And my duty is done (for a day, at least)

Almost there…

Thank goodness! I’m doing the last summary now and will write the opinion piece in a while.

Block Tests: LA

Why does the school insist on calling them block tests when they’re not even in a block anymore? I think Continual Assessment or Common Test sounds fine too.

 

So anyway, for Language Arts, today’s question was:

 

“A world without conflict is an impossible dream.” Discuss.

Can’t remember what the last part was, but it’s always got the same meaning, so yeah.

 

What I Wrote

• Conflict is part of human nature. You can curb it, but you can’t deny it. Society needs an outlet for this repressed tendency, and thus will have major conflicts e.g. war.
  • I can’t believe I actually quoted playground fights as evidence.
  • I wrote something about St. Augustine. And I think that was it.
• Conflict brings progress, advancement and evolution – biologically required? Seen in nature?
  • Cited horrible example: A-bomb. Even as I was writing I knew it was screwed up, but no time to think and I was stressed.
• Conflict breaks up the monotony of life, and thus humans will be loath to get rid of it because life would be boring without it.
  • Short, no substantiation – just a point, because I had 10 minutes left to write a page (or I would have only 2 pages and no essay at all)

I kept debating whether to focus only on big huge conflicts like World Wars or if smaller conflicts counted as well. This took up a lot of time and left me more confused than ever.

Mistakes I Made

• Really bad evidence. Not enough evidence. Evidence holds no weight.
• Wasted 15 minutes of time trying to figure out what the hell to write…
• …and another ten staring at my blank paper trying to make my arguments make sense.
• Didn’t follow paragraph structure that the teachers wanted.
• Introduction had unnecessary sentences – will affect my language mark pretty badly.

I Think I’ll Get

• Language: Band 2 if I’m lucky, maybe Band 3. Which is not good, because language has always been what pulls my scores up.
• The “Reasoning and Logic” Bit: I’m hoping for at least Band 3 but I have a feeling that it’ll drop to 4.

pleasepleasepleaseletmegetatleast21markspleasethankyou

 

What I Should Do To Improve

• Read about boring topics in the paper. Read all the articles in the Review section instead of the funny ones on language and America.

Samsung CLP-300 Waste Toner Cartridges

Problem: The printer asks you to replace its waste toner cartidge.

Quick Fix: Empty the cartridge and slot it back in. Be sure to wipe the sensor (the diode) as well as this detects toner levels, and can misread them very often.

If you’re interested in the backstory, it’s after the jump.

“Helping Patients Heal” With My Photography?

This is an abridged version of the post at SIGMA+, my art blog.

Okay, weird but kinda cool.

My dad came into the room holding this envelope from Singapore General Hospital. Being the morbid person I am, my first thought was “oh no I’ve been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and they’re trying to get samples out of me for research”.

Turns out it wasn’t about anything medical (okay, perhaps it was tangentially related) and instead about three (or two?) of my SYPA 2008 entries, which I had all but forgotten about.

The letter was titled “Help patients heal with your photography works” and said “we had the opportunity to view your submission to the SYPA competition and found them to be most captivating and we would be most grateful if you could send us…Lone Flower Nature and I’m Lovin’ It which would be particularly suitable for our wards.”

Chiachia’s face is going to be viewed by “up to 900, 000 patients” and “over 6000” staff every year! Way-more-than-15-minutes-of-fame beckons.

On another note, the flower being chosen is also kind of funny. That little yellow thing gets far too much exposure for a simple photo with lots of depth of field that makes it look fancy. And with such an uninspired name too.

I’d like it more if my emo leaves, which take the crown for uninspired-name-ness – Untitled (Leaves) – or something else was shown…

The typo error in the list of photos they requested is a bit confusing too. Do they want LF, N and ILI? Or N and ILI? Or LF and ILI? Come to think of it, did I even have an entry titled Nature? Or was it titled Growth? My mind boggles.

I think I’ll send them all three.

EPIC TECH FAIL

My parents just spent like one and a half hour on long-distance phone trying to teach my grandpa how to use Yahoo Messenger to call us with his computer. We tried Skype before; he couldn’t get it – so now they’re trying Yahoo Messenger because my dad recently discovered that LO AND BEHOLD, YOU CAN HOLD CALLS WITH PEOPLE ONLINE AND SAVE MONEY!

I even had to create an account for him. And after we got past the login screen, we got stuck at the ‘adding contacts’ stage.

Seriously, how idiot-proof can software get? Guess we’ll have to wait another twelve months (that’s when I go back to China) before we can get the VoIP going.

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Xiamen

I’m in Xiamen now. I just arrived at about 12:30 pm today, and…well, nothing eventful has happened yet. I played some IaMP on Normal Story Mode.

Freegate died. Won’t retype post.

LG Golden Ears

LG – Do you have Golden Ears?

Saw this in a half-page print ad today. So basically you go to the site and do an aural test – listen to two musical riffs and see if they’re the same, or different. The test itself is pretty easy. I scored 100% on the first try. Seriously, you don’t even need headphones for it – my notebook speakers are crappy and they worked.

I want to win a LG80 42-inch TV. Who needs gigantic wineglass-shaped speakers anyway?

Design is Everything

My brother is trying to sell me a booklet he made out of A4 paper entitled “All you need to know a bout(sic) letters.” For S$2.
Seriously, he tries to sell all and sundry he comes up with. What’s worse is that some unsuspecting people actually buy them. I’m serious!

Anyway, his handwriting isn’t going to win any calligraphy awards, so I told him that I wouldn’t buy it because it’s useless, and also dead ugly.

And he was like “but it’s cheap” and I went “design is everything” at him. It’s a nice slogan. Pity I think it’s already in use.

Also, I can’t seem to set poll alignment. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?