Sky hath no fury

I actually planned to take a longer break, but a force of nature like no other jarred me out from my hiatus. I am going to write about a natural phenomenon that has become increasingly common of late, thunderstorms. As if following a predetermined celestial timetable, massive rainstorms have dutifully taken the place of the previously ubiquitous haze. And like its annoying predecessor, the thunderstorms has disrupted my daily intake of outdoor sports, though it is more deadly than annoying.

Anyway, I thought I will only be affected by the presence of thunder. Well, today I stand corrected. The mere inkling that it was about to strike was enough to rob me of a session of training. Like a master conman, it has been planning its coup since early afternoon, with its usual cohorts, the clouds and rain in tow.

The plan was genius in its simplicity, for they knew the mere presence of some dark clouds will be enough to cause consternation. Jeremy was sufficiently concerned to push forward our planned training session by half an hour. As if to underline its capricious nature, the intermittent thunder gave way to blistering sunlight halfway through our workout, then came back on again to usher us out of the training ground. To future compound the illusion, the conspirators threw in some light drizzle for good measure. I was really looking forward to another long run with another group of runners, but the ominous sounds of distant thunder did what the light rain could not, so I decided to play football instead. Suffice to say, my projected half hour of football was extended to one and a half hours by the distinct lack of rain and lightning.

On another remotely related note, the people who set our MUET listening component questions got it spot on. Turns out that the info we got from that pompous voice might come in handy in these thunderous times after all.

Ex-ecution-am

Looking through the blogs of my schoolmates, the flavour of the month seems to be our year-end exams. Some devote half a dozen posts to describe all aspects of it. And I admit, I sure am amazed, I never knew there are so many angles from which to write about an exam.

I am probably late to get on the bandwagon, since my exams are more than halfway through, but this is my first exam post of the season. There was simply so avoiding this, the carnage was too brutal to ignore. Even MUET, which was the only exam of consequence since it is the actual one, was unkind to me.

I know how everyone seems to say they feel like throwing their exams, but this time I really did not have any high hopes. I doubt my mind was on school anyway. You cannot really blame me though, since seven weeks of freedom lies just beyond. Nevertheless, I guess that the school authorities are determined to make us suffer for this, as evidenced by the merciless papers.

To kick things off, we have the written part of PA(Patriotic Assholism). This is arguably the dumbest subject of all time. It basically consists of government propaganda, graph-drawing, and some essay writing. I mean who the fuck draws graphs by hand now anyway? Haven't the education administrators heard of Excel? Powerpoint? ANyway, we had 3 hours to do the stupid stuff. Normally 3 hours would mean a world of hurt for the derriere, but for once I was hankering for more time. I guess this only highlights the utilitarian nature of this subject, since the reason I could not finish was that the figures for the graph took so much time to tally and decipher. In the end, I only finished 4 out of 6 questions, with the graph uncompleted and the analytical essay untouched.

As expected, I fared no better the next day, since it was Physics and scientific subjects are the real killers. Even though I stayed up until 2 to study and had a sudden attack of kiasuness just before the exam, I felt strangely inured. Of course this did not make the Form 4 idiots' impression of a zoo any easier to take. My head already hurting from the lack of sleep, I felt like someone took a jackhammer to it. And since I had a proper excuse this time, I did not even bother to answer all the questions. No, I am not using my headache as the excuse. My teacher actually told us that it is ok not to finished all the questions since there was not enough time, way BEFORE the exam. Oh well.

Chemistry has basically been a tough subject for me, and it isn't about to change anytime soon. I also felt oddly numb and just took it as it is. And yet again, the zoo downstairs are in full force. This batch really is the dumbest, loudest batch of all. Aside from that I have no complaints really, my expectations are that low. My biggest concern this day was coming back to an empty house, since my family are on their way to enjoying a wedding banquet, sheesh.

After spending the night at my aunt's place, I woke up at the crack of dawn, ready to face the MUET exam. Okok, it was more like 7 and I was anything but ready, suffering from the lack of sleep of the past 3 days. The first paper was relatively easy, I even had time to actually sleep for an hour or so. This is a record of sorts since I was never actually able to really sleep in school before. The next paper was essay writing, usually my forte. I do not know where some celestial bodies in some faraway galaxy collided or what, but the topic could not have been worse. Of all the things, I was required to write about some cold dissertation on why ...... Argghhh! Even thinking about it makes my mind numb, so you can imagine the creativity draining out of me at that moment. It is potentially the worse I have ever written, it was that bad. Coming into this, I was under pressure to get a Band 6 since I had to sacrifice an important family commitment, but looks like it was a meaningless sacrifice after all. The last paper was a ho-hum listening affair, nothing dramatic, partly due to its short duration.

Sitting here now, with Maths and the objective part of PA left, I feel remarkably tranquil even though I am clueless about half the Math chapters. Sheesh, my standards really have dropped.

The sky is dark again

I suppose it is the rainy season again, or not. Either way, I do not really know anymore, since the Malaysian weather has become so much more fickle compared to, say, just 10 years ago when I was just a kid. Anyway, my feelings parallel this a lot, so much in fact that it is creepy.

Remember a spell when my posts were kind of down, follow by a spate of cheery stuff? They reflect somewhat on my feelings at that time. Unfortunately, another series of unpleasant things have cropped up. And at a very good timing too, smack just before my finals, damn.

My mood for the next few days would have been killed anyway, since the rest of my family will be busy stuffing themselves silly next weekend at my cousin's wedding, while I content myself with inane MUET papers. For the greedy pig in me, things could not have been worse, but like all cliches, they inevitably did. My favourite martial art will undergo another impending upheaval. I have been quite lucky with all the disturbances in my club, since the last major and course changing one happened 2 years ago. Since then there have been only minor niggles, and things usually went back to normal after a while. My gut however, tells me that this will be potentially annoying.

To make things worse, it always has to have a double whammy soon after, sorta like a tsunami and its afterwaves you know. And yet again, this has got something to do with the fairer sex. This time, I have a forbidding sense that she really is out of reach, or at least the relationship would be frowned on if it were to happen. The differences should not be that big to most of you, but surprisingly this time, age seems to be an issue to me.

Oh well, for my previous down times, blog therapy seems to help, but for now I am still feeling the sting.