Animated Cartoon Day/Caramel Popcorn Day/Tartan Day/California Poppy Day/Dogwood Arts Festival (Tennessee)
2004-04-06 @ 10:39 p.m.

I neglected to mention yesterday that I scored 63/75 for my contrôle. There's an inherent paradox in that performance. By right, it's good, and that's being objective. I personally think it's wonderful, and now everyone's going to accuse me of being proud and stuff, but all of you who think that way can just screw off. Where was I? Ah yes, the paradox. It is the fact that part of me wanted to do really badly, for a number of reasons. One, I think I'm becoming complacent, and a rude shock would spur me to work harder at French, since it's supposedly not that easy to score at 'AO'. The irony is, I studied pathetically little for the contrôle, and achieved what was probably one of the higher scores in my class. Two, it would have been nice to shock some of the people around me, give them a fresh perspective of me. (Am I warped, or am I warped?) Imagine this. Ian skips a lecture, then proceeds to fail his French contrôle. Whatever. All I can say is that this contrôle confirms my belief that it's quite meaningless to study feverishly for French, because it doesn't translate into good grades. It might sound like I'm an arrogant snob, but I believe that when it comes to the study of languages, talent plays a major role. Why exactly do you think there's a Chinese "B" syllabus now? Face it, some people just can't pick up Chinese!

Something damn funny happened today. I skipped another Mathematics lecture. I got caught and sent back, only to discover that they'd covered practically nothing, and were just starting on what I had hoped to miss today. Divine intervention? It was so funny walking into LT4, because everyone turned back to stare, and I was probably the least expected person there. I mean, I was walking in with Mel, Li Jun and Yi-Xun. Go figure. Anyway, things were going fine, until Li Jun decided to pay a visit to the photocopying shop. On her way back, she met our tutor, who followed her back to the canteen where the tutor caught the rest of us. It was damn weird though, she didn't look really pissed. Later, during the tutorial, she told us that this was our last warning before she issues us white slips. The lecturer was even nicer! I told her, "Lecture [sic] too slow." Whereupon she replied to the effect that she understood, but we had to realise that lectures are designed to cater to the needs of the lowest common denominator. I couldn't believe she bought my half-truth. Our teachers are just damn nice. Even the relief teacher who had irritated my class at the start of Term 2 was amused that we'd been caught and sent back to the lecture. Sigh, no more cutting lectures for me, at least not for a while...