Pengajian Am Paper Two

Today is the day we battled the great monster call Pengajian Am Paper Two. It would be totally unspectacular save one thing... It took me ONE HOUR to reach home from school after the exam. Usually, the journey to and from school from my house will take about 15 minutes, or 20 if there's traffic. Just the fact that it took one friggin hour to go home should have had me pissed and of the roof, but the fact was, I was pretty zen about it. Maybe the hilarity of the paper took its toll on me.

The hot topic for STPM this year was biotechnology. Everyone was talking about it, changing notes and discussing the probabilities at length. I was joking at one such discussion (two minutes before we entered the exam hall) and said too much emphasis is put on the 'kebaikan' of biotech, very little points on the 'keburukan'.. As Fate would have it, one question came out which is "Kebaikan dan Kesan Negatif biotech". I was at a loss at the keburukan and the two points I stated were:
1. Biologically engineered food might contain a new strain of disease and kill everyone who eats them
2. Biologically engineered food which repel insects deprive insects of food, thus disrupting the food chain, driving other species to extinction...

Lamest points, but I didn't have enough time to do the essay properly...

Another thing that bugged and tickled me me was the fact that global warming came out as a Bahagian E question. I was not really prepared to do Jadual because i was not familiar to the format and was hoping carta aliran came out. The fact that global warming came out was so funny ( because I have written no less that four essays concerning the topic for various competitions throughout the year, and did a PA assignment on the subject as well) and I really hope I did the topic justice. The thing that bugged me was it did not come out as an essay.

Anyway, I'm off to revise the other subjects now, hopefully I could finish in time...

Pengajian Am Paper One

What to say? The paper was supposed to last for two hours (our shortest paper) and I finished kind of early. Can't help but look for answers when I got home to see how many questions I got correct. there are still some ambiguous questions that seem to have no answer...

anyway, tomorrow is another day, another paper, and I better get ready for that too.

STPM starts tomorrow

For those of you who don't know, the biggest, hardest, most challenging examination in Malaysia begins tomorrow, and some of you might think, why is this guy still blogging on the eve of exams? It's like, having a wedding on the eve of a big battle or something like that. But as the title of my blog goes, In Omnia Paratus... (prepared for everything)

I don't feel particularly well prepared, and I know a lot hinges on whether I pass or fail this examination, yet there is a feeling of calm, as Gandalf describes it in Return of the King, "the deep breath before the plunge"....

Well, I just hope I fare well in this, and at the last hurrah, be able to bid farewell to those who accompanied me in Form six...

Birthday

Today is my birthday, and I had lunch with some close people. After that, I thought of doing something like this:



Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/17/1988 and ending 2/5/1989.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Dragon.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Snake; your plant is Thistle.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Tyby, the first month of the season of Poret (Emergence - Fertile soil).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 6 Kislev 5749.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 7 Kislev 5749.

The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.18.15.9.16 which is
12 baktun 18 katun 15 tun 9 uinal 16 kin

The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Tuesday, 5 Rabi'u'th-Thani 1409 (1409-4-5).

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 3 April 1988.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1988.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 17 February 1988.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 22 May 1988.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 29 May 1988.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Monday, 12 September 1988.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Saturday, 2 April 1988.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 16 February 1988.

As of 11/15/2007 7:30:44 AM EST
You are 19 years old.
You are 228 months old.
You are 991 weeks old.
You are 6,939 days old.
You are 166,543 hours old.
You are 9,992,610 minutes old.
You are 599,556,644 seconds old.

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 2.71585127201566 years old. (Life's just a big chewy bone for you!)

There are 366 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 20 candles.

Those 20 candles produce 20 BTUs,
or 5,040 calories of heat (that's only 5.0400 food Calories!) .
You can boil 2.29 US ounces of water with that many candles.

But nobody is going to read this anyway...

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

This latin palindrome (for those of you who don't know, a palindrome is a sentence that reads the same forwards and backwards) means "We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire", describing the behaviour of moths.

Sometimes, I liken this situation to myself. I am a moth, entering a circle in the darkness, and finally being consumed by the flames. This can apply to two situations.

The first is when I am attracted by vain things that destroy, entering the circle, along with so many others who are attracted by the same things, unaware of the destructive powers of the attraction. Finally, I am destroyed by the thing that attracted me, consumed by the flames of passion.

The second is to studies. The flame is the testing fire of examinations. If I don't study well enough, I enter the circle (exams) in the darkness, and unsure of my coordinates, I plunge into the whole thing unprepared and finally am consumed by the flames of examinations.

Am I a moth? I hope not. Yet time and again I fall back into a familiar pattern that leads to the path of destruction. Can I break free from the circle? Leave the familiar encircling towards a destructive attraction and fly towards safety?

In Omnia Paratus
(ready for everything)