Hot drinks?

It’s always nice to be able to make your own hot drink. Get up from your chair, stretch and walk over to the kitchen. Boil some water, add in some milo powder, add some milk and return to your seat in front of the laptop. It provides a moments rest from whatever work you’re doing. Hot drinks seem to have this soothing effect on the soul, particularly when you sit in a cold room trying to finish off some work.

I haven’t had time to watch top gear for the past two weeks. Thus is the sad state of my life.

Optimism

There are times when my unwavering optimism fails, and I am left wondering if I deserve to live, and if I’ll survive this year. There are times when I succumb to the temptation to deem myself inferior to others and hence am less able to achieve.

Last night, I was half way through this blog post on how results release days are always interesting on the blogosphere. How even dead blogs came back to life with a random post on results release. However, I was unable to finish it because of this sudden wave of stress that hit me out of nowhere. I was left unable to do anything last night.

Competition in a school like mine can often have such results. We are tempted again and again to give in, to brand ourselves stupid in comparison to the intellectual giants and the perpetual high flyers. This is not healthy. We must strive to work harder and bring ourselves to their level. It is certainly not impossible. We must never give up hope, and we must never give up trying.

Days.

There are days which are thoroughly boring and uninteresting, days which are dreary and tiring and days which are thought provoking and exciting. The past two days have been painfully taxing. I really don’t know who and what to blame. I just hope to get some more sleep to keep myself alive.

Buses

Quite a few days ago, the common tests ended. I don’t think there is quite anymore to say.

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From where I come from, or rather the school I come from, there are many who do not often make use of public buses as their main form of transportation. At times, I wonder what they miss out on. I take bus home on most days. Where I live there is no MRT or LRT. The bus ride is segmented into two sections because there is no direct bus home from school. Over the last six years I have found this to be extremely irritating. As such, I was rather delighted to discover that where I was going today, there was a direct bus. It would certainly take longer than if I were to change bus but it is was much more satisfying.

For a long time, I considered taking MRT to be more convenient and comfortable to taking bus. At some point in time however, I discovered that MRTs were perpetually packed with busy commuters who were all either looking exceedingly annoyed or trying to make out on the train. When I got on the bus today, it was relatively empty and thus I was able to choose a nice seat. Armed with a copy of The Economist and my iPod, I sat there and spent the next 45 minutes enjoying myself.

The thing about long bus rides is the fact that you are locked and enclosed in this seat where you watch as things beside you simply flash past. You are a passive observer. You know that despite the fact that it is a long bus ride, there is nothing much that you can actively do within this relatively short amount of time. Whatever urgent matters you were considering before you got onto the bus or wherever you need to go cannot be affected by what you are doing.

For that short moment on the bus, the precious time is yours and yours alone. You can sit there and look out of the window and think about what love is and the beauty of it. You can sit there and read a fiction novel and bring yourself into another world. You can sit there and watch the people getting on and off the bus busying themselves around the world. There is this moment of peace, this moment of tranquility that nothing can disturb and that hardly ever comes by nowadays. Ah, the simple pleasures that one can find in life.

Mathematics Paper 2

I walked out of the exam hall and laughed uncontrollably. I’ve lost the arrogance and confidence in my Mathematical ability. I’ve developed this timid fear towards Mathematics. I checked too much of my work. I ran out of time.

In addition, oxidation occurs too fast. I need reduction.

Physics Paper

Yesterday, I sat for my Physics paper. As per usual, I sat in the front row, the first table and fought for yet another 7. Despite having made quite a few mistakes, I reckon it’s been the best paper I’ve had thus far. 

I suppose it can be said that in life we all need some sort of reassurance, some constants that we can cling on to when stress levels get high and you find the need to take things out on something. In terms of academia, I’d really like to believe that my Math and Physics is representative of those constants which would be there to save me when I need it. It appears Math this time round has failed me and I hope Physics doesn’t too.

What this brings to mind however, is another post I made a while back on solving the Rubik’s cube. How I wish I could solve more than one layer at once, deal with more than one problem at once, and work on all my subjects at once.

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So I finished writing that blog post, sat back and read through it again. In contrast to my previous post or the one I linked, this post felt short. And after some consideration, I figured it boiled down to the fact that what I really wanted to say, I had already said in that post I linked. I wrote that post more than a year ago.

It’s come to a point where I’ve realised that I don’t actually have that much to say. The ideas I have are always the same. The things I come up with are always the same. It may come in different forms, in how I see them applied differently in different situations. But essentially, all I think, all I have to say, everything is always the same.

That is a very terrifying thought. Much as I hate change and like to have some constants to cling on to, I wonder how much I have changed grown since the start of last year. For that matter, thinking back, I wonder how much I have changed since my days in Sec 1! True, I have learnt more in terms of academic work and such. But there are so many parallels in my way of thinking, the things I do, the opinions I have and my responses to people. Are we then forever the same person we were from the past, that same fool we criticised for not having appreciated what was there for him in the past, or one who made all those silly mistakes? Is it then impossible to change yourself and improve yourself or anything?