Oh My Ga-od x30

It turns out Vesak Day is a very important holiday observed prevalently in Southeast Asia by Buddhists. Go figure.

In other words...oooooooooooomg the projects. So overwhelming...all due within a day or two from each other. It's going to make the coming of exams a huge smack in the face. First dealings is the Comp Sci Presentations due Monday, then Latin Essay and Creative needs to be dealt with by Friday, Physics motor is going to be an underlying threat, World History needs to be shoved into a pretty package by next week, and English will constantly annoy me with stupid prose test and presentation as time goes by. While that goes by Chemistry and Physics decide to stick in exams for fun, then I get assaulted by a full year's content of Math and then Biology, which is never all that fun to study for.

This is a good time to vent. Which is why some dudes are coming on Sunday to clean my home's central venting system thing.

Tick Tock Went the Bomb

I finally got around to stealing that funny clock cursor because I'm that original. But it's fun watching the day fly by so I'll keep it for now.

A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a Duane

Appearantly our Singaporean friend switched away from his crazy butterfly layout. Har. He also refers to Victoria's Day as Vesak Day?

Reebops will be eaten into extinction.

...whoa?

Haha, so I decided to click on Jenn's blog's link...only to find this. Appearantly it has been invaded by a Singaporean boy who likes butterflies and bright text colours. I think I shall remove it from my list...eventually.

It's 3 AM idiots.

Last night was John's party, and we got him the most wonderfully ingenious card. Sort of. After the television, there was Monopoly, where Cooper got himself so angry he eventually jumped onto Jason and began the whacking.

Afterwards was a time of unpeaceful sleeping hindered by allergies and a crazy gang of drunk teenagers. The gang wandered outside onto the lawn across the street and at first were simply babbling incoherently. Eventually they began spontaneously shouting profanity, calling for beer, and wrestling. Someone began taking random photographs, and the flashing was really bright and annoying. If anyone got into a car we would've called the police. The sound of beer bottles meeting pavement was heard, and a particular small man who was the most drunk of them all began to smash a bottle. With the level of alcohol, things began to get...pretty. (harhar) Climatically the man shouted for water. When obtaining it, he shouted, "If this water has alcohol in it I'm gonna fucking kill yous." Then they wandered inside, probably brooding over a plan on how to get sober. Oh, and at the same time, setting off fireworks. In the end they all came back out and walked down the street in a large pack, thankfully without their cars.

Sleep overcame me, and upon awakening at 8 AM...they were heard outside again. Returned from...wherever they came from. But yes, that whole fiasco was really amusing. I will now finish off those crazy assignments and test studying.

Portugese Urine: Roman Toothwaste

Since E3 '05 is going on lots of pretty new gameplay videos have been released on Age of Empires 3 and the game looks very very very good so far. The graphics are the first obvious thing, but their new physics operations are amazing. The buildings, contrary to most other RTS, don't just enflame as they take damage or begin to disintegrate, but parts of the building fall off gradually, becoming hazardous debris towards units. Trees will collapse around targetted areas. The water will make realistic splashes and ripples. When units get hit their guns and hats will actually fall off and roll around, and they'll bounce off buildings if blown into one. This gives me a new respect and hope for Ensemble Studios after Age of Mythology, which had fair gameplay in its own right, but wasn't what I was expecting. The game will be out around September or later this year and you'll surely find it on my wishlist.

You got Bio'ed

If you didn't know, the U of T Biology Competition 2005 results are up. My haphazard guessing got me into a lot of trouble. In the end I ended up not passing the contest :P

Correct: 20
Inccorect: 15
Blank: 15

Total : 15/50 (Correct - 1/3 Incorrect)
Excuse: 70% for effort.

Therefore, if I do it again next year I should have a bit of a better chance since I should've covered all of the topics in the contest.

Overall Markham District did not perform very well. We were about 65th or something, which, compared to some of the other schools around us, was so-so. No particular student from Markham did well except for this one Asian kid (his name says so) from Brother Andre. Darns.

Note: One of the links in the site to the answer key doesn't work, so in the address bar change the "2004" to a "2005" in the URL. Then the actual page appears. Like magic.

The mountains showed the river.

The streak of field trips has ended! The zoo was fun and musky-smelling, and I got ripped off sixty nine cents by an evil Harveys cashier. Now I have to figure out what's happening in Physics since I will have missed three consecutive clases in a row in a combination with tomorrow's Avogadro Exam.

Cerris Wheel

Wonderland was wonderful.

The Italian Job was a bit of a let down, in terms of it not being worth the 35 minute wait. Or maybe it's because I've already been to other thrill rides such as Test Track and Return of the Mummy that outrun the ride by a mile. I guess it's as good as we'll have it back here in Ontario though.

Buuut Wonderland is always fun no matter what. Except for the fact that it was fricken cold, and after any ride with metal bars the hands would become an intriguing shade of reddish-pink. Basically after the initial class photo it was Arthur, Dennis, Zaheer and I, who decided to head for Drop Zone area first since the other 99% of the class ran away to The Italian Job direction. After going onto Dragon Fire and such, we went onto The Fly and took an in-ride photo that almost paralleled the one from before in greatness, especially due to Arthur's amusing flattened face expression, which he claims was completely unintentional. It would've been a great photo to except for the fact that we didn't want to pay $2.50 each for a $10 photo. Darns.

Now I can look forward to zoo on Tuesday! Then I can look forward to the stash of Day 1 homework waiting for me.

Saving Classics saves trees, the animals, and famine victims.

EDIT: PETITION: From the Latin root word "to beg, to ask for".

What did the protester with a runny nose do? Picket.

But I digress. If you took Latin Level 3 you would learn the derivative of the expression "but I digress" while reading the fourth book of the Aenead. If this is the case, those poor intermediates currently being denied of Level 3 Latin will never learn the essence of "digressing". That is but one side-effect that will outcome if Latin Level 3 would stop.

Classics will continue to support the arts and humanities. It represents the roots of today's Western civilization. If history is important, than why shouldn't Classics receive the same priority? If the principal and vice principal would pull me into a security room to plead me to join AP Calculus and AP Physics along with the current 15 or so already, why can't they at least give Level 3 Latin a split class opportunity? You don't have to pay $100 for the exam in Level 3 Latin. You can learn the roots of the terms you'll use in mathematics, science, and law. It would be surprising for a Law student to throw latin terms at a latin student and for him/her to answer accurately without having studied or looked at law before.

If you could ask anyone at all who has attended Classics of their opinion on it, they will give you a positive response. Any course that can do this must mean something. Any course that consists of such a close family of students and offer so many events such as movie nights, Certamen, Saturnalia, Myth Contests, Conference, and downtown lectures...I can't see why the school would not want a program such as this to run. Is the fact that university students and university graduates who had taken Classics return to visit and volunteer for Classics to be ignored?

It's horrendous that society would want to give up this course for the sake of money. It goes against what Latin teaches you: the roots of humanity and society. Being in Latin 3 right now, I don't want the memories and experiences gained this year to be abstained from others who have just as much rights as I did to be priviledge with this course. Arts courses are great, as courses like music have brought me to many concerts before, and the histories to many museums. But no other course has let me experience anything like Conference, and downtown lectures which are FUN. The most exhilarating Math/Science excursion I've heard of is the Queens trip, but that requires you to be GOOD to be able to go, putting pressure on students to aim for numbers, not the sustenance of the courses.

But to wrap up this huge thing: SAVE CLASSICS.

I can't emote.

This site is probably old news to most, but I've just found it. Some of the emotes are amusing. Check it. Out.

I EPLACE L UNGE

Conference was very swell, and very fun. I didn't worry as much about studying as last year, so I think I did worse in individual tests. But it was still very much fun. The administration was a bit screwed and among those "technical difficulties" encountered included bathroom buddy-less people (ex. if you left your room key in your locked room it's off to Admin Services) and the complete absence of food or drinks from delectatio. Even with these "difficulties", they still managed the liberty of including a new award category: Host School Trophy. =\ On the other hand, to my current knowledge, it seems that we didn't have anything disqualified. :O

Hopefully I will be going again next year.

Boci

It's Conference time tomorrow...off to four days and three nights of fun. I feel less prepared for anything than I did last year. Darn.
...Why was I put into grammar...I'll do as well on that as I do in Roman History...maybe a little better with lucky guesses.

Today is Labour Day!

...in Australia.

I decided to find my other two agendas from high school and compare this week.

Monday
Gr 11:Physics Forensic Presentation in Pit
Comp Sci Level 4 Arrays Test
Math pg. 648 #1
Gr 10: Classics Skit Meeting
Math Unit Test
Careers in Comp Lab
Music Theory Homework
Gr 9: Appearantly, nothing

Tuesday
Gr 11: World History Gladiator Essay Rough Draft
Chemistry Graph Assignment
Gr 10: English Visual Verba Essay
Comp Sci Algorithms
Gr 9: Appearantly, nothing

Wednesday
Gr 11: Math Copy pg. 641,643
Math pg. 648 #2-4,5b,6ad,7-9
Gr 10: Classics Skit Meeting
Summative Double Work Period
Canadian History Essay
Gr 9: Appearantly, nothing

Thursday
Gr 11: CLASSICS CONFERENCE
Gr 10: CLASSICS CONFERENCE
Gr 9: Latin Sheets

Friday
Gr 11: CLASSICS CONFERENCE
Gr 10: CLASSICS CONFERENCE
Gr 9: Math Test
French Cashier pg. 151

Appearantly grade 10 was more hardcore than I had previously remembered. I guess living through that last year tells me that I should be perfectly able to endure what's coming in Grade 11.......which SO FAR isn't as compacted as last year was. It also makes me reflect whether grade 9 was really so easy. I can't recall the feeling anymore.

In conclusion, I let stress get to me very easily.

Power outage? Encore!

Soooooo Thursday went by all Bio Contest-like, and after checking on the Internet a lot of my guesses were wrong. Darns. Friday was all Computer Contest, and my team won first in Grade 11 which was nice. Except all they gave us were empty Maclean's envelopes and then left. wtf?

Yesterday was the power outage during which I grabbed one of the 5 flashlights in the house stragetically placed since the summer blackout, and sat there eating sugary Fruit by the Foot until the power went back on. Not touching any electronics except the lighting afterwards was a good idea, since the power went out again. Stupid power. The double blackout caused our fish filter and freezer to stop working for a while that night and pissed us all off. After we brought our two goldfish up to the second empty tank, the downstairs filter went back on. wtf.