Oh my God, I haven't blogged in more than half a month. In the lead-up to the exams and during the exam period itself, it seems that I was either studying or watching stuff whenever I'm at home. Actually, this would be true of the whole of term 3, simply because there were so many tests and so much to write (essays, essays, stories, essays...) that I didn't want to write any more than necessary. This theory is supported by the fact that I definitely blog more when I'm on holidays.
The exams are over now, along with term three and - oh my goodness! - YEAR 11! You know what this means? There's nothing but a week and a bit separating now and the beginning of year 12! Eep.
So, since I last blogged, I've crammed muchly and probably procrastinated just as much. After all, the amount of procrastination I do is in direct proportion to the a) the amount of study/work I have to do, and b) the urgency with which this work must be done by. I certainly failed to make use of the Friday night before the exams. I succumbed and got out HZGG1 and watched my personal favourite bits again. Basically, all the mush. I find the mush in HZGG1 is much better done in HZGG2. I watched the end of HZGG2 last weekend and found many parts of the dialogue cringe-worthily revolting and hilarious at the same time. I completely cracked up at the sheer and utter brainlessness of it all. I mean, what kind of bride says to her husband in the bridal chamber "I am your bride now". Um, obvious much? And she says it with so much gravity and her eyes so widely innocent... Ugh.
I also spent Sunday night texting Anne which served the double purpose of wasting my potential study time and wasting my credit (I now only have 6 cents, which isn't even enough to make a call in which anything can be communicated). I had a hideous exam timetable in which I had exams every morning in the first week and two days with two exams. Not that I suppose it could have been much better, or else I would have had to continue to stress beyond the first week.
Both English exams were reasonably doable, in that at least I didn't have to stare at the question with no idea what the hell to write. I could pretty much get straight into it. However, don't take that to mean I succeeded in the subject at all. Most people write one page every ten minutes and I write one every twenty. So, in the two-hour long English Extension exam, everyone seems to have written at least eleven pages while I only managed six. I seriously can't see how people can sit in the room for so long just churning out essays and stories! It's absolutely against human nature! People aren't made for sitting and writing in silence with no reference materials!
Chemistry was... long. And tiring. I kept not reading the question properly and mixing up things like ionisation energy and electronegativity, reliability and validity... Consequently I kept having to white entire 5-line responses out. Man that was a tiring exam.
Maths! Argh! Usually Maths isn't the most 'argh' of subjects, but this time it was hideously and unexpectedly evil! I ran out of time for both of them, there were questions in both 2U and 3U where I just just like "what?!" and had no idea how to go about them. Compared to the half-yearlies, where I had like 30min left over at the end of the exam, this was scarily hectic and I couldn't think straight at all! It was mortifying! And in both exams, I got to one of the last questions, didn't see how to do it, and then as there were like two minutes left I finally saw through it except I don't finish answering it in time and so I'll only get like half of the four marks or six marks or whatever. How annoying. I'm so disappointed in myself.
Modern History... all right. A bit uncertain about some things, but at least I got down on paper everything I wanted to get down. Even if my two source-based essays had no intro or conclusion. Whatever. I think I predicted the Japan question reasonably well - since Mrs Young had already tested us on internal changes in class, I suspected the exam question would be about foreign policy and expansion. Good on me.
And French. Didn't really study for that. Watched A Very Long Engagement on Thursday afternoon, which I thought would be good listening practice (even though I still set English subtitles. I would have used French subs, but there weren't any). Again, like Maths, a bit more pushed for time than the previous exam. I didn't manage to check over my comprehension, though I did read my writing again. Meh.
Omg, I absolutely must mention the epic dust storm that we had last last Wednesday, in the first week of the exams. Most of Sydney woke up to a pink sky. I woke up to an orange sky because by 7:30 when I got out of bed, I think some of the storm had already subsided. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before! It was extremely windy and I believe the dust came from inner NSW. When I left the house, I could hardly close the front door because the wind was blowing so strongly. And walking to the bus stop there waws dust flying everywhere. In the sky, there was this fluorescent blue-white orb that I believe was the moon but some people say it was the sun (I'm still a bit sceptical). The sun can't possibly be that bluish! I may have considered staying home due to the weird and frankly quite apocalyptic-looking conditions, were it not for the fact that I had two exams that day. I certainly wouldn't want to have to approach Kenway for a substitute English exam. I sat through the whole two hours of Eng Ext sniffing loudly because there was dust in my nose. 'Twas hideous.
After all the stress and dust and strong wind, then, it may not be surprising that I started feeling woozy on Sunday afternoon and came down with a fever. I had just bought new shoes from DJ's Bondi Junction - yes! new shoes! They were reduced from $160-ish to $60-ish and they were exactly the sort of flat-heeled, open shoes I was looking for. They are black strappy sandals with like gold highlights but they are totally more classic than those gladiator things. By my calculations, I buy a new pair of shoes roughly every 3-4 months. Isn't that interesting?
Anyway, I had a fever so I spent the evening sitting in bed instead of doing my orals. I had hoped that if I took it easy on Sunday night, i could go to school on Monday to practise orals with Nicole and Ama - but that was not so, as the next morning I still had a fever. I would say that that was a bad day to get sick, but actually, is there ever a good day to get sick?
Our oral group put in some good hours on Tuesday and Wednesday and I guess our orals on Wednesday afternoon went alright. Firstly, we got a decent question and despite the two awfully awkward silences that occurred, we kept the discussion going... Don't trust me on this, though - I'm never a good judge of what English marks I deserve.
So after I did my oral, Bei and I went to Dymocks in the city to get Anne and Cindy's birthday presents (those two had the misfortune of having their birthdays during exam week). We got Anne Wicked, the book, and Cindy this self-help book called Happy For No Reason. Oh, the irony.
Today, after my flute lesson, I met Anne, Bei, Cindy, Jojo and Svenja in the city for our celebratory outing. First we went to a sushi train, which was surprisingly good value, I think, and then we went to watch Mao's Last Dancer. A decent film. I have no qualms about it, though I suppose nothing stuck out to me or particularly moved me or entertained me. I suppose I am always a bit sceptical about books or films that deal with American foreign policy, in particular when it concerns Communist China. There is certainly no way that any film can portray the issue neutrally - someone has to be painted as the bad guy. In this case it was China, and while I should be angry at that for obvious reasons, I'm also against China in that it is true that they place a lot of restrictions. They are not very open minded and, like the US, so anything they can to uphold and promote their "strength", their "righteousness" etc. Just look at today's celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Communist China! Is there no other way or celebrating it but by an enormous military display? Like America, they say one thing (hope of peace) and do something else (stockpile weapons and maintain a gigantic army).
And they quash languages by imposing Mandarin at school and in the media. I can never overlook that. I've considered doing Chinese Studies at Cambridge (it's probably easier to get into that Sociology, at least), but how can I lock myself into learning only Mandarin for the duration of the degree. They won't even acknowledge the other dialects - mention them in passing, maybe, but certainly not let them rival the absoluteness of Mandarin.
It does seem as though the Chinese are more patriotic now, particularly the young Chinese. Are they still emigrating to Australia in droves like in the 80s? The topic of patriotism in education is intriguing to me. To what extent should we educate children (and people, for that matter) to love their country. On one hand, we must ensure the population are citizens that wish their country well and are willing to develop it - in short, be productive members of society. But on the other hand, if we indoctrinate them with the idea that their country is great and that they owe their country everything, is that not a lie? It's like how in Othello, even Othello has been made to believe that he himself is inferior because he is black, causing him to cave in at the end. Isn't it wrong to teach them that their country is worth loving? Regardless of whether they are treated like slaves or if everyone wants for nothing, I think that this decision should be up to the people themselves to make, not to be told what to believe. But this could be at the expense of economic, political and social stability. How can a society raise a generation or many generations of people who subsequently decide they have nothing to be grateful for and run off?
And then we went karaoke.