Pecan Day/Independence Day (Greece)/Festival Of Flowers (Alabama)
2004-03-25 @ 8:09 p.m.

My new timetable is quite sad, because it shortens Monday, which means I'll be wasting even more time before French every week. The rest of the days have been shortened, except Wednesday and Thursday. Argh, I still hate my timetable! Why am I typing an ex-RJC student's GP essay for Mr Purvis instead of studying for the French test tomorrow? I maintain that it's not worth the trouble to do especially well in these tests, just prepare sufficiently to get a decent grade, and that reflects your natural ability/talent. Sounds silly, but hey, it worked for me for my upper secondary French. Anyway, back to GP. I was about to type a nifty clause, but I realised that the English language lacks the equivalent of French "dont" in this context. I got a A2/B3, which I'm fine with, since I must confess to not having put much effort into it. Tommy, known formerly as Yi-Xun, got the only A1 in class. Considering he only took 30 minutes to finish it according to Li Jun, that's damn good. By the way, the essay that I'm typing out now is irritating me. It's written by a Medicine student, so it's understandably boring, but it's also full of typographical and punctuation errors that I have to keep an eye out for. Why can't people ever spell "millennium" with the double "n"? Stupid. Come on, this thing was word-processed, and the first paragraph already has a mistake because part of the first sentence was repeated! The essay is also extremely long-winded. The recommended length of a GP essay under examination conditions is just under 1000 words. This one hits 500 by the first page, and that's only the first three paragraphs. Okay, so maybe I'm being picky. Still, Mr Purvis is right. The ability to write powerfully with economy is precious indeed.

Just finished typing the essay, and going by what Mr Purvis was saying to us today, this essay isn't all that good. The conclusion is really flat, just a rehash of what the body of the essay was saying. Actually, I'm often guilty of that! Now that that's done, I can start on French. I've actually rationalised the whole thing, convincing myself that studying won't improve my grade significantly. I've conveniently forgotten where my council nominee interview's supposed to be held. I know it's the in the remoter TS block, either TS14 or TS15. Need to check with the rest of my class, see whether the other people who have interviews remember their venues, then I can figure out mine! I feel irresponsible. Never mind, will try to sort it out tomorrow. Kay Hwee's just informed me that TS15 is the holding room. Anyway, was talking with Ben Woon today on the way to the MRT station. If I were to have cosmetic surgery, I'd correct my vision, among other things. I'd want to be taller and have a leaner face, sharper nose, and slimmer waist. Sounds so terribly superficial, but allow me to pretend it's actually a possibility. Just cut my hair, wanted to style my hair differently. Maybe I should have been more specific with my instructions to the barber? Then again, maybe I should just switch to Gatsby wax for styling purposes. No, I refuse to shave my head like Ben Woon suggested!