Jedi Bass.

The first week of school is over, and it's like we've been pushed into some sort of time warp.

Almost everyone I've spoken to was feeling horribly tired this morning, even though it's only the fifth day of the term. Feels like it's been forever, yet it feels as if it's only been a blink of an eye. Goodness, someone's been messing with the time-space continuum.

So yeah, what has transpired as of late?

Well, on Tuesday we had this briefing about ARP, then had English, where Ms Dass basically went through what we were going to do for the year, and then had Math. I like our Math teacher, he's pretty cool (and he made a reference to Coldplay too, which totally added points in my book). Going through combination and permutation and probability now, sort of like a recap of last year's stuff.

Then went out to NUS with Wai Yin to meet our research mentor. But he wasn't in, so we talked to one of his students instead, who told us a bit about what the project was about and what we were supposed to do to help him. It's pretty awesome, 'cause the concept is to create something that will select certain frames from videos/clips/films/et cetera and arrange them in panels to resemble a comic book so people can simply read the video and select a scene they want to play from. Our job is to manually do that, and give the guy a set of criteria we use to select and arrange our frames so he can prototype the programme.

I love it. I personally think we've got a super cool ARP (or maybe it's just because this combines two things I really like; film and comics).

Had our first Chem honours class on Wednesday (turns out this module is an extension of last sem's organic chem, and it's daunting). Have Mrs Chong as our teacher again, but she's only taking us for classroom time (an hour a week) and not the mass lecture time (Dr Li is teaching us that, which we found out on Thursday). Oh goodness, Chem honours. Two hours in the theatrette freezing my ass off and being confused and feeling so horribly stupid did nothing to make me feel good. But I do understand probably around fifty percent of what was going on.

Also, our band won the band category for Talent Search. Yay us.

Then on Thursday (worst scheduling of the week), we had two half-hour breaks to last us all the way till the end of PE at 4.30 in the afternoon. It's an hour of Math, half an hour break, an hour of Chem majors, two hours of Ecology, half hour break, two hours of Chem honours, PE. Height and weight did nothing for my self-esteem, 'cause I put on weight during the holidays and am still this short. At least I'm not obese and am not a midget.

Mentoring today, then Math, then Physics (I swear half the class was asleep for this one, and the other half were either nodding off or daydreaming, because our teacher tried to drag out six pages of notes to fill two hours of class, and we'd sort of learnt this stuff last year), then English (stupid AQ), then extra Chem (after yesterday's Chem hons class, feeling clueless during the core majors module just makes you more scared of the subject).

First CCA session of the semester. Briefed, allocated duties, listened to instructor guy talk, shared M&Ms.

Youth Week this week too, since Sunday's Youth Day and Monday's a public holiday in relation to that. So there've been events here and there. Popcorn and ice cream (discounted Ben & Jerry's) and candy floss, and an assortment of games. Found out today I was one of the lucky few who guessed a close number to the exact number of M&Ms in a container (1237). I guessed 1234 for the sake of it because it looked nice, and it turned out three other people guessed the same thing, and some smarter fellow guessed 1240. Prize was 200-ish M&Ms. Nice.

But so pooped I hardly feel youthful.

Night.

P.S. I just realised we had eight hours of Chem this week. Oh God, it's the new bane of my school life.

Valencia 2012.

Missed the race and I'm sad. I haven't missed a race since Montreal 2010, and I was hoping to maintain that record.

Sigh.

I don't know whether to be happy that the results were awesome or sad that I missed a race yielding such awesome results. But either way, Alonso won in his home country and he's on top of the standings and Kimi was second and Schumi was third. Probably the best podium in a long time, for me and the other people who support Ferrari and Alonso and Kimi and Schumi. Yay.

It must've been really frustrating for Vettel (whose car broke down), Grosjean (I don't know what happened to him), and Hamilton (who crashed out thanks to Maldonado), but I am quite grateful it's Alonso who's broken the seven-for-seven streak.

First day of school today, nothing much. Must've yawned like, fifty times during our Chem majors practical today. It's so weird to have a practical the first thing on the first day of school. Just added stuff together and wrote down a few things.

Then had our first Biochem lesson, with Ms Renata. Pretty okay, and then received a bunch of handouts and notes and readings and stuff. Goodness. The semester's starting pretty heavy duty. Then there are those people who dropped Bio and their classes have Bio back-to-back, so it's pretty much a five-hour break for them. Lucky, but missing out on Bio.

So yeah, everything's pretty much back to normal now. Hopefully we'll all survive this semester.

Night.

Oh, and watched 'Brave' last Thursday. Beautiful cinematography, yes. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

P.S. And the Internet connection here is killing me.

Fire fiasco.

Hello there, dropping by after an age to do a movie review, a book review, talk about me going out with friends (once, because I'm anti-social and lonely that way) and then a story about a fire.

Saw Madagascar 3 with my mum and brother, and I have to say I spent half the duration of the movie laughing. You really have to let go of everything, and let fly all logic and laws of physics. Loved and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's the sort of movie that can make your day, with its antics and colours and crazy woman.

So the entire storyline is that the Madagascar animals try to make their back to their zoo, make friends and inspire other people (animals, actually), then realise their zoo sucks and that real life is better. No surprises there. But very funnily presented, yes.

The penguins are the best.

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is probably one of Seth Grahame-Smith's most well-researched works yet (I've moved on from the movie part and onto the book part, just in case you haven't noticed). The use of (fictitious) journal excerpts integrated into third-person narrated text was ridiculously effectively done, and I've always liked his casual way of writing about blood and gore and death and dying. I mean yeah some parts were slightly more disturbing than I'd have liked, but I did enjoy it nonetheless. The pictures creeped me out though, but that was probably 'cause I was reading in the middle of the night.

But very nicely done. Applause.

Read 'Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon' before that (and re-read the original Bartimaeus Trilogy before that, but altogether they're called the 'Bartimaeus Sequence now), and I can say the only things in common between that and 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' are the politics and the footnotes, but both are funny and brilliant in their own ways. Jonathan Stroud definitely knows how to deliver sarcasm and arrogance. Everyone should read these books.

Went out with Manda and Shar on Monday to watch The Avengers ('cause Shar hadn't seen it yet). Third time, and I have to say it was still exciting and awesome to watch. Caught a few of the references I missed (like the shawarma joint Tony landed in front of, and two ravens who we speculate are Huginn and Muninn flying past when Thor and Loki were having their argument).

Then met up with Jan and had super late lunch. Nice catching up with old friends.

And today there was this huge bushfire thing (well it was a fire, burning up a patch of tall grass) right across from my house. Scary stuff. Thank goodness we didn't fall prey to the bystander syndrome and managed to call a fire brigade and stuff. All the neighbours were in a fluster, the men of the houses stood around talking and looking manly with their little garden hoses, trying to control the fire before the fire brigade came.

Interesting, but I hope it never happens again.

Adieu.

P.S. Only humans and penguins can drive.

Montreal 2012.

Watched the race last night, or early this morning, rather.

A bit frustrating for Ferrari fans, really, so I'm not very keen on writing about it. But I have an obligation to myself to do so, so here we are.

So let's see, what do I recall?

The only thing I enjoyed about the outcome of the race (not the process itself, mind you, because I like racing for racing's sake) was that now the record is seven different winners in seven races. Quite unthinkable, yes, but it's happened. It means so far in the season, nobody's won a race twice.

I absolutely love how close everything is. I've said this before, but I feel the need to say it again. During qualifying, the top fifteen were covered within a second in Q2. Crazy. And the fact that everyone's so on par with everyone else results in completely awesome racing.

Things were going well for Massa until he spun, which was a really costly mistake. The rest of his race was compromised, right when we thought he was back as a racing driver and would be able to keep hold of his F1 career. So disappointing.

Then things were going well for Alonso until his tyres starting giving out really badly and Hamilton, Grosjean, Perez and Vettel overtook him in quick succession over the last few laps.

Schumi had to retire because his rear wing wouldn't budge. Button was stuck down the order because his car wasn't responding as he liked.

Sigh.

The race was a total gamble. Some paid off, and some resulted in complete disaster (refer to Alonso fiasco above).

The top three (during the course of the race, i.e. Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso) took huge gambles, with Vettel and Alonso opting to stay out on a one-stop and Hamilton trusting his engineers in thinking the other two would do a two-stop. So Hamilton stopped, Alonso stayed ahead of Vettel, Hamilton dropped behind, but then totally flew because of better tyres and then overtook everyone and won the race.

Perez and Kimi followed a one-stop strategy too, and Perez ended up on the podium behind Grosjean. As a side note, I've realised Grosjean's name is very nice to hear and say. "Romain Grosjean". Ah.

I like Lotus.

Interestingly, nobody heavily collided into the Wall of Champions. A few brushes here and there, but no victims this race.

All right, going off now.

Hopefully next race will be less disappointing.

EDHETLS

Went out to watch 'Prometheus' today, but hardly any comment, because I think I spent an honest eighth of the movie covering my eyes and cowering behind my hands, because I am totally useless and like to shield my poor, delicate mind from disgusting scenes of death and blood and gore.

I mean yeah, it was obvious it was going to be one of those "everyone-dies-horrifically-except-this-lone-survivor" movies (whoops did I spoil it for you? I am so sorry you weren't able to deduce that on your own), but man my dad likes these movies so we went anyway. I thought I'd like, toughened up, but apparently not. Hey, EDHETLS should totally be a movie genre all on its own.

Ugh.

No comment. I don't particularly enjoy this genre. Thought Michael Fassbender performed brilliantly though.

Then watched 'The Incredible Hulk' (because yes I am slow on the uptake and I'm educating my family on the Marvel cinematic universe). Quite awesome, yes. And all those small references to everything else in the universe were like little treats for rabid fans. Not that I'm a rabid fan, of course, but man I totally enjoyed those references.

Went to Miri a few days ago, and bought books, glorious books. Rick Riordan books (Son of Neptune included, thank goodness), and a copy of 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'. It sucks that I'm only getting my hands on this now right before they're releasing a movie based on it, because it's so much harder to find a copy with the original cover. Had to settle with the movie-promo edition, which I do not approve of.

Okay, going off now.

Adieu.

P.S. Oh, and I believe this is a cause worth raising awareness for. Vertical Video Syndrome is such a sin.

P.P.S. Why are there so many cases of cannibalism popping up lately? It's really getting out of hand. Zombie outbreak totally imminent at this point. Need to start training physical fitness and general survival skills.