My last exam ended 2+ hours ago, and my holidays have now officially begun. despite that, i'm not really in the mood to enjoy the break, and here's why. between monday and now, i've taken 2 more papers, namely spectroscopy 2 yesterday, and physical chem today. if i thought i wasn't happy before, i'm positively depressed by now. the difficulty of the 2 papers i just sat for were almost on par with (or even worse than) the first 2 exams.

to describe spectroscopy 2, the phrase "笑里藏刀" comes to mind. literally translated, that's "smile inside hide knife". that's because the lecturer's a nice lady, but she sets one hell of a tough paper. it was annoying, because i threw at least 20 marks back at her already. guess i got psycho-ed into it. during her consultation and lectures, she kept going <hong kong accent>remember to use the information from all spectra when deducing the structure of your compound</hong kong accent>. what she DIDN'T mention was that the spectra could be misleading. the IR spectrum didn't show signs of a benzene ring, so i thought putting one ring into my structure was already pushing it. turns out the correct structure had TWO benzene rings. then again, i supposed i should have been a little smarter. after all, how else can you distribute 9 hydrogens among 13 carbons and 2 oxygens (with other constraints as well)? aside from that, she kind of defied expectations. she specializes more towards the organic side herself, and spent more time on organic spectra during lectures, so we were kind of expecting heavier emphasis on organic. turns out there was more inorganic instead. to sum it up, i kind of feel cheated...not just by the focus of the paper, but on the over-complication of the questions as well. right now, it feels like a B-.

you know, after the paper, my morale just crashed. in fact, i found myself wondering, 'why am i still trying?'. all of a sudden, chem just seemed so foreign and unfriendly. it got bad to the point where i was briefly entertaining the thought of changing majors. yes...it was THAT demoralizing. in retrospect, though, it doesn't seem as bad today. maybe the additional time lessened the pain or something. well, even if i DID want to change major, i wouldn't know what to change to, so looks like i'm stuck here.

as for physical chem, i don't know. i really don't. but considering that i left blanks here and there (and forgot to answer one question, and got a negative activation energy), i'm not expecting too much. not having seen my lab grades, i really can't make a prediction. but i'd like a B, or even B+ if possible, though that may change after i get my lab reports back. long story short, i'm hoping that my CAP increases, or at least stays the same. a decrease now would most definitely not be welcome. but looking at my predictions so far (assuming they're all more or less correct), it's highly likely that i'm looking at a 3.6-something CAP after this semester. this is one of those times where i wouldn't mind being wrong...provided that my actual CAP is higher than my predicted one. for once, i'm hoping that the bell curve works in my favour.

since today was the end of my exams, i reactivated my facebook account. there was some initial reluctance, because i didn't really want to see all the incriminating stuff. but a few clicks of the "delete" button later, it was all gone. so...out of sight, out of mind? i'd like to think so, but i know that that's not going to happen. nevertheless, a quick clean-up later, and it's back to normal use. well, as normal as avoiding certain peoples' profile pages get, anyway. it's quite scary. my facebook has been back on for like 4 hours, and already i'm feeling the odd urge to check in on it every 5 minutes or less. not good. well, i guess shutting facebook off during term time will become a regular thing for me. since i'm the easily-tempted type, i had better remove my potential source(s) of distraction when possible.

well...exams are over, so i'll do my best not to think about them any more. i'll save that for 21 december, when the results come out. meanwhile, i don't have all that many holiday plans. i'm planning to do some area cleaning, as well as packing away this semester's notes. probably have to step out a little while later to get those plastic case thingies that i'm so fond of putting the notes in. if money permits, i'll also do a bit more grocery shopping. and it never hurt to buy my christmas cards early, too. i'm thinking of getting them all done before results day, so that my mood is not negatively influenced while writing them. we'll see how it goes. but first, i have 2 DVDs and a season of the big bang theory to watch, and a new driving music CD to burn.

-random thought of the day: Epicness.-

Now that 2 out of my 4 papers are over, it's time for a mid-point review. in general, i'm not happy. so far, every time i step out of the exam hall, i suddenly remember 2 or 3 key points that should have made it into my answers, but didn't.

more importantly, i realized that one of the 10-mark questions that i attempted (but didn't get correct) in spectroscopy 1 could have been done by a much easier method, which would have given me the correct answer and saved me 15 minutes' thinking time. what makes it suck even more was that that particular concept was covered twice this semester, once in spectroscopy 1 and again in einstein. AND I CLEAN FORGOT!! we're talking about 10 free marks , which comes up to about 2 grades' difference! consequently, i'm more annoyed with myself for losing these 10 marks than i am with myself for losing about 20 marks in another question. at least those 20 marks were well-lost, as i still can't figure out the solution even now. guess it's a learning experience, though i'll have a hard time forgiving myself if my grade turns out to be lower than expected. and speaking of expected, taking lab reports and tests into account, i'm thinking...B to B+, though anything above that would be more than welcome.

as for SS, i didn't really refer much to my notes, even though it was open-book. actually, most of the stuff that i wrote was pretty common-sensical. i wonder how that'll affect my grade, or if it will even affect my grade at all. after all, it's an SS module, and we're not supposed to get all that technical. well, based on perceived performance and established CA results, i'm hoping for a B+.

i know i shouldn't be so concerned about my mistakes. as two of my friends have said, it's no use crying over spilt milk, and this most probably won't matter in the long run. i agree with the first statement, but the second...i don't know. the worst thing that could possibly happen is that that the accumulation of many such idiotic mistakes end up costing me my chance at honours. as long as that doesn't happen, it'll be easy to let those mistakes go.

you know, it's the mistakes which leave a negative impact that are the hardest to forgive. the mistakes that don't have a permanent adverse effect on you are much easier to let go of. for instance, my idiotic slip-up during A-levels, when i gave the definition for nuclear fusion when the question asked for fission (or vice versa, i can't recall the exact thing right now). i beat myself up over it for a while, but when the A came back, it got demoted from "unforgivable error" to "funny anecdote". i'm just hoping that something similar will happen here.

if there's one revelation i've had in the past 3 days, it's that once you get to university (or maybe it's just NUS), you can't use the secondary school/JC style of mark allocation any more. it might still work for science and engineering, but not most other faculties. it's kind of scary, because you see 10 marks allocated to a question. looking back at your short answer, you start wondering, 'did i write enough? is there something else the professor wants me to do?' along with a million other doubts and fears. it's not so bad for science, since you know you're more or less right, except when you have zero idea about how to begin the question, much like that 10-mark question i mentioned earlier. looking at the marks allocated, i thought i was in for a full page of working. then when the paper ended, i found out that the actual answer only takes up about 6 lines. anticlimactic, can!? and, needless to say, it pissed me off to no end that i didn't see something that easy.

well...i'll do my best not to think about what i can't salvage. have to focus on spectroscopy 2 and physical on thursday and friday respectively. incidentally, i received a nice surprise today. remember that make-up physical chem test i did? turns out i scored really well on it...like "21/25" kind of well. how's that for unexpected? it's nice that the result came back at this time, because i sure as hell need a morale booster after going through 2 finals and making idiotic errors. of course, i can't allow myself to get complacent, as goodness knows my physical chem could use a LOT of improvement.

so, that's that. i'll probably update again after my finals end. meanwhile, i need sleep, as i've been up since 4:30am. tomorrow will be spent studying and cooking a little (i seem to be developing a cooking habit). as a reminder, i want to talk about jobs in my next update, and potential jobs for me in future.

-random thought of the day: Time to replace my graphics card.-

As usual, reading week is passing by too fast for my liking. in the end, i ended up scrapping the study plan, and went according to whatever i felt like studying. needless to say, physical chem hasn't been receiving all that much attention. but that's ok, since it's the last paper and i still have buffer time, revision-wise.

right now, i'm feeling...full. i just came back from a nice japanese buffet dinner, so that's to be expected. but that's just a nice coincidence. by "full", i actually mean academic-wise, for my spectroscopy 1 module, to be exact. it's like, i know all the concepts already. now the thing is whether i'll be tripped up by annoying little details, like remembering to divide a value by 2, or defining the energy levels correctly. then again, if i get caught by these things, it just means that i don't know the concepts well enough, right? it sucks! in fairness, though, the past-year paper was doable. the trick is to know exactly what the question's asking for, and to be able to recall the relevant formula/concept very very quickly. i don't know...i really don't feel like looking at it any more, but if i don't, and something that i didn't bother to pay attention to actually comes out, i know i'll seriously kick myself. arrgh. perhaps tomorrow will bring new motivation.

my other modules are on backburner for now, but i don't feel too good about them either. take SS for instance. it's an open-book exam, so there's not much advantage in being able to remember content. as the lecturer herself said, it focuses more on application. at the start of the semester, i mentioned that i wouldn't mind using an S/U on this module. now that i've actually gone through the module's content, i'm quite prepared to take that statement back. from the looks of it, an A grade is actually achievable. maybe it's because my confidence is boosted by my good results from the CA component. i mean. no point wasting a high mark, right? might as well go all the way. of course, the ultimate decision whether to S/U it or not will only be made after results come back.

spectroscopy 2's situation is somewhat like SS, except the "good CA results" part. from what i've seen so far, my lab reports don't look that bad (more on that later), and my mid-term SEEMS to be on the above-average side. logically, things should be looking up. unfortunately, the finals include UV spectroscopy, and guess how many lectures of that i attended? give yourself a prize if you said "zero". so...yes. you see the problem. thankfully, i was able to crash-course through most of it during consultation with the nice lecturer today. doesn't really do much for my confidence, but it helped, nevertheless.

over the past few days, i've been collecting my lab reports. i've got both spectroscopy modules' reports back, but not physical. it's understandable, because we had 5 reports for physical as compared to 4 and 3 for spectroscopy 1 and 2 respectively. still, it shouldn't take this long! as you can see, not knowing the physical lab grades is killing me. the grades of the reports that i've already gotten back range from A+ to B+, and i'm generally pleased with that. it's quite satisfying to see this kind of grades, especially when remembering how much i stewed over some of the data. hopefully that gives me a slight advantage in the CA component.

the one thing i don't like about most of the lab reports is that there are practically no comments. that's kind of acceptable for the A+ reports, because the grade tells me that i didn't screw anything up too badly. still, it would be nice if the TA(s) marking the report could at least tell me what they liked about it, or which sections were well-written. as for the non-A+ reports, i would really really like feedback. that's not to say that feedback is completely absent, but a few circles here and there just doesn't cut it as far as telling me what i need to improve on is concerned. admittedly, i rarely write feedback on my tuition kids' tests as well, but at least i'm there to explain things to them face-to-face. the TAs are too busy to do something similar, so i think that they should at least write their thoughts down for us to reflect upon. or maybe they find that difficult as well, due to the sheer volume of stuff that they have to mark. who knows? guess i'll find out for myself, should i have the opportunity to become a TA in future.

i suppose that i should talk a bit about yesterday. one of the judo kids organized a movie/dinner outing, seeing as (1) it was a public holiday, (2) he was done with his O-levels, and (3) it was his birthday. in light of my saturday exam, i had the good sense not to join them for the movie. incidentally, they watched harry potter 7: part 1. as i later found out from them, it was boring, so no great loss on my part for missing it. besides, i personally prefer to read the book. reading gives me more freedom to imagine how my character looks like (though i must admit that how i imagined snape to look like was heavily influenced by alan rickman after i watched the first movie).

recovering from my little digression, i met them while they were having dinner at marina square. in the...year or so that i haven't been there, there have been many many changes, which i will not list out as i lost track of them myself. anyway, after they were finished with dinner, we went for pool and bowling. didn't do so well at pool, but managed not to throw my face at bowling. considering the kids know i'm qualified as a coach, getting beaten by any of them would do some serious harm to my reputation. surprisingly, some of the kids have pretty good bowling sense, and, if they were given some training, they would make pretty decent bowlers. too bad they see it as more of a recreational thing than anything else. all in all, it was a welcome break from staring at organic molecules and formulae.

unfortunately, the outing also gave me some unwelcome stuff to think about. as you can probably guess by now, that person's involved again. i know i've previously said that i'd given up, that it just wasn't worth it, that i should just move on. but after looking at a photo of that person, i realize that i can't. no matter what that person does (within reasonable, rational limits, of course), i'll always feel something for them...even if they don't feel the same way back, and even if it kills me inside to see some of the things that they're doing. that's bad, because that person holds way too much emotional leverage over me. i'm just grateful that this is not something widely-known, so that person can't really exploit it. i think we're due for another talk, this time with me coming clean for real, and bringing the dreaded "L" word into play, which is something that i have more or less refrained from doing thus far.

well...yes. i really hope that the issue in the above paragraph doesn't affect my studies much. goodness knows i need my CAP to rise. oh well. have to remind myself to focus.

-random thought of the day: Next post prompt — Talk about Snape.-

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*Friday, 19 November 2010, 2:36pm*

To avoid adding on to my total post count, as well as to the number of posts that mention depressing stuff, i've decided to just add on to yesterday's post. i'm supposed to talk about snape. if you've read harry potter, you'll know that he's ultimately a good guy. and the thing that turned him to the good side and kept him there was love. i can't help wondering, though, how he felt when the love of his life married, and even had a child with, another man. after i finished all 7 books, i kind of understood why he was so horrible to harry potter.

you know, i think snape's a greater man than i am. had i been in his shoes, i don't think i could have done what he did. as it is right now, i'm already having a tough time suppressing my winces when i see something that i would have been better off not seeing. asking me to watch that person get married and have kids would be something akin to torture. well, it hasn't happened yet, so i don't know for sure. even then, i can safely say that it will most likely not be pleasant.

in army, i've often heard that people dislike what you do, not who you are (unless your character's seriously messed up). i wonder if it's the same here. i still like that person for who they are, but the things that they do are seriously annoying me to no end. worst thing is, i don't think they're doing it on purpose. and just between us, i'm being unreasonable, because i have no right to feel annoyed at what that person's doing. i wonder how long it'll take before this whole thing stops? or maybe it's just me being dramatic. and if there's one thing i've learnt from various conflicts in the family, it's that drama is bad for my health.

well...i'd better not dwell on it so much for the next 7 days. after all, i need all the brain space i can spare for examinable content. i should go through my spectroscopy 1 notes at least thrice more before tomorrow's exam. i'm determined not to be tripped up by any more irritating little details.

Can you believe that it's reading week already? i can, but only barely. seems like just not too long ago when summer break ended and school restarted. now, there are only 2 more weeks before i'm on my end-of-year holiday.

this post is likely to be a heavy one, as there are several topics (debts, feelings, and maybe others) that i'm going to talk about in great detail. but before all those, let's plan out my reading week/exam period first:

saturday (today) — planning, maybe a bit of physical chem
sunday — physical chem, grocery shopping
monday — cooking, physical chem, SS
tuesday — spectroscopy 1, spectroscopy 2
wednesday — physical chem, SS
thursday — spectroscopy 1, spectroscopy 2 (and consultation in school)
friday — spectroscopy 1
saturday — spectroscopy 1 exam, SS
sunday — SS
monday— SS exam, physical chem
tuesday — physical chem, spectroscopy 2
wednesday — spectroscopy 2
thursday — spectroscopy 2 exam, physical chem
friday — physical chem exam, holiday begins

that's the rough plan for now, and any changes should just be minor ones. after all, i can't change the exam dates. i'm kind of grateful that everything will be over within the first week. while it means that i have less time to study, it also means that the overall pain will last for a shorter period of time as well. interestingly enough, none of my exams are at any of the MPSHs this time round. instead, my exams are in the SDE building as well as in several halls of residence. would be nice if i was staying in those halls...i could wake up like 10 minutes before the paper was due to begin and still make it to the venue on time. and by some further odd coincidence, all my papers begin at 9:00am on their respective days. i'm not too worried for the saturday exam, since i'll have the car. but for the three weekday exams, camping in the central library is starting to sound oddly tempting, since i don't trust myself (or the morning traffic) enough to ensure my timely arrival. well...we'll see how things go. best-case scenario is that i'll manage to get half-day use of the car for my exam days.

seeing as today would be my last worry-free day for a while, i decided to go down for training. and it so happened that the dojo wasn't booked or something. so...impromptu free day once again. sian. dropped one of the juniors home first, then met up with the rest at j8 for lunch. as usual, seeing that person gave me a stab of something unpleasant, which i would now identify as jealousy. i can't explain it. i want that person to be happy, i really do(...or do i?). but now that that person is happy, why am i still feeling this way? it sucks. here's hoping that it'll get better after my christmas cards go out this year.

oh. while on the topic of judo...i made quite a girly purchase yesterday, and bought hair-ties. the link isn't immediately obvious, so here's the explanation. i figured that if my hair was going to grow long, i might as well tie it back during training to avoid having it fly all over the place, hence the purchase. issue is, some parts of my hair are long enough to be a nuisance, but aren't long enough to be tied up. guess i'll have to wait for the not-long-enough parts to grow out. and i learnt that tying hair up isn't that easy. like...how do you know you've tied it at the centre of the back of your head? my eyes certainly can't see 180 degrees behind me. i'm guessing that it's an intuition/practice thing. most girls do it regularly from young, so by the time they're my age, they can do it really easily compared to me, since the first time i tried it was like a few days ago. maybe i should experiment with different types of bands...within reasonable guy-limits, of course.

like i mentioned before, i want to talk about debt. not just in terms of money, but in terms of what the chinese would call "ren qing", which approximately translates to "favours" in english. you see, my boss had a gout attack a while ago, and he's taking longer than usual to recover from it. so, while he's semi-incapacitated, he's been calling me to help him buy food and other essentials. i'm not opposed to doing so, considering that he's something of a big-brother cum father-figure cum a whole lot of other stuff in my life. i must admit that i do find it a little irritating that he hasn't offered to pay me back for the stuff i've got for him. but then again, i personally feel that i'm not quite justified to feel this way. consider this: i've known him since i was sec 2. in our 8 years of acquaintance, he's spent WAY more money on me (food, transport, other random stuff) than i've spent on him. so, by right, i shouldn't be complaining at all. there is a slight technicality here, though. right now, my income's dried up. so, this is what i would classify as "unplanned expenditure". if tuition was still on, i'd have absolutely no problem with spending a little more than usual. also, i wouldn't feel this way if he'd at least offered to pay...that way, i can accept and refuse payment on my own terms. oh well...it's not like i desperately NEED every single cent. besides, i still have a couple of coaching paychecks incoming.

as you can see from the above paragraph, some debts can't be quantified. even if i were to settle the monetary aspect completely, how do you put a price on life lessons? or for someone being there to listen to you and to offer advice when you're stuck in life? it's like i'm permanently indebted to him, because without him, army life would have been a lot less bearable, and i might not have gone for level 1 coaching qualification. so, i am obligated to do whatever i can for him. likewise, i would assume (and secretly hope) that the kids that i'm looking after will do something similar for me in the years to come. granted that i haven't been taking care of them to such an extent, so i shouldn't expect too much. well...whatever happens happens. no point in me trying to guess how the future will turn out.

i think i've dragged this post out long enough, so i'll just end here. i may or may not drop by the library (both public and school) tomorrow, depending on how things go. i will do some shopping, though, since i have cooking plans for monday. next update will come...who knows? i have to ration my posts carefully if i want two significant events to coincide.

-random thought of the day: Either my graphics card or driver is screwing up badly.-

Early this morning (12:00+am kind of early), i was at the airport to see one of my friends off on his flight to germany. if you remember, i met up with him over the national day weekend as well, because he'd thought he'd be flying off around that time. throw in some unforeseen delays, and long story short, he just flew off about 14 hours ago. like i've mentioned in that post around national day, our friendship started off kind of oddly. nevertheless, it's grown to become a solid one over the years, and i'll kind of miss him. he'll be back for a bit in march, so i expect that we'll meet up for something at that time.

while driving one of our mutual friends home from the airport (you didn't think that i was the only one there to send him off, did you?), our conversation led to a thought, which goes something like, 'we've all really grown up, haven't we?'. comparing us as we are now to our secondary school selves, it's like we're the same, and yet different at the same time. of course, there's no denying that we've changed in both mind and body since then, what with going through NS, getting driver's licenses and stuff like that. kind of hard to believe, actually, that we've come all this way since our time in cat high. i can only imagine what it'll feel like, several years from now when we're looking back again.

our conversation in the car also gave me several things to think about. this particular friend's preferences and thought processes are kind of different from mine (for instance, he wants a tattoo, while i am dead-set against getting one). there's no saying who's right or wrong...after all, everyone's entitled to their own thoughts and beliefs. in spite of the fact that i couldn't (and still can't) see eye-to-eye with some of his viewpoints, we have (as he put it) agreed to disagree on the things which we don't have in common. i must say, it's a nice surprise to find out that we click reasonably well, even after 7 years of zero contact.

aside from that, this past week has been kind of demoralizing. i actually studied physical chem until i got a headache. those numbers, symbols and stuff are just not sinking in! it's annoying, to say the least, especially when there's a test this coming thursday and finals like 2 weeks later. well, after this semester, i won't (voluntarily) touch physical chem again.

speaking of finals, i suppose i should mention that next week is the last week of school. then, it's reading week, followed by exams. surprisingly, i still feel that this semester's content is relatively light. maybe it's because i don't know exactly how much i don't know. or optimistically speaking, it could be because the lecturers were good enough to make substantial content seem lighter. i don't know. at any rate, i'll have to buckle down and make sure that the things i need to know stay in my head at least until the respective finals are over.

while i feel like blogging about other things, the blogging mood has kind of evaporated. so, i guess i'll just condense the remaining thoughts into several short fragments. (1) no more tuition with that girl; thank goodness. (2) no more tuition at all, which means no income. (3) are some friendships worth maintaining? (4) i should get into better shape, though my lack of motivation is annoying. (5) my judo technical knowledge needs to improve. (6) I WANT A CAR!!! (7) my graphics card/driver is screwing up. well, that's about it for now. updates will come...whenever.

-random thought of the day: "Melon" and "lemon" sound very similar.-