A few days ago I called my school in Aus to ask about my IB grades. They promised to fax a copy of the results slip and asked for my name. So I said it and spelled it out for them.

When the results arrived, I nearly choked with laughter when I saw the name Yim Hui Lin (Stefanie). Brudder, they sent me YOUR results, HAHAHAH. Well, they got the 'Hui' bit right, and the 'Y' and the 'in'...but fact is, I never mentioned a Christian name, and no matter how hard you try, there just no way you can say my name in a way that produces the 'L' sound!

I called them back and patiently pointed out the error. They were mortified, naturally, and commanded me to DESTROY the document immediately. The usual hush-hush confidential policy. I didn't think it could get any worse than that really; I felt this incident came really close to when Baldrick spelt 'Christmas' without getting any of the letters right. Compared to Baldrick, 6 correct letters out of 10 is a great score. 60%! You gotta say, it's fantastic!

Unfortunately, the moral of this story is, it CAN get worse. My parents went out for a wedding dinner tonight and the onus was on me to order dinner. The majority voted for McDs delivery, and I wasn't about to pass up a prosperity burger. =) My brother was perhaps more interested in WoW and didn't seem at all concerned with dinner so I took my time about calling them up. Let him starve, I thought. Now usually I'm a conscientious, exemplary big sister, and I might not have dallied if he didn't keep staring at the computer screen while pestering me to order dinner. WoW sucks the soul out of you, I tell you.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point was, when I eventually did call (it was about 8.10pm) I was asked for my address and my name and my order. The works, you know, and soon dinner was on its way.

When the food and bill finally came, it was a little past 9pm. The food was good, fries a little soggy but the name - oh, the name was atrocious! They got my name down as, you'll never believe it - Miss Angrie Yen.

Actually...I knew an Angrie Yen.



There's nothing wrong with my pronunciation at all, thankyouverymuch. I blame everybody else for this. *sulk*

Two subjects down, 4 more to go. The biggest of my worries, i.e. HL Math is done for good. Chinese was all right, though I expected to go a little better despite no study at all. I just took some time off the night before to learn some fancy words and cheng yus, all of which were pretty useless thanks to the weird essay questions they asked. Some questions in Paper 1 were vague and ambiguous as usual. They should really dig up some file on those nuts setting the Chinese paper. Geezes. The essay I wrote was incoherent, disorganized and far too short for my liking. Oh well.

Math was relatively uneventful as well. It was harder than many past year papers I did, and rather tricky. I had a crazy urge to write "Therefore, E=mc2" for everything I couldn't solve. Bleah. I won't fail math that much I know. I know I've done enough on the paper to scrape through. At least the stats option was good. I managed to answer the whole thing well.

I'm still trying to accept the fact that math really is finished. I don't know what to do with myself now. It seems too quick, too trivial, compared to almost a whole week of solid math work I did before the paper, from 9am to 12 midnight each day.

Gah. I want it all to be over now.

I can't stop listening to One Man Guy - Rufus Wainwright.

I love this song! The folk-ish melody and simple guitar strumming really captures me. It's cute at first when you think of the whole Rufus Wainwright being gay and having a song called One Man Guy, but as Aditi pointed out, the song is about something else. But it's a nice double entendre nevertheless, intended or not.

Before I go back to class, I need to spread my overwhelming joy at having finished my ToK essay! I finished the last three paragraphs last night, in about 2-3 hours, a major improvement from the 2hours/paragraph before. I managed to squeeze the arts in 550+ words but I still have stuff to add and the essay's too long anyway. 1856 at last count. I'm so proud of myself!!! It was probably the second most challenging essay I've ever written, only because the Extended Essay required so much more research and was 4000 words long. Or maybe they tie.

As I was writing the penultimate paragraph, I was involuntary seized by spasms of joy on the verge of erupting into something dangerous. Ironically, it was these great happy waves that hindered my progress, because I was so happy at the prospect of finishing I could hardly drag myself to actually finish it. But I did in the end, at 12 midnight, and was bursting into people's rooms and proclaiming my unending rapture and doing jigs and floating floating floating! *sighhhhhhhhhh*

ToK is DONE! =)

revisiting the cane

I'm stuck in a rut though I haven't even begun. Aditi will be disappointed in me. :-( *groan* ...ToK. I wish I knew what it really wanted. I'm not even sure what I think anymore. I keep debating the issue with myself but I feel like I'm going round in circles and never really stepping past the scope of personal experience.

Doing a ToK presentation on corporal punishment has generated some rather interesting effects. Every now and then, in between researching and trying to sort out the mess in my head, I'd be suddenly struck by a vivid memory from the times when the cane ruled, leaving me rather shaken at the end of the little video in my head. I'm surprised that I still remember the fear and the events so clearly though they haven't crossed my mind in years. I guess there hasn't been a reason for me to look back on that part of childhood, though doing it now, involuntarily at that, makes me feel uneasy.

I remember screaming as loud as I could even though the pain didn't warrant that level of screaming, with the wild hope in my head that the neighbours will hear and come hurrying to our door demanding to know if there's been child abuse going on. I remember rubbing my legs against the pillows, writhing about and weakly dodging, because usually the warning was the more I dodged the harder I would be caned. I remember sobbing out apologies and begging them to stop. I remember sitting in my room studying, trying to block out the screams that were coming from my brother's room next door, or from the neighbour's house behind. Other people caned their kids too. I remember telling my parents "It's about time you gave her a good caning" when my sister was being rude and impertinent. It wasn't malicious though, it was simply matter-of-fact. But all that, they were so long ago. I don't understand. Despite those...unpleasant memories, why do I still think corporal punishment is right??!

Have I been so strongly conditioned I find it hard to imagine otherwise? I've always been contented with thinking that caning should be a normal part of childhood and now that time has taken the sting away, I believed this meant I could reflect on it objectively, without emotions getting in the way. I've never questioned the authority of it, and was satisfied, even willing, to call it a neccessary part of the disciplining process. Perhaps because I attribute what I am today to the strict disciplining I received when I was younger. But as Aditi says, there is no basis for that attribution, and fine, even if I think it works for me, I cannot explain why others should receive it too, especially since I know people who turned out well without having ever been caned.

On a lighter note though, I've found some amusement from those memories. I could write a hefty volume on the cane, how thinner ones would sting more than thick ones, how we used to cellophane tape the end of the cane so we wouldn't have to deal with split ends, or how we tried to hide the canes from my parents, only it just postponed the act as canes were sold abundantly in shops like Star Enterprise.

...actually, to an unaccustomed ear, this probably sounds rather morbid. XD But it's all right. I don't hate my parents, I'm not emotionally scarred for life, and somehow, stubbornly, I still think a certain degree of corporal punishment under certain conditions can be useful. Now I just need to find valid reasons to justify this view.

what's been happening

The exam days are long cold, but my life hasn't slowed down one bit. My results...could be better, as always. But I'm not too fussed. The post exam week has just been a haze and daze of packing, seeing teachers, catching up on the work I'll be missing next week and tying up loose ends.

Whatever it is, this almost-2-months summer break will not be a fantastically relaxing one for me. Top on the list is my first draft of my Extended Essay. Formulating a research question that I want to know enough about has gotta be the hardest part about writing the EE. I'm still not happy with what I have, but hopefully I'll get some inspiration over the hols. Then it's down to churning out 4000 words for it. That's like...5 English essays fused into one big headache. Then, I have to think about writing my World Lit essay, Chem holiday homework, Economics commentaries, improving my Chinese, learning Japanese, studying Physics, revising my entire Maths syllabus...*thunk*. Something tells me I'm being too ambitious. Well, we'll see where I get by 2005. ^^

I'm leaving on the 3.40pm plane tomorrow, flying home at last. It's been a year. I've still got some bits and pieces to pack, because we have to completely EVAcuate our room. Not a trace should be left, not a hint that this room was once inhabited. So my life is currently stored in a Lego cardboard box, an Arnotts' Biscuits box, a Hawken Bakehouse box, and a large blue luggage. Left to goodness knows what in the musty basement trunk room where luggages and boxes of all sizes from all over Asia (and Australia's countryside =) converge. I've always found that room rather fascinating. Looking at the suitcases stacked up, a little haphazardly, in cobwebby wooden shelves that stretch from floor to low ceiling. Picking my way across, searching for my own, and extricating it from the cluster where it's been sitting for a year.

It won't be long now.

the could-have-been's

Yurgh...I need to whine about my Maths and Chem test today. The feeling of knowing you can do better but didn't is worse than knowing you didn't study for it so you're not going to do well. It's like the feeling when you make careless mistakes y'know. I must have went too slow on my Chem test cause when Mrs. Greenhill said 5 more minutes, girls, I still had a page left undone. So I abandoned the calculations I was in the midst of doing and flipped over and scrawled any answer I could to questions that didn't need much thinking or calculation, which unfortunately for me, wasn't exactly in abundance. I'm questioning the wisdom of that move now, having a page of properly done calculations and a page blank or two pages of hastily done calculations and half (and probably incorrectly) answered questions.

Maths test was okay, questions and time wise, besides I like calculus. BUT. Careless mistakes. *sob. I lost a definite 8 marks already. And we've to give some leeway to other mistakes I'll probably make along the way. It's out of 50 too, so 8 marks is whopping big. Sigh...I suppose everyone else who did the tests will have their own version of gripes. It's not about 'You call that bad? I did even worse..." or "it's not THAT many marks lost..." - but about not meeting up to your own expectations. And frankly, I expected much more of myself. It's a hard thing to satisfy. In retrospect, there will always be something I could have done better, something I could have done more carefully, something I could have done quicker.

I might as well make the most of whatever remaining shambles of today, ride this wave of blues and let it carry me through my homework which I wouldn't have done so readily if I wasn't feeling kinda down-ish right now. Sometimes, disappointment is the best form of motivation.

Meanwhile, here's another two to toss into the ever-growing pile of 'could-have-been's.