*sighs loudly*

Half a week in fact, but I was just too lazy and depressed to post (although you might notice some new additions and crossings-out in other parts of the blog). Lazy because I hate updating a few days at one go, and depressed because I'm always depressed after the end of a trip - more so this time, of course, as the fact that I'm going back there with them soon is doubly depressing (if you get where and who I'm talking about...).

I wish I never came back from Bangkok!!!

Okay, okay. So where was I? Friday? We were released sliiiiightly early, and I was the first person out of the lecture theatre - and I was seated right at the end of the row! That's how desperate I was to get the hell out of there...

Had dinner with my mother at HarbourFront, then had to rush some work at night. Had to rush more work on Saturday morning before going out with YQ and Sam (you can read all about that on YQ's Space and Sam's blog), and came home at, erm, 11-something? Ran about throwing a few extra clothes into the luggage and gathering the few things I needed...before rushing more work, till past 4 a.m. - and I had to awake at 6!!!

Of course, I was counting on adrenaline to keep me awake (it would've been quite different if I was headed for school...), and I must say it worked pretty well. Since the flight was so short, I wasn't really in the mood to watch movies, play games (I started up Mario and changed my mind - but not before my father saw the screen and shook his head!), etc. So I tuned in to music (for the first time, no, not classical) and read my book. There was food - chicken noodles or some hashbrown thingy - which looked suspiciously the same as the food offered on my Beijing flight 6 years ago, and which I forced myself to finish.

Thought my ears were going to explode on landing; never, EVER felt that much pressure in them before. But then we landed and I promptly forgot everything - practically skipped out of the airport, in fact.

On the taxi ride to the airport I was trying to listen to my mp3s, but was highly distracted (and disturbed) by my sister's insistance on going to the weekend market. She couldn't understand why I didn't want to go...

...but then again, as I pointed out, it's not as if she got trodden by a rat of humongous proportions (longer than my wrist to elbow, I swear) the last time she was there!

Hmmph. Got to the hotel in surprisingly quick time, dumped all our stuff in the room and then I had to give in and we all took another taxi to the market.

Maybe because we were actually faced with traffic jams this time, but the ride seemed a lot longer than the one before. Sadly, I was somewhere in the sub-conscious when we arrived and I had to drag myself out into the polluted air, facing a few hours of squeezing my way through crowded, labyrinthine passages flanked with small shops.

My sister insisted on going off on her own, which I could tell was a bad thing from the start - like how on earth were we supposed to find her amongst the hundreds/thousands of people in there?! Sure enough, after the intended two hours of walking aimlessly, we couldn't find her. And most wonderfully, there was something wrong with her phone connection so we couldn't contact her either. I had a nice tall glass of ice lemon tea while we waited for her to pass by, but we finally gave up and took matters into our own hands. As always, when a family member is lost and we need to find him/her, we employed our usual method: look up.

Soon enough my father spotted her in the dense crowd and I made a (rather fun, for some reason) mad dash to get hold of her. She joined us and was horrified to find that I had only bought one pair of earrings. Then she promptly whisked me off for another hour, in which I ended up paying for a grand total of 5 shirts.

Very sadly, halfway through my second foray into the market, it started raining. It was mostly covered in the market, but it got really crowded and stuffy so we had no choice but to walk in the rain, trying to avoid puddles. Didn't take me long to proclaim I needed a bath. When the one hour was up and we had met up again...guess what? My sister wanted to find the part of the market selling live animals...and it was at the other end of the place. Yippee!

Another longer trek in the rain, mostly by the roadside. After almost giving up hope, I spotted the signs and, with a point in the right direction, arrived at open trays full of napping or hyperactive puppies - all ready to be petted. Now, if I were the puppies I think I would've died of shock from this treatment, but...ah well. They were just too cuuuuuuuuute. And, of all things, there was a husky in one of the trays! I managed to stroke it after avoiding the other occupant of the tray, a startlingly plump pomeranian.

Then we moved on to the other animals on sale, such as chicks, ferrets and...erm...snakes, by which point we'd had enough and headed back.

The first thing I wanted to do when we returned to the hotel was to have a long good shower, but NO, you can't waste a single minute not shopping in Bangkok. :P Washed our feet and slippers and we were off once again, but thankfully to MBK, which was connected to the hotel.

We had dinner first though, at this dirt cheap restaurant we discovered on our last trip - their noodles all cost around S$1. After which it was getting late (around 8 p.m.) and we were left to wander around on our own. Having nothing better to do I followed my sister to the departmental store; about 15 or 20 minuts to 9 we were browsing around the discount section and she was yanking clothes off the racks. I entered the dressing rooms with a whole pile of clothing - only to hear an announcement, after trying one shirt, that the store would close in 5 min.

I don't think I ever tried shirts so fast before. In all the haste and confusion I ended up with three shirts, paid then walked out of the closing store...and back, finally, to our hotel room.

I didn't really read much that night; was far too tired - both from walking and lack of sleep, so got a pretty good night's rest.

........and now it's getting really late and I have to do my FOM work, so don't mind if I leave you hanging here.........

Jessica wrote home at 1:29 am

It was a good book, really. Very exciting. Nice ending, but you didn't think it would end up that way. Unfortunately that's all I can say about it until all of you (or just both of you, depending on how many people read my blog regularly) finish reading it too. :P

So...now's the dilemma of whether I should change the position of HBP on my reading list. I think I will leave it as that, in the order I bought the books instead of the order I read them. Which kind of defeats the purpose of it being a "reading" list, but whatever.

It's 6.04 a.m. now! I woke up at one-something after taking my nap at 8 p.m. so my internal clock's all messed up. Ha. But who cares. School starts at 3 p.m. anyway. :P :P :P

Oh yeah, I was nearly late for school yesterday (Thursday). Something happened to both my alarm clock and my handphone's alarm (I think I might have pressed "Off" instead of "Snooze" on my phone, but I don't know what happened to the clock), so that when my mother popped into the room to wake me up, it was like 25 min later than the usual time I get up!

I can tell you, the urge not to turn up for my FOM tutorial was overwhelming. I mean, FOM tutorials are as slack as they come. 3 whole hours of slacking! But I had to drag myself to school anyway, because I had some research (well, actually, 13 full articles from the past year) I wanted to show my group, which most incredibly turned up in full force.

Also most incredibly, I was right on time, maybe at most 1 minute late. Amazing. Maybe I can extend my wake-up time a little more.........

Ahem.

Hmm. Yes. And it's barely a term but I've already been somewhat connected to something illegal in the school. Well, not really connected. At least, I'm fully aware of who did it. But it won't do anyone harm so what the heck. Pretend I didn't type anything.

Gah. Time to sleep. Felt so weird today, did you know? I kept thinking I had FOM notes to do, which was lame 'cos I already did them on Wednesday, and the second lecture of the week is going on later. So for the first time I actually had nothing on my list to do!

Although, of course, there's still something to be done before I leave. At least I now have some free time between the end of HBP and the start of Death Comes As The End (something very ironic there again!)...

Jessica wrote home at 6:03 am

*laughs maniacally*

Okay. So it wasn't what I expected. Still quite fine though, because I caught all the trick questions. :P Finished the test real early and checked it only a zillion times because I couldn't figure out how to spell "Philippines" in French (so I didn't study the country list, SO?) and I didn't know what the term for "dancer" was either (so I ALSO didn't study the professions list...). ANYWAY, the whole point was that while I was getting sick of rechecking and rechecking my work, suddenly all these people started standing up, handing in their papers and leaving!

I was like, what the??? I must so get used to the poly exam format - finish, check, leave. :P But I still managed to get out of the class before 6.45 p.m. Not bad. Nice change, really, leaving school on Tuesday before the sky's completely dark.

Oh yeah. OC results. I swear OC is the only module I'll be thankful to get a B for. Although it really wasn't my fault this time round. Or the other group members who failed the Q & A segment, since another group member happily answered all the questions, even those meant for us. :P Gah. Nice, though, that the lecturer said she expected better from me. Still have a very good chance of pulling up that grade when the term starts, since the next 30% will come from a speech-writing test.

ICP...haven't got my results back yet. Hope we don't get the papers back till next term. Well, it was originally supposed to be that way, except my classmates pestered the lecturer to hurry with it. :P

Ah, and it was fortunate I managed to get out of French early today; I was absolutely starving. Missed having my dinner 'cos I was in the digital media studio right after OC to right before French, trying to get as much work done as possible. Everything's due tomorrow and I don't want to go into a frenzy especially since that stupid Macromedia Freehand requires lots of patience and clicking the "undo" button. :P Managed to print out Assignment 4 and get started on my personal logo for Assignment 5.

Finally, I just have to grumble about something. After deciding to leave on Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday, then Saturday again, we are finally leaving on Sunday and won't be back till Wednesday. OH WELL. Not that I mind - I prefer Sunday 'cos I get a full day to study FOM and whatnot - but it gets quite annoying when the day's drawing near and everyone still can't make up their minds when they want to leave. :P

ANYWAY, so guess that means I'm free on Saturday too. *hint*hint*HINT*

Jessica wrote home at 8:41 pm

But she slept at 2 a.m. in the end.

Why?

"Because I was reading HP #6, that's why!!!"

Yeah yeah, I know I said I wouldn't read it yet. But I really won't read the rest until after my two books are done. Really. Didn't I ever tell you the most important reason for me to read HP #6, was to find out Harry, Ron and Hermione's O.W.L. results?

I don't know what's so interesting about the results, actually, just that I was dying to know. Unfortunately, this was one of those HP books where the story doesn't focus on Harry till a few chapters in. And each chapter is freakishly long, so (nothing really spoiler-y about the following, I suppose) I had to read till the end of Chapter 5 before I got to the part I wanted.

And that, by the way, was around page 100. So I spent all that time rushing through 100 pages.

Now I can relax and forget about the book till it's time to read it again.

I hope.

ANYWAY, guessy what? My CA was today! So it's over now!!! Yay!!!

Well, it wasn't that great. I mean, how creative and unorthodox can you possibly be when you're ask to write an article about an ex-student of "Sunshine Polytechnic" for a school-published magazine intended as propaganda for school-leavers? I tell you, there's not much improvision you can do. The only interesting things I could throw in were the name of the magazine (wanted to call it "SPasm" but decided against it, ended up with the relatively safe "SPeak!"), and title of the article ("No Re-GRADS"). Beyond that was all normal, boring article writing. Well, can always hope I do well. I happen to like that title very much. :P

And did I mention that we weren't allowed to type it out, so I felt very handicapped without columns and the backspace key? Ended up doing the whole thing on foolscap in pencil (just like in primary school...). Luckily too, 'cos the table was full of eraser shavings at the end.

BUT that's not the point of telling you about my CA. Other than the good news that I no longer have to worry about it for the rest of the week, it so happens..................

.........................that our Friday class is CANCELLED!!!!!!!!!

*laughs unnecessarily loudly*

Hahahahahahahahaha. I mean, now I also no longer have to worry if I should or shouldn't skip Friday's class. Dream come true, this is. So I only have two hours of class on Friday, that FOM lecture from 3-5 p.m. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah...I can finally get enough sleep in preparation for Friday night's last-minute madness. And maybe, just maybe, for the first time ever I won't fall asleep during the lecture. :P

But while I'm busily cheering, it remains to be seen how I am going to survive next term. Have like how many projects due around the same date, and we haven't started on any. Gah. Just enjoy the holidays first.

Oh, and I'm really not having that great a time right now. My stupid gum at the left side of my mouth is swollen for no particular reason. It hurts to swallow. Something like that happened when I was 10. Twice, in fact. I'm currently trying to convince my mother (and myself) that this time it may be my wisdom teeth growing - in other words I'm teething. Hahahaha. But really, there's no space for extra teeth behind so it could be the reason for the swelling. I hope.

Jessica wrote home at 2:17 pm

Let's see...got up at 6.30 a.m. this morning and couldn't even walk straight. I mean, hello? I was up till past 2 a.m. studying French and I didn't have a nap yesterday, not to mention that I was aching all over... :P

I was late leaving the house, particularly because I forgot we were meeting at the school, not the MRT station, at 8.30 a.m. Then I forgot to bring along my form so I only managed to catch the 8.00 a.m. bus.

As luck would have it, the Pasir Ris-bound MRT train arrived the moment I got to the platform, and at Raffles Place the Jurong-bound train arrived the moment I got to the platform too. So I reached Newton at exactly 8.30 a.m.

Well, what do you want to know about my day? Nothing interesting happened. I mean, we were confined to the school hall for the whole 5 hours. 5 hours straight of sorting through tens of thousands of coins! The people there said the faster we worked, the earlier we'd finish, but no matter how fast we sorted the coins, there were always more buckets of coins to empty on our tables, and trolleys stacked with collection tins arriving at the door in a constant stream.

So yeah, no chance of leaving early. Went straight home to have my lunch. Wanted to go shopping but figured everything could wait till next week. Plus I was freaking tired. And sick of the prospect of seeing my classmates for 12 consecutive days. :P

Had a nice loooooooooooooooooong nap. 3.5 hours if I'm not wrong, although I'd really like to nap some more at the moment. You can't blame me, I most likely have a 1 hr 50 min magazine-article-writing CA at 9 a.m. tomorrow, then it's our boring ICP tutorial (where the lecturer always asks if we're having Monday blues...I can see our Monday blues are going to be more serious tomorrow!), and to conclude, a final two hours of straining our eyes at the computer screens during ITB. Bleargh.

Gee. I am DYING to read Death Comes As The End (hmm...something ironic about that sentence...)!!! I bought it like how long ago - the first week of school in fact, when I met YQ for dinner on Friday. SEE!!! Haven't had time to do anything other than finish Antiquity (and even then I had to make time for it). :P And there's still Turkish Gambit and HP #6 (of which, at this moment, my sister is probably at the last few chapters). Grr.

So. Still at a dilemma. Should I bring DCATE or my FOM notes on holiday? 'Cos when I return I've got quite a lot of work to do too, studying for the ITB quiz, planning my OC individual presentation, and doing that report for CD. And it's only the beginning...

...then again, it's obviously better than slogging through a hundred Physics TYS and A Math questions each. :P Don't think I haven't forgotten my last trip to Bangkok, when I had to do A Math for 5 days straight (till 4 a.m. every morning) before leaving, and bring along my English homework just so I could finish all my holiday work by January 2nd!!!

Jessica wrote home at 8:35 pm

What on earth possessed me to promise Sam I'd blog tonight???

Well, at least I get to sit on my swivel chair.

Ahhhhhh...let's see. Sam was a little too enthusiastic in asking me to tell her all about my flag day. I was quite amused at the number of question and exclamation marks in her SMS, actually.

But whatever. Nothing interesting happened today, really. Like what interesting things could possibly happen on a windy Saturday afternoon out begging for money.

I arrived at Newton a full 7 min late. As it turned out, we were actually supposed to report at Chao Yang Special School at 12.30 p.m., not the 12 p.m. meeting time. And also as it turned out, the class couldn't be bothered to wait for the rejects and went over to hawker centre for lunch first. :P

Anyway, so even though we were all there at 12.30 p.m., we had to go off and "flag" in our Character Development groups. So since one of my three groupmates was conveniently half an hour late, we set off after the others.

First stop: Novena. No idea why, since there were so little people around. So we decided to take a bus to City Hall. Took me a long time to remember which side of the road the right bus stop was. I mean, since the last two times I was at United Square, I was drunk and everything. :P

But we caught the bus! And it took a hell of a long time to get to City Hall!

Grr. By the time we got there I had like one miserable coin in my tin. And that coin was, of course, mine. Hahahahaha.

We stood outside Raffles City for a little while. I quickly got sick of everyone's grumpy looks (hey, I may be the grumpiest among them any other day, but at least I donate) and decided to move on to someplace else. Although granted I did meet some nice people. Like this lady with her two sons, all of whom donated. One of the sons wanted an extra sticker for a - surprise! - Social Studies project (that's primary school SS, by the way).

Managed to convince one of my classmates to tag along (one had abandoned us to meet friends at Novena, the other was happily collecting lots of money outside Raffles City). Walked to Funan. I whined all the way about wanting a Slurpee. Stood outside Funan for a little while. Couldn't be bothered to ask, so were just hanging around saying, "Fous le camp!" to everything.

(Oh, and don't ask me what that means. I'm not telling.)

BUT, guessy what? While I was just standing there not even looking at anyone passing by, some nice man actually came up to me and donated! Haha.

Yeah, and then we got the bright idea to walk to Clarke Quay. From then onwards, it was as if we stopped selling flags and turned into tourists. Seriously. All we were doing was to stare at the river, walk, pose for lame pictures (for our project presentation) with statues, and sit down.

But quite good right? I mean, we saved the people around us from having to flee at the sight of our tins. *rolls eyes*

Took us a long time to get back because all the roads were blocked for the primary schools' preview NDP. Met the other two along the way, by which time I was completely sick of walking. Lingered around asking for money and self-donating (*ahem*) until 5.15 p.m., before we took the train back to Newton. At the MRT station, we saw most of our classmates leave on the train headed home...what the?! We were supposed to end the flag day officially by reporting to the school at 5.30 p.m., it wasn't even 5.30 p.m. and they had already gone to Newton and back!!!

:P

So yeah, that was the last we saw of them. Another classmate had just returned also, so we walked together to the school and returned our tins. As we were leaving the office the last two of our classmates came in. We sat at the school for quite some time (I don't know why) just talking. Okay, not "just talking". Complaining a lot, more like. Especially about someone.

Lalalalalala.

After that it was about 10 past 6 and we finally got up to leave. I went to Orchard and had time to browse around. Then I tried finding the restaurant but I forgot where it was, so ended up in Kinokuniya (not purposely). Walked right out of the store before turning around and realising my sister was inside looking at Harry Potter #6.

So anyway, my father must've been in a really good mood today because he paid for the book. My sister promised me she'd finish it by tomorrow night so I can read it. Like I told her, it doesn't matter because I already have two books on my waiting list, and I can't even start reading them until the holiday begins, because it's unlikely I will be free until then. Boo. That's really sad, 'cos other than reading the books, I was planning to buy FE:TSS too. Hmmph. Stupid assignments.

Oh yeah. Erm. So I've been nattering on and on and on and I haven't mentioned what I was supposed to mention. Hahaha.

And my "not important" news is that.................

.............................

.............................

.............................my holidays begin next Saturday!!!!

Told you it was not important.

Hahahahaha. KIDDING. I'm neither that lame nor evil. Although I am improving on that lame part, as YQ says.

ANYWAY, so my real news is..............

...............that when my holidays begin on Saturday..............

I will be alive!!!!!!!

...

What?

...Bleargh. Okay, okay.

I'M GOING TO BANGKOK!!!

Yup yup. From Saturday morning (giving me time to get my FOM notes done - only problem is should I bring them along to read?) to Tuesday.

And now...YQ is asking me to have Thai food on Friday. HMMM.

P.S. 2 extra things: 1) The HP #6 we got is the adult hardcover edition. This ends my British children's cover collection. 2) In case you were wondering, yes, I knew about the trip well beforehand. Why else do you think I was so distracted the whole week that I even started that countdown on MSN?!

Jessica wrote home at 11:16 pm

*yawn* Good rest, that was.

Unfortunately I have to get up now to 1) study French, and 2) figure out how long it takes to get to Newton MRT station.

Bleargh.

ANYWAY, my main purpose of blogging now is to recount something that happened yesterday morning which I forgot to mention in my last post.

So I was leaving for school and my mother was going off to the market, and we as usual, left the house together. I got off the front steps first to wear my shoes properly while my mother turned to lock the door and gate. Right after she locked the gate and was about to turn around, she gave a yelp and jumped backwards.

I was like, "What? What? WHAT?" and looked wildly around, until I noticed that there was a small lizard right on the floor beside me. So I, of course, jumped away (after I came back to my senses, that is).

Then after my mother shooed it off, she told me that.......................

........................the lizard had fallen from the ceiling onto her arm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

To think I was only a few centimetres away from her at that point of time.

AUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!

*screams hysterically and runs off to the horizon*

Jessica wrote home at 4:00 am

Anyway, running on very little energy this week. Didn't have my nap on Tuesday, which meant I had to catch up on a lot of sleep on Wednesday. But because my CA was yesterday, I only slept at 3.30 a.m. on Wednesday. And after school yesterday I had to rush off to attend my sister's convocation ("graduation ceremony", if you want to call it that) at NUS, then finish some work at home...so yeah, another day without my essential-for-survival nap.

Speaking of the convocation, it was actually pretty short. No ultra long, ultra boring speeches. Although it doesn't help when your surname starts with a 'Y', especially since the law students received their certificates last. :P

For the first night I was able to sleep without having to memorise definitions and influences on perception and self-concept. Speaking of ICP, so how was my CA? I got kind of mixed up with perception and self-concept actually. But to sum it up, I wrote a lot.

Of crap.

Hahahahahahahaha.

But really. I went out of the lecture theatre just focusing on the fact that the CA was finally over and I couldn't be bothered to discuss about it. Will face my grades some other day. In any case the lecturer said she'd try to pass us all. :P

Gah. I have a headache. Our CC class today was sooooooooo disrupted - first we started off waiting outside the LC Studio for the lecturer. Then when she still hadn't turned up 15min later, we had to go to our original classroom for the class instead ('cos the LC studio was booked). But you see, our CC class was supposed to start at 8 a.m., not 9 a.m., so at 10 a.m. another class came and we had to leave the classroom - right after the lecturer had started reading out my teenage love (yes, THAT article, Sam!) article!

So we all trooped to the Self-Access Centre where the rest of the time, unfortunately, was dedicated to the article. I found it very amusing the lecturer said she liked the logic in my articles...because one of the two weaknesses in my other article, was a logical flaw. Hahahaha. (The other weakness, by the way, was that I didn't even finish the article properly...what can I say? I don't always finish what I start!)

Ahem. Yes. Anyway, then we had a short break before Character Development. Today's class was quite pointless really, all NE stuff and confirming tomorrow's meeting time and place. At least we were released early. Oh, and there's no CD class next Friday because it was originally reserved for our community work session. So, supposing the CC CA is on Monday instead of Friday (both the date and the medium - written or typewritten - haven't been decided, I seriously hope it's Monday and typewritten), then I can happily skip CC and go to school at 3 p.m. for the FOM lecture! Wow!

*eyes glint at prospect of very short last day of term*

Or, if very sadly the CA is on Friday, then I can still go home at 11 a.m. May be possible to squeeze in some nap time. Same goes if I end up attending CC even if the CA's already over. :P

But still. Hmm.

I think they should just cancel the FOM lecture. As a nice little treat.

*eyes glint again at prospect of very short - or non-existent! - last day of term*

Ah. Such lovely thoughts. But unfortunately it's almost time to go attend this week's FOM lecture. Bleargh. Well, I'll blog again soon, either tomorrow after flag day or Sunday (if I'm too tired on Saturday). 'Cos, as I told Sam, I have something to announce.

P.S. It's nothing important, but just thought you should know in case.

Jessica wrote home at 2:19 pm

*Pops The Princess Diaries 2 soundtrack into CD-drive for no reason*

YESSSS! I lasted through the last full French lesson of this term!!!!!!!!

*squeals loudly and claps like a big idiot*

Ahhhhhhhhhhh...that's a great achievement. Now for next week's CA. Bleargh. Have to find some way to squeeze in lots of revision this weekend. Maybe Friday.

Oh yeah. OC presentation today! We did it at a lab in one of the engineering blocks. I think the engineering blocks are waaaaaaaaay nicer than the business ones. For one, they have railings instead of parapets so it's a lot windier...the elevators are also in much better condition. And the blocks have very few classrooms on each floor. Hmm.

ANYWAY, that's not the point. The lab was FREEZING, I tell you. I mean, we were all in our formal clothes - long sleeved shirts with collars, pants/skirts, and my fingers were practically numb. Didn't help that we were the second group to present, so we had ample time to get nervous and shivery.

I don't know how well or badly I did. I'm just glad (and slightly surprised) that I managed to hit the minimum talktime of 5 min. And I also remembered quite a lot of my notes, considering I only wrote them less than two hours earlier. But whatever. Will have to face my grades next Tuesday.

Speaking of next Tuesday, I can't wait for next Tuesday to end!!! It's my last stumbling block before I can relax and prepare for the holidays, because the CC CA is on Monday and my French CA is on Tuesday. Sure, my DTP project is due on Wednesday, but I've been keeping up with every week's work (beats me how my classmates still haven't done Week THREE'S assignment yet...I mean, what the hell have they been doing for the past four weeks?!) so I'm not going to be stressed over that.

That leaves Thursday's ICP CA (stupid me, I thought we would be tested till Lecture 5 - turns out it's only 4, and I already memorised a chunk of 5...). And after school on Thursday I'm going to my sister's convocation ceremony!!! How fun!!! ... Okay, maybe not FUN, but never mind. :P Don't know how I'll be able to wake up on Friday though. Thought about skipping CC, but..............

.............Ah ha, that brings me to what happened yesterday. CC. Hmm. Remember that fake magazine article I was working on during the the weekend? The one I was so distracted with I only finished at 4.30 a.m. Well, anyway, the CC lecturer, for some reason, has never read out any of my CC classwork/homework for the past 6 weeks. And then yesterday, of all things...

...she spent like more than three-quarters of the lesson praising my work! That article! And I have no idea what's so great about that article!!!

I think the limit came when she wrote the title of my article on the whiteboard, and asked the class to explain why it was such a good title. Thankfully she was asking the class and not the writer, because the writer herself had no freaking idea what made the title so good. I mean, it's just a title. It popped into my head and I typed it out. The end. It's not like I sat down and thought about how the title would be catchy and how it would grab the reader's attention and what the use of a verb would signify! Bleargh.

But THEN AGAIN, after she saw my work the lecturer remarked that this piece alone would get my class participation grade bumped up to an A.

Which I can see I really need, 'cos I didn't even know class participation was counted in CC and I've been sooooooo dreadfully unresponsive, as I have mentioned before. I probably originally had a C or D. :P

And yet..........Monday's the CC CA!!! We're supposed to write another magazine article and it's worth 30%!!! ARGH!!! Just the right time to get stressed like that...

Jessica wrote home at 9:45 pm

Friday

The last time I blogged, it was right before Friday's FOM lecture. Well, guess what? We were released about 10 min earlier. Knowing I had to settle my own dinner, I decided on Mos Burger at Takashimaya (had earlier wanted KFC, but if you recall, I ended up having it for lunch instead). So I was skipping happily along to the MRT (okay, I wasn't skipping, that just sounded nice), when I decided to call my father and ask for something.

And guess what again? Due to a meeting being sadly cancelled, he was free for dinner! WOW! So I ended up changing my plans to dinner at Cafe Cartel instead.

Then as I was happily riding the escalator to the MRT station, I received an SMS. Turned out Sam was at Orchard with her parents! What a coincidence!

So anyway, I had more than an hour to spare so I dropped by Orchard Road first. I decided to take a short cut and get on 16 from Tiong Bahru, since the bus stop's nearer to Esprit, where I was going to buy that shirt Sam convinced me not to buy last week. :P There was a last XS left, so I paid for it happily and happily made my way to meet Sam at Wisma Atria.

At Wisma Atria, Sam "abandoned" her parents and went browsing around with me, presenting her box full of test tubes and letting me (or making me, whichever way you see it!) read her Chinese essay. We visited a few places, including Perlini's Silver (where she suggested I buy the lizard earrings, lizard bracelet and lizard necklace...) and Stadium (didn't really browse around much since we already browsed enough last week).

Then we went to Topshop, on my request. Well, actually Sam didn't have any choice, 'cos the surfwear shop was empty (and she has a strange aversion to entering empty shops), and there was a dead end right behind Topshop. Haha. :P

Spent a long time there, as Sam said in her blog, looking at jewellery and plastic buttons. There was a Bailey green button!!! (If you don't know what Bailey green is, or who Bailey is, please ignore this.) But the button was kind of...er...expensive (for a round plastic thingy) so we didn't get it. I did, however, after MUCH deliberation, purchase a pair of very long and dangly amber earrings. :)

Since I had, erm, spent waaaaaaaaaaay too much time deliberating, I was verrrrrrrrrry late, so we crossed the road to the bus stop whilst Sam headed to Paragon.

Dinner was...filling. We had set dinners so didn't order any special drinks. The bill came up to above $30 so I finally got to apply for the Student Privilege Card! Yay!!!

*reader figures that Jessica is a little insane*

ANYWAY, then it was time to go home. I only managed to get my FOM notes done (quite a nightmare 'cos the lecture slides were extremely messy) and some DTP project stuff sorted out, before it was past-3 a.m. and I went to sleep.

Saturday

Saturday wasn't very spectacular. Woke up, incredibly, at 3 p.m. Was working on DTP halfway when I had to leave for dinner. Then during dinner everyone except me was in a hurry ('cos my little get-together was cancelled). Must say that this week I was pretty relieved it was cancelled, or else I would never have gotten my work done in time. :P But there's always...errrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmm...this Saturday night (after my flag day)? Orrrrrrrrrrrrrr...er, actually, I'm not going to be particularly free even when my holiday starts. Hmm.

I somehow managed to finish both my magazine article (at first I couldn't think of anything to write, and it didn't seem I'd ever make the minimum of 300 words...by the end of the article I had gone over the limit of 500!) and DTP homework. The DTP, I can tell you, was the most time consuming. Had to think of ten sets of visual metaphors, either draw them, take pictures of them, or find pictures of them on the Net, then think up of catchy titles for them...followed by printing, drawing, cutting, pasting, colouring. ARGH. A wonder I even finished my work at 4.30 a.m.

Sunday

Sunday I couldn't afford to sleep in 'cos I was supposed to study ICP and French. In the end I slacked till almost 3 p.m., before getting a headache after drinking some cold drink (I assumed it was brainfreeze) and trying to sleep it off. Unfortunately it hadn't gone away by 3.40 p.m., when my mother came and asked me if I wanted to visit Marina Square.

The bus took agggggggggeeeeeesssss to come, and when it did it was almost raining. :P We spent a lot of time walking all round the newly-revamped Marina Square (despite its updated look and everything, I still prefer the old Marina Square and its dark grey floor-tile pattern), which seemed to have more food outlets than shops. So we were spoiled for choice for dinner. Ended up eating at Imperial Treasure Xiao Long Bao, which, despite the good food, posh interior and free piano-cum-violin performance right outside, resulted in only a bill that was $22something. :P

Then I convinced my mother to walk through CityLink to the usual bus stop, which ended up delaying us a lot, because we stopped at, among other shops, FCUK to browse (where my mother bought some red shirt). Then we entered Raffles City and for some weird reason were compelled to enter Mango, which was still having its sale. You'd think by now that they'd've run out of clothes to sell, but noooooooooo, to my horror one of the first things I saw was this three-quarter sleeve purple shirt that I had wanted to buy before the sale, but cost $35. Then when the sale started I couldn't find it anywhere, so I was very very sad. And now, of all things...

...every $%^&*# piece was size M!!!! ARGH!!!!

So I wandered about, all sniffy and depressed, when I got further into the shop and saw two more of the shirt. One was M. Ugh. And the other one.......................

...........................S!!!!!!

Oooooooooh, I was so excited I tell you. How kind of Mango, saving the last S for me. :) And now, after 3 years of searching, I was finally able to replace my old purple Mango shirt that got too small. All for the grand price of...................

..................$16.

Haha. So other than the fact that I was getting less and less time to study, I went home in a very good mood.

UNFORTUNATELY, my headache (now a full-blown migraine) came back again and I couldn't keep my head up without feeling like it was going to explode. So, agonisingly, I had to give up after studying only one chapter, and sleep before 1 a.m. I was kind of hoping the migraine would still be there in the morning and I could skip school, but as usual, I woke up feeling perfectly fine. :P

...And as for today's update, that shall come another time. I want to nap now. :P

Jessica wrote home at 6:57 pm

And why am I happy?

'Cos I just had a Shrooms meal for lunch!!!

:)

Okaaaaaaaaay, fine. So Shrooms gets me a little high, got a problem with that? :P

ANYWAY, I noticed I left out something important in my last post. The part about how our group wouldn't have the time to plan everything. Well, as luck would have it, CC was cancelled again. (Unfortunately I've got another magazine article to work on, but that's a different story) Which meant that if not for someone continually delaying the completion of our project, I would've been able to wake up at 9 a.m. today. Well-needed sleep that would've been too, since I slept at 3.30 a.m.! (Don't ask. I was trying to think up, sketch and take photos of creative ideas for DTP.)

BUT, like I said, because someone had been holding us up, we had to meet at 9.30 a.m. instead to touch up the PowerPoint slides, delegate tasks, etc. We only started slightly before 10 a.m. because two of them were late, and somehow we managed to get everything settled, plus add a few slides before we had to zip off to CD. We actually left the library at 11 a.m., but class hadn't yet started when we got there. Thank goodness.

Ours was the second group to present, and by far the shortest presentation that was - it took barely half an hour, and we were supposed to speak for 45 min! We didn't have anything else to do in CD today, besides another reminder to get our group's pre-community service report done ASAP. Great. Another group report. I have a frank loathing for group reports, after the ICP proposal. At least the post-community service report is individual. And so is our CA2. Some inspirational experience thing. Except I don't actually have anything inspirational to write about, and it must definitely by real, so.............ah, whatever. Will bother when the time comes to bother...oh crap. Just checked the deadline - first week of next term! ARGH!!! One confirmed piece of holiday homework...

Anyway, like I said there wasn't much left to do so we were let off 40 min early, on top of our 2 hour break. Now I'm left with slightly less than 1 hr. Going to get started on my magazine article. :P Bye bye!

Jessica wrote home at 1:50 pm

*glances suspiciously around*

Jessica has decided to delete the last two posts. No reason. She just wants to delete them. Okay, okay, it makes the blog friendlier. :P

Unfortunately though, there is a gripe in this post and it's actually...about the same person. I mean, you'd think the person might have realised she gave us a big headache just two days ago, but nooooooooo, she decides not to turn up yesterday too, and it's freaking crucial 'cos Thursday was supposed to be our last chance to put the slides together and rehearse. Since our first class on Friday has been moved one hour later, it means we don't have a break between that class and the class we're supposed to make our presentation.

And even worse, she didn't send us the PowerPoint slides to work on, because she was out. So instead I had to send my data to her and we have to all hope she does her job.

Or else we are seriously going to kill her, because that is going to mess up our CD grades. Well, it may only be 10% (so I heard; didn't bother to check), but still. Just because you've made it clear you can't be bothered about CD, doesn't mean you should screw everyone up too!

Grr.

On a non-gripey note though, today was actually quite a good day. For the first time in FOM tutorial history, the whole class turned up (not on time, but better than nothing)...well, the whole class except her, obviously. :P My group had two out of our three answers correct for our tutorial question, not that I actually cared 'cos I had an inkling what the correct answer was...just that you know, group discussions depend on the majority's opinion. And no one actually bothers about my opinion. Haha. And speaking of not turning up on time, I barely got to class on time actually. 'Cos I missed my bus and was fifteen minutes late. Didn't help that the FOM tutorial room is in the last classroom on the top floor (6th) of the last block in SB! I reached the door just as the lecturer (yeah, I know he's the "tutor" but who cares) appeared from the staircase behind the classroom.

Oh, and after the tutorial questions had been reviewed, we got back our FOM CA. Like, did you expect them to finish marking the papers so soon? Hmm.

Anyway, so instead of the original 30 marks the CA was based on, they computed it upon 100 marks. Then we all had to go to the front of the class and sign our name beside our score. So when it was my turn and I was looking for the line with my name and score, obviously I couldn't resist giving a quick scan of the whole class' scores. :P (Like who didn't do that!) I was scanning through this series of 60's, a lot of 70's, the occasional 80-something...

And ta-da. My gaze fell on that "92" beside my name.

Not that I was all super delighted. 'Cos I received the paper next and realised I'd only scored 27.5/30, which, if you take into account how much time I actually spent studying for the stupid thing, wasn't that great. I can't figure out how I lost the 0.5 mark (must be something to do with it being the last question, me not having enough time and thus me crapping away), but the most idiotic thing is, I lost the freaking 2 marks................

...................in the MCQ section.

!!!

And there were only like 10 MCQ questions!!!! ARGH!!!! The stupidity!!!!

Well, that said, there was some nice little rumour floating about class that the highest score was 80 (which, if you also come to think of it, is 24 marks, and that isn't all that far from my score...but 12 marks sure makes a big difference)

Yeah yeah. Whatever. The whole point's that I got the highest score (and think the next highest was 27, if I overheard correctly).......................but since the CA is only worth 10%, that means I've got an official 9 marks for my FOM final score! Wow!!! *end of sarcasm*

And where will the remaining marks come from? Ah........that brings me to my next incident. We were finally given our FOM project brief. Basically we're supposed to choose a company operating in Singapore and study it, evaluating its marketing strategies and suggesting marketing strategies it should implement, etc. Our group (my favourite group because it's the only one comprising less than three of my usual groupmates) had a nice discussion on which company to study. There were a few categories to choose from and we knew Food & Beverage would be the most popular, not to mention only two out of four groups could pick the same category, so the moment we decided on Old Chang Kee as our company of choice, we told the lecturer. Not long after, another group chose Bread Talk, so thankfully the first problem was solved.

The loooooooong written report is to be submitted in the third week of Term 2, so I think we'll plan to get as much info as possible during the holiday week and the first week. I doubt anyone will be in the mood to start researching earlier, considering we have our ICP CA next week, CC CA on either Monday or (unlikely) Friday of the last week of Term 1, not to mention our DTP individual (thank goodness...) sketchbooks are due in the last week too. AND the weekend before the last week will be ocmpletely devoted to our flag day. Plus my French CA on Tuesday! ARGH!!! So busy.

Will make sure I take complete advantage of that one-week break, I tell you. :P I'll talk about my plans some other day. You know, like during the flag-day weekend, or in the middle of the last week when all the CAs are over. Can't wait. :)

P.S. Was supposed to watch Project SuperStar just now (for my project! DON'T get the wrong idea!), but ended up making sarcastic comments while watching SBK. In the end I missed half of Project SuperStar. Oh well. How sad. *rolls eyes*

Jessica wrote home at 1:32 am

Then again, since the CA's over, who cares when I read those notes as long as it's before next term???

Right. So much for the new hardworking Jessica. :P

Sigh. Stupid weekend always passes by so freaking quickly. It's like I've barely finished the CA, and now I have to go to school again?! Seeing what I have to put up with everyday, I think they should give me an extra holiday every weekend. Seriously. It's like, everyday I go to school and I think, "Why don't they just rename this *&%$#!% place CP (Chinese-speaking Polytechnic)???"

Everywhere you go, you hear Chinese. At the MRT station, on the way to class, in class, at the foodcourts, in the toilets...even in French class. FRENCH class, for goodness' sake!

And I thought I'd be spared just because people here need a higher English grade. :P

I think I should stop trying to be hardworking and just try to keep my sanity instead.

I'm not sure if I should be happy because this week (or at least Monday and Tuesday) are relatively short. School ends at 2 p.m. tomorrow 'cos ITB is cancelled (yeah, yeah, you have a holiday tomorrow, SO?!), and school starts at 11 a.m. and ends one hour later on Tuesday. If you ignore the fact that I still have French class. Don't think I'm going to change it 'cos I want to get it over and done with as early in the week as possible.

But ANYWAY. The point is that I have two PowerPoint presentations due - one on Friday, one next Tuesday...and so far my groups have barely done anything about it (other than the layout of the slides on Wednesday, when I was sick. But that's a valid reason!). Especially that very pressing one on Friday, because the person who insisted on that topic, has the most amount of knowledge on it (I can tell you it's not exactly a good thing to have a lot of knowledge on that topic...), has the plans we drew up, knew perfectly well we had 2 full hours to work on it last Friday...and insisted on turning up only at 3 p.m. for the FOM lecture and later, CA. Obviously stayed at home studying, after not buying the textbook and not turning up for almost all the FOM tutorials. (Happens to be in my FOM group - in fact the only person in ALL my groups - and we've been short of brainpower for the tutorials, so I am super duper highly annoyed!!!)

Gah. Like I said, with all the things I put up with. If I was that vindictive I'd derive some joy out of making their lives difficult during projects too. Like running away with the plans and not turning up on crucial days. But I'd rather get my work done.

Shall not screw my grades because of crappy group projects. To quote WH's current nickname: "Project jus make my life sucks!"

So true.

Jessica wrote home at 11:51 pm

Anyway, I won't go into details 'cos I seriously can't be bothered, especially since yesterday was such a freaking long day. Unfortunately I couldn't worm my way out of going to school for CC, so ended up dragging myself to class at 9 a.m. CC was pretty okay this time round though; we were asked to type this fake magazine article on teenage love while the lecturer turned on some music to get "in the mood". (Speaking of the article, must get back to working on it soon...)

CD was okay, we basically just listened to the presentations. Still kind of worried about my group's presentation, seeing as how we've barely gotten anything planned, and the person who had the plans conveniently decided to only turn up in school at 3 p.m. *evil glare*

During the 2-hr break between CD and the dreaded FOM lecture, I didn't need much convincing from Sam to go online at the BizIT library (which was almost full to capacity) and chat via MSN webmesseger. At the same time I tried to revise FOM (again), although I got VERY VERY sick of it.

The FOM lecture passed by amusingly quickly, and for the first time I didn't sleep during the ten-minute break. We were let off particularly early in preparation for our CA (must be why the lecture seemed to end so soon...because it actually did!).

Well, without going into details...the CA was...

...pointless. I needn't have studied the whole week, I tell you.

(continued the next day)

But whatever. The first thing I did after that was to zip off to the MRT. Ended up being late meeting Sam, so by the time we reached the basement of Cineleisure, we were both starving. That unfortunately did not help us in deciding what to order, so there was a lot of shoving-the-menu back and forth across the small table. And when we finally wrote down our orders, Sam had to begin a long debate on whether to buy a drink to make it >$30 (and thus get the card). THEN she had to re-calculate how much the GST would cost...

ANYWAY, the point is that we got our food in a shorter time than it took to actually order. :P

For an alternate account of the episode at Cartel, please visit Sam's blog.

Dinner over and done with (can't remember what we talked about...mostly school stuff), we tried to squeeze in some shopping before the shops closed at 9.30 p.m. We managed to visit quite a few places in Takashimaya and Wisma Atria (barring that surfwear shop, but whatever). :P :P :P

And no, I didn't buy anything. Like Sam said, I couldn't find my shirt in XS (I could've asked, but couldn't be bothered). Although I have no idea what is so unbelievable about me wearing XS.

I mean, I'm a small little girl and everything. :P

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. In order to squeeze in as much window-shopping time as possible, we delayed our dessert-buying. So after 9.30 p.m. we stopped outside the underground McDonald's trying to decide what to get. Then I suggested Slurpees and we both decided we'd prefer a drink over ice cream.

So off we went to 7 eleven!!!

...Unfortunately, the only flavours they had the usual 7 eleven were Cherry (eew), some blue thingy (hmm...weird blue thingy), and brown Atomic Apple (the apple probably oxidised). There was Coke too, but that was still all watery.

So in the end, being left with no choice, I had bottom-half apple and top-half blue thingy. Sam had the opposite combination. Then we left to make the long walk to City Hall.

And that was the start of all the mayhem.

You know how there's this quite-long stretch of road from past-Specialist's Centre to the underpass leading to Plaza Singapura?

Well, I'm glad there was practically nobody along that stretch last night, 'cos they would've feared for our sanity and I would've feared for their safety.

I think it all started when we were slurping and walking innocently along, then all of a sudden Sam pointed at a recycling bin and said, "I'll throw you inside and recycle you!"

And for some reason I found that so hilarious I couldn't stop laughing.

Following that were a few other lame incidents, most notably being Sam pointing at the hill across from Hotel Le Meridien and saying (sounding slightly insane/hysterical), "Hey, let's climb up the hill and roll down!"

Upon which I asked her if she was drunk, then we both burst out laughing and couldn't walk straight anymore. Like we were both walking in zig-zags and banging into each other, then walking apart and banging into each other again. Didn't help that after I had calmed down and was staring at my drink...I walked face-first into the protruding leaves of a nearby plant. :P

So, yeah, after all that, I finally deduced that either the Slurpee machine had been spiked, or that the Atomic Apple had fermented and produced alcohol in the process.

Anyway, after that we had mostly finished the apple part of our drinks, so we were more sane and could walk through the crowds outside Plaza Singapura like normal people...well, until Sam saw the big fake cockroach on the bus stop signboard.

But that's another story.

We got to City Hall at around 10.20 p.m., crossed the road, then remembered the bus stop was on the other side of the road, watched 131 as it drove by (*sniff*)...got blocked by a giant truck, then finally crossed back.

There was some uncertainty over whether Sam had missed the last 518, but in the end my bus arrived first and I hopped on. Less than 5 min later her bus arrived.

Got home, had a nice shower, then went online and typed my notes. Despite it being not-yet 3 a.m., I was dead tired so I went to sleep. :p

Jessica wrote home at 1:52 am

I'M NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU! ANYMORE!!! :P :P :P

Hmmph.

Now, don't ask. I barely just awoke from a nap that went horribly wrong. I mean, a nap that went horribly long. Went to sleep at slightly past 8 p.m. (after reading Antiquity...almost done with the chapter on Athens! Yay!!!).................then didn't awake till 11.50-something. I wouldn't have realised it was so late if Sam hadn't sms-ed and forced me to get up, actually. 'Cos I saw the time the message was received and nearly had a heart attack.

Anyway, have to give allowances to myself since I'm still slightly sick. Of school. Pity I wasn't sick last week instead. Then I could miss part of Friday's lessons. :P Actually, having the 'flu can be pretty fun. You get to flop all around the house looking and feeling like you're half-dead, command everyone to switch off the fans, sit in a corner and look pathetic with a piece of tissue, miss classes..........

..........Yeah, it was really FUN. More fun than school. Although I have to admit, the chocoloate ice cream last night was a bad idea. But whatever.

Eh...Gah...Argh...must I study again?

Sigh. Read the stupid notes only about a gazillion times since school started, especially this week. So if I don't remember anything then IT'S NOT FAIR and I SHALL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR NOT STUDYING!

Just taking precautions...

Jessica wrote home at 12:12 am