uh-huh. yeah.
written: 6:09 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004

But, just to save myself some face, I was genuinely tired. I was doing some bloody stupid Maths nonsense -- if memory serves though I don't think it does, it was probably binomial distributions -- and falling asleep every other second. I mean, Maths in its purest form is already boring as shit; imagine doing something boring as shit while one is tired as shit. It will only serve to accelerate one's degree of tiredness and hence make one fall asleep.

Excuses, excuses. Yeah, I know. Shut up Yelen. You slept when you weren't supposed to. PERIOD. That's all there is to it.

Yesterday four people pissed me off. One of them was Mr. Girl. Was doing Maths early in the morning in the canteen; some population parameters thingy, Chapter 6 of JJC's Statistics lecture notes. I was trying to figure things out and then I had a stroke of genius when I thought back to something similar that was done earlier. So I started writing things down. Mr Girl, who was right in front of me, looked at my exercise book and went, very tactlessly, "What are you doing? That's wrong!"

I may have forgiven Mr. Girl but it still does not conceal the fact that I hate it, absolutely detest it, when people tell me that I'm wrong. First of all, most of the time I am right and they are wrong about me being wrong. Second of all. I came home and checked the answer in my red-spot Maths TYS and guess what? I was, amazingly, RIGHT.

So my point is, the next time some bugger decides to tell me that I'm wrong, that bugger better think twice about what it is that he's trying to prove me wrong because chances are, he's gonna feel damn stupid when it is revealed that he's wrong about me being wrong. So there.

Second person to piss me off was none other than the irritating discipline person of the school. I was trying to figure out some crappy market failure Econs MCQ which was explained to me before (but I've forgotten all about it) when the discipline person came up to me from the back and went, "Your shirt tuck in propry! Go toilet and tuck in propry now!"

Duh. He meant 'properly' but it came out as 'propry'. Like I said, duh. I wonder how he's managed to teach statistics, judging by the non-existent command of English that he has, since stupid things like hypothesis testing require you to understand the question before you can decide whether your population proportion or sample mean is supposed to be more than or less than or not equal to your null hypothesis.

But anyway, it was DAMN IRRITATING considering the fact that I was STUDYING and hence DISTRACTED when he came over and told me to tuck in my shirt "propry". With buggers like him going around interrupting people's thought processes when they're trying to study for the all-important A Level exams which begin next bleeding Thursday, it then comes as no surprise that JJC produces such abysmal A Level results. It starts from the small things, people. You should shut up about attire when people are trying to study. And I don't understand why he must take it upon himself to pick the stupid attire bone with me when the principal doesn't even say anything when I saunter all over the canteen with my T-shirt blatantly tucked out and all. Irritating ass.

The third person to piss me off was the irritating girl in my class about whom I've bitched lengthily in the past. You know, the moron with feministic pretensions and thinks that her English is good? Yeah. So it was during Tubby's class, which was funny as hell, and Tubby was off about how other teachers have nice hair and dress well, yada yada, but in fact he was referring to this one particular teacher, and...

Okay, on second thoughts, I don't really want to talk about it. Suffice to say, though, that the girl said something stupid which I presume she hoped was funny but it did not amuse me in any way, shape or form. Do me a favour and shut your stupid trap. Thank you.

The fourth person to piss me off is someone whom I don't feel like talking about so I'll move on.

So today.

Got my HCJC Paper 2 AQ back. (You know, application question.)

To be honest, I found the HCJC GP paper really easy. I mean, look at their bloody Paper 1. The question about how the youth have no taste in music or whatever? Fuck, how fucking easy is that? And their Paper 2 is like, so duh. What a piece of cake. I suppose it's marginally tougher than my school's paper (which has the honour of being the easiest comprehension I've ever done in my whole entire life, including my secondary school years and I am not kidding) but compared to SAJC's paper whose passages I could not even absorb, it's really damn easy.

And I got full marks for my AQ. Before that I thought I was going to get like, less than 4.

Inevitably I started whining to him about how I think I'm gonna fail my GP, ie. get an A2 which would be my worst nightmare come true, but he was really nice about it. I don't know if he fully gets it, but to some degree, I think he understands.

And with people around me thinking that I have nothing to worry about just because I happened to get ABBE A1 for the prelims, people who do not understand my fears at all, people who hear my words but don't fully comprehend them, what he said to me came as quite a nice change of music in these honestly hard times. (Not trying to invoke Dickens here but seriously, these times are hard.) He knows that I expect myself to super-excel and that my placing such unnecessary stress on myself would ultimately be my undoing in the exam hall on November 4, but it cannot be helped because of my high expectations of myself. I mean, he gets that, and what he said in response to that was really, really reassuring.

He told me that I'm already excelling, that I'm the school's only hope (this I find hilarious but that's just me), that I'm good, basically. And coming from someone like him, whom I completely admire, it was just... I don't know, I had no choice but to agree with him.

Okay, I just made it sound like, I don't know, that it's inevitable that people should have that opinion of me, but yeah. Somehow I've lost most of the cockiness that I had, which were clearly made manifest in the earlier entries of the second half of this year. Still, at the heart of it all, I think he's right and I think that I'm going to get the A1, no matter how much I'm going to think that I screwed up, and no matter how much I think I'm going to screw up. I mean, I'm inherently pessimistic and hence I'm always thinking and expecting the worst, but... I don't know. I'm not very coherent right now. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I should have more confidence in my abilities because getting the sole A1 was no fluke (although I still think that the essay sucks like hell) and I know that.

It's just that I'm fucking scared of the questions that are going to confront me at 8 a.m. on November 4. I'm scared of the possibility of me not being able to pick a single question because all of them would be things along the lines of "Doctors - can we really trust them?" which is a truly WHAT THE FUCK question from TJC. If every single question is like that, then it's the end of the road for me.

Let's just hope that I'd be lucky enough to have a choice between a few questions.

Then again, since I suck at decision-making, it's probably better that there'd only be one question which I can do.

But anyway, that small talk with him has injected some confidence back into myself. Which is a good thing because I'm really going to die if I go in with this kind of shitty state of mind.

Okay. Time for some self-esteem boosting.

I am a genius. I rule the world. I am better than everyone else. I am a genius. I am a genius, did I ever mention that? I'm the smartest person in the world.

Okay, that didn't work. Felt false as shit merely thinking those words.

Whatever. Moving on now.

Had a nice chat with Mr. Anand at the new and nice cafe today with Mel and Mr. Girl. I was telling him about my pathetic Paper 8 prelim, about Tony Harrison's "Timer", and oh my god, he just went off about its themes and symbolisms and everything, things that never even crossed my mind, and I was standing there, like, "Shit, I'm such a bloody failure and a fraud."

More positively though, he warned us about the detriments of screwing up Paper 8, how it would cost us the A in Lit. And on this point he looked at me, did the bulging-eyes thing which is his trademark, and went, "You won't get your A, Yelen!"

By implication it means that he expects me to.

Which I already know, but it's good to know it a second time.

I wanted to say the above differently but the precise word for it slips my mind right now.

I kind of wasted time in school but I'm glad that I got home and completed (well, for the most part) the 2003 November Maths Paper 1. Got a 60% and I left out three whole questions, the last question because I was too damn lazy by the time I got to the end to think about it. Made this other stupid error, as per usual. It was the '1+x' becoming "1-x" thing again, and you know partial fractions? Got my A, B and C correct but when I substituted the values into the original f(x), my B value somehow became 1 when it's actually 2.

Hence, my stupid maclaurin's expansion was wrong even though I expanded the stupid thing correctly.

Moral: Stop making stupid mistakes and MAYBE I'd get that A.

Haha. Yeah right. I'm inherently bad at Maths so I guess I'd have to settle for a B.

Okay. Time for dinner.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010