heard that there are some who cheated during the exam, too.

As soon as I called up my mom to inform her about my results, she returned with countless, yet annoying phone calls, saying things such as:

“Your father said that you played too much music. He wants you to quit the band.”“Look at [insert name here]. You could’ve done better than her.”“Your father this, your father that…etc.”

 

 

I was extremely furious. I refused to answer the phone after a few calls. Allow me to have my say:

1. “Too much music”? There is never “too much music” in this world. What a very ridiculous statement, my dad had made. You tell me: How is life like without music? Another thing’s for sure: I will NOT quit the band and waste my time on other societies.

2. I am who I am; I am not them. I am an individual, not a replica of someone else.

3. I feel very unappreciated. It is as if my talents are invisible to them. Even the people who you don’t know, from deviantArt, knows how to appreciate one’s art.

Can the numbered alphabets even determine my future?

I hope not. In the future, I’m hoping to work in either the arts or music industry. I doubt that religion will be related to what I do in the future. That wasn’t an offence of any sort..

The results are now over with, what’s left to do now?

Moving on, as a Form Four student-to-be, we are given two options, which is to switch to either of the following: the IGCSE syllabus or the local one.

I’m going for the local one (science stream), so I’ll be sitting for Sijil Pendidikan Malaysia (SPM) when I reach Form Five. Honestly, this wasn’t my choice. It was my dad’s. IGCSE seems to be [almost] completely in English. They offer World History as well. The local one offers local history of course. I bet that it’s not as interesting as Hitler and his moustache.

There are cons of taking the IGCSE one, though..
1. It is still very new to our school
2. We should be having “imported teachers” from somewhere else (obviously)
3. It’s pricey
4. They provide the pure science and sub science streams, and there’s not a single artsy subject in either of them.
5. We have two years to prepare for it, instead of one (although it seems better when there’s sufficient time)

Note: Not everyone’s capabilities are always the same.

Dexterity?

Actually, I’m more of a sinister person, as in the left-handedness sinister, not the evil kind of thing.

Right, back to what I was talking about: Dexterity, anything that has got to do with the hands.

(Time to blog about some random stuff ) 

Most people do not know that I have a digital piano, while knowing that I’m already in Grade 8. I don’t know what my dad was thinking when he got me a digital piano when I was eight. It may have all those cool functions such as changeable sounds (from piano to any other instruments you could think of, including percussions), playback mode, etcetera, etcetera..but it seems that my dad didn’t consider all the important facts such as its sound quality and touch.

What I meant is that the sound comes out from the sides only, whereas an acoustic piano produces sound that comes out from the top and the back of it.

It was until last year that I yearned for an upright piano.

Yet, I haven’t even got this necessity. My current piano is capable of spoiling my dexterity as its touch is..well..hard and unresponsive. I can’t believe I made it this far in the world of the music study.

Hmm, is this what I have to say after receiving some wise words from the inspirational Edward Gan over the past few weeks? After all, he is one of the best pianists I’ve ever met, knowing that he’s only 16. Respect.

Besides ranting about my piano, I do need to lay off Maple Story (SEA), a MMPORG game. My friends are playing, and so am I. It’s a real shame because it wastes a lot of my time when I could do something so much better (complete a painting, perhaps?) Unbelievably, some people don’t even mind spending their REAL money on their character’s accessories and such.

The game has a lot of catches: Flat graphics, no poses for your characters, and cheesy music. How saaaad.

For a better alternative, you might want to try Sword Of The New World (a.k.a. Granado Espada, introduced to me by Chai Leng)

The graphics are really really really good. And so is the background music (it has that “classical” feel). Your characters are even capable of posing (that is, if you have the pose books)

..but be warned. The whole game will take up about 3.5 GB of space. Yeah, approximately.

OMGzZZ! N0 WAI!1!!

Inconsiderate

Sometimes, I just need to post about the problems with people of the modern world.

Ah, cold-hearted classmates. Just because of any single student sitting at the front, some rude ones at the back can just yell out “Eh, move your big fat head! I can’t see the whiteboard!”.

Feh, it’s too bad that they can’t see the whiteboard. Why did they choose a seat at the back in the first place? Why can’t they move forward for a while if they can’t see? Why can’t they be polite and just say “Excuse me, I can’t see the board”? If these people were given brains, why aren’t they using it well? Ha, maybe their heads are too small to fit a brain in.

Maybe the complaining classmates have housemaids at home, they can just laze and boss other people around. Some may get influenced by their friends, too.

One of my good friends, Jessica, was depressed because someone was bad-mouthing about her, and worse, her family. I don’t see what’s wrong with stretching, but someone at the back HAD to say “Stop stretching lah, do you want me to slap you?”. Sadly, Jessica is a very sensitive girl. She gets hurt easily. At one point, someone mentioned something unkind about her family. And there was another who said she doesn’t look pretty and nobody likes her. Of course, she broke down minutes after that.

I wonder, why do innocent people always become the victim? The ever-insulting ones should review themselves, and think before they open their mouth to say anything.

Theory: People who fish for comments about their looks are people with not-so-good-personalities.

And insulting for fun is never funny, you can’t predict whether the second party might get hurt or not. Poor Jessica, how I wish I could give a straight-forward reply to those who insulted her, without starting a fight.

Blah, flah, help me, help you. Sometimes, people like to use my talents to gain their own credit. One of my biggest problems in life.

I’ve had enough of this. I am definitely willing to help my close friends to draw, since I’m sure they’ve helped me lots of times before. I am NOT willing to help people who I’m not close to, for the sake of marks, marks, marks. No, not that I’m selfish, lah. I have the rights to accept/reject requests. The worst time for me to get requested for help is during Art lessons. I vowed to myself that I am never going to help anyone in Art, ever.

“Aiyoh…give me a break lah..”

Please, don’t use other people’s “powers” at your own free will. I am not here to be someone’s slave, just a human being who wants personal peace.

Now, be considerate to others!

Let the books close for now

Photographed by me

Hmm, February was a very complicated one. Behold!

1. Valentines’ Day was as usual — Solo every year. I don’t receive gifts, I don’t buy gifts. Not even from/to my close friends, but so what? Sometimes, the best gift neither comes in a box, nor a fancy bag. My best gifts are my close pals (God knows how we met), and somehow, art and music. Back to the topic, I decided to make a slight change in this year’s Valentines’. With Jessica’s kind help of shooing the class for lunch early (as there was no teacher around), I inserted a letter into this particular person’s bag, containing all those nonsense I’ve been planning to write a week before. Yeah, some kind of indirect confession. I did include a poem, and with no shame, I stated that I didn’t create it. I got it off Nightmare Before Christmas, but hey, at least I didn’t plagiarised like someone I know. Ha-ha-ha. Honesty is the best policy, and keep in mind that it wasn’t a Christmas poem.

• Conclusion: It’s great to get a friendly reply through the net after all that worrying, just to insert a letter into a bag.

2. Speaking of poems, I’ve been seeing a big number of “admiring-yourself-publicly blogs” lately. Now, what do I mean by this? They’re the kind of blogs which had too many pictures of themselves, doing the same lame poses until it bores you, and the oh-so-notorious girly phrases written under the photos, which bores you even more than before. True, they can put whatever they want in their blog, but they must learn the fact that there are clever people out there who wants to have some fun, with the help of face-morphing applications. Tempting? Ay, sweet consequences and carnage! Protecting all that right-clicking won’t help because the clever ones can always use “Print Screen”, check your source code, and in rare cases, camera. Guess what, I could be one of the bored people who needs to have a laugh. I may sound bad right there, but they should know about the side-effects/consequences. An example:

• Conclusion: You put it up, the world snickers in certain areas.

3. After years of spectacle problems, I’ve decided to make a new pair of glasses. My mom demanded for a change in my look, so I had to pick out a half-framed one. The lens? They’re Nikon-made. By coincidence, there are about 7 students in my class who wear half-framed glasses (including my best friends) Ha! We’re a destined clan.

• Conclusion: The lens on my previous glasses can be removed and joined to other parts of the frame (though it’s not supposed to), looks amazing and fun, but now I don’t have to face much problems with it’s..uh..looseness.

4. Somewhere in the past month, my phone, W810i, ended its life. It had the blinking white screen of death. I checked the net for help, and some had stated that it’s a permanent death. Ay, you can’t believe everything they say. I had no choice but to send it to a far away place, with hopes of reviving it. Fortunately, it revived few weeks after that. Ah, the joy of music returns!

• Conclusion: I thought I had to get a new phone. Thankfully, no. I like what I have.

5. The monthly test wasn’t too bad. Most of the subjects were done with confidence, maybe that’s because I studied beneath a bright study lamp (it helped my memory by 60%)…but talk about Maths. Almost everyone struggled to finish up their paper. In fact, I did, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll receive miserable results. Maths was the only thing I wasn’t prepared for.

• Conclusion: Never kill time during a Maths exam, ever.