So in a day otherwise filled with flares, eggings, hazmat suits and bored-looking firefighters tramping across the oval, you could trust the art room nerds to be confined to their usual lair.
With provisions, of course.
And much jiving to the mellifluous strains of the Bee Gees.
In other words: school as usual.
But, really, considering how many extra revision classes I have left + exams + graduation + the formal, it hardly feels like the end at all.
Who needs whitening paste when you have iSight?
For any Photo Boothians and iChatters out there, check this out.
Ah, election is in the air and I just received my absentee ballot! The Age today even said that the race for President could rely on overseas votes. Sure, I’m not registered as a resident of any swing states, but who’d want to live in Ohio?
UPDATE: Whoops, turns out New Hampshire is a swing state. Cool.
Welcome to The Beginning of the End…
Exam Duration: 15 minutes in a box (room) somewhere in Pentridge, I mean, “Coburg”.
Exam Format: 7 minutes of question and answer on the topics of school and study, friends and hobbies, family, work, and plans for the future + 1 minute introduction to Detailed Study (Chinese School Life) + 7 minutes of question and answer on Detailed Study.
Weight of Revision Notes: 40 grams (1.4109585 ounces) consisting of 18 pages
Exam Fun Level: 2/10
Victim’s Comments: they don’t muck around in Pentridge — the multistorey building where the exams were held was under lockdown with hired guns for security and swipe pass things at every doorway. Contrast this with the somewhat paltry identity check of my concession card, and other people’s forms lying within easy reach of any disgruntled and possibly delinquent LOTE students (yes, I was tempted).
The exam was at 1.25ish, just after the assessors’ lunch, and I’d been warned to speak loudly to keep the assessors awake long enough to hear my tonal ranting in full. Instead the examiners were relatively cognizant, though they really ramped up the “good cop, bad cop” cliche — advice to any LOTE victims yet to do the oral exam: ignore the mean one, you’ll just get more nervous as your try-hard pronunciation fails to stir a ripple of sympathy or interest on their slab of a face.
Otherwise, it was over before I’d realised it, and the result now blissfully irrelevant until December 15.
Everyone has their own way to deal with stress. As exams loom on the Year 12 horizon, I have noticed myriad outlets for students in the haven’t-studied-all-year-not-enough-time-to-cram-god-I’m-f***ed situation (i.e. most people), including proverbial binge drinking, eating large quantities of highly salted deep fried yellow things, combusting hapless Sims by buying them cheap ovens and not installing a fire alarm or phone, and eveyone’s favourite — denial. Personally, I go for long walks and cry self-pityingly.
All of this actually reminds me of a similarly traumatic era, one that has scarred my family and no doubt millions of others as we try to come to terms with our tragic, shared past: the re-election of John Howard in 2004. At this dawn of a new Dark Age, poor Mum, after much indefatigable campaigning for the Greens, could only find recourse for her pent up disillusionment by making pies. Lots of pies. As you can imagine, this made me happy, especially when they were cheese pies. But Mummy’s anguish still impacted on my Last Exile-infatuated Year 8 Smoothie Brain enough to write her a song, or rather, re-write a universally-loathed and unfortunately ubiquitous song to reflect the terror and economic rationalism of Howard’s prolonged reign…
Obey America Fair
Australians all let us extort,
for we must fund the war:
It matters not whose war it is;
As long as there’s blood and gore;
Our PM lusts for omnipotence
and we bow to foreign rule;
Let’s slash the tax, and never look back,
Obey America Fair!
Let democracy die and kill free speech,
Obey America Faiiiiiir!
Sung in my screechy faux choir girl voice I thought it was rather effective and jaunty. Of course, it’s slightly less relevant now than it was, but maybe in a few years when the Kevin ‘11 Brigade has rolled past and Mum once again commits herself to the kitchen in the service of pastry creation, I will take up pen and paper once more to write Driving Brendan Spare, or perhaps You Don’t Care (you smarmy hypocritical Queenslanderous bureaucrat), and then This Isn’t Fair! when I appear in court over libel charges. W00t.
At last! A themed birthday party I already have a costume for!
The Nintendo Nerd in its natual (Zelda-themed) habitat
Complete with Wii Console and Paper Mario Earrings!!
I think my Mum said it best when she found out I was taking the tram to the birthday venue rather than riding in the safe and obscuring confines of a car: “that’s courageous”.
