I'm back! (and missing wales LOADS)

Chanel very nicely sent me the wicked soundtrack and I want very much to start listening to it now but my sister has the radio turned up ): I have the uncontrollable urge to sing along!! "No one mourns the wicked..." "Loathing, unadulterated Loathing" and then very soon the fangirl squeals will start. I MISS FANGIRLING, something we weren't short of on the trip. Though we mostly stuck to our cliques during the fieldtrip, we still got to know each other to some extent.
I absolutely hate singaporean weather. When I came back, it was so incredibly humid and warm- 30 degrees, imagine! I wouldn't have minded trading windsor weather for muggy tropical afternoons, although the warmth is condusive for growth- it turns out we have a much greater variety of species in mangroves than on the welsh saltmarshes.
Back to fangirling, in london especially, we talked about good omens and neverwhere- "mind the gap" and fed ducks in hyde park (not st. james', sadly) And I bet you never knew mr l i m cp liked neil gaiman. (but him liking star trek isn't that surprising)

now that it's over, I have math, english, and chinese pt waiting, not forgetting c a c things D: But I have a nat king cole tape to keep me sane and nostalgic. though I technically am too young to be nostalgic about the 1960s.

first things first: JORDIN WON! Finally, an american idol I am satisfied with. (although I think doolittle shouldn't have been voted out) I knew during career ed (a free block), an hour after the show was over :D because wencen was nice and went to find out when physics pt-ing. I liked blake when he did the maroon 5 thing though, partly because I like that song so much and I liked to see it not mangled. In my personal opinion, the guys were not as good as the girls this time, because I was gunning for stephanie or geena to get into the finals, but not phil or sanjaya to get so far. OSC doesn't like the whole idea of american idol though :/ he thinks it is a very commercial thing and the contestant with gimmicks and is popular gets to win, but not the contestant with the best voice. He also didn't like what the record companies did with mcphee's album because they made it sound very pop-ish, copying from artistes with the highest record sales, resulting in her not sounding anything like herself on american idol. -think 'somewhere over the rainbow'

secondly, my mum and sister just left for my sister's school trip, which reminded me to pack early (i.e. today/tomorrow) for wales because they found out at the last minute that the luggage couldn't close properly and had to switch their stuff to a new one. I will miss them, because my sister isn't coming back for 12 days and I won't see them until after wales. They left at 10.40, and they were supposed to be at the airport at 11, which also reminds me not to pack last-minute and make sure everything is ready, which I very rarely do X) but if I don't the consequences will be mine (and a lot of other peoples') to bear, so.

Trying trying very hard to be focused and work on physics so that it can pull the unsatisfactory mya mark up. Will probably post tomorrow so that I have a lot for you to chew on as I won't be posting very much when I'm in wales- we only have internet connection for the first 6-7 days I think, so maybe I can post then.

Osc: If you're a Harry Potter fanatic -- and what sensible reader isn't? -- you might enjoy The Great Snape Debate, a book that can only be purchased at Borders.

I'm going to buy that asap, and I am very happy that osc supports jo. :D :D all the more you should like harry potter.

Today I will plug plug plug since my life is kind of dumpy right now, and not very interesting.

I ship bean/petra!=pean?[ew.] or betra [odd.] it is so incredibly sweet, and a lot like the canon pairing harry/ginny. Though I think not many osc fans ship pairings because the books are quite plot-based, and one tends to focus on the themes and major issues at hand. And bean/petra have weathered many hardships together and they are the only people that genuinely understand each other, just like in Kathy/Tommy in Never let Me Go. (you should read that) Sometimes I find it surprising that osc can write fairly good fluff, since most of the Worthing Saga was smut, and the fact that he is a guy. (okay I'm stereotyping) So I'm kind of on Shadow Puppets right now, after a short break from osc because his stuff are quite intense and sometimes emotional, and after reading one, you feel a little drained and in great awe-- this 'whoa' sense like after you've been though a 360 degree roller coaster.

= I am very happy that blogger automatically saves posts now, so that my long lovely posts don't get accidentally deleted.=

I read in Two Caravans that chickens are bred in masses, and they are housed in a large warehouse-type thing (illegal, of course, but cheaper for major supermarkets) the lights are turned on 24/7 so they don't sleep and continue feeding all the time, making them nice and plump for human consumption. The food they have is nutrition-rich, making them weigh more and sell for a higher price. In the crowded space they are in, they are packed shoulder to shoulder, such that they can only waddle a little and shove their way to the feeding tubes. As a result, they have little or no physical exercise and underdeveloped muscles, with brittle bones. This makes them all the more easier to catch them and stuff them, sometimes on top of each other, into crates for transportation. Feeding on large quantities of food results in them producing great amounts of excrement. Because they are packed so tightly within these warehouses, the excrement forms a layer on the floor, and the birds have to wade through it as when one cleans the warehouse, one has to first remove all the chickens. During their short lifespan of five weeks, they live in these unsanitary conditions but do not fall ill because of medicines in their food supply.
One can only imagine how other livestock are treated, just to supply the needs of human demand and excessive consumption. The fishing industry is also not spared because most companies fish from unsustainable sources, and the fish are killed at increasingly younger ages to meet worldwide demand. Their short lifespans only allow them to grow to a certain weight before they are harvested. These are one of the reasons I chose to go veggie, and perhaps you should consider changing your diet to save your environment. Having one less meat product every week may not seem much to you, but if done on a large scale, the demand for animal products may eventually decrease and the overwhelming amounts of natural resources used to sustain these industries may decrease as well. For more information, go to The PB&J Campaign.

its been what, three weeks? an mya hiatus, even though I've been spending lots of time online anyway. I did really badly ): rawr though it was expected due to my lack of effort. I haven't told my parents yet, though I plan to do so today, to get it over and done with. I think my mum would ground me for the rest of my life, till I'm thirty. This is exaggerating but I think she doesn't really expect this, explaining the serious punishment. I sound/feel kind of apathetic about the news though, I think mainly because it has happened so many times, and if I start to bawl over it, it wouldn't help because it would make me feel in more of a funk, and less motivated to start working again. (what mum would get me to do when she knows) Anyway, I did my cranky blubbering yesterday already, perhaps on a subconcious hunch that my results would be so bad. I saw a lot of people blubbering today and I distract myself by going to study german or reading my caravan book, primarily because I've been rather touchy lately and hypersensitive, i.e. prone to psyching myself into thinking blubbering would make me feel which I'm trying to correct. (I have no idea how)

On a lighter note, I've read three sandman graphic novels, Never Let Me Go or Alles, was wir geben mussten (translated, it means 'we must give everything'), Shadow of the Hegemon and In the Time of the Butterflies. I think I won't review the sandman ones, because I can't remember enough to review it >< but I especially liked a midsummer night's dream's neil gaiman's puck in dream country, I think, the one with the trio of short stories

This is is a long review I wrote on paper, and it made me very happy(: p.s. read ender's shadow first before you read this review or risk getting spoiled!
Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
This is one of the few books that I have read that gave me the need to cry. (besides the time sirius feel through the veil) OSC writes from bean's point of view when telling the tale of ender's game, and so there is added suspense because you know what is going to happen. Bean's impoverished childhood makes him emotionally detached, but when he gets to battle school and know more about ender, he almost emaluates him through bean's idolatry. Bean's hunger for and ability to gather information results in him probing into the battle school system, and being able to log in as a teacher. However, he did not play the mind game, and so did not allow Jane to make a philotic connection with him, unlike ender did, and so the teacher know less of his personality. (refer to Xenoxide)
Ender has more emotional understanding than bean, having elements of Valentine's character. Ender is therefore better at leadership and has more likeability than bean, and also had more friends than bean. It comes not as a surprise that ender is chosen to be commmander of Dragon Army, and eventually commander of the fleet sent to extinguish the buggers. Bean is sharper and more intelligent than any of the soldiers, despite being the youngest, and this allows him to grasp new concepts quickly but still have time left over to study earth's political situation and discover locke and demesthothenes, peter and valentine wiggin. It is therefore almost natural that bean was ender's backup, ahould anything have gone wrong, and he also took the role of watching out for other players but still continued to execute ender's strategies when he was occupied.
Bean has the courage and determination to seem brave, despite knowing that the fleet sent to kill the buggers was real, and not just computer graphics on a screen. It made the xenocide all the more chilling, knowing this, with the added emotional attachment, knowing that the fleet was composed of real soldiers being led to their sacrificial deaths by a bunch of children. Towards the end, Bean senses Ender's disppointment and exhaustion, although he doesn't feel it himself. I admire bean for his tenacity and determination to get over his shortcomings, like his size and age, or losing it when he gets nervous (haha a lot like me), making the most of what he has and trying to help and support ender in any way.
Although it felt a little bad-fic-ish in the middle, when OSC was filling up battle school plot gaps, because it sounded very repetitive, this book complements Ender's Game very nicely, especially if you have read Speaker of the Dead or Xenocide. You also get to know why ender is able to develop a philotic connection with the sole surviving bugger queen in this book. I like OSC because he gives a lot of backstory, the kind of thing you look for in fics, just that this is written by the author himself and so is 100% official, and so ruthlessly destroys bad theories. There is MORE backstory in Shadow of the Hegemon, which is sitting very nicely in the school library, a 30-second walk from my classroom :D, just that I'm reading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Dream Country now, and was reading bio pt things before and the book day book is next in line.

Sometimes I think that the only thing I am good at is reading books and then plugging them incessantly until I get to the next one, so I'll probably be a freelance writer and plug books/ movies/ theater for people, since working at the ST doesn't really appeal to me. Mum wouldn't be thrilled at this proposition though; she would like me to have a 'professional' job like medicine/ engineering/ architecture/ law etc, not some wishy washy sociology/ anthropology major- what I have my eyes on.

snarry games <33>< color="#009900">not very comforting for someone who is snarry-hungry, or would die if snarry wasn't administered in five minutes. Some people though, think snarry is wrong, especially oh great cat, wencen and siling. They ship drarry and d/Hr, which I appreciate as well, but there aren't drarry games or d/hr games, are there? XD Sadly, I've read one of the wartime ones, and I think it was overly dramatic and was not sufficiently clear, even though the comment-writers said it "gave them goosebumps". Maybe I should try the post-war ones.

eois are looming on the horizon, and that means less computer time, less reading, more mugging till your nose is shiny and your shoulders ache. I think I should have purpose. and be more discipined, by planning systematically and with sufficient self-control. I have lots of reading to do for bio pt, and I hate hate hate the language it comes in because I have to read every sentence twice, being the dense, slow reader I am. Unlike geeru, who can finish two terry prachetts in a day. Although terry prachetts are entirely different things altogether, I fell I lack the self-motivation to read about creationism than to reach for ender's shadow. [which explains a lot about leadership and the Cretaceous Whale Fish and the Greater Lemur Knut, but more in another post]

For the wales trip, I almost thought that you couldn't bring anything but a ziplock bag with you on the plane for all inbound flights to heathrow, (jkr was almost separated from her manuscript) but I just checked, and the restrictions are similar to the US ones, and they allow large hand baggage but you have to put all liquids in a pint-sized ziplock bag, with no bottle >100ml. *whew* I can occupy myself properly. The restrictions are very amusing: "Allowed: wedding cake, hat box, wedding dress" and the faq too: "I would also like to know what checks you make on all the staff working at the airport - how do you know there are no terrorists working in security? Or smuggling bombs on planes via the food that is put onto the planes?" I sound very free.

Went to do FA duty on Saturday for wrcd, and I very smartly forgot to bring my shorts, and ended up walking around with a very, um, transparent uniform ><>.<

read neil gaiman's a game of you, instalment 5 of the sandman series. However, it was a little disappointing because the story wasn't long/developed enough for me, and it left me wanting more details and background. But you can only fit so much into a graphic novel, so. Plus I think I have understood this book better than the rest I have read, and it wasn't as scary or violent as the other ones. I sound childish and wussy, but the last one I read (book 1 I think) was so haunting that it put me off sadman for a while. Tried to introduce sandman to shinyi and sarah, and I think they were a little into it for the first few pages, but the graphic-ness wasn't for them. It is also fairly diffcult to read in school without someone(a teacher ) peering over your shoulder and recommending you to the school shrink. Interestingly, I have a feeling that it would be perfectly acceptable for boys of my age to read this kind of thing :/ Though people in my school read animae, which is also graphic but rated nc-16, I think sandman would be rated R(A) because of nudity and violence. I shouldn't focus much on the ratings, and should focus more on the plot and things, which made me want to read it in the first place.

I am selfish, irritable, cranky, inconsiderate, self-centred, and in desperate need of anger management. I also felt like heaving this morning, and tended to scream at people more than usual.

I was thinking of having a harry potter release party either on the day itself (July 21st) where everyone gathers with coffee and cookies to read and then mass review after, or a pre-party a week before (July 13th) to coincide with the movie and to discuss theories or do readings (reading aloud of the various books in the series). Since most of the release parties are organised by major bookstores, and there is no harrypotter-fan community in Singapore that I know of, (I have no parties to go to!) it would be nice if I could do my own. If enough people are interested, we could even hold it in school or something- a bigger area for more people. (I wish!) In the meantime, it would be nice if people could second me on the ideas, or say which party they prefer. I 'll also be on the hunt for any singaporean fanbases, so see if they have anything planned. If nobody is really interested, the least I could do is a small gathering with people like sihui, siling, chele, geeru, charisse, crystal and other fans. Mugglenet is probably doing parties and even a tour (in the US D:) haha so I feel pretty left out.

AHHH!!!!!!111 I just wrote a very nice What will Happen in Harry Potter 7? review and internet explorer hanged and so it is all gone)): Note to self: always always save reviews at regular intervals. Anyway, in short, everyone has to go buy it. I mean it is absolutely imperative that you go buy it, because it has in-depth analysis of all the 6 books so far, suggesting what they think might happen in deathly hallows. And the sunday times review has not done justice to it AT ALL, because it is not written from a theorists' point of view. *is being elitist* Oh and don't worry about it spoiling you, because they only put what is most likely to happen from the evidence of what we've seen in the books, and we might not know if jkr will pull a dumbledore on us again. Plus it has already been proved wrong in predicting deathly hallows' release date, and therefore enlightens you to what is most plausible and gives you a little heads up on what to expect. Please please buy it from kino at $23.40, and support Mugglenet to let the great people there do their thing! *plugs* You can borrow it from me if you want a look((:

You know honestly I was very scared that we wouldn't win for ttime, because all the other schools were so good, and then jane had to call before they performed XD so I didn't know how/ what to say so that they would feel confident and smile and things. [this sounds like I don't think my year is good enough lol but just that the other people sounded as good as them] And I tried to be honest in the nicest way possible. Anyway, the most important thing is that our unit won both for song and dance, which proves the power of belief!(and really hard work!) I was really impressed by scrcy's tap-like thing they did though; they were very good technically, and with all the costumes and props, it stood out from other performances. I was sorry I missed dinner and all the crazy things yearmates were up to ): but it was very fun yelling my head off when the results were announced, and eating the juniors' cookies- I'll make vegan cupcakes the next time (I think/ hope/ wish) and be a groupie.

This is fustrating. Last night, right after phantom, I wrote a review and stupid blogger has deleted it): this is the first time it has happened to me, however, and the last few times the 'recover post' button has worked very well. Actually if I had a nice long review I should have been sensible and saved it as a word document.

Phantom was really really fun XD I saw cat and wencen, and they must have enjoyed it as much as I did. I sat right up in the first row and so I got to see everything close up, even the actors' expressions and acting and everything. Brad Little was brilliant as Eric/ Phantom; I liked his singing and this is the first time that I couldn't wait for him to get onstage. Rebecca Pitcher was, so far, the best Christine I've seen, I LOVED 'point of no return' and she's a lot better singer than emmy rossum, though emmy is a better actor. There was a live orchestra and they were great too- the conductor did a magnificent job, considering I sat right next to first violin.

The only downside was that I couldn't see the dancers' footwork because the stage was slightly elevated despite having watched the ballet all though the first "angel of music", but obviously in this case I shouldn't have such high expectations because the focus is on the musical, not the ballet. Not many people gave standing ovations, though, when they were so clearly due. X) I think because it's the first night, the tickets are usually given to the sponsor companies and the ticketholders get the ticket for free. Therefore the people are not big big fans and only go because they don't have to pay for it. I think that after this time, though, they will get to appreciate phantom more and maybe go for similar performances.

I'm at school now, waiting for yearmates to get ready for talentime. I really shouldn't be using the computer so this is goodbye.

so. This is my 100th post! I can practically hear the brass trumpets. In commemoration of this monumental event, I will put up an extra long ramble for you to mull over.

ecamp
I have to say it, and on here so I will remember and I won't lose it or anything.
I messed up a lot. Especially as welfare when at the beginning and I wasn't sure and things. This is going to be some specific post and I have a nagging feeling that you won't get the sarcasm, when used, at (in)oppurtune moments. A few hours ago, I had lots and lots and lots of things to say, so much so that I couldn't focus on anything, and now I don't know what to say (let alone where to start) so I will blogsurf for a bit and wait for it to come.
I think I should start with what I think of it overall. I think. that. [it isn't coming!] that we could have done better. (I always think that-_-") Been generally more self-motivated, louder, more optimistic. BUT how this happens I'm not quite sure. I suppose motivation starts primarily with a reason, a goal, and probably a plan. We have the goals and plans in the proposal on paper, but I don't think we have it in us, i.e. actually believe that camp is to initiate sec ones, make sec twos leaders, and so we must provide a suitable environment for them to develop/learn as much as they can. And therefore we should___. But sometimes having an argement that is, to some extent, too long-term, may not be effective because I use my 'work for greenpeace' argument to get myself to do my homework and it very obviously does not work.
At the same time, I also feel that having a certain sense of unworthiness is necessary (this sounds SM-ish) to keep one in check and not abuse one's power and authority. Then again, if the sense of unworthiness is outwardly shown, it creates a lack of trust for the person in authority and consequently a decreased willingness to listen. (I am thinking of the Hegemon as I write this, although it is a very far stretch.)
I was thinking, during camp, to do a sociological study of the roles of people in our camp, how they interact, who takes power and human nature or characteristics. (sociological is used to make myself sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I don't, so.) For example, in our year, group A always does ____, with group B not that into it. This occurs in every year, but there seems to be a maximum number of people in group A, and so in our year, the ratio of groups A:B is less than with other smaller years. This results in a general lack of effectiveness of the entire year, even though there is the requirem number, or even more, people into it. Of course these observations and inferences are not entirely reliable, considering my background (or lack thereof) of sociology, and that the theory is disproven as there are people who are categorised between groups A and B, and by that fact that I love, and am very comfortable being, a groupie.
This isn't as long a post as I wanted to write, but I think I should take the stupid theories thing slowly and not shock readers.

I must be the dumbest person on the face of the earth. I must live under a rock in a well a million miles from all humanity. Honestly. For me not to see my review in the papers, (granted, not everyone flips through the classifieds) and to not see, in big blinking letters, the words "4 Mar" at the top of my email, I must be a very blind person. I even replied and asked when I would see it in the papers! She must think I was a neurotic neophyte who walked around with her eyes closed. I have never had anything in the papers before, so I'm staring at the article fairly egoistically right now, a week after it is published. -_-" Oh and the said review is somewhere on here, so you can scroll around for a bit. *is being stupidly arrogant* And I've won a pair of movie tickets, to I'm not sure what, and I'm not sure when, as I haven't collected it yet. Does anyone want to come?

I've also just realised they've edited it a little, but I am still happy as long as my name is there. (they have rights to edit it, so.) I swear they deliberately made the picture of the book bigger so that my review would look longer.

D.S. and LCP are so mean! After all the anxiety of an interview, he wants to go through our bio journals?! Good luck ploughing though >20 journals, anyway. Go charisse! junru! hoongyan! gayle!

As of today, 8th March 2007, I am a miro/ouanda shipper. I am also a snarry, harmony and harry/ginny shipper. I like being a shipper! I like to read fluff! and this leads to the public proclamation that I declare myself a fangirl and a groupie! (of akaibatsu, no less) today I listened to saccharine-sweet duets and was extra and groupie-ish.

Neil gaiman linked this, and it's about two very emo sisters who get to go on a tour of the entire US, visit colleges, book signings and comiccons [twice!] (amazingly big conventions for geeks in general; kol and mugglenet have been known to visit/participate) >:( This is very unfair as all of this is parent sanctioned(!) just because the siblings, Sky and Winter, are homeschooled. Sky is fourteen and Winter eleven (or around that) and they are very into manga, graphic novels, and this tv show called veronica mars. But it doesn't really matter because their dad is a writer and they have these crazy opportunities to meet new people, go to conferences with authors and visit museums, so the fact that they don't go to school school is negligible. I. am. jealous.

The interview was okay, and better than the others I have done (I hope) though I was a little worried; {right wait I always am anyway} because I was first. Naturally I told everyone else the questions and wished them luck while I got away with my burden relieved and much less wriggly. I wish everyone else the best of luck. :) I should go do something useful, like googling the lit poems or the ecamp item or at least go to sleep early.

pffft. I am the first to be interviewed. At least I'll get it over and done with quickly. Being last means having to wait in agony. I suppose.
The purpose of this post is solely to bump things down, and I hope it will serve its purpose by being empty, but full of purposeful space for my mighty Purpose. I don't like leaving empty spaces though; empty spaces on paper mean wasted paper-> unneccesary comsumption-> climate change. If everyone left a wee bit of empty space on their paper, one entire piece of paper will be wasted, and soon enough, millions, which will result in worldwide forest destruction. Empty spaces on a webpage, however, mean entirely different things, which will be discussed in later posts.

Meet the Austins by Madeline L'engle
This is more family centered than the Time Quartet*, and more suitable for younger readers. As an older reader with a more concrete mindset, and not the impressionable person I was, I approached this book with many paradigms. The Austins believe very much in God and His presence, and this plays a large part in keeping the family together. The theme of religion is more significant in this book than her others, perhaps because God played a large role in L'engle's life, and she wanted an opportunity to showcase this. [Meet the Austins] emphasises the importance of strong bonds between siblings, as well as the trust and respect for one's parents. When the book was written in the 1960s, the family unit was still significant in American history. This is before the advent of modern communications, as well as working parents and overscheduled children, bringing us to an era when peace within a family was more importance than the peace within oneself. An in-depth narrative of life at home, including details one can almost only experience first hand, suggests that L'engle grew up in this kind of family, and her family is part of who she is today. Comparing my life with Vickys', the protagonists' , Vicky, without the influence mass media has on us today, is more innocent, and has a firmer sense of belonging to her family and faith in her religion. However, the questions she has while growing up are not very different from mine, reminding us that self-doubt and a less definite view of the world are not only problems adolescents of today face.

* A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters

I think my clauses are wrong.

I just might have a chance to watch equus. I think. IF I get accepted for the wales trip, IF the teachers agree to watching a play and IF they consent, also considering the price. (the cheapest tickets are 19.50 pounds, around $60) If price is most important, othello/ the merchant of venice is 5 pounds ($15) but you have to stand. I would like to watch the mousetrap, a mystery play by Agatha Christie, Chicago, Fame, Les Miserables, The Monty Python(!) a Misummer Night's Dream, Phantom, Macbeth, Cabaret, Dirty Dancing and so forth. Oh and they have 43 applicants, but only 40 slots, so they are still holding interviews ): Three people won't be hard to squeeze, won't it? I don't know what to say for the interview, but I'll have lots of time to prepare- I'm the last! So you see I'm counting my eggs before they hatch (again) But this time hopefully it's safer because there's a higher chance of getting in. For Boston summer school its on a first -come- first serve basis, (rolling basis) so I'll have to write out my personal statement soon, photocopy my results, and get the financial bit down and send my application. I can reject the application once they reply without having applied for the visa or anything, so I suppose I can decide later. Ohoh and Crystal, charisse and junru signed up- so I know I won't be lonely but then again, making new friends is also very fun if I go to boston. Yes, I am a very undecisive person.
I swear the first thing I'm going to get is a lunette when I get a credit card.
I will be a good and undistracted person by doing math, german and chinese, so that my mum won't nat, and so I have a nice gpa.

I'm at school to watch the tt people and then after that I'm going to go to the library in takashimaya to mug math and german and maybe meet hoongyan. I might have a dairyqueen and then go to moelc for german. I haven't come in a week (to blog) and I suppose you can tell.

Mum wants me to go to Boston University's Summer Challenge Program during the june holidays. I 've printed out the application and everything and mum is really bent on me going but it might clash with trainingcamp, and I'll miss a bit of school. But even after I send in the application I still have to see if they accept me or not, so. Plus it costs US$3000 excluding spending money and airline tickets, compared to the Wales trip which is $3000 sing (around US$2250) with everything included, and which I also signed up for. But the summer challenge thing sounds really fun- you have 2 seminars in a day, get to stay in a real dorm and even get to see fun things like Shear Madness and explore Boston yourself. There's a lot more autonomy and space to do your own thing, get to know other people and experience what university might be like. But for the Wales trip I'm with people I already know (no one would know me if I went to boston) The topics of study are more relavant to what I'm doing in school, and there is a lot more fieldwork and out of classroom exposure involved. Of course, mum would prefer me to go to both, but that= a lot of money. She doesn't usually pay any consideration to this in my argument. Also, she thinks that Boston isn't safe enough to be on my own, so she, my sister and my dad are all coming along if I go. This is an incredible statement that is all encompassing and I feel my wallet burning as I type this. Oh jeez I sound stingy and miserable but they have to pay for accomodation, food, plane tickets etc and it adds up. I should get the estimates and maybe she'll relent. But I can't help planning for my trip ( if I ever go) - planning where I'll visit, what I'll do, what I'll bring; what it would be like staying on my own for two weeks. I don't want to get my hopes up and the more sensible half of me says no anyway, but if I get all psyched up or psyche myself up, I'll be really disappointed if I don't get accepted. ( you have to write a personal statement in your application)

it's been 12 days. 12 days! procrastination gets the best of me at times. And it is not a good time when my printer is throwing temper tantrums. i.e. now D: aop

Mass swim today was fun! I forgot how great swimming could be- I haven't been swimming in ages, unless you count kayaking in obs. There were little flies all over the place- they buzz around and land on your shirt in masses. Especially on my bright green buckle shirt- somehow they didn't land on the new dark green one. They are tiny brown dots with even tinier wings, and some have developed enough to become red and have wriggly legs. When you dust them off your shirt, they fly a distance away and come back, so you have to pick them off individually and squish them, when they subsequently leave yellow slime on your shirt and fingers. But it was okay after mass swim, because they all drowned in the pool and left little fly corpses floating around. I stayed for mass aquarobics, which was relatively easy to get a representation point :D and we did a lot of splashing! The people who participate in house activities are usually house comm members, and not many non-comm people were seen. (except sec ones) :(
[pfft. I want to SLEEP. stupid printer.]
drowsiness-> lack of vocabulary-> excessive use of smilies; although I've been up later and written a more credible blog post. lousy stamina.
The Worthing Saga was very lovely and very human; more so than ender's game. It, apparently, stemmed from one of the first SF short stories that osc wrote. It is more science fiction than fantasy,but I still like it lots. It was also the only decent osc book (besides ender's game) that the school library had, besides this long series about american beginnings or something like that. The Saga explores issues of human ethics, especially in the case of Jason Worthing's, the protagonist's, mind-reading abilities. I plan to borrow xenocide from the library after school on friday to keep me alive and sane, and will probaly lend the worthing saga to charisse. This review significantly diminishes in quality compared to luna's, even though this is thicker.

July 21st 2007!!!! omfg *hyperventilates and possibly ceases breathing* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released at 12.01am (new york time I think, so around 12 noon the same day in Singapore) in addition to the release of OotP on July 13th Friday (in Canada, the US and in the UK), = a harrypotter summer! It's on a Saturday so I have the weekend to read it. But it'll probably be in term3 with lots of pts, SAs and whatnot so I have a feeling it wouldn't be such a good idea. And harrypotter fever would practically end by 21/7 , for good )): All the hype would be from friday to saturday of that week, and it would ebb before the next week is out. I honestly did not expect it to be so soon, and I have a feeling I would miss listening to theory discussions on mugglecast, and what would happen to editorials?! I actually wanted it to be around june 2008 so that jkr would have sufficient time to do it up properly and we would have lots and lots of time to postulate. Also, I'm not sure if this is a wise publicity stunt by the publishers, because once the hype dies down, it would be difficult for sales to rise again. The sale of the book would have to compete with sales of the movie, as well as publicity, so there would be less net sales of the book even though there is greater hype. Some might argue that the movie would instead promote the book, since the movie is released earlier, and maybe persuade non-harry-potter readers but harrypotter movie-watchers to buy a copy.
I don't think I'll pre order; the last time I did it, the book came 2 days late, and I was spoiled by then ): I should get to writing an editorial, if I want to, really soon.