Creepy Month

So! Today is the first day of the 7th lunar month according to the Chinese calendar, alternative known as the ghost month! To be honest I wouldn't call myself superstitious BUT I do admit that I am kinda timid. I don't scream usually but when someone else (Nicole) scream my initial reaction is to follow...
Anyway, I do change a little bit during this month...
1. I sleep earlier. Before 12. But this time it's not gonna happen since we have exams......!! Right after the hols!!! Argh!!! Exams are more important than silly superstitions duh.
2. I try not to curse. Not really curse, just that if I speak in Mandarin, the equivalent of 'what the hell' is something like 'what the ghost'... LOL if you speak Mandarin you shall understand.
3. I avoid reading horror stories or watching horror movies... Duh I don't wanna scare myself.
That's all. I said a little didn't I?

p.s. What would you do if a random (ugly) pic of you suddenly become a popular meme on the Internet? No that did not happen to me I was just wondering... I mean, the person would probably be like, what the hell is going on?

Life is Unfair

Last year Nat entered the school scrabble competition... And spent whole day complaining... This year I entered she did not... So it's MY turn to complain!!

Basically, the rules are like this: the results for senior group and junior group is counted separately, but during the competition, we play together. Which means that if you are unlucky, you might get paired up with a too pro senior.

There are three rounds, and everyone remains in the competition for all the rounds. For the first round, the teacher just pair you up randomly with someone. For the second and third round, your opponent depends on the number of games you win and your spread. The spread is the difference between your score and your opponent's score. If you win, your spread is positive, while if you lose, your spread is negative.

The problem with this system is, (if you are smart you probably guessed it by now) the better you did in the previous rounds, the tougher the opponents you face in the next round. For example, if A is the first in round one, in round two A face B, the person who got second in round one. Which means that you have to fight each other. Which is unfair because people who are weaker will get better results. For example, there can be only one winner in second round for A and B, so if B lose, C who is weaker and played against a weaker opponent and won, will get a higher placing than B. Which is damn unfair.

Me and Weiryn who got high scores in round 1 and 2, came across tough senior opponents in round 3, and we both lost. So, Weiryn got third and I got fourth. And, the champion was a form 2 (I think.) girl whose spread is lower than us, but she won all three rounds BECAUSE her opponents are weaker. Like, what the hell? Seriously, a Scrabble game is not like a sports game, one should be able to prove oneself using the score instead of winning or losing, coz whether you win or lose depends on your opponent, but your score depends on your skill. I saw a lot of people who won but have a lower score than some people who win. My point is, the spread should be taken into account, not the freaking number of games won.

To make things worse, the fourth placing just gets you co-curricular marks, and no prize money. Seriously, what damage would it do to give us (me) some money?? Especially since the school asks so much money from us every year?

The only thing good about the competition is that we get free pizza. Two slices. Oh and the room has air-cond.

p.s. It's the Raya holidays. I love all religions since they all have holidays. But, IMMEDIATELY after hols, we have freaking EXAM. Damn school.

THE Competition :0

Yes the day of ultimate terror has arrived. Today is THE day, the ping pong competition day!

Um... Actually we weren't that bad.

Well we got 4th. Okay, there was five teams. Hey at least we didn't got last~~~ Flo did in her basketball competition... Actually we won 2 matches out of 4. Which means that the other teams must be really good. I bet House Yellow which got first won all. They were really strong... In our match against them, we lost all 3 singles and 2 doubles to them ._.

Yi Qi and I were the 2nd doubles... In the first match, against House Green, we lost... It was quite disheartening actually. I can only say that we weren't quite ready yet since we didn't have time to practice before the match started. If we practiced we could have won. Duh.

The second match was against House Blue... We won, which was really encouraging since we mentally prepared ourselves for a total failure. (Like losing all 4 matches o.O) The third one was against House Red. Well they  put someone really random for 2nd doubles. I felt so... reassured... knowing that there ARE indeed loads of people worse than me! Yay!

The last one was with House Yellow. Which we lost. Actually the duo playing against us were weak compared to the rest of their teammates. But they were still skilled compared to us... My point is that House Yellow ping pong people are too scary. Unlike their basketball team which Flo was in and got last.

Basically this is the very first sports game I've participated in, minus the telematches in kindergarten and lower primary ._. Well that wasn't too bad since I didn't end up last...

4 consecutive matches of ping pong is quite tiring too! I ended up with a numb finger as a result of holding the bat in a same position for so long... It's still numb. But at least the hall is air-conditioned.

p.s. Okay this is completely unrelated. I'm recently obsessed over a color called Capri Blue. For people bad at Geography like me, Capri is an Italian (Yes!) island. And the reason it's called Capri Blue is that Capri has a famous blue grotto where you can go scuba diving. Even tho I'm not a fan of scuba driving, the view is simply amazing~~

Gelatomio or Baskin Robbins?

Well today I had dinner in First Avenue... [Random out of topic stuff: There was a Young Enterprise fair at the basement so there's really a lot of people... At our school's stall I saw Amanda, Nicole's nice debate senior. It's not like she's the only person there but I only know her... Anyway there are a lot of (handsome/pretty) foreigners around too for some reason. (I'm sure they didn't come for the fair.)]

Anyway, I decided to get some dessert so I dropped by Gelatomio. Then there was these three fat guys blocking the way. I mean, no offense to plump people, but you ought to care for your own health and cut down on your intake of ice cream. To make things worse, they have terrible fashion sense. When I reached it was the guy with the worst fashion sense of all's turn to choose his ice cream flavours. He had hair gel on, wore a random red t-shirt AND a pair of PATTERNED, TIGHT leggings. Seriously we don't have to see your not-even-slim thigh, especially since you're a guy. I'm not sexist, I'm just telling the truth. Oh and he is coughing. Seriously, why eat ice cream when you are coughing?? Pay some basic attention to your health please.

Okay the point is I didn't get to buy my ice cream because he took way too long... Yeah I'm an impatient person so what? And no I'm not criticizing him because I cannot buy ice cream.

I'm also stubborn as I wouldn't give up my ice cream so I went to Baskin Robbins... Remember that foodporn shall never appear here since my first reaction to food is always to eat.

I ordered Green Tea and Strawberry Yogurt~~ No I did not take as long as the fat man =.= and I would say that the BR Green Tea is nicer than Gelatomio actually. But for fruits I prefer Gelatomio.

Bored

It's normal to study until you feel bored, that's what we call laziness. It's not strange to watch tv until you feel bored, since some programs are really boring anyway. But when you read horror stories until you feel bored, you know there's something wrong with you... Well that's what happened to me. Seriously, I feel really bored and tired of life lately. I mean, it's not like I'll kill myself out of boredom, but still.

So anyway I was feeling too 'sien' to read novels lately, so I read short stories instead... Honestly, horror stories are not creepy anymore after a while... You can kinda guess what's gonna happen... In fact they're less scary than those 'I saw a white shadow in the Form 6 library' type of story people tell you. But actually, the fact that someone else told you the story and the possibility that it's real makes things scarier a lot. Anyway, here's a not really horror story I really like. Yea well it's not boring at all. And Nic likes it too. It's basically about a floating hand... http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=2075125 You might want to try this one too, by the same author, same short story style... http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=1961576

As for short stories... Recently me and Nat opened a new blog, and apart from our old novel which we are still working on, we decide to write a random short story just for fun... It was meant to be short but by the look of things, it might become very long instead... Visit this blog to read!

Anyway after reading so many short stories I made a list of how to make your story short... Unfortunately it's too late for us...
1. The lesser (main) characters the better. Mostly it's 2, since 1 is too boring. Well, we have 5. Which is really too much.
2. Have a simple (non-conspiracy) plot. Well... that's impossible for me. No conspiracy no fun!
3. Lame plot twists are acceptable so that the story can end fast... Er, currently no.
4. Ending doesn't have to be 100% complete... We're planning to follow this rule...
5. Plot doesn't have to be full of action or main points, a seemingly boring plot can be very nice if you are skilled at writing, basically just focus on the interaction between the characters will do. Okay, we did follow this one currently since the story is very random and has no main points...
6. Fix a style for the story: funny or sad or sarcastic. I think ours is sarcastic.

Photoshop

As I mention but did not have time to explain in the last time, I was doing an anti-drugs brochure for art. Apparently Malaysia educational system is really weird because they believe that instead for telling you the bad effects of drugs, telling you the positive things that will happen if you don't take drugs will be more effective. Which is illogical because if you take drugs, you will sure fall sick but if you don't take drugs, you won't necessarily be always healthy still. So, we had to do a brochure with 'positive' stuff only, saying only 'positive' things. I'm never a big fan of positive stuff, really. Life's not just positive, one has to acknowledge the negative side's existence too, so why whitewash the world when the illusion's gonna fade one day?

Anyway here's the brochure. I used Photoshop. Not very sophisticated or skilled I know. Photoshop is actually quite fun if you have the time.

And I made this picture just for fun. #mustloveblue

And recently we are so busy with the stupid PT3. The History and Geography kajian kes are so insane. Anyway, while searching info for the History thing, I found some interesting Malay articles on Malay gossip sites. Well I never know they believed in 'bunian' which means elves... And there was this funny story about a Malaysian Bank Negara Governor alleged to be one. Click here to read. And just like Westerners, they also believed that we have supernatural twins. Well not so creepy but I dunno how to explain... Here's the story...  Oh and ghosts stories... So here's a not very scary story. Maybe I should read more to improve my Malay which is really terrible...