Yes, I know I should have blogged earlier, but you have no idea how busy everything suddenly became. One moment, I'm peacefully levelling my character on WoW, and suddenly along my mum comes... Bang, I get hit with shock after shock of everything I should have/have to do before I fly off tomorrow evening. Ok, fine, so I'm not the most organised person (even though you think I am (not)), and I haven't finished packing... Fine! I haven't started! Sigh, I really should get to that >.> But really, you have no idea how much there actually is to do, especially when you're going for holiday. And not coming back (for 2 years :P).

On Wednesday night, I probably saw my all my school friends for the last time. It was actually sort of sad in a way, they were pretty much the first (close) group of people in my life who I had to actually say goodbye to. It was odd, in some senses, and just downright sad in others. I must say, holding in my emotions was not an easy job. The good thing is, they all left in small groups of ones and twos, that sort of made it easier. If they all left at once I don't know what I would have done =/. After the hotpot, 5 of us went over to chris's, while David, Anyq and Jack went home. Ji-yoon, who had an interview the next day, couldn't even make it to the dinner, but I was really touched by the fact that she made the effort to come down just to meet up for the last time and see me off. Kylie and Greg left shortly after they came.

On a side note: Kylie made me do this! <-- disclaimer. Well apparently, Kylie made some pretty indignant claims about what I said about her habits of letting people know about outing plans. My bad: it wasn't just me she left out. She left all of us out. Only she knows what we're doing. Yeah, Kylie expressly asked me to blog this, hope you're happy now Kylie xD.

Anyway, so it was just me, Chris and Kat who were left. And we pretty much spent the whole night with whisky, webcomics, and just general chatting. Somehow, after chatting for what didn't seem like such a long time, we opened the blinds and the sky was getting bright. I hate it when the sky starts to get bright. It actually feels like a hangover. Eventually Kat left in the morning, and I stayed with Chris until noon teaching him WoW, before I left too.

As you can see, the goodbyes were sort of spread, minimising the emotional impact they could have potentially had on me. Aren't you glad :P.

So I spent the next day (Thursday) getting a haircut, and shopping... I've always been better at buying gifts for people when I come back :P. I did promise Lynette I'd get her (a) <--surprise-->, ^^. Many gifts for all my old friends too, assuming we even meet up before I have to report in T.T.

Tonight was sort of our church's farewell thing for me, so my parents had a sort of farewell party at our place. Even though I'm not really too close to my church community, I found that there will be a few people I'll miss too. And there was the whole goodbye thing all over again. My mind found a way to disconnect the hugs, prayers and cries of "good luck" and "see you in 2 years", from the actual emotions that normally go with them. I think, after having so many goodbyes already, this one was just sort of numb, emotions few and short, sort of when my mind realised what was happening, then got disconnected again. Self-protection mechanism? Perhaps.

Something I sort of didn't appreciate as much was this cake a lady from church brought. It's sort of hard to explain why I was sort of disdainful of that act... What it was was simply a cake, with a liberal amount of intricately coloured icing depicting what was supposed to be me, in army uniform, sitting in a field with a gun. And I was muddy. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly appreciate the effort and everything that went into the cake, and I don't doubt the intention one bit. But somehow, if I was to choose a cake on my farewell, it would probably be a relatively plain one, perhaps with snowy-white icing, saying farewell/good luck/come back soon or something. Not one with me in the army, that would be the very last thing. Sort of something that reminded me of the bright side of things to come, instead of the actual source of sorrow (even though that was probably the thematic choice)? I don't know... Sorry for my clumsy explanations. I'll stop now. If you get it, thank you. If not, go away, don't ask me.

Oh yes... Apparently my treatment with the plate (braces thing) thing should have finished by now... But somehow the dentist said I still need to wear it. For another 2 years. Go go dentist. Gah. They hurt quite badly actually T.T.

Well, this whole goodbye thing is getting old anyway. Sort of fed up with all the seemingly endless motions of goodbyes, rituals of parting so to speak. Sounds really insensitive of me, but it's sort of true. I've been more than prepared/pumped to move on now, and now I just want to get it done with, embrace the future gracefully. A very interesting observation I made was that, assuming something happened, and I would somehow not have to go back anymore, just apply to uni like a normal student and go on to continue my studies, with no more NS, I would probably be more crushed than I am about going to NS in the first place. It's really weird, but it's something I've come to realise. Maybe it means I'm ready to move on. Maybe it means I'm an idiot. Meh.

Still, I'll miss you guys over here in Australia who I've come to know in my relatively short 3 years over here, which somehow seemed like half my life, even more. Truly, it's been a pleasure. This is probably my last post before my flight tomorrow, as I anticipate a mad rush to come... So to everyone here, this is goodbye =), the true end of the chapter lies here. My next post will probably come from Singapore, a new beginning.

So if you'll excuse me, I should get packing =).

Cy4 l84z~. Flourish. <3

Hello again from the post-exam netherworld. My relative perception of day and night, as well as other normal cycles of life have been rather warped by this sense of newfound freedom. No school, and especially, no exams to study for. I've whiled away the hours playing World of Warcraft, in a rather mad rush to get to level 70 before I enter the army. I started off pretty strong, but recently i've been wavering in my resolve and am starting to get sidetracked. Well, I do have many other things to get done besides this, I am moving to a new country in a week's time after all (OK, that realisation just shocked me quite badly just then).

Went out two nights ago to a pub (?!), lured in by Kylie and her ever-wily words. "Movie". Right. Anyway it turned out to be quite fun, although I didn't take any alcohol at the lounge itself (Being unaccostomed to alcohol, coupled with the fact that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast really didn't give me the best circumstances to be drinking under). Still, pretty wasteful fun night out. I find that with this group of people, it's really quite inevitable that I'm excluded out of every other conversation, having nothing to "recall" from past events to laugh or joke about. So I just pass the time listening to their never-ending recollections of good times past, and dream about my own.

I find it quite sad actually that we're no longer in school. Especially with all the anime. They just expand on all the various possibilities school life holds, all opportunities gone now. However, I suppose that in a sense, we had our share of fun times and laughs. Just nowhere near enough. I blame computer games. Then again, probably many of the fond memories would be from those very games themselves...

Well, tomorrow, apparently a group of my closest school friends are throwing me a farewell party of sorts, except it was organised by none other than Kylie again, which meant unknown venues, unknown times, and unknown activities (she has everything immaculately planned out, but it seems just a little too hard for her to let the person she's throwing it for know, I mean, after telling everyone else what the plans were). All I know is: Meet up at this place, this time, wearing this. Expect to be back the next day some time. Wow. Makes me question the state I've degraded to. To quote Kylie: "Trust? What does this word mean? Could you explain the concept to me?"

All I can say is that I assume they planned something fun (for them at least). Rest assured I'll be on my toes tomorrow (you never know with these people...).

You would assume that I've started packing for my big move to Singapore, or at least have some idea by now what I'll be taking right? Well, you were wrong (sorry, chances are you were probably right, but I like making assumptions for you). Nothing done at all. When my mum raised the subject it just made me go "OH CRAP" at all the things I had thought I would have done by then, that I possibly won't be able to do for, quite easliy, 2 years after. Finishing the unread manga in my bookshelf would be a good start. They're just a bit too heavy to carry over to Singapore, let alone display in whatever space I'll be allotted once I'm living there (Or will they? My manga collection IS really quite important to me, and I'll be constantly expanding it during my stay in Singapore... Oh, my parents and sister are coming to Singapore too... Right?).

I realise I won't be able to do everything I had hoped to by the time I have to leave... But to fall short by this much? Something must be done! But what about WoW?! More dilemmas... Sometimes, I miss the decisionless lifestyle of school/exam routines. There's the exam. Study for it. Pwn it. Done. I guess with freedom come these extra perks called "choices". Which I should really be doing my best to enjoy huh. I won't see them again for a while after a month's time...

Oh well, I should get to sleep, I actually have the house to myself tonight, parents went to Crown to use some free night at the Crown voucher thing, sister staying over at some friend's place. It's nice. But I still have to keep to my exercise routine, which means I'll have to be up tomorrow, exercising BEFORE I leave for my little outing. Gah.

Night~

Liberation. Freedom. My last exam ended today, and the resulting rush of pure gladness was nothing less than expected. I would assume that the Spec paper did something to contribute to this, the fact that I managed to put a reasonable answer down for every question is something not everyone can attest to I think.

I definitely thought it was a hard paper, especially during reading time, while going through it and going "GG" in my head. Somehow during the paper as I went through it, it just sort of fell into place. It was an almost surreal feeling. And a good one at that, after spending 30-45 mins on the last question and getting a reasonable answer (the previous answers included something like negative time, complex time, and other hilarious ones).

I must say, God has really helped me through this trial, one that I'm pretty sure I couldn't have overcome as well as I did without help. It's really through Him that I seem to be pulling great reults out of nowhere from. I thought I should mention Him, God doesn't get enough press on my blog compared to how much He does for me =P

So, I bought the World of Warcraft expansion: The Burning Crusade right after the Spec exam, and have been installing it for, at last count, the last 3 hours. My motherboard SERIOUSLY needs replacement. But that means no computer for a few days. And these days are very important. I also got a new 500gb HDD =D my dad insisted that that was my christmas present -.-", but that's ok I guess, really needed one especially before I left for Singapore. So that's where my whole evening went.

Well today also marked the last time I'll ever be in school in my school uniform again. As I came out of the Spec exam, participated in the usual post-exam banter that actually went for a much shorter time than usual, I found myself stuck in school waiting for my mum to finish work and pick me up. Spec was from 3-5.15pm (terrible time by the way) so I didn't have to wait too long I guess, compared to what the rest of this year was like. But the cool thing was, everyone left rather early, and so I found myself left alone with my thoughts. I instinctively found myself sitting in the middle of the Quad, and reflecting, with "Time Of Your Life" playing on my ipod (somehow). It almost got pretty emotional.

So I'm installing WoW right now (which is taking ages due to my failing motherboard). There's a million things to do, but definitely no time to do them all, so let's get to the important stuff.

Edit: Sigh, I think my motherboard has failed to the point that I can't even play WoW properly. The fps I get is so low that it's barely even playable. This is bad news, and probably means that I'll have to take my computer to the techs again to get a new one, possibly waiting for quite a long time in the process. Without a computer. Evil evil news indeed.

Good night.

END Story Arc 1 - High School

So, I said I would post during my next gap between exams, and I'm right in the middle of it.

With regards to the exams I had from Monday, school bio (ironically) was actually something of a disaster. Due to my lack of time management capabilities (perhaps due to my arrogance) in Bio papers, I found myself left with 10 minutes on the clock, with 1/3 of the paper undone in a 1 hour 30 minute paper. Which is generally a position you don't want to be in. Despite this, I managed to finish the paper (somehow) although my handwriting actually degraded to a point where I'm afriad the examiners might just not bother. Hopefully the first part of the exam will convince them I'm not completely hopeless.

Specialist Paper 1 went pretty well, I suppose it had better damn well have, after being my most studied subject this year (and may I say, by FAR). There were a few trick questions at the end, looked sort of odd, but not difficult to me, but apparently people found it hard. Well, paper 2 still remains, that will decide the true fate of Spec.

Uni Bio exam on CUP DAY. Yes, Cup Day. Public Holiday type Cup Day. Apparently it wasn't a Uni holiday, so yeah. Exams on it yay. I actually expected the exam to completely massacre me, but this wasn't the case, strangely enough. The sample exams did a good enough job of completely dashing my hopes for anything near a distinction, but it seemed like an illusion as I looked through the paper. The calculations were do-able, and I (perhaps through luck) managed to decipher an essay problem which people didn't seem to. The other essay questions were thankfully bullshittable or rather broad, allowing for some random inserts of sentences/phrases/words to make the examiner think you know what's actually going on. The multiple choice wasn't too bad either, the guess rate was much lowered from the Mid-Years, at only about 30% maybe -.-" Multiple-choice is seriously cheap stuff, the things they put in there... Sometimes I wonder if we're actually meant to know that. Probably some random side thing the lecturer mentioned (who we, as UMEP students, don't get to listen to unless you downloaded the lectures yourself, but who does that...).

On a side note, I realised that the park next to the Royal Exhibition Centre and Melbourne Museum actually seemed really serene and beautiful, with a mini-lake, trees, unpronounced paths and lush green carpet, combined with a touch of Old English architecture. Really stood out to me as I made my way through it. And LOL! As I was walking with Ai Lin and Su-Ann to the main road through the park, we saw this procession of undead/halloween monstrosities (people who actually took the time to get props/proper dress/make-up for the occasion), and who really seemed to care enough to maintain their groaning, sprawling gait, and illusion of being possessed or undead as they made their way through the park path. It was really quite impressive. I mean, once you see people who bothered with synthetic flesh hanging from their face, blood splattered all over them, torn clothes etc, it really makes you stare.

What I didn't understand was, a) it was 12.30pm in the afternoon. The sun was one of the brightest we had seen the entire week. Undeads walking around wasn't too scary/convincing, and b) it was a week past halloween. So.

Methods paper 1 is the next paper, on Friday at some point. Methods has been the subject I've been slacking off the most, and I have tomorrow to buck up on it (the last few days have been spent wasting time/relearning the chemistry syllabus, to varying degrees of success for each area of study). Probability especially, it's a completely new style of maths compared to Spec, which I've actually studied quite thoroughly for now. Hopefully tomorrow will be fine.

Alright, it's 2am now, and after waking up at 1pm this afternoon (no joke, I was that tired after the triple exam combination in two days), something tells me I should get to bed. Now.

Until the next break, good night.

Here I am. This post is evidence that I survived the English exam. What can I say... Not having to analyse another text in my life? It feels... good. Yeah. Screw vocabulary. Good is a good word.

The exam itself wasn't terrble, but it wasn't great either. Didn't like the questions, and there wasn't any flow in my writing. Maybe it was just the exam setting. But that's over now.

Tomorrow I have two exams, the only day I have two (Spec maths paper 1 and school Biology). Followed by Uni Bio on the day after. (Tuesday, which happens to be Cup Day, generally a holiday in Melbourne -.-")

Strangely as I came out of the English exam, everything felt sort of numb and emotionless. Should have felt a bit more than that, but I think I sort of leaked emotion into my exam paper to the point I didn't have much left after. Which should be a good thing. Maybe.

I haven't been stressed this whole weekend, taking it easy, revising at a comfortable pace. Then last night I started to panic. I'm still panicking.

Was up till 3am last night trying to get some Uni Bio notes going, and I would have gone for longer if my whole street didn't have a power outage -.-". Such a mess up of my plans. Sigh. Thuderstorms.

So, you ask, if I'm panicking so much, why am I here and not studying?

And I would reply, that's an astoundingly valid point.

Until the next hiatus between exam barrages.