Monet Day/Guacamole Day/Pilgrim Place Festival (California)/Holiday Festival Of Lights (South Carolina)/Quiet Festival (New Jersey)/Children's Day (India)/Pickle Day/Teddy Bear Day
2003-11-14 @ 11:18 p.m.

Today's papers can be summed up in one of Yi-Xun's favourite phrases - no kick. I mean, what kind of paper is it when the first question is a crossword puzzle? It's even easier than last year's paper, which was already damn easy. Anyway, French was even better. It was supposed to be a 1 hour 30 minutes paper, but I finished it in 30 minutes. Then I spent an hour staring at the whiteboard, flipping idly through the paper and making some minor corrections. I was bored stiff. Seriously, it was barely a challenge. Heck, it was a waste of three years of studying, because I could have taken that paper after one year studying French, that's how elementary the paper was. It was totally unlike what came out in previous years. Maybe the original setter for subject 3012 died a few years back, then the new setter didn't know how to pitch the paper? Whatever, it's not like anyone was complaining when we came out.

Incidentally, I've decided what I want to do for the rest of my life, or rather until the day I go blind at least. I will strive to become multilingual, able to read, write and speak. I've got English, Chinese and French now, adding Italian and Quenya in two to three years. I'm not too keen to start on Latin anymore, because while it's highly organised which I like, it's also extremely confusing since I have no real grounding in the technicalities of grammar, which Latin is extremely concerned with. So that will probably have to wait until some undeterminable point in the future. I'm also fascinated by languages like Occitan and Venetan. They're related to French, but used by a far smaller population. I think it'd be quite challenging to pick up something like Catalan. I'm considering doing that in the distant future. Ah, such grand plans for language acquisition, but everything'll have to wait until Wednesday when the History paper's over and done with. You know what's fundamentally wrong with the education system here? You can't study what you want to study. Interest sustains pursuit of knowledge in my opinion. Compromising when it comes to choosing your subjects sucks! Why must we study what we think will get us a good job in the future? Granted, it's very pragmatic, but don't you feel sad having to give up what you really want to pursue? I want out of the system...