DiViNE EViL

Again, I gain the will to study just before examinations, as everyone does. It is not the will to study, actually. It is obviously the panic of not knowing enough to barely pass the examinations...what a bunch of crap.

I'm not into Facebook kind of things, but I did kind of overwhelmed when I opened my e-mail inbox and found forty new friend requests from a five-day Facebook account, and most of them were my secondary school friends, at the time, was less open (even now I am still low-profiled).

Well I hope I can carry this studying momentum until the end of the year. When I'm bored, I dig around the sty of paper trash and whatever not and will begin to read some crap (except Time Magazines), and that will probably waste a quarter of my day.

And don't ever play Monopoly in the night. I'm still having sleeping disorder aftereffects.

Strangely I do not feel the power of DiViNE EViL now. As we all know, it peaks in the month of September, but it's probably receiving all my unworthy results that will drive the panic and stress.

Ah, I need more control.

Finally there was one day where I passed without guilt of not studying enough. Unfortunately, a mock mathematics test deemed that the information still needed time to set in. Time is not what I have.

It also seems like I cannot do many things continuously for more than two hours. Near the two hour mark, my concentration will suddenly decrease by over 50%. This includes studying, playing piano, gaming, afternoon napping...although I usually insist to sleep only 45 minutes, I still usually automatically wake up half an hour later.

Now I will need to direct my concentration back to studying. I could cover many topics in that single day, but it was exhaustive and that cramming of so much information into my head might leave some important points out. Not to mention I have to do probably more for Physics and Chemistry since those require some memorisation of descriptions, though frankly I'm better at explanations than calculations. And I would prefer to do those.

Even training on piano requires time, albeit a more obvious visual progression. Really, I don't know if I'm learning anything right. I'm just doing as I am told. Like what I read from the Binomial Distribution notes. I don't get the introduction, I don't get how it's actually used, but I'm forced to know how to calculate what I'm given using the examples.

Some things may be useful, in the most tiny of situations...but if you have no interest in it, you may never realise this situation even though it is right in front of you.

Usefulness depends on your Interest.

I think I've had it.

I do not have the passion for academics. I do not have the passion for art. I do not have the passion for technology or computers. There is one and only one, or the branches and tributarites that arise from it: Music.

Study music? Maybe. Compose to a scene? More likely. Use technology to make music? I'd like that to happen. But a career on music is difficult; it also rarely yields great benefits. Knowing my personality, that is hopefully not a problem.

Get 'A' levels over and done with. Study for it, and never touch differentiation again. Never wanted to touch it in the first place. All the past years in which I have been delusioned into comfort, has made me realise, my one and only trump card, needs to activate.

Concentrate now and propel towards the destination.

Now that I have gathered some momentum, it seems that I will miss the finish line before my wound-up engine loses energy.

Screw the still-surviving laptop giving me the 'auto-ctrl-key' bug again. Worse, it now returns in virtually every ten seconds! No rest for spamming the ctrl keys to temporarily cure it.

More randomness: the old mouse suddenly died. As in the mouse that used to connect to the laptop. Annoyed me until I again, borrowed another computer accessory from my neighbour...

And when I was just about to type the third paragraph of this post, the laptop suddenly switched the shutdown screen and poof the computer shut itself down in barely three seconds. And that was when I was not even touching the laptop. Not to mention that if I shut it down the normal way it takes approximately ten times longer.

So yes the laptop and the desktop are two pieces of junk that are miraculously still working, and still attempting to be maintained by my father. He is apparently so adamant of getting a new computer, for who knows what reason. Not that I would want one if we had a perfectly fine one, but out of two computers, we do not have a perfectly fine one...

I would be happy with this laptop, if:
1. it could run on batteries.
2. the keyboard can work.
3. it would stop screwing up every mouse/keyboard I plug in.
4. it didn't start lagging after opening three Internet Explorer windows.
5. it didn't overheat in less than an hour.
6. no stupid photogallery thing comes up requiring me to spam 'cancel' everytime I start the computer.
7. I can start the computer normally every time.
8. it didn't shutdown by itself.
9. the auto-ctrl bug didn't plague it.

Ah, looks like I've run out of ideas...but look, the above nine reasons are not just what I'm whining. It's what a normal laptop would be. And somehow I'm coping with it...

Anyway looks like time is running out again. one more week and the examinations begin. Preparedness for each of my three subjects:

Mathematics: 9% (Complex Numbers)
Need to Revise/Learn: Differentiation/Integration/Graphs/Vectors/Statistics(6 or so topics)

Chemistry: 40% (Nitrogen/Periodicity/Atomic Structure)
Need to Revise/Learn: Gaseous State/some parts of Organic/Electrochemistry/Chemical Equilibrium/Energetics/Kinetics

Physics: 35% (Superposition/Measurement/Kinematics/Gravitational Field)
Need to Revise/Learn: Thermal/Forces/Electric Field/AC/Electromagnetism/Quantum

One thing is the whole Tuesday is devoted to Mathematics and I'm sure I will at least treble that 9% of revision there. Now there are no alternatives. It's all out.

Technically, it's all in. In the house, that is. I have been confined to the house almost everyday, because I cannot afford to venture beyond the timewastings of events outside. My hair is too long to be accepted in school, and my back hurts. Yeah it hurts sometimes but it has been consistent for about a week now. I cannot even turn while sleeping without feeling some pain. Usually this is reduced by walking (I think), so I may have to endure this for another week.

Tch, this pain is not bothering me. What is bothering me now is that my momentum for studying is constantly interrupted by petty events that do not even concern me. But why. Why can't I understand what I am studying...and again, I return to the piano to exhaust myself.

In the end, he who suffers to get his work done fails by completing the wrong job.

As Lim Chee Wan would have said, Well Done. *sarcasm*

Alright, so I returned from Taiwan on a successful trip, I might say. Of course, I have gained a lot of experience and knowledge, but I'll be too lazy to describe much of the things that happened (what I type is usually more of thoughts and opinions rather than happenings, but there are some exceptions). In fact, I have returned for a whole week now, and somehow the time just warps past in a flash. Not a good omen anyway.

No pictures because my sister damaged the camera and my the phone in my camera can take wonderful pictures of dust. No, seriously the lens is clogged with dust that time when my father bought it second-hand two years ago as my birthday present and still grumbled about it. It is also quite impossible to dismantle it and clean that part of the phone. Not to mention it can't zoom and you can count the pixels on it, and maybe one quarter of it is clogged dust. So in Taiwan I watched other people take pictures (or have my picture taken) but no landscape pictures, unfortunately. There were some great views when we were on the top of a hill (or small mountain?) or just quite high up actually.

The trip was more of an educational/shopping trip rather than a musical exchange. In Taiwan, they are actually nearing their examinations (ugh) now and they cannot afford to miss too many lessons. Therefore we spent at most two hours at the schools. However, in the brisk exchange we still gained a lot. Not to mention their students were a cheery lot. As for educational, we went to a erm, site, that is evident of salt weathering. Because of the salt weathering, there were weird landforms near the sea, which became a tourist attraction. Not for long anyway. There were many pothole-like hole thingies on the rock, which had sea water trapped inside and some crustacean-like creatures around it which somebody said looked like 'sea cockroaches'. Then we went to a museum...yeah. It is apparently a famous museum. There are many and I mean a lot of artifacts in the large building, but somehow the main attractions were the printing stamps of artifacts that are supposed to be a token of commemoration scattered throughout the building...people were crowding around it to stamp their guide maps.

So that was geography and history...and for the shopping part, whenever it wasn't mealtimes or over 1900hrs, we were either brought to a tourist attraction or a shopping area. Speaking of shopping area, I'm not the type to shop for clothes, so usually I get down the bus empty-handed and return the same way. The booklet that they gave us before the trip recommended us to bring an equivalent of S$300 in NT (New Taiwan) dollars, but as the miser that I am I only brought 2000NT, the equivalent of S$91. Actually I misread the booklet or something haha. Oh and, when we reached Taiwan, 500NT was to be collected from each student for the tour guides, which left me with 1500NT, which is roughly equal to S$68.50, which I had to spend for five days. Well guess what. All I did was borrow another 500NT, and I returned to Singapore with two 50NT coins. Not to mention I spent over 400NT on the last morning on stationery. HA!

The hotel that we stayed in was in the middle of...everything. Apparently it is in a shopping district too, so we were allowed to go out at night until a certain time. The was a window in my room and I thought opening a window would reveal the street which isn't that bad. I opened the window, and saw...a wall. A WALL. It belonged to the next building, and the distance was less than half a metre. What's the point of a window if it opens to a wall? Anyway, I didn't go out at night much, I usually went out only to the 7-11 store(s), as I...well, didn't shop. Speaking of 7-11s, the whole Taiwan is infested with them. I mean, from the hotel entrance, you turn left and around the corner is a 7-11. On the right across the road is another 7-11. Basically you can stand in one and see the other. And in Taiwan there are a lot of neon signs sticking out to the streets. You can look down one straight road and see two to three 7-11 signs. 7-11 is not just 'a store and more'. It's plainly, 'There's no Escape'.

Oh and I obtained a pack of cards from the Singapore Airlines flight on the way back. It hurt my hands when I shuffled it. I suppose that was quite random. And because nobody played with me during the flight, I started perspective-drawing on the back of my reflection sheet. I tried to draw some streets of Taiwan but I apparently failed and gave up (half the picture anyway). It of course included a 7-11 store.

After I returned, it seems like time passed twice as fast. It somehow seemed like in the past 7 days, I gained 5% as much as I did compared to the 5 days in Taiwan. That's including a whole day of studying Chemistry (most of the time I was stoning). My engine has died down...had it even started?

I know that I need to start running at full speed over my studies, but the lack of resources is killing me. And that is when I know, the resources are available, the machinery is available to extract it. It is all ready and set, but there is no signal to proceed.

Only if I do, will I obtain results. Only when I proceed, will I retrieve. I had the enlightenment, but through the flash of time, it disappeared again.

Good Evening to the World.