The Lack-of-Talent Quest

The Talent Quest has generally dropped in quality as time passes. That's not to say that there were good acts, it just becomes harder to find that gem of an act. Anyway, I've finally seen what the 2-Unit thing was all about. It was kind of embarrassing the whole act, although I do have to give them credit for having the guts to do a weird-ass skit.

In terms of pure eye-candy, the short-shorts group, Supercool Cheesy Ninjas(?) , easily won that one. I think Charles said it best, "If only all the acts were like that, then I could watch the Talent Quest for hours." This is one of the rare occassions that I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Now Rock'n'roll Man was definately an act. He spent most of the time screaming inaudible words, but he definately had what many acts lacked, energy and passion. Him standing there, screaming his lungs out, whacking his tambourine and slamming in a bit of piano, was awesome and outstanding. He was probably the most enthusiastic act ever.

Helen's and Land's was cool. Round of applause to them for getting out there and representing the year 12s in the Talent Quest. Great work!

Holidays...holidays...holidays...just say that a couple of times. It may be a study break, filled with work, but remember to have some fun people. And let's get some ideas for year 12 concert.

The Lackhouse

There was a time where I went through a kind of phase. I started to watch Korean movies, for some inexplicable reason. Still, it was an enjoyable phase. One of the movies that I really liked was "Il Mare", about this guy and girl who live 2 years apart and fall in love with each other, communicating through the use of a letterbox. "The Lakehouse" is basically the American version, posted above, with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Could this be a movie where Reeves doesn't suck? Quite possibly.

The fact that "Il Mare" was a romance is a bit strange. They don't really work for me. I usually tune out, if I'm forced to watch. But "Il Mare" kept me watching, so I probably started going soft then. The trailer certainly looks good, and I'm definately going to watch this.

By the way, the trailer music is "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane.

Feverish

So the end of another week. Another week to go and school ends, and the two-week holidays begin. Just had my 3U test and I severly regret watching the match between Australia and Croatia. I felt sleepy and muddled and during the test, I got stuck with some relatively easy questions. I hoping for a pass here. Damn World Cup! Why must it be on now? At least the World Cup final is during the holidays. I don't think it will interupt things.

Of course, the match was spectacular and nerve-wracking, even in the final minutes. The referee was alright, but near the end, he didn't seem to be in control and his whistling to signal the end of the match was so unclear, I thought it was going to be a penalty kick. It would have been nice if Australia got the goal and won the match, but this thing a draw was enough. There is this one thing. Hiddink was impassive as a rock. He kept standing there, leaning against the dugout and his emotion was only really visible when Australia scored a goal. He mainly pumped his fist. The Croatian coach, Zlatko Kranjcar kept leaping onto his assistant coach, in a move my brother tentatively called "riding-the-cock."
Comments anybody? Thoughts are welcome.

Schoolpolitik

I like going to school. The mix of people of different races, genders, backgrounds, intelligence and morality makes interesting events and are absolutely fun to watch. Now apparently, Serena told Jack she didn't like Manno very much. Fair enough, we like some teachers more than others. Then Jack went off and told Manno what Serena thought of her. So, Serena was not happy. That's probably a bit understated. In English adv, Serena started going off at Jack for revealing her personal thoughts. Jack was defending himself saying it wasn't a big deal. Serena called him gay and Jack countered saying Serena discussed stuff about him with David. By the time, they calmed down I was laughing, though I hope I hid it well enough. Serena started throwing dirty looks at Jack. Jack just laughed it off. Now I hope this happens more often so I can have a laugh like this. It's probably bad of me to laugh at people's arguments, but it was funny and definately made my day, despite the hammering rain.

There were a whole bunch of essay questions we were going to have to write up, but it was located on the school computers. No one wanted to go on the school computers to get it. Too much hassle. And 10 cents printing per page. So we choose Jack to copy the questions and post it on his blog. I think this is the first time anything education-related is going to be blog posted. We've sent emails, MSN transfers, scans of prac results, but this is going to be cool. In a way.

Land was away to day. Which is strange, as she usually shows up to school, often late. Very dedicated and enthusiastic. So I'm thinking she's sick. Must be one hell of a cold. Charles was late yesterday, but he had to help translate for his mother's blood test. Must be one hell of a blood test.

Superhero

As I was browsing the net, procrastinating rather than doing my English related text analysis, I stumbled upon a website that generates a superhero identity from your name. It's humour based but a lot of fun.
Link is here.
Here's what I got:

Your Superhero Identity Is:

Name: Duke Lad

Secret Identity: Steven Nguyen

Special Power: Flight

Transportation: Wonder Horse

Weapon: Electron Lasso

Costume: Lead Gauntlets

Sidekick: Mary Anne

Nemesis: Melvin the Yodeller

Tragic Flaw: Fear of flying

Favorite Food: Twinkies

The Last Detective

If there ever was a show that I regretted missing the first ten minutes of, its The Last Detective. New series that started showing tonight on ABC. It follows Detective Constable "Dangerous Davies".

Davies is a low-ranked CID officer in the London borough of Williesden. He is nicknamed Dangerous ironically because he is the member of the department least likely to get into a dangerous situation. In the novels and TV series he is called The Last Detective from his superior's assessment of him as the last detective you'd ever send out on a case. Despite this, Davies is by no means a poor detective, and although he can take longer than his colleagues, and is dogged by bad luck, he does usually get his man in the end.
from Wikipedia

tThis is a series that I definately don't want to miss. Peter Davison (who played the fifth Doctor in Doctor Who) is absolutely amazing as Davies as the nice guy trying to do his job. He's in the middle of a divorce, considered useless by fellow colleagues and unlucky in love. He is the physical embodiment that nice guys come last, well, most of the time. Instead of being a gruesome police drama, with blood, gore and angry characters, The Last Detective is slower, more subtle. The solution doesn't come straight away, but fits nicely into the overall plot. The DVD for series one is out on Amazon.com, but no word on series two and three.

Screw liquid nitrogen, I have to get all these episodes taped. Now I'm pissed that I missed the first ten minutes of the opening episode. Hopefully, they'll do an encore or repeat.

Push the fader, gifted animator...

So, the last athletics carnival I'll hopefully ever have to attend is over. It was pretty good anyway, but despite the fun I had, I couldn't help but think I'd rather have an ordinary school day.

So the day started at 7:30am, waking up, shower, brushing teeth, breakfast, and so on. Prefects were probably already at Jensen Oval setting up. Well, sucks to be them. By the time I got to Jensen Oval, the sky was blue and the sun beginning to shine feebly at the horizon. The name marking was slightly better organised this time round. I spent the first couple of minutes wandering aimlessly because I missed the first announcements and didn't know where to go. There were no 18-years this year for some reason...so I had to join the 17 years. 100m sprints were up first, and probably the only event that I can do decently. I came first in 13.75 seconds, but since it was a non-serious attempt, I didn't move into the heats or finals. Just as well anyway, as the finals had some serious racers.

I drifted from event to event, participating in some, sitting out in others. Damien had brought his PSP and loaded some tennis game into it. So I could safely say that most of the morning and afternoon were well spent on trying to beat Federer on Hard mode. Lunch came and of course that meant the sausage sizzle. Honestly, I didn't buy any, for two reasons. I had my own lunch and the food was a rip. I mean, the buns were bought from some Viet bakery at what, 20, 30 cents per bun. And they were flogging them for $3. Still, thumbs up for the perfects for such a business venture.

Most of lunch was spent playing soccer. The field was small, there were no outs and only goal kicks. It was quite a challenge as Yehson, Khoa, Ji Bin, Ray D and Paul N formed the core of the opposing team. Still our team, with me, Dexter, Andy, TJ, Ru Yang and Hao managed to pull off a 4-2 win. The day ended with the finals for 100m sprints. Richard did badly, but at least he didn't come last. Strangly, Jessica N was in the finals but didn't appear at the end. I wonder, whether she screwed up her start to badly to even consider even finishing. Still, it was some fun.

I spent most of today busy. Routine blood test in morning, then haircut, lunch with aunt, then off to ARC to buy a new graphics card. Throughout the day, I was listening to the radio and this song would come up. I love that song, but I never got its title or artist. I managed to track it down anyway. Dani California by the Redi Hot Chili Peppers. It's a great little track.

Curse you, quantum flux!

You know those days where everything seems to go wrong and it feels like the whole world is against you? I had one of those days yesterday and like half of those days today. It's one of those days where religion is nice, at least you can say God (or gods and/or goddesses) have a plan for you and you can blame them for it. It would take a pretty brave and committed atheist to say "damn-you-random-quantum-fluctuations-of-space-time-continuum!!!". To be honest, I don't know anyone who says that at all.

Anyway, long story short, my computer decided to die, resurrect itself and then die again. Repeatedly. The video card has been making a loud whining sound for some time now and yesterday the computer decided to freeze, switch the monitor off and die, or, well, go into a coma. It's fustrating when you're trying to do something and the computer goes comatose. I've given it a few whacks but it dies without "percussive maintenance" anyway.

Doctor Who season 2 is out! Actually it's been out since April, but I keep forgetting. That is this is the newest series of Doctor Who, restarted in 2005 and now continuing in 2006. Look it up in Wikipedia, if you're missing out. It's one of the best things to come out of British popular culture. Besides Monty Python and other comedies [I want my Sketch Show!]

Funny. I've just remembered. Serena was saying that science was crap in maths. Within 15 mins or so, she started going how science rules. Yes, we're made of atoms, which are possibly reused. Look on the bright side though, it only took like 2-3 years to sink in how science is cool.

Now to set the timer recording on our new DVD recorder. My mum and dad bought it in a kind of spur of the moment thing. I actually kind have wished that they did some research before deciding just to buy whatever of the shelf.

Later, readers. World Cup Fever! Why does the World Cup have be on now? I'll never get any homework done....

Ever been integrated?

Yipee! 2U Maths test is over! It was much easier than I feared, though I'm sure I'll get a couple of questions wrong. Still, I'm quietly confident that I'm going to do well. I did some serious studying and asked serious questions.

Now the 3U exam is up next and its definately going to be tougher to score better marks. A lot of the 4U people will ace this and I'm not terribly confident about getting decent marks.

English analysis on related text for powerplay is due tomorrow. I reckon I should get started soon. I always estimate like 2 hours to do it, but procrastination rears its ugly head and I usually end up taking 3 to 4 hours.

So long weekend coming up. Can't wait.

FIFA WORLD CUP MONDAY 12th JUNE!

Friendly Fired

It's been a while hasn't it folks? The days are getting harder, with more work to be done and assignments to hand in. But, it will be all good in the end. Two main events to be noted today.

Reports. Now I got a fairly decent report, but my brother got a really crap one. I won't go into exact numbers, but the marks for all subjects were below average and under 50%. This report could possibly attributed to the obscene amount of time he spends playing games. Obviously, he's been more stringently banned from playing, but I've been caught in the web as well, even though I play less hours and have a better report. So that throws I few things out of whack, but I think I'm alright with it. It could have been worse.

Next up, the Physics excursion to the University of Sydney. We took the train to Redfern and spent most of our time doing the crosswords and listening to music. The walk was short and the uni was HUGE. We spent quite a bit of time to get to where we were supposed to go. The classes was divided into two group and we did the same things but in a different order. I got stuck in Fearnside's group. We attended the lecture first. It went for an hour or so and was on binary and variable stars, and how they are used in astronomy. It was quite interesting, but became a bit boring during the middle part. Still, the end was quite fascinating with several exotic types of binary stars and these cool animations.

We then had a two hour break. Eating was going to be on the agenda, but firstly we visited the Macleay Musuem of Natural History. It was an interesting collection of stuff, ranging from beetles to butterflies to Aboriginal instruments. If you ever visit USyd, a quick visit to Macleay should be on your agenda. We had lunch at the Manning Bar. Well not actually at the bar, because they were serving alcoholic drinks, so we were stuck on the two lower levels. They had a bunch of decent food, but it was expensive and a rip as far as we were concerned. Charles bought these sandwiches with beef, lettuce and stuff and it was immensely satisfying to the stomach, but a pain in the hip pocket at $4. The Uni has a whole bunch of activities going on as part of Life Week, some excuse to do silly stuff. One little diversion was to throw a rubber chicken up 2-3 metres into a crate. If you did get it in, then you were in the running to win an iPod shuffle. Several Seftoners tried, but none were successful. Also there were a whole bunch of stress balls in the image of cricket balls beening given away for free. Land and Phuong were the first to strike, and quickly set off a chain reaction of Seftoners running to get some free stuff.

After all this fun, and suitably refilled and refreshed, when went back again to the School of Physics to attend some lab work sessions. Just before entering, we were told that they weren't ready for us yet, so we had some fun on the nearby oval. Most people were throwing the stress balls, but a whole bunch of us started to play shuttlecock, drawing a few stares from the Uni students.

The lab work was quite cool. It was basically what we had done in class, but with much superior equipment, that a University can afford. We didn't finish all of the activities as we were pressed for time, but we did managed to do the superconducting one, and our 2nd year students-guides were joking around with the liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is so cool. They had their own supply in a giant tower outside. Man, I gotta get liquid nitrogen. My greatest disappointment was that I didn't bring a thermos flask to leech some liquid nitrogen.

Still it was great fun. On the way back to Sefton, a whole bunch of people had early leavers. Still 23 people were supposed to be back on Sefton station and there were only 12 students. Hmmm, looks like some people just decided to leave. Don't know whether Fearnside will follow it up though. Nah, probably not...