I will not fail FUNE!!! NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!! Production still drives me nuts and I haven't revised Equilibrium yet. (Why does the latter sound like a chemical reaction??)

My class' version of Battle Royale is currently at chapter 3. The good thing is I'm not one of the first three who died...in fact I'm the only person who hasn't even been mentioned yet!

I was supposed to stay home and revise today. Problem is I woke up verrrrrry late and still had a nap. So I haven't had the chance to begin genetics yet. GAH.

Don't know what's become of that web publishing proposal. Honestly? I really don't care either.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WEAR THIS WEEK!!!!!!!!!! (a certain dark brown jacket is bugging me to wear it...)

In fact I don't even want to go to school. After this week I'll probably self-destruct. SO MANY BLOODY THINGS DUE AND TESTS TO TAKE IN 2 WEEKS!!! ARGH.

Man U is one goal down at the moment. 57 seconds into the game!!!

Second straight week without touching my book. Stupid school.

I want to shop.

ERM. You didn't see that last line.

*runs off at top speed*

Jessica wrote home at 12:05 am

Okay, an update on the last two days: as usual I was not paying attention on Friday. Unfortunately we had to do group research on a current issue and come up with articles which will help us write our essays. Our group was spoiled for choice but I didn't find any article that dealt with EXACTLY what I wanted to write about, so by the time everyone had filed out of the lab, I was still hurriedly shuffling papers into my file and coursebook. I even read through the whole pile of articles as I walked out of school and to the MRT! Discarded most of them outside the station and spent the train ride highlighting stuff in the relevant articles.

Then I got to City Hall and promptly forgot about anything to do with school.

Lalalala.

Sam got there late, thanks to whichever-bus-that-took-so-long-to-arrive. I told her to go to the Marina Square or Suntec branch of Cartel (since it was likely to be less crowded), but did she listen? No.

And what happened as a result?

Did Cartel run out of fish or pasta?

Were we made to wait half an hour for a table?

No, but we got served by *AHEM*!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had just settled down at a table and were poring over the !Chill @ SP brochure I had just gotten in class, when this tall waiter came along and exclaimed enthusiastically, "Hey, guys!"

I, as usual, wasn't looking up. The waiter didn't budge from the table. I was like, erm...since when did the waiters come up to us to take orders? Hasn't this place always been self-service??

Across from me Sam looked up and made a small exclamation. And I (still staring at the menu) was like, ooooooookay, why is she staring at the waiter???

So finally I looked up to see HER grinning down at us.

And then she had to unintentionally insult ask by inquiring if we knew how the ordering system worked. Hmmph. I've been eating at Cartel since before the millennium! *sticks tongue out in startingly realistic imitation of YQ*

After that I think I lost my appetite. I mean, if you come to think of it, why was she greeting us in such a familiar and friendly way?? I don't recall us being very close friends with her the last few years! *sticks tongue out again*

ANYWAY, we obviously didn't linger after finishing our meal. First Sam went to Sembawang, where we spent a loooooooooooooong time till she finally paid for her HP #4 soundtrack.

Then I went about pestering her to buy her jacket at U2. Mwahahahaha. It was in stock in the CityLink branch, but she said she'd rather try it in a bigger outlet so she'd go to Suntec instead.

Me: "Later Suntec no stock lor!"

BINGO. After trying (and failing) to postpone the inevitable trip to the next U2, it turned out the jacket was nowhere to be found. So Sam was all happy (:P) as we took the time to comb through Mini Toons and Carrefour's toy section.

BUT THEN...we had to return via CityLink! A-HA!!!!!!!

And Sam was finally convinced to try the darned jacket. Which was nice and everything, but my brown jacket is nicer. Hahahahahaha. Kidding.

Of all things Sam was suggesting going to Orchard to buy instead, and I (the eternal pessimist) pointed out that if it wasn't in stock there, it'd be much harder to return to this outlet and get it.

Eternally pessimistic for the right reasons! :P There was no stock in the Takashimaya branch and no M in the Wsma Atria branch.

But by then she'd finally bought it anyway so who cares.

Well, we did walk around a fair bit, from Kinokuniya (no HP book for Sam) to the sports shops to Giordano, etc. - the usual places.

Then it was a nice little walk to OG to find Sam's belt. Unfortunately we stopped to browse through the assortment a little too long, because then she couldn't decide between the pale blue one she'd initially wanted, or one with red, cream and blue stripes.

The latter eventually won, and by "eventually" I mean EVENTUALLY. Till I was almost asleep. :P

After that I pondered why I didn't buy anything, as Sam left for the MRT and I made my way to the bus stop.

I bought Mos Burger home for dinner, had my bath and slept peacefully till 3 a.m. Then I had to scramble through my work till past 7 a.m.

I had a short sleep till 11.30 a.m., when I got up again to have lunch and complete my proposal part. Left for Orchard at 2.30 p.m.

Met my mother at Centrepoint. Since she wanted to stay in Orchard long enough to see the light-up, we spent the rest of the afternoon there, walking up the stretch of shopping centres. First we stopped at Hang Ten at that Emerald place, looking for jeans again. Found a nice pair and went to try size M, because I suppose S was too short.

The stupid thing was that, however short S was, M wasn't much of an improvement. And not only was it waaaaaay too short, but it was really lose too.

Bleargh. I wish they wouldn't sell jeans by S, M and L. There are highly disproportionate people on earth, you know.

Anyway, then I decided to try one of another style, which was S. And quite amazingly, it fit! It was just about the same length as my current pair of jeans, and it wasn't too tight or loose. The only glitch was that it had this coloured bands on the back pockets, which make it difficult to match anything. But one of the bands is brown...*whistles and walks by*

My mother signed up for the Hang Ten card whilst paying for it, so she got a 50% discount and it only cost $25. Haha. (Oh, btw: if you need the card, you can borrow it!)

Then we walked around Takashimaya and Wisma Atria till we were too hungry, so we queued up outside Swensen's. My mother had fish and chips and I had the black pepper seafood pasta I've been wanting to try for a long time. Verdict is that it's really nice and everything, but perhaps because I just ate fish pasta the previous day, it wasn't quite as satisfying. :P

By the time we left it was almost dark and the decorations were lit. Took a few pics whilst waiting for 124, which brought us past the decorations at City Hall too, before the winding route through Chinatown and finally back home.

Yawn.

Jessica wrote home at 12:48 am

Alllllllll right. Kind of flustered at the moment; we just went to the IDEA Centre to interview the lecturer there and take down notes for a (group) article due tomorrow for News Writing. I'm the group editor so it's up to me to correct mistakes and the like.

Then there's our WP project proposal. We were supposed to do it on Tuesday but somehow I haven't heard anything about it since Monday. And it's due first period next Monday! ARGH.

Group projects.

But anyway. Back to where I left off. Have more and more to update as each busy day crawls by. The movie was okay, I guess. Don't know. Somehow the third one seemed nicer in a sort of atmospheric way. I honestly thought the Hungarian Horntail chasing Harry was a bit too much. What happened to it when Harry returned alone to the stadium?! *images of students being fried alive come to mind*

And the first few scenes (pre-Hogwarts) were sooooooo brief. It was like a few minutes of this, a few minutes of that, then the situation changes again. Like the World Cup. It started and immediately ended. :P

As for Deprived Myrtle and the Annoying Cinemagoers' Adoration of Cedric, kindly read Sam's blog. Lazy to repeat the same things.

The movie ended and, as usual, Sam and I were the last to leave after having stayed through the entire roll of credits, only to be disappointed by the lack of promised funny takes. Although there was a nice song that played at the end and we were both laughing at the thought that it might be "This Is The Night" on the soundtrack. (It wasn't.)

It was really late by then so about the only thing we managed to do was look at Sam's green shirt for like the third time in as many weeks. :P Then we, sweltering in our jackets, took a bus to City Hall. We had Cartellinas at Cartel and since it was already 9.30 p.m. when we arrived, we had cheesecakes too. As Sam said in her blog, she played a game of Agent V before we left for home. Agent V rocks!!! (Even though I can't get past the fifth mission!!!)

*cough* On the bus I played Agent V also, and when I got home I was soooooooooooo tired that I fell asleep halfway whilst planning my commercial.

Saturday morning I honestly forgot about the class reunion. I went out with my mother to Raffles City, then Suntec where we had roti prata and I looked for jeans, and finally Marina Square where I left almost as soon as I entered. Actually I had half a mind to forgo the gathering and just keep browsing around. In fact, I was 10 min late for the meeting at Marina Bay station because I took my time walking out of CityLink.

Not that it mattered. A few of us - Lydia, Charis, Samantha, Wei Ling, Edwin, Shaun, Samuel (I think that's all) - waited there for quite some time whilst negotiating with "Zhi Yu's group" via handphone. Finally ZY's group got us to meet at Plaza Singapura instead because the Marina South steamboat wasn't halal.

So fine. We took the train to Dhoby Ghaut, and waited for quite some time near the entrance of PS, where Valerie joined us. Finally "ZY's group" turned up - ZY, WH, Vanessa, Johan and Andrew (ignoring the fact Johan and Andrew weren't from 4A!). More waiting around and discussing. We had decided on Pizza Hut and were just about to enter when Lydia suggested going to Seoul Garden at Bugis...............

Off again to waste our train fare. :P Exactly two hours from our initial meeting time, we arrived at the equally-crowded Bugis Junction. Met Gillian, Pui Ser and Sandesh outside the restaurant.

Off-topic: Sandesh and Andrew standing shoulder-to-shoulder are damn scary!!! They were both towering over all of us...

Anyway, we spent an EVEN longer time deliberating outside because apparently we had to pay $25 per diner, and all of us thought it was too expensive whilst some didn't have enough cash on hand.

In the end Lydia and co. (I don't know for what reason) left and the rest of us went in. We were alloted four tables (two adjoining with a small gap between the other two). I sat across from Edwin and Shaun, and of all the annoying things to happen, ZY's table was full so WH took the liberty of joining us.

Thus began what they called "mass cooking", whereby the guys took really large amounts of meat, cooked them all at once, and started distributing them to everyone. They were halfway through barbequing another large plate of meat, when WH got the idea to eat his money's worth of ice cream, and after that he said he couldn't eat anymore so the plate was left alone. (Not to mention Edwin and Shaun took the cue and went to get ice cream too.)

We were almost halfway through eating when Rosalia and Sue Anne arrived. When Sue Anne stopped eating momentarily, the waiters came to clear the table and so she couldn't barbeque anything after that. Shaun ended up becoming her personal cook, whilst he ate his third or fourth bowl of chocolate ice cream.

We didn't keep eating till closing time though. No one could decide where to go so we lingered about by the escalators, took some photos, then headed for the MRT. I was the only one (*sniff*) who took the west-bound train.

I got home and planned the rest of the commercial. Took a short rest before starting work on my PowerPoint................

..................but instead fell asleep and didn't awake till morning.

I had high hopes for Sunday, but in the end I was so busy getting all my work done (pictures and slides for the PowerPoint, reading notes) that I didn't even have time to read The Pillars of the Earth. In fact I didn't have any breaks save a nice nap. :(

Monday I was REEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLY not in the mood for school, what with the nice weather and long day ahead. Plus we had a "pleasant" surprise when our FUNE lecturer said our IPRA lecturer was away and thus could not conduct his lecture, so she was going to take over the lecture instead. Yippee. I think I spent half my time dozing.

NW was fun though, we played some game in which our group cheated but still didn't win. Haha.

The weather was as nice on Tuesday. Like I said in my previous post, I returned to the classroom and had another half an hour of lecture before we were released - giving me 3.5 hours before the next lecture.

Went home and got almost 1.5 hours of sleep, which certainly saved me. In fact I was having such a nice time snoring away while it rained outside, that I seriously considered missing the lecture. But always the good girl, I eventually got up and went out into the rain. Was almost 10 min late but people were still pouring into the theatre. After the lecture I had my dinner and went off for French immediately afterwards.

French released late again and as usual I checked my watched only about a thousand times. Time seems to slow down whenever French starts! :P I had accidentally left my umbrella drying at home, so thank goodness it had stopped raining by the time class ended.

Got home, had my bath and took an extremely long nap, waking up later to upload pics to my thumbdrive for the PowerPoint, among other things. Then, not having finished reading my FUNE notes, the match started.

I'm beginning to think there is absolutely no point in staying up on a schoolday to watch Man U play. That was like the fourth game I watched and the third in which they didn't score anything! :P

Of course I was crazily tired and didn't want to go to school again. It was raining really heavily and I had two straight tutorials to survive, so you can't blame me. But OF COURSE I went to school. :(

I actually arrived for the FUNE tutorial 6 min late, but right after I sat down the lecturer announced she would be kind (owing to the weather) and not mark me (and the other classmate who arrived at the same time) as late. But everyone else who arrived later was considered late. What luck! :)

IPRA tutorial we watched a video and then did the questions. I wasn't paying attention to either.

Was soooooo not looking forward to USOL but it was raining so going home would be troublesome. Endured 1.5 hours of not understanding what the lecturer was going on about and trying my vainest to keep awake, before we were let off early. I was the second-last to leave because the lecturer had borrowed my pen at the start of class and hadn't returned it. So I walked up to him and he asked if I was going to mark my attendance.

I was like, "No no, I marked it already."

Then he was looking at me questioningly so I added, "Um, my pen."

And he was like, "Oh...Ohhhhhhhh..." And promptly asked me if the lecture was okay; if I had any questions about it; if I understood what he was talking about and if he was too fast or something.

So, being nice and kind, I said, "Er, yeah. It's okay."

LIAR!!!

Then he said something else, nodded and walked back to the front of the classroom, before noticing I was still standing in the classroom.

And then I said, "Erm...my pen?"

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

Well, after that I forgot all about my extreme fatigue and zipped off to Orchard, where I found out that a certain Esprit outlet had closed (!) and had to run all the way to the near-Cineleisure outlet to find my jacket.

*cough*

I got home two hours later and slept without having a proper lunch.

Last night, unfortunately, I noticed that I was running faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar behind time with planning my presentation. I spent a loooooooong time working on my FUNE tutorial (didn't actually finish it) before the match started.

Now I have to say that, after the events of the previous night, I was not really keen on staying up again. Plus when the line-up was read, I realised someone wasn't playing and so I lost interest almost completely.

HOWEVER, I did leave the television on as I went to work out my presentation and add in the final picture. Was sooooooooooooo tired but I couldn't delay anything anymore. Sigh. Finally went off to sleep at 4.15 a.m. (60 minutes into the match, which I found out just ended in a goal-less draw - mwahahahaha) and couldn't wake up again when my alarm rang........................

Jessica wrote home at 1:31 pm

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

That's all for today. See you.

...

...

...

Yeah, sure.

Okay, let's really start off with: you know what's pointless? What's pointless is our IDEA class being moved up one hour earlier, me rushing through the one-hour break to surf the Net for project stuff (and try to blog, but the connection failed on me), then running off to our classroom. After 10 minutes we found out the classroom had changed, so we went into the classroom and set out our models (damn, mine is soooooooooo crappy).

And the lecturer tells us to leave the room for the next hour so she and the other examiner can grade our work!

So I'm back here again. :P

Anyway, I haven't blogged the past week because I was either too busy or too tired.

Let's see. I think something happened on Thursday but I can't remember what it was. Probably I finally managed to catch up on most of my lost sleep.

The problem with having only one class on Friday is that at the end of Thursday I immediately switch to weekend mode and forget I actually have to PAY ATTENTION during class. We watched a video for about one hour, then set about coming up with points for a debate, in which my group was given an almost-impossible stand. :P

I am such a failure at group brainstorming, I tell you. I can NEVER NEVER think of anything productive to contribute, especially after everyone's contributed and are staring at me expectantly. I always wonder how stupid my classmates must think I am whenever that happens - which is extremely often!

Anyway. I went home straight from school, and after procrastinating by reading the papers and eating cup noodles, I finally left the house again for Orchard. Arrived around 2.08 p.m. Went immediately to find my jacket, still at 30% (sniff). Walked around for some time until I nearly fell asleep. Didn't buy anything so was pretty dissatisfied.

By the time Sam arrived, it was as good as our meeting time so we barely had time to do anything before going to buy dinner (which, as she can attest, we took a very long time on). We packed the packages illegally into our bags, then headed to the cinema.

On our way to the hall, we heard some usher telling another usher that the Harry Potter film would be at "volume 7".

Apparently that meant "VERY loud", 'cos one of the pre-movie trailers, King Kong, nearly destroyed our eardrums when King Kong and a T-Rex were furiously growling and roaring at each other.

(Erm, one hour up. Update another time. Can't be sure when because if I don't have a project discussion later, I'll go home to sleep during the 3-hour break. Then there's French, of course, booooooo. And after that I'll be too darn tired to do much.)

(Oh, and there's a match tomorrow morning! *evil thoughts flash through mind*)

*Jessica makes a quick getaway*

Jessica wrote home at 11:28 am

For all who would like to know, I slept from just before midnight to 6 a.m., and when the stupid alarm rang I pretended I didn't hear it. Of course I got up eventually and grumbled and grumbled and grumbled about being too freaking tired to go to school.

Not like I had a choice.

Econs tutorial was okay; IPRA tutorial was not. There was this break of 25 min during the class, when I actually fell asleep. My lecturer woke me up and I was like, Oh nooooooooooooo!!! Class started and I was asleep!!!!!!!

And then I looked around me and realised practically the whole class had yet to return. :P

I was very surprised when I found the corridor along my genetics class empty. Decided everyone must have gone into the classroom already. But turned out it was empty besides the group that entered right before me. Talked a little to the two girls who sat beside me (and who I think sat beside me last week too). Unfortunately I forgot both their names in like five seconds flat.

I've begun to notice this annoying trend: my classes only end early when there just happens to be another class some time after that. Like IPRA ended half an hour early last week, leaving an hour to French. IDEA ended a whole hour earlier last week too, leaving three hours to IPRA. And just now genetics ended 15 min early...but of course I have to wait another 2 hr 15 min to the make-up lecture. So I've spent the last hour in the library copying my notes and doing other stuff.

Now I'd really like to sleep again but I don't think I have time. Besides, I'm hungry. *stomach rumbles*

OH, and I just found the academic calendar for 2006/2007! Since by next year we would've made the transition to earlier entry after the O's, we're having the original long holidays back, which includes 2 weeks instead of 1 between the first two terms, 3 weeks instead of 1 in Term 3, and 9 weeks at the end of the year. The most amusing was the number of weeks per term. 8 for Term 1 and 7 for Term 2, that's not unusual. Then I saw Term 3 was 12 weeks long!

And you know what's the most pointless thing about having 12 weeks in Term 3? That after that we have 3 weeks of term holidays, before Term 4 starts............and Term 4 happens to last only 3 weeks.

ERM.

But, of all the sad things to happen, my birthday happens to fall right smack in the middle of those three weeks! BLEARGH.

Jessica wrote home at 4:11 pm

It all started when I was supposed to go offline at 1 a.m. to do my work for an hour before sleeping.

Of course, knowing me, that didn't happen.

Instead YQ and I spent the next 2.5 hours watching 4A's graduation video, viewing allllll the photos included in the CD, and reminiscing about old times. I was all like, "I want to go to SHSS tomorrow and walk down the corridors and play with the JERPSies during SS and have black pepper chicken pasta for recess, then joke around in Mrs Gan's class, not pay attention during Bio...then carry all my heavy books to meet Sam and walk across the road for bubble tea, then waste time by walking to the interchange via Tampines Central Park, finally arguing with Sam at the bus stand about which bus to take home."

Sniff. I have pictures of the top floor corridors stuck in my mind. I can almost hear some classmates chasing each other down the stairs, their voices and laughter echoing up. And I can practically feel the weight of my A Math textbook, file and either one of the science texts in my arm! In fact, I can almost taste my favourite grape ice-blended bubble tea...

SNIFF. I want my grape ice-blended bubble tea! :P

Of course after all this I was in no mood to sleep and in even less of a mood to get up at 6 a.m. and go to school. My only consolation was that school was going to end early for once. Was way too warm when I went to get ready, so I decided wearing my jacket would probably kill me. Which was, as you'd expect of me, a bad move: my first class was FREEZING cold and then it started raining in school...grr.

Anyway, even as I was waiting for the MRT to Dover, I couldn't stop laughing 'cos I kept thinking of the grad video, with "one word describing yourself" above everyone's individual pic. Jing Guo's "Apple", Xian Hong's "Thunder", Hien Yong's "Theoretician", WH's "Boy", Varun's "Ronaldo" and ZY's "Humorous" (above his scowling face) are sooooo sooooo funny I was nearly crying with laughter when I watched it.

Then the train arrived at Dover and I became more sane. In fact something struck me: did I miss 4A so much because I really missed 4A so much, or because school currently sucks so much that anything, even A Math homework and Physics tests, is comparably better?

Hmm.

As for the rest of the day, I shall make it brief 'cos nothing much happened. We did Macromedia Dreamweaver during WP; which is really quite easy to use, although I was so tired that I can't remember much of what we did at all! :P Oh, and I got my group for our design-a-website project! And although those two guys wanna do "Anime", at least it's better than who-knows-what theme the usual group would come up with. :P

Next was FUNE lecture, which as usual went super-fast and all I can say is: thank goodness I read up on market equilibrium during the weekend! And at least, I can see the logic in market equilibrium more than in the law of supply...anyway, we also received the sad news of our make-up lecture on Wednesday from 5 - 6.30 p.m. CRAP! And I soooo need Wednesday to recover from 12 hours of school on Tuesday, but because of genetics I can't go home to sleep at noon and return at 5..............GRRRR..............

The guest lecture was inspiring. I even managed to stay wide awake the whole time. I think if I didn't want to be a journalist before this, I probably would want to be one now. :)

IPRA lecture, as usual, started like 15 min late and still managed to end on time. Oh, and as usual, I think more than half the people there weren't paying attention. My classmates in my row were chatting loudly away; the girls in the row in front of me were busy folding straws. *rolls eyes*

Went home, quickly made a list of work to complete, then raced around getting all the required stuff and tossing them on the bed, so after my bath I sat down amongst the pile of books and started on my work. As of now I have finished everything, including next week's French homework (which is A LOT!) and will be going off soon to read News Writing and Reporting For Today's Media, which I didn't manage to read over the weekend due to laziness. :P Sigh. Long day tomorrow. And Wednesday. And Thursday. I shall be glad when Friday and Saturday come. ;)

Jessica wrote home at 11:08 pm

I just realised I forgot about the advertisement drafts I promised to post. Here they are:

Oh, and speaking of photos, on Friday after school I checked my phone and there was this picture of an aeroplane on it. Didn't see any reason for anyone to send me a pic of an aeroplane, so I immediately called up the only person who would send me such a pic (my father!), who promptly told me it was the new A380 that had just landed. Oooooh. But I'm lazy to put it here so too bad.

Sigh. Depressing how fast the weekend passes. On Friday it seems like a long way more. I woke up all alert at 8 a.m. yesterday, and my immediate reaction was, "Oh my goodness! Am I insane or what? Didin't I just go to sleep 3 hours ago?!" So I made my self go back to sleep.

Then I woke up at 9 a.m., mused at my wildly-functioning internal clock, and went back to sleep again.

Finally I woke up at 11.30 a.m. and decided it was enough. :P Spent my afternoon lounging around, reading my genetics notes (what nucleosomes and chromatids and the chemical components in a nucleic acid!) - as you might've guessed, I fell asleep. Slightly over an hour later, I was awoken for tea. Then I quickly finished up the notes and started on The Pillars of the Earth, which is very nice but I get the idea it's going to be weepy very often. However, staring at the small print made me fall asleep AGAIN, and when I was next awoken it was nearly dark and time to leave for dinner at HarbourFront.

We had dinner at Pastamania.

Guess what I ate! :)

P.S. Erm...my MSN nick...er...I think I need to change it. Bad influence, it is...

Jessica wrote home at 3:46 am

Anyway, I ended off the last entry before my DVPA class. After learning about all the different-sized shots, we were made to split up into groups and film a short script. My group took one hell of a long time to get started and from 40 minutes we were left with 5 minutes to film. I was the cameraman and boy, did I suck. Thankfully we get another go at it next week.

Friday's Issues & Viewpoints class started off slow as usual, with us breaking into small groups and thinking up statements relating to issues that we will discuss in the following weeks. I realised that I have, sadly, few Viewpoints on world Issues. Today's topic for discussion was mail-order brides, and we got to watch the first 45 min of this superbly screwed up documentary, which apparently is more screwed up at the end!

We were released at 11.45 a.m., whereupon I bounded out to the MRT station, took the train straight to Tiong Bahru, then caught 16. Reached Orchard with the intention to browse around and buy my mother's favourite fishcake later.

It dawned on me that other than a $2 note, I had no small change!

And as it turns out, the solution to this is to spend some money first.................

*cough* Don't think you want to know about the rest. I went to the usual places and at 2.45 p.m., decided to head home because I still hadn't had lunch and I knew I couldn't last much longer. Got home, had a nice bath, then made a bowl of the dry instant noodles I used to eat every night during the O's.

Oh! Speaking of the 'O' Levels, the past few days I've been observing secondary students doing some last-minute revision on the bus in the mornings. Needless to say, the temptation to point and burst out laughing at them is sometimes too great. :P

Er. Yeah. So I had my very very very late lunch, then had a few long conversations with Sam (who had gone to Orchard later to book next Friday's movie tickets) before I was finally allowed to have my nap. :P Woke up at 9-something, had dinner and read through the next topic in my FUNE textbook.

Spent the last few hours on the Net, talking about sweaters AGAIN. :P Now I am going off to eat something and read my genetics notes.

Jessica wrote home at 3:48 am

Just copied the next two genetics topics, by the way. The copying process was less complicated than the first batch of notes...the topic itself? ERM.

I know we're learning about cells and organelles. And there are a ton of diagrams and profound names. Shall go home, print it and find out just how difficult the thing is. :P Oh, and I finally cleared my thumbdrive as much as possible. :) It just occurred to me I still have my initial advertisement ideas for last semester. Will probably post them later.

FUNE went into overtime again. Must read the textbook again. Bother. Economics is so time-consuming. And since FUNE went into overtime, we were pretty late for News Writing. I kinda feel sorry for our NW lecturer. Our Monday lesson is the fourth class of the day and we're all too tired out to think properly, and our Thursday lesson is right after FUNE which will probably always end late! But the good news is that we have a guest lecturer next Monday, so although I won't have a single break for...erm...6 hours, I get to go home at 2 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. when NW usually ends, 'cos the guest lecturer is taking our only break of the day (12 p.m. - 1 p.m.).

Oh yeah. I wasn't very productive last night, for anyone who wants to know. Right after YQ went off, Sam appeared and we spent a looooooooooooong time talking about sweaters. :P By the time I got offline it was almost 3 a.m. and I couldn't do my tutorial because we hadn't learnt Supply officially in class and I couldn't remember anything from last Thursday's studying.

Not to mention I didn't have time to re-study at 3 a.m. in the morning, so I left my FUNE and USOL notes mostly untouched. SIGH. Have to make it up tonight.

Jessica wrote home at 2:32 pm

Anyway, to backtrack, I barely reached the bus stop on time this morning. As usual was one of the first to reach class - today's first class being at the media studio. We were led into the place and, to our surprise, didn't enter the lab but the filming room instead. I didn't even know there was space to sit there.

Well, apparently there was. One of the very first things our lecturer told us was, unfortunately, something I now wish I didn't have to find out. It seems that my class has gained notorious status...because we're like the first class to ever have so many schooldays starting at 8 a.m.!

Like, wow, so comforting at 8 a.m. in the morning.

Oh, speaking of which, the class very kindly passed around the "Change Friday's class to 9 a.m." petition during the lecture. NOT amused. But not like I could throw it into the rubbish bin. Sigh, and I was harbouring such happy thoughts about Friday too. As if one more hour of sleep is gonna make a difference. Like the lecturer remarked, the perpetual latecomers will still be late anyway - we didn't have a single 8 a.m. day last semester and it's not like they did any better. :P

Yeah. Back to my lecture. I seriously have been having some concentration problems since this semester began. Boo. So I was very glad when we moved away from the projection screen to the back of the room to set up the tripods and videocams, then learn how to operate them and bring them out of the studio to film whatever pointless things we wanted to film.

Then it was my first 2-hour break. Since I had so much time to spare, I decided to have KFC for a change. Took a long walk to FC5 and got a seat overlooking the swimming pool. Well, okay, so there was a stupid banner blocking my view, but I could hear the water lapping here and there. As expected, had a Shrooms meal and cheese fries - which, like Saturday, made me very full.

And you know when I'm very full, I start to get very sleepy...

Lingered for a little while to read my book, but then I couldn't take it anymore and wanted to sleep badly. Made my way zombie-like up the hill, found an empty table at the library, and had a nice nap. The funny thing about napping in school is that I never seem to sleep for long, but the nap still does its job. Too bad that's not the same at home... :P

Then it was lesson time again, that (pointless) institutional module, Innovation, Design & Enterprise in Action (IDEA). After that lecture on creativity and creativity and...err, I told you I wasn't concentrating, I still think it's pointless. Like next week, we're gonna do ontography drawing (???) and make a plasticine model of a product. See? POINTLESS.

At 3 p.m. (1 hour early) we were released from class. That meant 4.5 hours till French, so I was all like, "Whee! Can go home and sleep long long!"

Then I remembered the stupid IPRA lecture at 4 p.m.

Bother. I could've gone home for a little while, of course, but I had something else to do at the Admin block that took nearly half an hour. Then I decided it would be a complete waste of time walking out to the MRT so I might as well stick around and surf the Net somewhere. Settled on the main library 'cos it was right across from the admin building.

Oh yes, I know I should probably revise my French now, seeing as to how I'm getting more and more lost in lessons lately. But I already spent last night doing this week's work (as in, the French homework that's gonna be assigned later) so I can't say I care at the moment. Not to mention I found this very fascinating site (ooh, Web Publishing must be paying off, I finally remember the html code for hyperlinks!) that I can't seem to stop exploring...

More than 1 hour to the lecture. Kindly pray that I survive. Not the lecture, I mean, 'cos it doesn't matter - my whole row of classmates (including me) was sleeping during yesterday's lecture and the lecturer didn't even say anything. I meant French! If it ends past 7.40 p.m. (and that's being very generous already), I don't think I'll make it home alive.

P.S. Just remembered I haven't changed my class in my profile.

Jessica wrote home at 1:59 pm

1. MAN U WON!!!

2. Damn, why am I still awake?

3. *blinks innocently* I was planning this week's outfits. I got Monday and Thursday's done. Hurrah.

4. Well, at least it was worth it.

Jessica wrote home at 1:57 am

The good thing is I only have one gripe today.

Anyway, back to Wednesday. I grouched all the way to school, where I was early for the economics tutorial. The lecturer/tutor managed to talk almost nonstop during the two hours, although we only went through this semester's schedule. Thankfully there's only one little project for FUNE, which requires pairwork. My partner's not someone I haven't worked with before, but neither is she someone I've worked with waaaaaaaaaay too much (*cough*), so that's fine by me.

Straight after FUNE, we had to rush for our Introduction to Public Relations & Advertising (IPRA) tutorial in the next block. The lecturer/tutor told us about our special textbook for the module, which will only be available next week. Then we went through the semester schedule (two projects!!) and all the usual stuff. We were released like 48 min later, but not before he asked us again if we hadn't understood our FOM classes, etc., maybe it's because DMC students like to answer in short sentences only? Or maybe we were just too confident and that's why the other diploma people did better?

So we were all sitting there looking sheepish (including me, even though anyone can tell I was far from confident about the paper!) and I couldn't help wondering exactly how bad everyone did. Either way it doesn't apply to me! All my hard work and I get asked why I did so badly?!

Erm...so now I had more than 2 hours of break before my genetics class. I took the chance to walk to FC5, went to bind my FUNE notes first, then popped into Popular and checked the booklist. To my absolute delight, they had News Writing And Reporting for Today's Media in stock, so I asked for the price. $28. Then I asked for a copy of the FUNE textbook and went to pay. The bill was $50.

...Right. Didn't the girl say it cost $32something on Monday? How did it suddenly become $22? And, most importantly...

...you mean I wasted my time borrowing the book on Monday, when I could've just bought it?!

So in actuality the lecturer was right about the cost of the FUNE textbook. Not so for NW though, because it was supposed to be less than $20. Oh well.

Next, I must admit I went to sit somewhere to arrange my new stuff, and I couldn't help marvelling at my efficiency at getting everything done within the second day of school. :P

After that I headed back to the BizIT library to return the borrowed textbook (which was seriously weighing me down), then whiled away the time before 1 p.m. when I went to wait outside the classroom. Coincidentally, two of my classmates had GEM classes along the same corridor. They had long disappeared into their classrooms when mine finally opened.

Inside everything was dark and slightly humid from the lack of electricity. I nearly fell asleep before the lecturer finally entered at 1.25 p.m. and got the electricity on. He told us a little about what we were going to learn, then asked us what we wanted to do because there isn't much to cover during any class on the first week on school.

Obviously we wanted to go home.

But we had to stay till at least 2 p.m., so he went round the class asking everyone to introduce themselves and mention if they'd taken Bio before (I'd say maybe half the class had), and what they liked about it, or ask any questions about the course.

Of course when it got to my turn I just had to say how much I fancy genetic diagrams. :)

At exactly 2 p.m. we were released and I bemoaned havng to come back for French as I headed home.

At home I spent some furitless time trying to copy and paste the genetics notes off the 'Net. Finally gave up at Page 8 of 13 in chapter 2 and had a 45 min nap.

Woke up (with much difficulty), grumbled about not wanting to return and just sleeping the rest of the afternoon, but eventually dragged myself back to SB.

The classroom was on the top floor of Block 21. Surprisingly, not many people turned up for the class, considering everyone from the three classes was supposed to. The class seemed to drag on endlessly and I seemed to lose track of everything, till we were finally let off at 7.34 p.m.

That's like the first time we've been let off so early. The lecturer must've listened to my feedback! Wow!

Got home again, had dinner and a bath, then settled down to read my NW textbook. Sooooooooooo interesting. (Oh by the way, buying that textbook isn't even compulsory, but surely you can't stop me buying something about news writing? :P Besides this is only the first of my writing modules.) But as expected, I fell asleep soon after chapter 1.

Woke up, got the rest of my genetics notes (with much difficulty), then switched off the com and went to the living room to do the last question of my FUNE tutorial, among other assignments.

It was hard keeping awake till the match started, and when it did start it was totally not worth it (despite RvN being captain). At halftime I finished the remainder of my work, then in the second half I was too absorbed in finishing The Canterbury Papers to bother watching the match much. Switched it off just before the whistle blew.

I tried vainly to wake up early but only managed to do so at noon. Even then that was less than 6 hours of sleep. I finished the book and spent a lazy day snoozing, trying on clothes (my mother: "You think this place is a boutique ah?") and reading my textbook again. Because of my nap I didn't go off the com till past 2 a.m. Then I got this stupid idea to listen to some songs on my discman. After a lot of trouble I heard three songs then went off to sleep at past 3 a.m.

Less than 3 hours later I was awake and grumbling about the weather. I mean, what are the chances of it raining every alternate day - the day being a schoolday - this week?! However was in a suitably good mood as I went off to school.

Class took a long while to start. The classroom was the same as my French one, and since French had been the last class held there this week, I could still see remnants of my French lecturer's whiteboard scribbles! Haha. The lecturer of course started by mentioning our CC (the module she took us last semester) results. She said most of us had our final advertisement pulling up our grades. I don't know if I was in that category because I was averaging a B before that project anyway. Then she asked one of my classmates (who is very keen on the specialist diploma) how he did overall for CC.

I was like, if you don't know then who tallied the results?!

Anyway, he had a C and my lecturer told him not to worry about not getting that B needed for the course, because apparently as long as you get one B out of CC, OC and DVPA (this semester's module), it's all right.

Gee. She could've mentioned it earlier! I thought we had to get at least a B for all three! :P

Then she told us about the schedule. Apparently this GP-like module, made specially advanced for us "cream of the crop" (her exact words) DMC students (once again I shall say that remark completely insults the intelligence of other SP students...in fact, how come science students don't take the advanced module too? They have some of the lowest aggregates in SP!), involves one group project and a final essay test worth 40%.

And I thought I was done with stupid argumentative essays. I can't even remember how to write one.

At this point it was 9 a.m. and I honestly thought she would release us, but unfortunately she went and got photocopies of a newspaper article for us to study. Before that (and this is my gripe) however, one of my classmates asked her if we could kindly push our Friday class to 9 a.m. instead because we have so many 8 a.m. days this semester.

Me: What the hell, we only have ONE class on Friday and that's still not enough for you?! What difference does an hour make anyway, when you can just go home and sleep right after the lesson? It's not like our postponement of Friday's CC last semester from 8 to 9, since Friday used to end at 5 p.m. back then. But now...

And then of all annoying things practically the whole class were in favour of pushing the lesson back. BLEARGH.

Anyway, so we studied the article and then discussed it, after which it was 10.30 a.m. and we were finally dismissed. I went home, changed and then went out with my mother and aunt to Bugis, Orchard and Chinatown (for dinner).

Now I'll just go off to do some non-academic work (this good little girl did most, if not all, of her work on Monday and Wednesday already) then hopefully read more of Dead Man's Folly. Or my textbook.

Jessica wrote home at 12:24 am

I accidentally fell asleep last night so I had to do all my work later than I expected - reading (but not understanding) notes and that textbook, and doing my first tutorial. Actually didn't get to do anything else before I went to sleep past 5 a.m. Imagine if I didn't have a holiday today, I wouldn't be able to finish all that!

Woke up grouchy because I wanted to go out but I couldn't get up (due to sleeping at 5 a.m.). Plus I kept thinking about school tomorrow so that didn't help.

I eventually went to Orchard at past 3 p.m., wanting to look up some recommended texts at Borders, which was freaking full. Didn't find anything, although a similar text cost like $106 so I decided there was no point in searching anyway! Bought my earrings at Topshop, then walked around Kinokuniya before going to CD-RAMA to get my mother's compilation CD.

After which I went home; was slightly cheered by the noodle dinner...then promptly grouched away again.

Now I'm grouching because 1) I just watched the sad match highlights on TV, and 2) I can't watch the match later. The best I can do is like get up 15 min before it ends. Stupid French. Because of the two holidays, the only class available this week is Wednesday's. Like can't we just skip one week? Then I'd be going home at 3 and I can wake up early to watch the match and hopefully stay awake through two straight tutorials. But noooooooo, now I have to go to school at 8 a.m. and stick around till after my GEM at 3 p.m. Then I can go home and return at 5 .30 p.m. for the class, which is in the business block so I have to walk right back in again.

BOTHER.

Jessica wrote home at 11:43 pm