Pages from the Journal of My Journey with Jesus

Just little bits of unimportant things scattered about, jotted down for no reason.

I am trying to study, for a test tomorrow. And I am bored, even though I have not read more than two sentences. And I did first say that I was bored about a half second after opening the book, perhaps in the time it took me to register that the pages were white but not enough time for me to realise the book even had words in it, let alone what those words contained.
There’s this niggling thought that distracts me by telling me that I can easily study tonight, tomorrow morning.
When I come to the possibility that maybe I’m not ADHD at all, I’m just a lazy. Because nothing else can account for that I can crash study really well when I want to. Of the many nights and mornings I have considered 4 a.m. a decent time to be awake and learning about the wonders of the world. Maybe I just need the pressure. Which is why I can’t concentrate when my exam is fourteen hours away but can when it is two. Of course, by t minus two hours, I usually would have given up all hope on passing the test.

Had English practical test today, an oral test of sorts, done through the internet. It’s like a tele-test. Makes you wonder at technology. It’s humorous if I didn’t take into account that I would be graded. My English was good, as it always is, except for a the many hanging sentences and filler words that plague my language: “So… yeah.” “Well… yeah.” “And… yeah.” “Y’know,” “like,” “cos like,” “Y’know,” “I guess.”
If you have nothing more to say, stop there. Sentences are ended with a period, not “so” nor “well” and certainly not “yeah”. If you do say so, well or and, it is so that you can continue your idea with a supplementing point. It should not be used to buy time and it certainly should not be used to buy time to realise that you have nothing more to say.
“Y’know,” if the listener already knows, then please don’t say it. It’s redundant to tell people of things they are already aware of and is a waste of precious resources of glucose and emits heat and carbon dioxide waste, both of which contribute to global warming and drowning polar bears.
“Like.” Of the same form, appearance, kind, etc. In like manner with. Nearly, closely, approximately. NOT, I repeat, NOT a word to be used after “because”. Note that “It’s like,” also makes not much sense in the way you overuse it. “It’s like traumatising.” It is either traumatising or not. If it resembles traumatising, please state what it is.
“I guess.” Only to be used when really guessing, not when you are disinclined to commit to an absolute answer. And please try not to guess in an exam. It is also rather impossible to guess your own opinion because your opinion is yours and you should know it.
“Kinda.” Not a word. “Kind of.” As with “like,” it either is or isn’t. I don’t care what it is kind of.
“Well,” does not need to be preceded with, “uh.” “Frog in a well.” not “Frog in uh well.” Similarly, “Well, it’s hard to tell.” Not “Uh… Well, it’s hard to tell.” and certainly not “Uh… well, like, it’s hard to tell.” Also note that not every sentence needs to start with “Well”
“I mean.” I already assume that you mean it if you say it, you need not specify that you mean it. And please don’t say it if you don’t mean it.

To the examiner.
If you give me a picture with a boy in a ballet classroom full of girls and ask me to describe the picture, I will tell you, “A boy in a ballet classroom full of girls.” I will not tell you about popular forms of dance in my country nor the effect the image has on challenging stereotypes until you prompt me to.
Please don’t thank me after every other sentence I say. I feel inclined to reply, “You’re welcome,” each time you say, “thank you,” and I really don’t want to say, “you’re welcome,” fifteen times in a fifteen minute conversation. And really, you needn’t thank me.
It would be nice if, after introducing yourself, you gave me a little time to greet you and introduce myself. That is generally how conversations go. Please do not prompt me to introduce myself by asking me how many languages I speak.
If you ask, “okay?” expect me to reply and don’t move on immediately to your next sentence. If you don’t expect me to reply, then don’t ask if I am okay with it.

Well, that was English. As you can tell, I’m not entirely happy about it.

Chemistry report, serotonin. My teacher has allowed me to modify my report and we spoke today on how I could do that. He wants me to put brackets and explain the meaning of every difficult word I use. As for other modifications he suggested, those were somewhat valid. He was a little more tactful this time around and said that, “I know you know the meaning but just put it in brackets anyway so when the moderator comes, he knows you know it too.” LIAR, big fat LIAR. Last I heard, it was assumed you understood the work you handed in unless there was reason to suspect otherwise.
While I am still, overall, a little edgy over the issue, I have calmed down a lot and shall, despite my silent protests and curses, improve on my report.

Lastly, albeit completely unrelated to the rest of this post. I’m finally starting to realise how little I know. I’m finally starting to humble myself in the face of reality. I know a lot, and I don’t know so much more. And I am forever regretful that I wasn’t aware of this before. Once again, pride has been my fall.
But thank You for holding on to me anyway. I love You.

Yun once told me about OCD people hoarding things. And I know I hoard, proud of it to some weird extent.
I was cleaning my study desk this morning *gasp* and I found four sanitary pads, a heck load of empty plastic bags, three handbags, two pouches, three books and two CDs. It was a mountain before, I’m surprised the table didn’t give way.
In the spirit of cleaning up, I decided to gather all the coins I had found and all the ones in my wallet so that I could use them. I have over 11 dollars in coins. And that’s just the Singapore ones. What the heck do I have 11 dollars in coins for?
And money. I have… too much. Well, too much cash to be in a drawer of a normal 20 year old anyway.
anyway… OCD. lol…

In bio on the topic of introduced animals becoming pests, mostly in Australia. Cane toad were originally introduced as a biological control to control the beetle population in sugar cane plantations. Not only did they fail miserably as beetles were hard to fine and those toads ate virtually everything so they didn’t bother to look for the beetles, they also reproduced like rabbits, well, reproduced like cane toads, and became a pest. They also have poisonous skin which is harmful for many local animals that would like a meal of toad. (but there are some which are immune) So, no predators and horny, you’ve got yourself a pest.
One of the means of controlling the population, which I cannot understand, is to sterilise them. Something about triploidy, sterile, and other stuff.

Me: Why would they want to breed triploid toads and release them to the wild?
Friend: Because those are sterile and they want to increase the sterile population.
Me: but… =/ those toads are sterile, triploid, they cannot reproduce, so it’s not like they can produce more mutated toads.
Friend: idk, that’s what it says.
Me: But… it doesn’t make sense, if you catch a cane toad, why would you bother to breed it? If it’s a pest, shouldn’t you just kill it? I mean, would you breed a mutated rat if you caught one?
Friend: Yeah, actually, there were a few websites I found which suggested killing them with golf clubs.
Me: *bursts out laughing*
Friend: *mutters something about Australia not having good golfers*

It’s just that, that gold club part, is just hilarious. I mean, you want to suggest to control the population by killing them, good and well. But to suggest a murder weapon too? What for? Why can’t I kill them with a baseball bat? Or run over them with a car?

Anyway.

I actually have a maths assignment to do now. It was given to us about a million months ago and I’ve not even read it. It’s due tomorrow. Well, technically, today. It’s 2.30 in the morning.

Facebook isn’t loading, which perhaps isn’t a bad thing.

I have many indian friends. Excerpt.
Friend 1: Yesterday my mum made chatni.
Friend 2: oh, you should try my mother’s chatni, it’s sexy.
Friend 3: My mother’s chatni is sexy.
Me: … My mother is sexy.

chatni is a type of Indian food.

Got back a few marked tests yesterday. Tests I sat for a fairly long time ago and don’t remember much of. But I scored pretty well for them. Top both tests for Physics. And scored an A for Bio. I’m happy with it. It’s good motivation for me since exams are next week and I’ve been slacking and “losing hope” lately.

That about sums up my day yesterday.

I scores 10 out of 20.
After all that hardwork,
apparently it was too good for year 12 work. On the bright side, my teacher did say that I could hand it in for my third year BSc research, but for Ausmat, it has to be simplified.

In a rush now but I will come back and curse later.

Ok, editing now…

I need to firstly bitch.
I think that one of the reasons he gave me such low marks is in part because he didn’t think I knew what I was writing about. He did say something, before he gave us back the reports, that if the report is in simplified English, then it showed that we understood the topic.
When I, rather calmly, asked him what I did wrong in the paper, he looked briefly through my paper because we were in a whole class, he could not give me more attention. Which is fine. Anyway, he looked through my paper, he sees in me use the word “et al”, which he had circled when he was marking. He then asked me if I knew what it meant.
I was pretty insulted. If I can use it in my report, then you must assume that I know what it means, if you think I don’t, then ask me, don’t bloody circle the thing and immediately assume I don’t know.
Also, as far as “simplified English” goes, my standard of English is not “simplified” by Malaysian standards. Especially when I am writing, I use “big” words. Not big like triskadekaphobia. Big like inhibit, stimulate, recurrent, affinity. These are words I use as daily vocabulary, they are not big to me.
He also mentioned about my pictures being too small/blur. This, I can accept, but I do not believe this alone warranted 10 marks.
He commented on my introduction and conclusion, which I also can accept.
But overall, he gave me an impression that he didn’t have a good reason to give me low marks except that it was too good. Too complicated, is the word he uses.
So the disappointment of finding out I did poorly on this research, along with the stressors of the everything else, I cried. Like, huge ass cried. I thought I couldn’t cry, but apparently, I can sometimes.
I rushed out of the classroom, to the toilet, locked myself in a stall and just stayed there for fifteen minutes crying. and cut myself but shh…
I’m just really glad I had good friends who followed me to the toilet and stood outside asking me if I was okay, telling me that my teacher is gay, and cracking jokes in an attempt to cheer me up.
Personally, I was rather surprised that I cried so much. A poor grade doesn’t warrant this much tears, imho. Perhaps it was more the disappointment of having done a job well yet not getting recognition for it.

Anyway, since I attempted to murder him I talked to him about it, he offered that I could improve on the paper and send it in to him again. Which I as rather reluctant to do because I felt it was unfair. What gives me the right to get a second chance when the rest of the class don’t. So I wanted to write to him, rather officially, and tell him why I think I shouldn’t have gotten 10 and ask him why he gave me that mark, and ask him to stuff a gold club up his ass ask him to justify giving me 10 marks.

BUT
today in class, he opened it up to the whole class and told everyone that if they weren’t happy with their marks, that they could see him.
So I’ve since decided that I SHALL attempt to lower my intelligence simplify my project report.

What pisses me off is that, I think if you use big words in your report, you automatically get lower marks. A friend of mine, schooled in Sg and has English standard equal to or higher than mine, wanted to improve on her project too because she only scored 13. (top in class was 19) When he went to see him, he looked through her report, saw words like bradycardia and tachycardia and asked her if she knew what it meant. Needless to say, she too was insulted by that question. When she said she knew and subsequently explained them, he said, “Well, I didn’t know,” perhaps to point out that the language is too difficult for the average reader to understand. BUT she did explain what those words were, she explained every big word that she used. AND frankly, I don’t think those words are very big words at all. I know what it means, I’m sorry if you’re too stupid to know, but I know. *rolls eyes*
Also, it’s a CHEMISTRY report, a scientific report should use scientific terms. This isn’t for your grandmother to read, it’s for, perhaps, our peers, at least. Who are science students, who should know scientific terms. And if they don’t, I’m sorry that their standard is so low, but you cannot penalise me for having a standard that is higher than the rest.

Overall, I’m still pretty pissed of at him but I shall intend to bend to his wishes and “improve” my project.

Bio teacher: So how do you recommend these environmental issues to be controlled.
Me: Shoot all the humans.
Classmate: I agree.