Life's Till Now

Life's been great, although there are less exciting events. This year has so far been great. There are no huge content or disappointment that bug me, but one particular event does deserve extra attention: first term result. It's better than expected, but could have been better.

January is the start of the year, and school reopens to my dismay. Going to school is fun because you meet your friends, it's sad because you have lectures to have attend and I recently realised I have troubles paying attentions to lectures. This is partly due to my refusal to be spoon-fed or gorged with facts. Knowledge is something like a mess of tangled knot. Somehow I realise disintegrating it yourself is much more effective than being guided to untangle them, although I do agree in certain circumstances a guide is important as some things cannot be printed black and white and need to be told verbally.

School reopens with quite a lot of changes. First of all, my class, as always, has always been unique. We have two teachers changed. One has been sent to teach form 4, and one has been given a pass for less burden. The problem here is, we got one teacher changed for a much better one - and one teacher with more acceptable English pronunciation and better proficiency - and one teacher changed for a worse one (but thankfully not that bad, just not good at teaching but still good at the subject).

You may say that the good and bad is balanced, but in third term we'll change the good one back to the bad one, and now that's not something one would receive with delight. Anyway, MUET result was released earlier this year. I have high expectations for my English for it is something I show interest in, so I was very anxious to know what band I got. I sent an SMS on midnight to check my result, and the reply gave a rather short answer: Band 5. That was the moment I almost jumped, because I knew getting Band 5 is tough for someone who does not use it as a first language, getting Band 5 is something that should be proud of.

The next day I went to school and tore the slip, I realised I scored 220, the minimum mark to get Band 5, and that was the time I first felt so lucky. Only 6 out of 220+ managed to get Band 5. I was one of them. I had never achieved such achievements.

School continues as usual. Then Chinese New Year came. This Chinese New Year was quite different because two of my cousins just got married, and one of them didn't return due to busy schedule. He now lives in Singapore but intends to celebrate it with his wife's family in Hong Kong.

Oh, did I mention after studying in my secondary school for 7 years, I got my first demerit mark? Technically, 3. I watched my friends play poker in class and it was so coincidental a discipline teacher walked past and caught us red-handed. I wouldn't completely grumbled for being given demerit marks even though I wasn't playing at the time of being caught because I used to play thrice. Yup, I counted. But of course if you could bring yourself out of this quagmire, why wouldn't you? Sadly, I did to no avail, and accepted the "awards". After all, I wasn't the only one being awarded so there was nothing much to complain. Lol

Anyway, house practice resumed and as usual, I hated it. House practice is a complete waste of time. You stayed in school wasted three hours for evening to creep by and you gathered with your friends, let your teachers marked a tiny little tick on his sheet of paper, and you sat around talking about nonsense. Whoever suggested house practice should realise how stupid this idea was.

We have two things to do for this term: an assignment for Mathematics, and a project for PA. PA project was useless. A piece of junk. Technically, you should choose a theme and select a title you wish to do survey about, and go out and drag unsuspecting Samaritans for interviews and surveys. The problem in Malaysia is that rote learning would regard such measures as ridiculous and insane. If you go out and stop someone for surveys, people will eye you with anger or annoyance and probably chase you with a broom. So, we all faked the data. Simple.

Maths assignment was rubbish too. I already had this conversation so I don't really want to talk about it anymore.

April came. April was the month I hate the most. Too many co-curricular activities, and we have trial. First, I have PA presentation to do. 10 minutes was more than suffice. I could talk only about important points and frankly 10 minutes was too long. Then I have a science project for Science week and it's actually a child experiment. Lol. We simply burnt the soft drink until all water had evaporated and sugar was left, and then we compared the amount of sugar present. Childish, but still earned us a third place. Haha. Trial then came and was one hell of a nightmare. I don't really want to talk about it.

Life after trial was rather dull and same. Study, study and study because term 2 exam was reaching. It finally came with little excitement. I have talked about it in three separate posts so I really don't want to talk about it either. I'll just prepare for the worst.

First half of the year has just ended. I'll embrace the second half with more gallantry.