i am not belle

I came ridiculously early into uni today by catching the 6.30 train and arriving at close to 8, which left me plenty of time to walk around the Scientia and fitted in about 15 minutes of iLecture streaming of the Environmental Biotech lecture, which I was still very unfamiliar with. Turned out for the best, as it was included in the paper. Phew! Some poor guy’s calculator died at the start of the exam (how unfortunate!), but John gave him his extra, which was nice. We didn’t even end up needing the calculators. Stupid course. It was allocated to run from 8:45-12pm. Most people were out of there by 11. Totally underestimated us. It was a hard exam, I hope I can manage to scrape a pass with this. I also got my psych emotions report back = EPIC FAIL. Luckily, it was only out of 15%, and my finals are worth 65%, so hopefully, a miracle will happen.

View from under the big tree on Scientia Lawn

In digressing news, check out my tumblr page :O)

After the exam, I hung around with Mui til her last exam at 2. From then, I had relocated from the library lawn to the front of Mech Eng and to Scientia where I finally settled. It took me two hours. During that time, I wandered around the uni as well, because I was just so damn bored. I should have left the bags in the Scientia instead of hogging them around. I decided to borrow two books for some fun reading in the holidays: Chaos and Determinism: Turbulence as a Paradigm for Complex Systems Converging toward Final States and Control of Chaos in Nonlinear Circuits and Systems. The first book is a combination of science and philosophy, while the latter has more equations (which I really need to get a grasp of). Did you know that chaos exists in epileptiform bursting in the brain? They take randomness to a whole new level, I love it! I had also wanted to borrow a book about the placebo effect, but there didn’t seem to be any decent ones listed available in the catalogue. Grr.

Went to eat at Ramen Kan to celebrate our end of exams. Yay! I took an hour nap as soon as I got home. Got woken up by an SMS and my heart was thumping so quickly. I didn’t know why, but it was a little scary. It went away after a while, but shit, I thought it was going to come right outta my chest! I came to the conclusion that I must’ve been dehydrated and worn out from the past few weeks of non-stop studying. I can finally coax my body back to rehabilitation.

I am still burping up my dinner from more than six hours ago. Feraaal..

I couldn’t afford a plane ticket to south-east Asia, so I decided to squat over a claypot for fifteen minutes crushing garlic cloves. Ahh… I’m there!

Well, it paid off in the end, because I had concocted yummy peanut sauce to accompany my summer Vietnamese rolls. I have been having them for the past two days. It was a nice alternative to eating out. I forget how lovely homemade food can be. I also had to stay home because I needed to cram for my biotech exam on Tuesday. It’s only Saturday today, but considering I will be out for most of tomorrow- Newtown Festival, I figured I could make the most out of today. I was trying to not write anything, because nothing gets in when I write. I spent the focus on writing instead of the info that’s actually there. I got through six lectures today. Woo!

I am so full. Blergh. Can’t wait for tomorrow. Hope the weather is going to be good. The weather reports have indicated that it would probably be raining this weekend, but it hasn’t rained all day today. In fact, in the middle of the afternoon, there was some considerable sunshine, and the sky looked pretty good as well. Hopefully, the clouds would have moved interstate or out to sea by tomorrow.

Ew, I’ve been sitting at my desk all day and I haven’t washed my hair in two. It’s so greasy, I could shape my bangs into a mohawk (without product!) Better get washing.

This makes studying biotech much more interesting!

I went to the state library yesterday with Joey, Stan and Chin. I’ve only been there once last year, and that was with Anson and I remember specifically, because it was the first time I tried the apple pie from Maccas. Anyway, I obviously couldn’t remember how fucking anal the system is over there, because if I had, I would have suggested going to the uni library instead. It was compulsory to rent a locker (free of charge), not bring in any food or our bags and we had to write on blank strips of cards any published books we were bringing in, so they could check it on our way out. That was ridonkulous. I don’t think I’ll ever willingly agree to go there to study ever again. Despite all that, we got a lot of studying done, well, at least I got a fair few things done- 1 lecture. Ugh. Still have heaps to go before the maths final on Friday. It’s Wednesday already. Time just flew by very, very quickly, and by next Thursday, I would have to have had chemistry and psychology down pat. I think I shall have to go out after Friday’s exam and stock up on food so I don’t leave my house for the rest of the next week.

The weather was lovely today. It got less sunny in the afternoon, but it was still sorta humid. Went to Joey’s to get some stats done and we went to Cabra to search for food. Sadly, Cabramatta has a distasteful habit of closing all their yummy food stores at around 5, so we didn’t get to have fried banana. Dammit. The sugarcane place was still opened, and the owner was dancing as he was mopping. It was cute :O) I forget how deserted the place can be as you’re approaching 8, but not that we stayed that late.

Oh man. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Even a hefty amount of Roses chocolate and kudong tea won’t bring me out of this miserable state. We all have to feel it some time. It wouldn’t be too healthy to always be happy and carefree, wouldn’t it? I was never really sure. I wonder if too much of a good thing was ever bad for you, like feeling happy-go-lucky. Though, that’s probably more of a character trait than a temporary feeling. I don’t see the bad side of it though, feeling carefree all the time. Most people would want to feel like that, I imagine. Nobody wants to feel run down, at all, unless you’re one of those people who insist they’re at their productive peak when under pressure and such. I suppose you would get bored, wouldn’t you? If you were motivated to do/achieve something, you would kind of encourage yourself to get there, and that would be considered pressure. So, does that mean, if you were constantly relaxed and stress-free, you have no goals? I don’t think I phrased the concept as properly as I should have, but hopefully, you get the gist. Essentially:

If you were always in the stressless, carefree state of mind, are you more advantageous than the people who do worry, even occasionally? What is your state of mind if you were in the former category and were trying to achieve something (whatever it be)? Can you maintain that carefree state of mind while working yourself? And if it were possible, I wonder how long this mindset would last before you got bored, assuming that nothing external will happen to stop you.

Ways of Reasoning (ARTS2366) is running over the summer session. I am contemplating taking it up, that’s if I fail to find a job to keep me busy. I have taken the appropriate units to be able to take it up as a subject. Hmm. Might be interesting. It runs from the 30th of November to the 11th of December, and it’s being taught by Michaelis Michael (whose Metaphysics and Epistemology course I took last semester. It was ace!) Maybe if I can find somebody to take this course with me..

Back to biotech report. I really should be heading off to bed right now. Ouch, or else I’ll be late tomorrow.

P.S. I just realised this as I was writing, but how funny is this:

1st
11th
21st
31st
41st
… and so on.

Is 10 (110, 210, etc) the only unit where the 1 is denoted by a ‘th’ instead of a ‘st’? Well, it obviously is, but, hurh.

So much for a storm. Stupid Yahoo weather. I woke up to find the house empty (as per every Saturday). I briefly remember my dad coming into my room and telling me that he and my mum are going shopping, but I must’ve went back to sleep shortly after that. I woke up at a decent time (11am) and got procrastinating, first by eating a banana, making tea and ruffling through pages and pages of work that I need to get through by the end of the coming week. I’m thinking of heading into uni tomorrow, even though it’s another three hours wasted commuting and probably not doing anything. Since I am not doing anything tonight, and probably won’t be until the 10th of next month, I figured this would be a good substitution for going out. Man, I hate it when people are trying to help you out, but they end up making things even worse. Like, my dad keeps turning on the light unnecessarily when I’m trying to study because he assumes I won’t be able to read because it’s too dark. I know he means well, but, ah well. I need to be in some dungeon where I can just not be distracted by anyone.

How do you work with music? I know people who can’t study well without it. I, on the other hand, cannot study with any background noise. It’s pretty distracting. Refer to dungeon reference above.

Am finding it hell to look for articles related to this final report for biotech. Way too much reading to do. I don’t even understand half the things these articles talk about. Too many measures, too many letters and too many tables. Science, why do you hate me? I can’t risk procrastinating though, even though I’m on here writing about it. The thing is worth 15% of the course mark and we’re required to write 12 pages, 12-point font and single-spaced. Death! Like, really?? Fuck this shit.

Back to gases.

On Thursday night, a bunch of us went to the viewing of the CSE Revue, Gossip Geek. I am very proud of the performance put on by Segolene and Huy (personal friends), because they’ve put a lot of work over these past couple of months into the production, rehearsing into the wee hours of the night at most times. The rehearsals paid off with an impressive set production, dance sequences and geek gags. The show was based around a girl-boy romance story and narrated in a style similar to Gossip Girl. I found the opening titles extremely impressive, almost verbatim, but had a nice twist to the CSE theme. The only downfall with the revue was that there was a considerable lack of performers, but other than that, I really enjoyed the show. Out of the revues held by UNSW this year, they’ve definitely won in the technical department, except for the very last score, where there was a microphone glitch- or so it appeared to be the case. That’s the last of the revues this year, sadly. I don’t know why the Arts faculty doesn’t have one. It’s such an irony, out of all departments to NOT have a revue, it had to be Arts. I reckon they would do an excellent show if one was ever considered. There’s just so much more people would understand in a literary backdrop. One of the disappointments I’ve had with watching faculty based revues was that I didn’t understand what they were talking about half the time. I didn’t understand anything from Med, except it was just all about SEX. Law was just witty, in that, you had to have read the blurb of a Torts book before you could laugh like you meant it. CSE was much better, in that I understood the jokes they’ve put in, thanks to a science degree and engineering friends. Can’t wait til next year’s. A CSE night is always a fun night :O)

Friday was a day of pandemonium (for me). I had a psych report due and had done less than half of it. Geoff was nice enough to drop us home the night before, but even though I came home at a decent enough time, I was way too tired to turn on the computer, never mind continuing this blasted assignment. Jake always manages to fall asleep by the time Geoff reaches Cabramatta, I noticed. Anyway, I was in the library with Jonathan and Ashish trying to get the work done. They both managed to go away for an hour or two and I finished my work. Maybe I just needed to get rid of some distraction, haha. Never catch me in a state of panic- it’s almost hilarious. Running around the library computers, printers and photocopiers.

Had a POD meeting afterwards, which wasn’t really a meeting because nobody showed up. We did some YouTubing as usual, then went to eat at Ramen Kan. I really liked what Chin was eating- it kinda tasted like congee.

I spent today bludging and trying to do my bit for the biotech debate which may or may not be happening tomorrow. The lecturer said she was going to post up the names of the people who will be doing their sections tomorrow. She said this last Monday. It is now the Sunday before the Monday of our next lab, and they’re still not online. She’s so stupid. I’ve got my CATEI evaluation responses ready.

On a MUCH HAPPIER note,
NO MORE BIOTECH LABS! WE’RE FINISHED WITH E.COLI!
WOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(just tutes now, but it sure beats staying back for four hours!)

Also, the Moon Festival is happening in Cabramatta. I have completely forgotten about it. Had I not, I would go and laugh at all the little shits / wannabe gangsters.

It’s been incredibly windy these past few days. I’m surprised I haven’t seen a car blow over yet.
Hope y’all enjoying your Sunday!