The End

It's funny seeing how the last date I blogged was the 28th of October (yes, I'm shocked too), and imagining how everyone had probably thought, "Oh crap, Lesley must be studying so hard and burying her head in her books and hibernating in her room and abstaining from television and the internet and going out and talking and...OH NO! Lesley just HAS to be stuyding harder than me!" If you were really thinking that...

HAH! I gotcha!

Contrary to popular belief, NO, I did not chain myself to the leg of my study table or swim in a sea of textbooks and notes for half a month. Actually, it quite disgusts me that unlike Pau, I wasn't 'on hiatus'. I was merely pretending.

For those who haven't tried, pretending to study is in fact way more stressful than real studying. This is because the fake study-er (that would be me) knows that she's not really studying (unlike the majority of Secondary Fours in Singapore) and so gets stessed because, "Help! I'm not really studying but everyone else is!". Unfortunately, there's no panic button to press, and after a while, this poor kid starts wallowing in self-pity, because try as she might, she can't seem to get any real studying done. My advise after coming through the O's relatively unscathed (just relatively - I shall elaborate later) is (surprisingly) don't start studying too early and too hard. As much as I know this is about the part where a whole stream of parents, teachers and principals are going to come running after me with eggs and choppers, it's true.

My mom's friend's son who's now in NS visited us around Chinese New Year earlier this year, and told me to start studying early so I wouldn't get too stressed as the Prelims and O's drew close. Taking his advice, I tried starting. And after weeks of futile attempts, I managed to finally get down to studying around the start of May (friends, please don't start screaming and shouting and yelling into my ear about how I'm a liar for saying I didn't study and what have you; I'm not done yet). It started off quite okay, but the bad thing about having started supposedly early, is that I grew so tired of studying near the actual exam, that I think if I had perhaps started a little later, I might have performed better during the Prelims and O's. It's strange, I know, but my drive just completely ran out, and even as I stressed up and felt like ramming my head against the wall more than a couple of times everyday, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't study as hard as I wanted to or as I should have.

But now that the O's are offically over, I'm going to scrap all the complaining and whining and self-pity. Still, I think it wouldn't be too much to ask though, if I could have just maybe...about half of this blog entry to do a little ranting.

Lesley's O Level 2006 Disasters (juniors, start taking notes. NOW):
1. Bad vocabulary, a sick mind and wandering thoughts.
In the English paper, under the question for Vocabulary, popped up the word, "Pervasiveness". See, the strange thing about the word "Pervasiveness", is it's one of those words you think you know, and as your eyes ride across it in a sentence, you absolutely know what the author of whatever passage you're reading is talking about. But somehow when they ask you to explain in written words what it means in an exam, weird things start to happen. When I first saw "Pervasiveness", it performed some little magic trick thing, causing me to misread it as "Perverseness". The passage had been about whales, which then obviously prompted me to think - perverse WHALES? And a whole slew of thoughts (you don't need to know what exactly) followed. When the whole daydream finally ended, I re-looked at the word. Pervasiveness. And I couldn't think of how to explain it. Well, at least I know I'm not the only one, because immediately after the paper had been collected, Meiyi and Luang Poh turned around at the same time: "What's pervasiveness?". Phew.

2. Not listening to my Sixth Sense and not having a thirst for knowledge.
In the short 15-20 minute break between Biology Paper1 and 2, as I clutched my textbook close to me, it crossed my mind to revise Chapter14 on The Eye because it had been a while since I last looked at that chapter. But owing to sheer stupidity, I turned to other chapters instead, like Reproduction (blasted hormones) and Nutrition (some people said they were having a brainwave that it would come out, but SURPRISE! It didn't) . Then sitting down for Paper2, I open the cover page, and what do I see but The Eye. Cambridge examiners really have a way of laughing in your face without even having to be there. Anyhow, I ploughed through all that, then came the last part of the question, something about cataracts. And all I could think of was how my grandfather had a cataract, and cripes, even my DOG had a cataract, and yet I never bothered to ask anyone what in the blazes a caratact was exactly, and how if affected one's sight. Okay, it must've had something to do with making everything real blur and stuff, because that poor dog with the cataract just walked out of the house one day (probably thought the gate to the road was the door into the house or something) and never came back, but why oh why didn't I try to find out what cataracts entailed? You'll find that exams can really make you hate yourself - certainly made me think twice about how I felt about me.

3. Nice handwriting, bad handwriting.
For papers in which I felt I had a little more time to spare, I decided to write in nice script handwriting, hoping that the Cambridge guy would smile at my attempt to be neat and tidy and award me a bonus mark or two. Bad mistake. Instead of being a paper that was supposed to be comfortable where time was concerned, these ended up being those I had to rush for a lot near the end, simply because I had spent more time writing neatly than I should have. On the other hand, for the Humanities papers, I always get complaints about my most ugly (I'll admit that) handwriting. Miss A Tan writes, "Please expand your handwriting." and "Not more than 15 words on one line, can?", while Miss Sie HW circles random words in red pen and scribbles beside them, "Illegible!". So for the O's, I did as I was told - I scrawled, but I scrawled BIG and WIDE so I think there was even less than 15 words a line. The irony is that I usually have less time to complete my Humans papers because there's so much to write, but during this round, because I didn't try my nice handwriting during Lit, SS and History, I ended up having to rush less in that sense, compared to some other subject papers. Argh. SO. ANNOYING.

4. Lousy spotting skills.
Unless you have the powers of The Great Majella, do not attempt spotting. It is risky, and in my case, was almost always wrong. For SS, I initially wanted to devote my life to the Secondary Three syllabus which I've always preferred and found much easier (except for Merger and Separation - morbid fear of it after failing TWO essays on a topic everyone scores nearly full marks for). Convinced by logic and reasoning, however, I gave the last couple of hours before the exam to Sustaining Economic Development, which did come out - for the Source Based Question. 'Source Based' already says enough - the sources are enough, ie. you don't have to study the topic to be able to answer the questions. And guess what came out for Structured Essay? Conflict in Northern Ireland. That's supposed to be my pet topic...that I didn't really study for. Go ahead and call me intelligent (I did it anyway). Then for History I thought I'd have better luck. China! Japan! If one doesn't come out, the other will! ...Right? Hah, wrong. NEITHER came out. China Chapter9 (Great Leap Forward) did emerge under SBQ, but I had studied China Chapter2 (1911 Revolution, Shanghai Massacre, Long March), so not that that made a difference. No choice, I had to do Germany (Impact of WW1, League of Nations, Treaty of Versailles). I have never felt so cheated in my life. I specially woke up early on Friday morning to mug China and Japan, when I could have just slept. I'm never going to spot for History ever again. Oh no, wait! I'm never going to TAKE History ever again. If all goes well this Wednesday (DEP auditions, here I come! Except I have yet to memorise the TWO scripts they e-mailed us - probably explains why I'm still stressed even though the O's are over).

I'm sure there's many other things that happened, but due to my lack of retention where memory is concerned, I've actually forgotten (gasp, NO! I can't have! Well, I have. So there).

Despite the disaster that was History on Friday though, the rest of the day was wonderful. Sushi buffet at Sakae, cell (the first time in a long time none of us Sec Fours had exams on our mind!), but most of all, the SLEEPOVER! Where we did everything but that. Sleep, that is. It certainly isn't the first time I've stayed up all night, but I think it is the first time I've done so without feeling positively exhausted by 4, 5am. Watching television, talking, playing Polar Bear (guys, we have to make that our game, I tell you), talking, The OP Fiasco (don't think OP would quite agree - and yes, OP, I've already told my whole family, haha!), talking, watching the sunrise on Suyin's beautiful roof top garden, talking, eating breakfast...but really, talking. That was the best part of the whole night, and what we spent most of it doing.

I think bonding on Friday night has made us realise how important a role each of us has to play in this amazing friendship; I just don't think it would be the same without anyone of us. I appreciate everyone's honesty that night, really, coming clean on certain issues, giving your true opinions and views. I enjoyed all the jokes, funny stories, laughter. I loved the moments when we realised that from Politics, we had moved on to teachers, then students, then our families, then Prom, without even noticing once, because everything happened just like that; so naturally. I soaked up those short silent pauses when it suddenly hit us that the O's were over, that Secondary Four was over, that Secondary SCHOOL was over, and that we'd all be off to our respective JCs next year. Then what would follow tended to be someone saying, "We'd better keep in touch.", or "We must meet up next year.", or "I hope we'll still be like this 20 years down the road." I'm sorry if I spoiled the mood (yeah, for maybe like 5 minutes because I think Shan made a lame joke after that, haha) when I said I'd heard such things before in Primary Six except they never materialised. I guess one never knows, and yup, there's a good chance we'll be having Christmas parties years later, where our husbands can talk about boring things like work and our kids can play around the Christmas tree. Oh, but count me out of the kids bit...or maybe I'll adopt. Haha!

Just wanted to thank you guys so much for making Secondary School life so fun and most memorable. So thanks, Lorraine, Shan, OP, Fuzzeh, Jessica and Suyin - I will NEVER forget you guys. I mean it - never.

Moving on, I watched Step Up on Sunday. Before you start lambasting me about paying good money ($9.50 - ouch) to watch a chick flick type thing, let me say: it was a superb movie. It was great! Really! I know what would come after this for most girls is, "Channing Tatum was so hot la! Ay I really want to marry him leh. He's super cute lor!", but I am NOT most girls. In a diplomatic stance, yes, I would agree that Channing Tatum is a rather good looking young man, and yes, I can understand if in dancing away on the big screen and showing his, er, rippling muscles and uh, nice body, many young girls in the audience would fall madly in love with him, but what made the movie so amazing was really the dancing. It completely took my breath away. I mean if it inspired this lazy, large slob (me) to want to start dancing again, then it must be good. Trust me, especially if you're interested in dance, go see it.

I know most must be thinking - why watch Step Up when you could have gone for something better like Casino Royale? Well, I guess James Bond isn't quite my kind of thing...you know, running around and fighting with the bad guys and fast cars and explosions...and I haven't actually watched a James Bond movie before, which would explain the hesitation. Still, even though I've yet to catch it, I already know which is my favourite scene in the whole entire movie - when Daniel Craig emerges from the sea in those hot little blue things. The ads excite me precisely because of that bit. What a body! I mean, come on, you have to admit it makes you salivate. At least a little. So maybe I'll watch the movie just to catch that moment on the BIG screen - think his body'll look even better? Haha, okay. It's not that I adore it that much, but after seeing my dad in various states of undress, you kinda yearn for something more. Wait. Did I really just say that?

Anyhow, happy after O levels, people! I can't wait till this week is over (auditions on Wednesday and more BMT from Friday to Sunday), then maybe I'll really begin to feel that excitement and pure exhiliration I was supposed to have experienced at 4pm last Friday. Somehow I thought I'd be much happier than what I'm currently feeling, but you know what? Anything beats studying, so I'm happy enough, thanks.