The Procrastinator's Creed

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.

2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.

3. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.

4. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.

5. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.

6. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.

7. I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle, though infinitesmally small, is not exactly zero.

8. If at first I don't succeed, there is always next year.

9. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.

10. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.

11. I obey the law of inverse excuses which demands that the greater the task to be done, the more insignificant the work that must be done prior to beginning the greater task.

12. I know that the work cycle is not plan/start/finish, but is wait/plan/plan.

13. I will never put off until tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.

14. I will become a member of the ancient Order of Two-Headed Turtles (the Procrastinator's Society) if they ever get it organized.

Follow this creed and we shall become great procrastinators.

Break something

A bit late in posting this, but I needed time to cool off. Doing things when emotions race around my head has never appealed to me, and it's probably going to lead me to do something stupid later on. Just imagine. Wait...no don't.

Anger. Sheer, white-hot anger. There have been many times in my life when I have been driven to fury. Most of it came from the usual parent-child conflict. Me wanting something, only for it to be denied. But lately, another incident made me mad. It was a tiny incident, in retrospect, with some unreasonable behaviour thrown in...but, what suprised me what some angry and fustrated I felt. It took me a few days to calm down and even now I'm suprised that my anger could burn for so long on so little.

The incident started when we were playing cricket. It wasn't serious, some little fun as we had no bat and we used one of Tom's books as bat. Cheap, yes, but it was fun and brought about some hilarious moments. Then Long just stands up and starts yelling in a mix of Chinese and English, going on about this wasn't the proper place to play and he started to drag the bin around. I was suprised by his bout of unreasonable behaviour and simply put it down that he just could hack some fun around him. But at home, I just felt so angry at his actions. Not the proper place to play? I could list a littany of things that he's doing that's not proper.

Regardless, I have been reminded of other times I have been furious about something. But what stands out for me, is that I never really lashed out, never properly released my pent-up anger. I guess that's just me. I'd rather not get into emotionally-charged arguments, I seek to avoid them. If that means I have to lose the argument, so be it. Also, I never really found an outlet for my anger. I would just sit and sulk for a while, and then get on with life. Of course, this begs the question, would it be different if I had? Would life be different if I hadn't backed down? Would I be different if I was more firm? My only conclusion would be that I would be different. I would probably have ended up more ill-tempered and grouchy.

As I type this up, I've been reading Land's blog. She too states she can get angry, though to be honest I can't visualise Land being angry. Nevertheless I don't think I'll ever try to get her angry. Who know? The results could be...intimidating.

For me, my anger seems to verge to the knife's edge to action. Every time I get angry, I feel pumped up, I'm ready to do something, like punch something, anything. Instead, I force my self to sit down and get on with it. Is it some subtle influence through my life that I force myself to take a rational approach to life? Certainly, it's not healthy. Ah, such decisions and deep thoughts.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
-T.S. Eliot

Hmmm...upgrades.

My Doctor Who poster fell down again. I think it's just the combination of cheap tape and the heat. It's like 40 degrees Celcius outside. Dammit, why can't they make some kind of tape that keeps sticking? On the other hand, removing it would be a bitch.

Personally, I love to frame the poster, but it's a poster! You don't frame a poster, unless it's a rare one or you own a museum's worth of posters. Sticky tape was creating a huge mess. Is there an answer to my problem?

Yes! Blu-tack! I've stuck my poster back on using Blu-tack. I'm not sure what happens if the temperature decides to jump, but I think the blu-tack would be able to handle it. The only niggle is that the poster is slightly crooked. Doh! Stupid me! But I'm too lazy to fix properly. Maybe if it falls down again...which I doubt it.

The Greatest View

Whew! The third week has passed and I'm finally beginning to get into the groove. It always takes me a while to get myself fine tuned for school, though I actually don't have that long left of year 12, if you think about it.

Anyway, I came to school at 7:35am with my brother. He had to go on an excursion and I had to had in my homework to Armitage. See, I didn't do my Bio homework yesterday and it was caught in a suprise homework check. Damn! But Armitage said to bring it before 8:30am and no letter. So I read Emma for a while for going to the Science staff room at 8am. I manage to catch Armitage just stepping out of the doorway, as the excursion was actually leaving at 8-ish. So I was safe. Charles ran into Armitage in the school grounds and was pulling his book out (he hadn't done his work either) but Armitage waved him off saying he'll take Charles' word for it. Cool.

We played cricket until 8:20am. Then Charles smashed the Swingking right into the trees and it didn't fall down. Doh! Now he has to compensate me. Either $5 or another Swingking.

I had a study period for first period and spent the entire 80 minutes reading Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Quest. Which is a really cool read. Great fantasy novel. This time I was completely absorbed into reading. I didn't take notice of anything else, except occassional glances at the clock. When it was 10:08, I jerked out of my reading trance. Which was difficult. I had to fire up my brain, making and redirecting connections to get out of "reading mode". I felt really stiff and sore, probably due to not moving while reading. I had a drink and I felt better. I usually slip into this kind of trance when reading a book, but since it had been awhile since I actually read a book (Emma doesn't count) I guess my mind and body wasn't ready for it yet. Still, it was cool book and probably helped to zone out anyway. Hmmm...gotta get Book 2.

During lunch, a year 7 kid started to play handball with us. Some girls from our year, who will remained nameless, tried to get the kid's name and/or number, depending on who they got to ask the kid. This starts the question "how big can the age gap get?" How many years difference before the love/lust starts turning pedo? 10? 15?

Lately, the song "Shakedown" by theSTART has been popping up on my playlist. It's such a cool song for me. Why is it in my head? Why can't I get it out? Is there an album? Such depth to the questions plagueing my mind.

Anyway, jump for joy as the weekends are here. Don't get killed out there.

And then...I was disappointed...

Let me say right now that this was not a planned trip, in a real sense. My parents happened to see the Wollongong New Year Festival advertised in one of the Viet papers and decided to go. They did not tell me that we were going until 1 hour of the time to leave. Needless to say, I scrambled to get some music for the trip.
Now let me say furthur, that it is nothing like the Warwick Farm New Year Festival. It is my understanding that the Warwick Farm one is kind of like an open market. You go there, buy stuff, ride the rides and have some semblance of fun. I haven't been there yet, but it sounds good. So we thought "well the Wollongong one would be same, except smaller right?" It wasn't. It was more like a concert, where people sat down and enjoyed entertainment on stage. There was a small kitchen, selling food and drinks. For the Viet readers, just think of the Wollongong Festival as a cheap Paris-by-Night wannabe and you have a good idea of what the festival was like. Anyway...

We left home at like 4pm with a couple of friends and we got to the place at around 5-ish pm. It was being held in a hall or something and it had not opened yet, so we waited outside. Since the festival didn't start until 7pm, we were the first there. I went to KFC for some food while we waited. Eventually, people started to trickle in and we followed. The festival started with dragon dancing outside. It was done competently by some Aussies from some martial arts school. Of course, some might wonder if this was culturally acceptable, but the Wollongong Vietnamese community numbers at under a thousand, at best, so it was no biggie. So we got inside, and the speakers began to introduce some important people. We even got a mention! As visitors from the Vietnamese community of Sydney, who had been here since 5pm. Woot! But the number of Sydney visitors numbered at best under 15. One dude also thought it was like a market or something and he had a backpack ready to carry his essential items as trekked around the place. Well, shit.

So with the introductions over, the students at the local Viet school sang this song, "Bé chúc Tết", but it was just really bad lip-syncing. There were some dancing pieces and karaoke singing, before there was this competition between girls wearing the Viet dress, "aó dài". They were all under 12, but the 3-7 year old category had some adorably cute girls. Wait a minute. Did I just use "adorably cute" in a sentence? Damn. Anyway, we left just as the competition ended and the judges were adding up the scores. The festival was planned to end at 11pm but it was running like 30 minutes late, so we made an early exit.

It was nothing like what I expected, but I have to admit that they definately had spirit in that festival. I spent most of the time with my brother, since we didn't know any other kids of our age. There were a bunch of teenage Viet kids, but it was hard to tell, especially the girls. It's not that they were all ugly, there were quite a few that were good-looking, but you couldn't tell whether they were 12 or 17 or 19 or married. Most of them had little kids or siblings in tow and you couldn't make the decision whether they were with the kid brothers/sisters or that they were married. Age is such a deceptive thing, especially among Viets and other Asians, I guess. I'm regularly confused as much older that I really am. That why the older men keep offering me beers.

Well, it was alright. It wasn't spectacular but it wasn't completely bad. I enjoyed it and so did the rest of my family and friends. Except my brother. He thought it was crap.

Tripping...delays to be expected

Spur of the moment travel thing. We're going to the Chinese New Year Markets in Wollongong. Shit. That's all I can say.

Deviously Shifty

So the weekends are here, and so ends the second week of year 12. It's been a bit of a slog, but, I guess it's time to really up my game if I want something decent out of it.

Funny story time! Well, depending on your views, I guess.
Thurdsay, we were playing cricket at the nets and Richard was batting. He smashed my Swingking over next door. I say next door, but it was just outside the back gates in a driveway. So the usual rule is that if you lose a ball, you pay the ball's owner $4 or get a new ball. Since this is a Swingking, that cost $10, the payment was upped to $5, nevermind the fact that I got it free from KFC. So Richard plans on waiting until school ends and to rush out to grab the ball and give it back to me, so he doesn't have to pay the fine. He's in F-block, so he really needed to haul ass to get the ball and I didn't trust him. I then realised that 4th period I had Biology in A4 and that I was much closer. So Charles and I schemed to get the ball before Richard, make him pay the money and then split in 50/50. It worked. Richard thought the ball was gone and payed up $2 and NZ$1, with the rest to come later.
Of course, Richard was notified on Friday, and he wanted the money back. I acted as if I had no idea just to rub it in and agreed to give the money back, as I didn't have the money on me.

Hopefully though, he'll forget through the weekends.

News to gamers: Halo 2 will be available ONLY on Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-gen OS that will replace XP. And that just sucks. I hope there's a way to get to work on XP. Bloody Microsoft.

Getting my fix

There's going to be a scheduled outage and I'm thinking that PST stands for Pacific Time or something in the US, so instead of checking on Google, I'm just going to make this quick post.

Vietnamese music is getting stagnant. (Or is already stagnant, depending on your view)

So many songs are about lost and/or unrequited love that it's getting kind of boring. So what do I do to bypass these crappy songs and find more songs? Benxua.com

When Vietnamese music works, it's actually pretty good, and there are a crap load of songs here. Unlike Japanese songs, which I have little or no idea of the lyrics, my Viet is just good enough to get some enjoyment out of Viet songs.

So if you're Viet or just want a taste of what Viet music is like, hop over to that website and you can stream Viet music over the net. It says to create an account but you don't need to. That's for creating playlists and forum posting.

Run to be displaced...

I went on a little trip to the city, anything to get out of doing my Chemistry practicals and other homework. My dad is planning to become a taxi driver and so my mother and I tagged along to help him do the practical course, which basically consists to driving certain routes and answering some questions. My brother stayed at home.

While doing the course, we stopped at the Rocks Market. They are held every Saturday and Sunday, starting at 10am, at a section of Georges Road (or street?) near the Harbour Bridge.
I bought this little statue made out of wires. Its a cool looking killer robot, pulling out a massive sword. It was like $55, but we got it for $50. The seller was an Asian, so he probably thought we haggled too much, we would eventually leave. My parents also bought a tea pot set, with 4 cups. Around $48 for that.

I also finally managed to put up my Dalek poster. I bought it at MovieWorld but I haven't put it up till now. It's so cool. On another note, we had KFC for my dad's birthday and I convinced my mother to buy the Backyard Bucket, just so I could get the free Swingking. The food's alright, but KFC loses points for no coleslaw or potato and gravy.

Poster of a Dalek from the new series of Doctor Who.

Swingking on the left, with statue on right.

Clocks...Cheese...Public Transport...the Swiss way

I really like public transport, when it works of course. I can grab a train, fling myself to various parts of NSW and not be bothered about stopping for pedestrians. And then the buses can get me with spitting distance of EXACTLY where I need to be. Of course, this is when it works.

But when it doesn't...it's horrible. Trains are "delayed" by hours and buses become so slow. Slower than Lesley's dad's driving. And he is slow.

On the odd occasion that I do need to take the bus, I usually grab the 910 than stops near my house between 8:28 to 8:35am. The closer it is to 8:28am, the greater the chance I'll get to school on time. The closer it is to 8:35am, the more stressed I become and the greater the chance than I'll be late. Some people might say "so what? just get a late note" But the hassle! Showing up to the deputy and then having to get all your teachers to sign it off...

This country needs alot of fixing and tweaking. If there's one thing that they can fix it's the public transport system. Fuck, the Swiss have PERFECTED the public transport system. There trains and buses don't arrive on time, they arrive EARLY.

Bloody hell...

On the movies front, Jarhead looks so damn cool. Gotta get....