More Upbeat?

I had a delicious dinner: udon + kameboko + smoothie. My mom made it all :)

Sorry for the grumpy post. I'm not naming names, so don't ask.

I gotta go practice piano now... I said one time before that scales would take at least 45 minutes? My teacher actually said they'd take 2 hours. Yay. But I don't practice staccato and legato on the same day.

Math finals review too. I've been putting it off for a few days, and now I finally have to finish it up. I have about 15 questions left, so it's not going to be too bad. Although I'd have to say that I don't get vectors at all. I've been nagging my dad to explain it to me, but both of us always "forgets" or says, "Oh yeah. Well, let's do it tomorrow, because [insert excuse here]." I'm not motivated to do things I don't feel like doing, which is something I need to work through :P As for math, we were supposed to do it after dinner, but now he's vacuuming the living room... ^-^;;

Ewww. I just accidentally touched my sister's rubber bands. They were lying out on the table on a kleenex. On a brighter note, I need to fix the comments for this blog. Apparently they're not working.

You're Right, For Once

Ryou just took the "What does your mind look like?" quiz on Facebook and the result is A Waterworld.

"Your mind is like a Waterworld. You live fast and are impatient, when you slow down it's only to discover your next goal. You constantly look for changes and like to take chances. You have big demands for yourself and are very creative. Some people are scared of you, cause you dont smile much. But your closest ones know that you can be the nicest person in this world."

I think it describes me completely. But, don't you think I smile a lot? I guess most of the time I'm pretty serious. I'm a definitely a very determined person; I just keep going, all the time.

Motivation

I didn't make tennis.

I felt a bit disappointed as a result... not for long though. Somehow I feel more determined than anything. This is even better motivation to work harder and harder this summer. I like challenges, as you can tell. I feel lost without having something to work towards. That's pretty much how I felt today before I decided to try out again >.> So as usual I went in my room and listened to music. "Always & Forever" by Planet Shakers has been encouraging to me lately when I've been feeling overwhelmed by everything.

I've only been playing tennis for 4 months, so people say I did ok considering that. I personally don't feel it's a good excuse... I did horribly compared to how I usually play and that is all there is to it. But after 3 months of training in the summer I may just have a chance at making the team.

I'm so happy for everyone that made it! Good job- you deserve it. Represent our school well! I'm really proud of you, Pooja. You didn't have to worry after all.

My dad is on my facebook account talking to my godpa (his best friend) in Singapore. They're having a good chat about everything from chicken rice to BSF. My dad will surely be convinced to get facebook now! He always forgets or says, "No time, lah..." Which reminds me, whenever I talk to a Singaporean, Singlish works itself into my speech in a jiffy. It feels natural, although it makes me laugh at first.

Oh yeah, I practiced piano for a long time, which is why I am posting (can't stay off for long, anyways). Finals were all good. The ones I took today were pretty easy: L.A. and Science and Yearbook. We filled out a sheet (or three) to submit parts of the book for IOPC and we also got to eat cupcakes in class. Shhh.... :)

Small Town

This week is really packed full. Thankfully, there's only five more days of school.

I have about 20 more problems on the math review, most of the USH review, and all of the science. We had Full orchestra recording today, and tomorrow in Spanish we have our writing final. Friday brings 3 more finals... and I have tennis tryouts tomorrow. I'm nervous and excited and confused at the same time!

Probably there's a few other things I've forgotten xD

One other thing: I got into Yearbook! My grammar is atrocious here when I'm typing things out fast, but really, I can speak/write English pretty well. I'm doing photography though, which I much prefer to writing. I heard Yearbook will be super busy.

Ashley and I took a ride home from Westwood with Darren. His car broke down in front of my house, so he came in for awhile and played computer games with my brother xD

Anyways, I'm painting a watercolor for the TAG TKAM project right now. I did it pretty quickly... it's not as good as it could be, but I wouldn't say it's bad. I love being able to do art projects for other subjects :) To Kill a Mockingbird is a good book, but it wasn't what I expected it to be. The movie is alright, but it helped me to draw the characters. The painting's of Scout trying on Tom Robinson's shoe, with supporting cast.

Watercolor pencils are the most convenient thing ever! It's nice to have both pencils and paint so you can do both details and base color. I need to buy more paints soon, because I'm out of most of the colors...

My Face. Is Burning Up.

Tennis lessons today= muy muy calor. I'm not doing that great cause I didn't get to practice at all this weekend :\ Tryouts are on Thursday for us. Good luck to the boys tomorrow!

One bottle of water is just not enough!!

Anyways, I got over 150 photos of this weekend posted on facebook, so if you're my friend, you can go see. I took the Singlish Proficiency Test there too and I got a 100% the first time... that made me unexpectedly happy!! Here it is, edited for clarity.

1. What does "Gostan" mean?

2. What is the direct translation in Singlish for the sentence, "This book is mine." ?
This book is my one.
This book is your one.
This book anyone one?

3. Today I'm very "sian" but still have lots of work to do. What is "sian?"

4. "Look at this person so kiasu pushing everybody away just to get a seat on the free train." What is the Singlish word in this sentence?

5. "Nearest train Station where ah?" Translate this into proper English.
"Wait, station????"
"Eh, boy. Nearest train station?"
"Where is the nearest train station?"

6. What is "Can lor" in proper English?
Yes.
Yes. I think so.
Yes. Of course.

7. Person K: "What are you doing now ?" Person G: "Some project." Person K: "Must finish it?" Person G: "Ah (ber) then ?!" Explain Ah (ber) then.
A question that implies one does not see the obvious.
A question that implies one should finish it.
A question that implies one should stop talking.

8. "Wah, so ex ah!" Translate into English.
The price is just too low.
The price is normal.
The price is just too high.

9. "Food in Singapore very shiok, man." Rephrase this in proper English.

10. "Pai Seh" is to feel _____________ in the phrase "very paiseh to tell her about that incident..."

11. What is "ya...ya..." in the conversation: Person A "Eh, I got full marks for science." Person B " ya...ya..."
Showing off.
Acting up.
Saying too much.

12. Which is commonly used when we don't understand or when we want them to repeat the question?
Hah?
What?
Say again?

13. "Is there a problem, Sir ?" Translate into the correct Singlish.
Got problem, Mister?
Got problem, ah?
Got problem, meh?


I don't feel very Singaporean since I've been in US for so long, but I'm glad I can at least do this :) Makes me want to go back this summer.

Seven More Days

I'm so sick of school, for real.

It's mostly all the reviews we have to do. The math one is pretty long, and I discovered that I've forgotten about half of what we learned, which is not good. I haven't even started on the USH one yet. I don't feel like working on them at all, but I'll have to soon. Bahhhh. (humbug!)

I don't think the L.A. final will be tough at all (our teacher said, "If I had written the final, it would be ten times harder!!" so I'm glad that the other teachers wrote it). It's on-level :]

Science shouldn't be too bad. I'm pretty good at science and at making educated guesses. I could worry a little, but not as much as I do for math or USH, both of which need a pretty fresh memory. Which I can't say I've got-- I have a terrible long-term memory, but a good short-term one, so yes, I can cram succesfully as long as there's not a mountain of stuff to remember.

Honestly, I'd rather be prepared, because I start freaking out otherwise :P

Tennis tryouts this Thursday. I don't really feel prepared for that, but I'm just going to do my best. Art's my back-up so I'm really good either way.

I watched the French Open on TV at the hotel in Houston! Sliding on clay courts!

Not Enough!

The soccer team won the Spirit Cup!

They lost 2 games on Saturday, so they had only 2 games scheduled for the next day. Our team calls itself the "Old-Man Team." We never have enough players, so Matt and Jon played too this time. Unfortunately, both of the teams we were supposed to play decided to forfeit, so we won the Spirit Cup without playing at all the second day. Everyone was a bit disappointed and annoyed, but we did something really fun instead. On Sunday, we went to Galveston- the beach.

It was kind of rainy at first, but we were all wet anyways, so it didn't really matter. We dug lots of holes and channels and made a giant sandcastle. We picked up a few fragments of seashells too. The hurricane caused piles of debris everywhere- we saw guardrails half buried in the sand!

It was fun. We did pretty much everything with Andrew and Becky :)

I'm trying to upload pictures to Facebook, but the camera ran out of batteries and the USB thing is too wide to fit into this computer, cause there's this ledge that sticks out and gets in the way D; Pooh. I guess it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Dance!

Okay, so we're going to Houston early tomorrow morning, which means... I get to go to the dance :D I've never been to one before, so I don't know what to expect. Emily will be going with me too... which is the best, ever.

I'm pretty excited, because a lot of people are going, so I'll see my friends. I might actually enjoy it :) I'll write more when I come back, so see you later!

Later: at 11:05 PM

It was pretty fun after all :) I danced with my friends. I didn't know any of the songs though... xD The music was loud (all I could hear was the beat, really).

I had a good time. Now I'm feeling super tired and my feet actually hurt, so I'm going to sleep. Gotta wake up early tomorrow.

Sorry this post is kinda bad, but, I'm about to doze off... Hope you had a good time too! Tell me what you liked.

Conjugations Are Annoying

I don't like conjugating verbs in Spanish.

It's not hard in itself, but there's so many different forms and irregular ones to remember that I get all mixed up. If we don't use a conjugation form in the unit, I kinda forget it. S`yea, I'm having a wake-up call on the review x3 Good luck next year.

Japanese conjugation is harder, though... I'd better study a lot this summer! I'm only at 540 kanji, most of which I have since forgotten. Gotta go through those before adding any more.

There's a little fly buzzing around the lamp. That's annoying too :\

To end on a happier note, we're passing out yearbooks tomorrow... at 7:30 in the morning, thanks to the SAT10. Just pray that I don't trip while sleepwalking down the halls, `cause those are some real fine yearbooks we've got. :)

Gravity

I had a pretty bad day today >.> You know what that means: complaining! Woohoo.
Yea, so... let me tell you all about it.

The SAT10 was the stupidest thing ever. There were 9 timed sections so it took forever (most were around 30 minutes, but they made it something like 26 or 29 minutes instead. Weird :\). Some of them were easy, and some were tough, cause we didn't learn the stuff on there!!!! The social studies section had the most "ihavenoidealet'sjustguess" questions. Math was easy-- addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, but it was pretty boring. Spelling was easy. I mean come on. "Multavitamin?!" Or "gratifyed??" lols. But yeah... it took us past lunch. I was starving and freezing in there. Unfortunately, my stomach has never gotten used to eating lunch at nearly one D;

It was worse than the TAKS. Well, around the same level, because although it was a lot easier, the boring factor was waaaay high. The good thing was that we got to doodle on our scratch sheets whenever we finished a section early. Pooja and Justine wrote a story about me, Josh, and George, the master porcupine...

Next. With what was left our time at school, we played bingo in Spanish. Around 12 rounds of it, but it was alright, even though the same three people kept winning xD We watched "Gone With the Wind" in USH again, and I was soooo wrong yesterday. Scarlett is still as much of a jerk as ever. SPOILER COMING: I can't believe she married Frank Kennedy!!!!!!!! And killed him!!!!!!! He was really nice too! Gahhhh. Scarlett >.>

I had a good chat with Vic on the way home on the bus. It's fun to talk and relax a bit... but then I had to go to piano. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm starting to hate piano. It's all because of the stupid exam. I used to enjoy it, and I'm sure I'll start to love it again afterwards, but the exam is evil >.> I have this Schubert piece that I'm having trouble with, but I don't have that much time to practice. It's all a mess again.

I then fell asleep on my teacher's couch x] Connie Lo-see, if you're reading this, I'm not mad at you. I just get frustrated. You're a good teacher :) Thank you!!

Alright. Gots 2 more pages of Spanish review to go. I heard we're getting a 150 question math review soon... hope we get it tomorrow so I can take it to Houston >.> Which is where we're going for Daddy's soccer tournament. Good luck to everyone playing soccer this weekend!

I don't get to go to the dance or to the Wildfire thing D: Which stinks, `cause I've never been to a single dance before (I'd probably not enjoy it anyways xD) and I'd never want to skip out on seeing mah friends. Oh well. Take lots of pictures!! I will too, of the tournament :)

Couldn't Be Better

Seriously. Today was one of the best days of this semester.

At school, we didn't have to do much. We had the math test yesterday, so we just did translation tessellations today- super easy, and fun besides. Vic's looked like a mutant seahorse, "one that sings songs and makes everyone happy." Mine was kinda boring looking. It looked like scales. Everyone else suggested boots, speech bubbles, dish, spaceship, and a rabbit with one ear. I think I'll probably do Qoo, that really adorable HK drink char :)

This picture is from http://qoo.jp/. It's a nice drink, and Qoo is cute too!

We are watching "Gone With the Wind" in USH. It's looooong, but pretty good. Scarlett is such a brat in the beginning. As the movie goes on, she gets much better. I think Rhett Butler is kind of ugly. His face is always sweaty >.> Anyways... it's like Jane Eyre, one of my favorite books (thanks, Simone). Jane is a totally different person at the beginning than at the end, just like Scarlett. I didn't know the Civil War was that bad in the South before watching this.

The Orchestra concert went really well. We kinda messed up on the pieces a bit, but it still sounded fine. Thank you to all you band people that helped make our full orch so awesome :D The pieces sounds boring when we practice without you all.

Afterwards, we gave our speeches... mine was a bit short. Raymond's was amazing!!! It was formal, but still funny. He's a good writer. Ashley's was good too! I'm not good at writing speeches or at public speaking xP I need to work on that...

I think Mrs. Frederick liked the gifts, cards/canvas (good idea, Ashley, it was real pretty!), and flowers. She didn't cry much, so I didn't give her the tissue box until the end x3 I enjoyed this concert a lot. But I got all sweaty from running back and forth everywhere.

I got a 115 on my proof notebook, so that was awesome. It's a test grade!! -faints-

Now my average is a 99... which is a lot better than what it was before >.> I hope that I finish out this year well in all my subjects. Tomorrow we have to take the SAT10 test (our scores will be the data for somebody's "experiment") for 5 hours. It's essentially going to be the TAKS with pictures, or so I've heard. They might end up replacing TAKS with this, depending on how we do. I have no idea what they're looking for.

Blue of Summer

I changed the layout, because I saw it was of the beach and I just couldn't resist. The color scheme and picture put together make me feel really peaceful, and besides, it has an obvious summer theme. Well, if there's any problems with it, let me know!

It really makes me feel happy. I feel like I'm updating a lot, but it's a novelty to have such a nice blog to write my thoughts down :)

Have a good night, everyone. The concert's tomorrow...!

Graffiti

I was playing with the Graffiti app on Facebook just now, and it sure is a lot of fun. The good thing about it is that it allows you to control line thickness and opacity, so it's easier to make something nice. It's hard to draw things with a mouse though; the lines never come out straight or curve the way you want.

That reminds me: I might actually be getting a tablet in a few weeks! That's really exciting. I've wanted one for a long time. I'm hoping I can get a decent one that will work well for graphics and that won't break for, well, quite awhile, even if I accidentally end up doing something to it xD

We also finished our annual door decorating contest at school today. We got our entry up on the door literally one or two minutes before the deadline -_-" It was kind of nervewracking to have to hurry so much! The theme this year was "World Class School," which is probably the lamest theme ever, though not quite as bad as those writing prompts they give you on benchmarks and TAKS. We still managed to get a good entry in. I stayed in during lunch a couple of times with Pooja to finish it (I ate my lunch in my L.A. teacher's room the period before).

The background is black, and there's a big cut-out of Earth in the middle with our school mascot on top. We drew a caricature of the principal, who is sitting on a plane and waving. The plane has a big banner coming out the end of it that says "World Class School" and is flying over the Earth. It's based on the joke we have about British Airways xD Everyone cut out and signed yellow paper stars which are all over the black background. It's actually pretty good! We might have a chance at winning in our grade, although there are a couple of other nice ones too.

I'd like break to start right now. I think I did kind of badly on the math test (and it wasn't even that hard this time), which is what usually happens. I do great on the quizzes and homework, but our teacher makes the test a billion times harder. Apparently it's since we're in TAG and the material in the book just isn't good enough for us and all. Well, I can't complain, since the questions pretty much cover different/harder applications of what we learned. Our Geometry teacher's actually pretty nice, at least to me. She's an okay teacher, but you really can't get much done in a 50 minute class period anyways.

Blah. Better get back to work now. I seriously need to practice my scales and arpeggios, since the exam's coming up in 2 weeks. I have to prepare so many that it takes me over 45 minutes straight to practice them all.

I hate scales. Rrrrrrr.

In the End of the Plan

I played tennis today after school, like I usually do on Mondays. I noticed that I have a shirt tan (it's called a "Farmer's Tan," isn't it?). I also have a sock tan. It's strange to see the skin on all four of your arms and legs change colors suddenly, like the hide of some sort of mutant zebra.

I don't think anyone can tell, because I wear all my shirt sleeves the same length. I can't roll them up. I tried once and couldn't do it, so I don't even bother now. Besides, with me, it'd be a waste of time, since even if they were a millimeter off I'd be forced to start over.

"Oh no! The right side! The left side! The right!"

It's a silly thing to think about, isn't it? I don't really care that much about it at all, but it's just something I noticed today.

The Geometry teacher said that the math final will only cover what we've learned this semester. That's really good, because I have no idea what we learned last chapter, least of all what we learned before Christmas!

About the concert: everything went accordingly after all. Without my realizing it, we collected over $90 (excuse: I wasn't in charge of the money anyways!). Several people wrote up their speeches, and we even decided on a rehearsal time. I guess I didn't need to worry so much. Things'll happen when they happen.

The only thing was, we kinda sorta bought the wrong gifts. Well, since they're pretty generic, it's not like they won't work. There were gifts like soap and other smelly things, and then there was...

balsamic vinegar. Does she like that? It's certainly smelly.

I'm planning to go to bed early tonight, but...

'Til Wednesday

Our concert's on Wednesday, and I'm half-looking forward to it, and half not.

It's the last one of the year, so that means the "surprise" speech and gift for our director. I'm one of the reps, so I'm helping to organize this thing. It is such a mess. Yeapp, I'm actually getting kinda stressed out over it D:

It's annoying when time is running out, you haven't got much of a plan, and people aren't following the tiny bit of a plan that you do have.

Thanks if you've been trying.

After that I won't have to worry about orchestra much at all. The final is never anything hard, especially after having gone through the ABRSM Theory Exam.

I'm also worried about the math test on Tuesday. Geometry is kinda hard sometimes, and kinda easy sometimes. It all depends on what we're learning. Seems like every time my classmates get good grades, I get bad ones, and vice versa. Everything's a mess...!

And then finals... and more projects...

It'll be a very long seventeen days.

Preface

Hello. I have no idea what to say. It's the truth.

I used to have an LJ (I still do, technically), but I'm probably not going to use it anymore.

I never used it much anyways. It's a whole lot more confusing than blogspot, although I'd have to admit that it has a lot of really cool stuff. That doesn't make up for accessability, though.

Anyhoo, school's almost out, so maybe I'll actually start blogging regularly. I can't say that my life is particularly interesting, but I'm going to post regardless. Feel free to leave or jump back in whenever.

This blog will probably be updated... whenever I feel like it (which could be a bad thing). And there won't be all that many pics, because I'm too lazy to upload them :] I'll just try to write post more often to make up for that.