No pain, no gain. Pure grit.

So, it seems that I've scored rather badly for my Common Tests... That simply means one thing - much less time left to do blogging and keeping you guys entertained from this nice ol' fool's writing. So here's pretty much a summary of my bad report card when it comes back:

General Paper: C
H2 Mathematics: U
H2 Economics: S
H2 Biology: C
H2 Chemistry: C
H1 Chinese(from A level results): A
Project Work: ???

Which reminds me of the common anxiety shared by everyone - when the hell would they release the PW results?

Anyways, we've been told we've only got 7 weeks left to work for the Mid Year Examinations, which can either make or break us. I just hope that I'm physically fit enough to take abuse from midnight study, and not get myself sick or into the Early Bird Programme... I was late for school today, and it was only then that I was told that it was no longer counted by the term, but by the semester. Late for the 4th time this semester, and there'd be great trouble to my study career in college, if you could even call it a "full-time career" in the first place.

Nasty shock this morning. And it REALLY is high time to start on the A level revision on the Year 1 topics. Never seen me bite grit before? This is it. I hope.

Studying or working?

Just a little while ago, we were done with all the Common Test mumbo-jumbo, and then came the Guitar Camp 2010 proposal as well as the competition uniform problems... A lot of stuff was going on, it almost knocked me senseless.

For one, we were told that we were going to share our barbecue pits with the Shooting club. As is always with such stuff, the fight is still going on over who should get both barbecue pits, since a barbecue to feed more than 80 people would definitely call for a minimum of 2 barbecue pits...

Yeah, at least the chef here agrees with me - good food should come with good music, and good musicians need good food.

Source: http://barbecue-tips.com/tag/bbq/

That aside, after Saturday's trip to VivoCity to settle the uniform problems, I was thinking to myself about the reason why men don't go shopping with women. Probably now, I could better understand why men groan at every single chance of getting home early being eaten into by the prying open every single flaw of the clothing details... Not being sexist, by the way, don't get me wrong - it's just pretty annoying for such situations to occur, that's all.

And again, the work demon within me was roaring out loud since 2 nights before, and we quickly produced the proposal. Hopefully that'll stuff their mouths shut about all the paperwork nonsense, haha!

Work aside, there has to be some time set aside for family time, eh? So we went to Tampines Mall for a random window shopping session. And it was there and then that I took notice of my mom's spending habits.

What surprised me was that she wasn't spending money on clothes and other stuff that's typical of women, but rather, what she was splurging on was all those foodstuffs like Famous Amos biscuits, Japanese rice takeaways and other food.

"Ah-aah, Ma, don't buy that," I shook my head and pressured her. "That ja-jang myeon I had earlier needs time to digest leh!" It was only just 5 minutes ago that I had that shoved into that deep pit of mine...

She bought that box of Japanese rice takeaway anyway. She smiled, "Aiyah nevermind one lah, like I ever get to go out and spend like this everyday."

"But look at how much you're spending on these stuff leh," I jabbed my finger gingerly at the plastic bags she's carrying. "Your son's gonna go into the army soon leh, you wouldn't want him to get enlisted 2 months earlier, would you?"

"Aiyah, this kind of thing nevermind one lah, must spend money on the right things, mah! Like these!" Raising those plastic bags like trophies in triumph, we moved on home after that. So along the way, we were talking about how the furniture shop was, as is the norm to ask her about work and stuff. I haven't been spending much time with her since two weeks before the common tests, so it was high time for mother and son to reconnect, I reckon.

By some random switch of topic or some other thing that led to it, we were soon talking about whether study or work life is better. "If you could choose between work and study, which would you choose?"

"No need to say one lah, study lah!" She then talked about all the work stress and stuff that everyone has to face, just that in her instance, my aunt was her boss so she's having an easier time at work since the boss was family. Funny, why is it that so many people prefer to study than work?

Hm. Food for thought for the week, again. And a fierce holiday week is waiting to pounce on me soon, how's that sound to you?

Sneaking a blog entry in the middle of the night

It's halfway through the Common Test period, and I'm not supposed to be blogging, but ah well...

Day in, day out. It's the same old thing all the time - you start and end an exam, you ask around to compare answers to questions. And that's pretty much the boring stuff you see before and after an exam. And it'll probably go on and on until the end of time. Or at least, until I start vomitting blood and my guts out on the exam paper instead of the stuff I memorised just the other day.

It's so irritating - whenever you finish studying for something, you have this urge to slack. It's well deserved at times - the trouble is not knowing when. You rush back home to finish up your revision - and suddenly panic about what the hell you've missed out during revision... In any case I'm just hoping that I make it past that stage of learning by the time the Prelims come.

And oh, the GCE A Level results came out recently. I wonder how my secondary school seniors fared in this major exam, but knowing them, they could be high-flyers for all I know. Big birds, them high flyers. Most surprising was that the top student of year 2009 was actually one of us - from SR Guitar Ensemble. And the gay-looking results were unbelievable. How the hell did Jack and Zhen Yong do it?

Ah well, maybe I'll worry about that after this Common Test period, first of all. And perhaps I should be content with my A for Chinese at the moment while waiting for that dreaded Project Work results to be released. Dammit, the sort of effort we pumped into this project rubbish had better be worth it...