Obligatory end of year post

So 2011 ends as I'm typing this in Vietnam with a bunch of mosquito bites. Just bought some awesome $10 reebok leather sandals :D Hmm.. really don't know what to think of the year. Studied hard (not really), met some awesome people, attained the ATAR I wanted, ate a 1 metre pizza and started drinking. I don't know... I should feel pretty darn happy but I'm not. Pretty mixed at best.

I think it's the inevitable passing of time. The knowledge that everyday I'm one tiny step closer to the big bad world of adults and drifting further and further away from the comforting world of childhood. Scared of the future. Scared of failure. Scared.

Okay, reading that last passage.. holy shit what a loser I was five minutes ago. Fuck it, I can't wait to turn 18. Can't wait to get a real job. Can't wait to be able to make enough money to eat Italian everyday. Can't wait to... I dunno.. get married and have kids? Actually, nah what am I saying, that can wait.

Ah wells, 2012 is going to be a completely different and awesome experience, even if I try to fight it every step of the way. 

Life and death post-ATAR

So.. received ATAR/HSC results. Reasonably satisfied- made it into Commerce/Economics @ UNSW by almost 5 ATAR (counting bonus points). As such, didn't get disowned/discriprined for bringing dishonror to famiry :D Oh and they're funding my student exchange to the US in 3rd year uni. And I think my uncle is giving me one of his (i think he owns like 5) cars when I get Ps. Oh, and Fort street rose to 8th this year. Fuck yeah.

Another thought: dang, I guess it must suck being my sister. I mean, coming from a family/culture that values academic achievement while not being as naturally gifted but just as lazy as your own brother (feel like such a douchebag writing this =[) while being held to the same standards as him. Sure, she's rude and selfish and disrespectful but... yeah. feels bad man.

And... death. Went to a birthday party with family today. Saw (everyone thought he was just unconscious at the time) a dead person today. Honestly don't know how I feel right now... Okay, I'll explain. A not-that-close family friend (about my parents' age, mid 40s) suffered a heart attack while asleep. For about 20 minutes, everyone simply assumed he was asleep before it was time to eat. By then, he had become unresponsive and his face was cold and pale. Ambulance was called, ambos tried to revive. Ambos called for more advanced assistance and after about half an hour of trying to revive him, he was rushed to hospital. Then we all started to eat some food and I left early.

Later, I was told that he was pronounced dead. Really... that was... someone's father, someone's husband, someone's son, someone's dear friend. Life is so precious and just gets taken away just so easily. Even though I did not have a close bond with the man, I still felt rather..... empty afterwards. I still feel... it's really hard to explain.... a sense of sadness and loss mixed with emotionlessness. Really do not want to experience something like that so up close again.. Honestly can't imagine how I'd react if it was someone close to me.
Maybe I'd become Batman if they were killed by a criminal.. lol
Or maybe I'd become a killer if their murderer walked away free...

HSC results/ATAR

funny thing. they're so important yet so... meaningless. This time next year, no one will care about your ATAR.

Basically, the system is fucked up. Scaling, moderating, compulsory English, rote-learning. A single number that determines whether or not you get into your desired course. A single number that tests how well you can make the system work for you. Not that I should be complaining.. but oh wells, here goes:

Oh English... a test of how well you can bullshit and memorise a work produced by someone else. Teaching kids who don't even know the difference between whom, who and whose the significance of iambic pentameter and enjambment. Sure, I enjoyed some of the texts (George Orwell and Shakespeare in particular) but others were pure torture (I'm looking at you, Jane Austen/Charlotte Bronte). Creative/Analytical works which can simply be memorised and taken into an exam. Yeah. That totally is a good measure of how well one will perform in uni.

Oh and scaling/moderating... Unbelievably unfair to some students. For example, I don't see General Math and Extension 1 Math as being that far apart in terms of difficulty. Yet a student that scores 90% raw in General will lose to another student who scores 65% in Extension 1, simply because the system believes that the first student is inherently "less capable" simply because they didn't choose extension. I'm not sure whether I'm explaining myself clearly but.. oh well.

And.. ATAR... doesn't really matter as long as you get into your desired course, although some see it as a measure of how "smart" a person is. Bullshit. If a moderately intelligent student chooses high-scaling (Asian) subjects and puts in minimal effort in class but attends coaching for said subjects, he can easily achieve 95+ (hahaha this is reminds me of my lazy self). But a student just as intelligent who wants to do subjects which are not high-scaling but works hard and does not attend coaching would find it difficult to get above 90, simply because that is how the system is designed.

.. Oh wow, I feel like such a hypocrite after writing that... Like, I did not put in that much effort for my HSC and went about relying on the little natural intelligence I have and alot of tutoring... Well, we will see whether it was all enough in just over 2 hours. 

Another life update: Mordekaiser got buffed! Yay! Also, I'm going to take a 2 hour nap before getting my HSC results by text message.

...

And remember: Once you hit rock bottom, the only way is up! 

New look and great food!

Rebecca says:

BLOG ABOUT IT
LOL
Peter says:
"hello reader. You may have noticed that this blog looks different. This is because I changed the design. That is all.
-Peter"

Yep.
....
....
....


In other news, started playing LoL more. Mordekaiser and Master Yi are so much fun to use!
Also, went to a 9(?) year old's birthday function with my family last night at a seafood restaurant. Everyone else there was either under 13 or over 35 years old. *Lack of belonging!!!* But.. ohhh.. the food was so good that I remember exactly what I ate in order:
2 bowls shark fin soup
Lobster
Crab
Abalone
Steamed fish
Fried rice
Grilled beef
Fruit salad
Sweet dessert in the form of a soup (know the name in Vietnamese but not in english)
Coffee birthday cake with strawberries everywhere

Typing this up after an all-nighter. Yeah, terrible for my health but I stopped caring ages ago :)
HOLY CRAP HSC RESULTS IN 3 DAYS FROM NOW!

oh oh and.... must watch a scary movie before the end of the year... preferably silence of the lambs, which traumatised 11 year old Peter ._.

Pizzas and the past

In case you didn't already know, Peter loves Italian food, especially pizzas. So I had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Parra today. ONE METRE PIZZAS.
that deserves repeating again.
ONE METRE PIZZAS. LIFE IS NOW ONE STEP CLOSER TO COMPLETION.
Yeah. Costly as hell (especially the drinks) but very nice. So good. So good. So good. So good... *drools*

Life Update time:
I finally gave in and started playing LoL. Pretty fun.

Oh yeah, also met my primary school friend James on the train going back home. Still the same guy, with his love of Casio watches and cars. Makes you realise how quickly life goes by sometimes. You're a tiny, shy year 6 kid in primary school and then high school flashes by in a blur. You slowly lose contact and drift away from your old friends while making new ones. And one day, you realise that you've turned into ......... an unemployed bum waiting for your ATAR like me :)

To be honest, I really don't know how to feel about all this situation right now. Nostalgia of the way things were, sadness that those times have passed, happiness to see people you haven't seen in such a long time, belonging ( ...HSC english killed that word for everyone), anxiousness about losing contact with my high school friends and acceptance that life just goes on.

In true Fort Street fashion, I shall end with a quote: "Do not worry about yesterday, as it cannot be changed"... "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Holiday update!

Yeah... life's pretty sweet. Been going out of the house every weekday and catching up on my deprived HSC social life.

Finally started gyming for free

Yet to learn how to pick locks. Yet to start reading books. Yet to get a job (haha. ha.) Yet to catch up on HIMYM. Yet to start watching a certain Asian drama because of a certain someone (I know you're reading this :P). And... yet to get my Ps. =/

Well.... pretty busy next week. 

Monday: Lunch with Chi + Gym

Tuesday: Formal(s?) with overnight stay in hotel + doing random stuff in city

Wednesday: Checkout of hotel, see orthodontist, possibly gym again

Thursday: Paintball

Friday: Gym/someone's house + youth group

Saturday: Amazing race #2 

And dinner/lunch at that pizza place which has 1m pizzas, tennis, and a primary school reunion have to somehow fit in that schedule as well =/ very costly

Spare cash before holidays: $500

After selling text books/cards: $700

After buying formal gear/going places: $400

Estimate of by the end of the week: $320 :(

YAY! HSC over!

So no more exams for me (and anyone else doing the Asian combo) :D Honestly, I probably could have done alot more work to prepare. Oh well, only time will tell whether I put in enough work....

There's so much to do, so I'll just list some of the major things I plan to do over this 4 month holiday:
-Drafting, Amazing Race, youth group, formal
-Get Ps and get a job (haha. ha.)
-Get rid of my books, preferably in exchange for assets with more liquidity
-Go to beach/city/shops/other people's homes
-Watch heaps and heaps of movies from the list below
-Become fully sick by going to the gym
-Become fully sneaky by leaning to pick locks
-Become fully cultured by reading classic works (eg. Tolstoy, Heller, Victor Hugo)
-Start watching Asian dramas/catch up on How I Met Your Mother
-1 month holiday to Vietnam/Thailand/Singapore

Okay, now I'm really regretting that terrible first post about how sad I was at the prospect of graduating. Life has only just begun =]
Cool quote: "Scientists figure out the rules. Engineers play the game."

English and post-HSC movies

Wow... looking back at that post below, it's so sappy and QQ-ful it's almost embarrassing... oh wells.

Well, English is over. I still can't believe it- no more belonging, no more Shakespeare or Ted Hughes or Bronte.
Speaking of which, Jane Eyre has to be the worst, worst book I've ever read. Seriously, it's about a girl who lives a tough life and falls in love with some rich guy to discover that he actually has a crazy wife in the attic... so she runs away to this religious guy but needs the previous rich guy in her life so bad that she comes back to him after his wife dies in a fire and marries him. There are basically ZERO insights to be gained from reading that book, other than the fact that poor people and women were treated like crap in Victorian society (but everyone knows that). But... since we're not going to write that in the exam because we'd get marked down, we are forced to say how awesome Jane Eyre is and how it's soooo universally significant to the human condition.

And OMG, seriously, Sylvia Plath. Her works are one of the most self-absorbed pieces of crap I've ever read. She's just like those emo's who spend all day writing about how they want to cut themselves because their lives are so miserable and almost bask in their own despair. She's just like them, just a little more eloquent in her diction. I guess that's what poetry is all about (conveying emotion) but still, she has literally made a name for herself out of her own self-pitying misery.

Shakespeare's great though. Some of the lines and double meanings in his plays are just pure genius- he really shows you the beauty of the English language.

Enough of english, I'm now just going to write a list of movies that I must watch after the HSC that everyone seems to have seen but me:
-Lion King/Toy Story 1 and 2/Tangled
-Matrix series
-Lord of the Ring series
-Star Wars (needs rewatching)
-Titanic/Saving Private Ryan/Apocalypse Now
-Rocky/Rambo
-Bunch of anime feature films (eg. Ponyo/Laputa/Grave of the Fireflies)
-Kill Bill/Pulp Fiction/Schinder's List
-The Godfather (never finished watching it)/Goodfellas/Taxi Driver
-Hero (with Jet Li)/Red Cliff
-Gone with the Wind/Lawrence of Arabic/Seven Samurai
-Psycho/Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Silence of the Lambs

Oh yeah, I've also never read the Harry Potter books (except the first one) so I'll need to catch up on some of my lost childhood after the HSC... although we all know that Snape kills Dumbledore so it's already been spoiled for me.............

Soup, blog reader.

"Never regret anything, because at that one point, it was exactly what you wanted." - Author Unknown (no seriously, I did a google search)

I remember that quote from a long long time ago.. so that's why I'm doing this- because it's exactly what I wanted to do at 12:05 AM Wednesday the 21st of September 2011. After reading Colin's blog and Apollo's blog, I thought to myself "hmm... they write pretty interesting posts, I think I'll do the same."

So.... what now? Dunno. Where do I want this thing to go? Dunno. I'm just going to write whatever I feel like.

So... Fort street. Looked in my wardrobe. Saw some suits, shirts, and next to my Fort st sports uniform was a Hurlstone khaki summer shirt and blue wool jumper from year 7 (back when I was like 140cm =).

Some background information: I was accepted into the Fort only about a week before year 7 started. After I had bought all the uniforms and attended the Open Day for Hurlstone, I received a phone call telling me that there was a free spot at Fort Street. I only accepted because FSHS ranked slightly higher than HAHS and it was closer to the city. In hindsight, it sounds like such a stupid reason...

 But if it weren't for that naivety, I wouldn't be where I am today, with all the awesome people that I've met along the way. Now I'm getting all sentimental and sad... :(

But yeah, this brings us back to the topic sentence of this post. Sometimes, during those mythic-rare occasions where I felt terrible at the Fort, I'd wonder whether it was the right decision to accept the offer to attend. Argh, getting emotional again. Whatever, the point is that I don't regret choosing Fort Street, because at that one point, it was exactly what I wanted. 

And now, it's all over. It's been so fast. But I feel like the same 12 year old kid at the start of year 7 again, like I haven't really grown up at all. I don't know... it's hard to express. Like in the end of Spirited Away, when Chihiro matures due to her experiences, but is still just a kid. I'm sort of like that.

And now at the end of those 6 years, I may be alot taller and somewhat less introverted, but deep inside I still have the same vulnerabilities and emotions. I know it sounds like something melodramatic you'd write for a belonging story, but all I feel is an intense sense of sadness and loss inside.Gosh, I'm really going to bawwww my eyes out on Thursday...

Here's some Advice Dog to lighten the depressing mood:

Anyways, I still dont know what this blog is about, or what it is for. All I know is that it was exactly what I wanted to do at a moment in time. Maybe this will be the only post... I've tried to do as little editing as possible. For the Fortians reading this, thanks so much for everything, even if it doesn't seem like much. *cries*