Arbor Day/Hairstylist Day/Oatmeal Cookie Day/Mushroom Festival (Missouri)
2004-04-30 @ 10:38 p.m.

A lot of interesting things happened today. Must be the curious alchemy between last school day and last day of the month. I'll try to keep things chronological. Here goes nothing:

Economics lecture - Increasingly useless, because the lecturer bores me to hell, so I don't learn anything. I just do my tutorials, like the functions one that I started on today while being lectured about long-run average costs. I vaguely understand the whole theory of costs. I hope I understand the theory of price better, or I'm screwed for my essay test next week (which I haven't studied for). The problem with this series of lectures is that it's chock full of graphs, which I hate sketching and understanding. It's not particularly intuitive at first glance, but things start to fall into place mentally after a while. It'd have been better if they could have given us both real data and the graphs. More helpful to see how real numbers get crunched into the graphs. Economics is a lot of common sense with technical jargon. I'm not very fond of Economics right now...

International History lecture - Didn't feel like sleeping for once, even though my head was foggy and my nose was blocked. Actually took lucid notes, which reminds me again about how much I hate Mr Kwok's slides. They waste money, and making them more organised (and more comprehensive) couldn't hurt. Forgot to look for the ring. Must remember to look for the ring next week. Still wondering what to make of it. Should I be inclined towards the more generous interpretation, or should I be hasty and nasty?

Mathematics lecture - Ms Chen was later than me! I've not skipped a lecture since getting caught, even though I've been tempted to. Wasn't even hungry, though that didn't stop me from taking this Japanese cracker from Jennifer. Spent the lecture doing a tutorial and trying (successfully) not to be distracted. Caught most of what Ms Chen was saying about transformations. Even bothered to think about Daniel's sketching versus scaling issue, and came to a conclusion that satisfied me, and either dismayed or confused him. I don't think it convinced him. Ah well.

English tutorial (Silas Marner) - Had a brilliant discussion during his lesson. Left feeling like I'd done something active, instead of passively listening. I like listening to him though, which is why I don't speak much. We were talking about morality. What basis is there for believing in a fundamental morality of the world, when you don't believe in God? Is doing good out of self-interest, craving for reward from society, really morality? Our discussion didn't exactly come to any hard and fast conclusion. That was the point I guess. It was the first time I ever saw people continuing to talk about something after the lesson. Jennifer was talking to Chernise, and I was listening in. You know what I think? I think Jennifer's take on morality is a lot like what Mr Purvis has described about George Eliot's. Might pick up Middlemarch from the library, it'll be more interesting than Cold War readings. Oh, and Mr Purvis was really nice yesterday! Turns out, he went down from the top floor, through the canteen, up to the PE department, then down to the middle of the field under the hot sun, just to cover for us over our absence from PE. All that only to meet us walking out as he was walking back to LT4. He kept apologising, even though it wasn't really his fault. It's little things like this that you remember about your teachers...

Break - Ate two eggs again. That makes at least six this week, not including those I can't remember. I ate three yesterday. High cholesterol will kill me eventually. Borrowed another dollar from Shaun, who doesn't really remember if I borrow money from him. Now if it was Yi-Xun, I'd have no qualms about not paying him back. However, this is Shaun we're talking about, only like one of the nicest people I've ever known, so I'll pay him back. Maybe I'll throw in interest because he's been so nice all these years. I think I will.

Mathematics tutorial - Went back extremely early, though we were still late. Just not as late as usual. Realised that my method for a tutorial question was wrong, and I just realised that I've forgotten that I wanted to change it when I came back home. Damn, so I can't go to sleep after all. Did a bit more of Tutorial 6, and still didn't feel like sleeping. Must be the after-effects of falling asleep last night some time after 10 pm. I was going to get up and blog, but it just didn't happen. Apparently, my mum woke me up at some point and asked me if I'd brushed my teeth, whether I had work to do, etc. I nodded and shook my head, but I have no recollection of this conversation at all. Scary, isn't it? Need to get her to photograph me during these conversations, just so I can remind myself they actually happened!

International History tutorial - I hate his tutorials. No offense, because he's got very good ideas and structures, but it just doesn't come across very well. He doesn't write, he scrawls like a doctor! I find the way he speaks very irritating. He repeats himself too often, sign of a limited vocabulary. He's a nice tutor, just painfully pedantic. He's quite petty. He complains when we let other tutors take up bits his lecture and tutorial slots, but he's quite content to keep us back a while, when what he's really eating into is our sacred free time. Anyway, paid moderate attention today because I wasn't sleepy. Didn't dare to do more questions on functions under his watchful, (potentially wrathful) eye.

Whew! This is like a monumental entry. One of the longest ever in fact. Have fun reading it. It's not quite done yet! So we start making more earrings again after lessons. I'm waiting for guitar practice to begin, so I start making my "caterpillar" earrings as Chernise so unflatteringly terms them. Ms Chen popped by for some reason, just before she went to conduct a make-up lecture for the second intake. She showed us some of the stuff she's made using beads, and damn she is good. Gave us so many ideas! Her creations are really elaborate. She had this necklace and earrings set that was really beautiful. She'd told us a few lessons back that she used to do this regularly on weekends to destress, until making all these things caused even more stress because of the marking she was putting off. Anyway, this is the hilarious bit. Ms Chen told me she was "impressed" that someone "big" like me could make something so "delicate". Do I look very "big" and clumsy? How terribly ironice. Then it was off for guitar practice, which was uneventful save for Shulin telling us we sounded good and everyone telling my section to stop rushing. French was noticeably more boring than school. The most exciting thing was some joke about sex-change operations in response to a question Mr Quenot posed. Our class is extremely susceptible to that sort of humour. I pity Mr Quenot, having to put up with such madness week after dreadful week. I've rediscovered my Chicago OST, and fallen in love with it all over again. I love the last song, Anastacia's Love Is A Crime! Major identification going on there. Okay, I think I'll stop here. This like a mammoth entry. I look at it and I just go, "Wow."