Pre-Exam

Lalalala it's that time of the year again where I realize how screwed I am. I still haven't finished that bloody assignment which I was supposed to have finished like a month ago, and I haven't even thought about revision. Life is terrible, death is terrible, being a zombie is worse still. I don't even know what I'm doing any more.

I feel like I'm at the point where I'm willing to pray to any and all of the Gods out there if it means I'll pass my exam. I might even be willing to sacrifice baby lambs if it means I don't have to kill them myself. I mean, I could eat a baby lamb. I get pretty hungry sometimes.

So I'm going through my textbook without actually taking anything in. I'm like, reading, but it's not registering in my mind for whatever reason. Maybe it's because my attention span is too short and I can't actually focus on anything any more. I'm like looking at practice questions for the test and being all "wtf we didn't learn this", and reading up notes on a chest exam and thinking "I don't think I'll remember all these steps". Also, doing physical examinations on people can be super-awkward, would you believe it. As it turns out, I don't like touching people and people don't like being touched. We're just not a very touchy-feely society- which overall is a good thing but GODDAMN I'M GOING TO BOMB MY PHYSICALS.

I can't wait til I finish my exams and feel de-stressed again.

Board Games Night

Soooo, in my attempt to lighten up my university life (and to curb the loneliness and depressive feelings I often harbour) I joined our university's anime and games club. Remember my last post saying how it was the epitome of nerdiness and I wanted to bail right as I got there? Well because I actually ended up having a decent time back then, I decided to try another one of our club activities- the board games night.

Now board games night is literally just a bunch of guys playing board games. Well, not limited to board games- I saw some guys playing Magic the Gathering. I thought Hearthstone was all the craze nowadays- I mean, I used to play Magic myself but I was like, 14. It was so weird watching all these guys who are at least 24 having an intense Magic duel.

Can you feel the intensity yet?

Anyway I show up to the night expecting to be like, the new kid in a closed group- and I kind of was but people were really friendly and welcoming. That makes what I'm about to say really fucking mean, but I'm going to say it anyway- I think half that club is just made for kids with learning disabilities somewhere on the autism spectrum. There were a few "normal" guys who were just extra geeky, then there were some kids with obvious behaviour patterns that you recognized were part of the "special needs" cohort. I think most people there, to a certain degree, entertained a level of social awkwardness that determined they would be incompatible in an unprotected and open environment. Like, if this was high school and they went out onto the playground, they would get bullied. I'm not saying bullying is right and kids should really have more decency, but there are things you can say or do that attract a bully's attention- and these kids are full of it.

I start the night by casually sliding into a game of Cards Against Humanity (CAH). If you haven't heard of it, it's basically a party game where a question is asked, and you have a variety of responses on cards in your hand--- and you try to pick out the most disturbing answer possible that fit the context of the question. Anyway, I join the table without much complication- introductions were unnecessary and I really have to say even in my casual clothing, I looked so well dressed that I didn't belong. Everyone seemed to sport a uniform of track pants and t shirt, with a hoodie on top and worn sneakers on their feet. I guess everyone else felt it too- the fact that I wasn't really one of them, I guess, but CAH is actually an excellent game for assimilation into a new party. Soon they learnt that my moral inhibitions were close to non-existent as I dished out disturbing answer after disturbing answer- so that went quite well.

Not that the game passed without any awkward moments. Sitting there I noticed that the guys around me tended to laugh even when the answers weren't that funny, but it was more than the polite laugh you made around strangers- it was the "I genuinely think this funny" laugh. I mean, if you want to call me out on having a different sense of humour, that wouldn't strictly be incorrect, but it was fucking weird man. Then at our table was this Asian kid whose first language obviously wasn't English (sounded like he was from Hong Kong, actually) but he wasn't shy about it at all. That's not a bad thing, of course. No, what was bad was the fact that we were playing CAH with someone who didn't speak English fluently in the first place. Sometimes we'd laugh and this kid of would look seriously confused, and then you'd be forced to explain to him why it was so funny, but as you did so you felt oh-so-fucking-guilty because you literally just laughed at "Auschwitz" as an answer and you were desperately hoping no one at the table was Jewish.

Many awkward things had to be explained to this kid over the night, and among them were scrotum, queefing and pixlated bukkake. If you don't know what the last one is, I recommend not searching it on Google until you are no longer at work or school. #NSFW There I literally bolded the warning.

After one finished round of CAH I bailed to playing Pictionary. Naturally my team won, though I only made minor contributions. We had this guy studying architecture on our team and man you could tell he was a good drawer. I mean, I draw a fair bit but when I play pictionary you'd be lucky if you could guess something even vaguely related. So collectively we had 2 people who can draw and there was another guy who was genius at guessing- he won us the game by saying "irrigation". Like goddamn I know architecture guy actually drew an excellent picture of irrigation- complete with pipes, surrounding land and water, but the word irrigation just would've never occurred to me.

Now after pictionary was really when I should've excused myself and bailed the fuck out, but instead I was roped into playing another game called Munchkin. It was one of the most unnecessarily complicated games I've ever seen- it wasn't very much like Magic the Gathering- I mean there was strategy involved but most of it came from not having players at the table spite the shit out of you, and drawing the right cards to save your own sorry ass. I got bored very quickly and I was no where close to winning the game because I had lost all interest. I kept on playing though, despite everything, because the guy who was winning and coming up big was the guy who knew all the rules and was super-enthusiastic about the game. In the 5 player game there was me and one other person who was bored to shits, but we didn't really want to steal this guy's sunshine because he was winning and because he was trying so hard to teach us the rules, but everything was so goddamn complicated, it didn't even make sense as we were playing the game. Anyway super-enthusiastic guy won in the end (surprising no one) and it was like half past nine before the night ended.

When I got to the bus stop I realized I missed the bus by 30min (so I really should've just left early when the game bored me to shits) and the next bus was due in 30min. Awful feeling. So I was stuck at the bus stop, being bored, and my phone had just died on me because it ran out of battery and I was left to being so goddamn bored. When I got home I resolved that I am never doing this shit again, but despite my inability to make friends I think I had good time. Like, the fact that I can't really get into the mood and laugh along at most things isn't really their fault- it's hard to assimilate into the group that you identified as "kids scoring hell high on the autism scale". But just because I suspect them of having social problems doesn't necessarily mean I can't have a good time around them... ya?  Am I sounding desperate for company yet? I'm pretty fucking desperate for company.

The Excitement and All

So the new budget was released not long ago- I don't really like it. There are some highly inconvenient changes, which shouldn't affect me personally in the long run, but I don't see how it's going to work out for everyone else in this country. I would be very close to graduation by the time the university course fees hike up, and I can afford to pay $7 every time I visit a GP (though that hasn't come into effect yet and hopefully never will). I think I'm just sympathetic towards the people who have to suffer, and in turn I'm kind of hating on this budget too.

There you have it, Australia.

Anyway, I tried to be social tonight by attending our university's anime/games club. It sounds super nerdy or geeky or w/e you want to call it, but I felt like I was missing those kinds of people in my life so I HAD to try. I show up and I kind of just want to turn around and get out. The room is just full of people as nerdy as nerdy can get. There was this hyperactive kid who I suspected of having Asperger's, this guy who I suspect hasn't showered in like 4 days and some guy who knew the history of Zelda a little TOO well. So there I was at a table with these characters, playing a game of super mario and I realize "hey, this isn't even that bad". I mean apart from the guy next to me smelling like he hadn't showered in 4 days it wasn't even bad. As it turns out I really don't care who I'm playing games with, and games are really excellent bonding activities.

Though mario kart is arguably THE friendship killer, on par with monopoly

I had quite a bit of fun in the end, and then I ended up playing pool vs my friend. I was winning until I lost- so that was a sad game, but I'm bad a pool so I guess it didn't matter after all...

On a completely different topic: how fucking epic was the latest GoT episode? Goddamn that snow-castle scene between Sansa and Petyr and I'm just all "wow the ship is real" and it was literally the best part of the episode. Well I guess the whole Danaerys x Daario scene was pretty hot but there wasn't enough nudity so I'm unsatisfied.

This could be my fav romance of all time...

Anyway I gotta stop blogging even though it's just a little bit past 12am... I plan on waking up in like 4 hours to catch this LoL game... GO TEAM GO.

Summer Heights High

I've been really non-productive lately. By non-productive I mean I've been spending my time on reddit, tumblr, facebook, youtube, twitter and so forth. The internet is terribly distracting. Other than that I've been watching (or rather, re-watching) Summer Heights High (SHH). If you haven't heard of Chris Lilley, he's an Australian comedian and a phenomenal producer/actor/writer. He basically did the whole series himself, and he portrays all 3 of the main characters- Ja'mie King, a posh Sydney school girl, Jonah, the typical high school delinquent from Tonga, and Mr G, the school's drama teacher.

Most of the show 's humour stems from Lilley's exaggerated portrayal of stereotypical characters. My favourite character is probably Ja'mie King- I don't know how he does it so well, but he pulls off many posh teenage girl impressions perfectly, and when I saw the character I knew she was real, because I've seen a lot of girls like when I was in high school. Anyway, watching the show for me started off as a lot of laughs.

However, with me being the person I am, I found my own way to get depressed over a comedy. It mostly came from the character Jonah, who basically has really low literacy skills for his age, is a bit rough and doesn't know how to express himself in a socially acceptable manner. His tagline seems to be "fuck you miss" and he enjoys drawing penises all over the place. I can't recall how many manifestations of this character I've seen in real life, but it really resounded. I remember, starting from primary school, how there were kids who'd do these attention seeking things, and say really fucked up crap whilst being generally disruptive to the class. The teacher would break down, yell at them, and they'd spend more time at the principle's office than in class. As one of those high-achieving quiet Asian students, I'd just sort of sit there and try to work, while getting really annoyed that there was all this commotion in the background. I felt sorry for the teachers frequently- these kids were annoying as fuck, after all.

But here I am, roughly 8 years later, and I'm thinking "wow that teacher is being a bitch". I'm just watching TV, and this fictional kid is getting yelled at by his teacher, but it really hurts me. The school tries to get Jonah to participate in this "Polynesian Pathways" project, and he doesn't want to be there but the adults around him are pressuring him to embrace his culture. See my argument against these programs is that you can't embrace what you don't understand, and if you grew up in a foreign environment, then you adapt the culture of THAT particular environment. You can't force a kid to say things like "I'm really proud of my heritage and who I am" if they don't really understand their heritage. Like, as a developmental milestone, people go through an identity crisis phase (most commonly during their teenage years) where they try to figure out who they really are and what their place is in this world. I think in the show they made Jonah dress up in traditional clothing and perform a dance or something- I got kind of grossed out whilst watching, because it was essentially a bunch of outsiders pushing this kid into this foreign territory, giving him a label which he himself didn't understand, and yelling "LOOK THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE, NOW YOU BETTER ACCEPT IT AND BE PROUD OF IT EVEN IF YOU DON'T IDENTIFY WITH IT AT ALL".

It's kind of irrational to get upset over a satirical documentary, but I'm like this because I'm alarmed that what is supposed to be satire isn't even satire. I said the show was funny because it was exaggerated, but I'm watching this character storyline and I thinking "I've seen this happen in real life, it's not an exaggeration"- and then I just become horrified. I think our education system is fundamentally flawed in the way we try to bring kids with lower literacy and numeracy skills up to speed. These kids often also have what we consider as behavioural problems, so putting them in mainstream classes would be highly disruptive. I'm not sure totally seclusion from their other peer is the best idea, but what we do need are teachers who better equipped with ways to deal with difficult children. when the teacher yells and screams alongside the student you know something's gone wrong. I think overall this show just hit waaaay too close to home for me.

I really need to stop reading into these things...

The Weekend and So Forth

Firstly I'd like to make some excuses about why I haven't blogged in so many days. There was this international LoL tournament which started on Thursday. In my timezone it was about 10pm- which isn't actually that bad considering it was mostly a weekend tournament. Naturally I slept at around 2-3am every night and woke up at around noon every day. I didn't do much work when I was awake either- I think I just spent eons on reddit or I played Brave Frontier or... something.

Come Sunday night I was getting pretty tired, but it was the grand finals and I thought I should watch it. I had a tutorial at 8.30am the next day, and I hadn't written any notes for it, but come on grand finals are totally worth the sleep deprivation, right? The results went as I expected, with Korea taking a 3-0 win over China in a Bo5, and then I just felt sad for ages, because the matches were humiliating. I think in the last game Korea almost won the game before China was able to surrender (you have to play for a certain amount of time before you can surrender a game)- so that was completely dreadful. Like I mentioned before my favourite team (from North America) lost their team captain due to a collapsed lung, and I'm 90% convinced that they could've taken down China and met Korea in the finals if they had their full roster.

Monday came and Monday went- I was at the tutorial half-dead with 2 hours of sleep, and when I came home I basically just showered quickly and went to sleep. I woke up at 7pm or something like that, but it was completely dark and cold and I was extremely confused. I guess I could've done some productive reading then, but I decided it would be a better idea to waste some time and sleep at 1am. I expected to wake at 7am this morning- not because I'm a morning person but because I already slept for ages- but noooo, I woke up at noon. I think my body clock has adjusted to waking at midday due to my sleep patterns over the duration of the LoL tournament.

Anyway that brings us to today and my excuses are sort of over- I mean my excuses were completely crap so I guess it doesn't even matter. The one great thing I did today was call up a random dental clinic after 5min on Google. The pain in my teeth is really bothering me- I had a look in the mirror last night, and my right wisdom teeth appears to be facing forwards and growing horizontally, while my left wisdom teeth is only half-uncovered and is leaving my gums chronically inflamed. There's also this spot on the left side that looks like an adhesion between the wall of my mouth and my gums. Yea, sounds gross. Essentially what I'm saying is my teeth are fucked, it hurts, and I really need a dentist. I hope the clinic I'm going to will be decent, I have a feeling that I'll require at least 2 wisdom teeth extractions (not sure about my upper ones).

My impression of dentists have not changed over the years

You know, I haven't been to the dentist in forever- the last time I went to one, I was meant to get referred to an orthodontist for braces, but my parents were too worried about it affecting my grades and decided to delay it (how Asian, right). So 4 years later I still don't have braces and now I need to slot it into my ever  changing uni timetable--- time management is a complete disaster for me. I think I'll need at least a week to recover from wisdom teeth extraction, and idk when I'm going to fit that in since exams are coming up but I'm also like, really scared of dentists. I had many dental disasters when I was young, whether it be cavities or infections or whatever the fuck. Then I got to the age where I was meant to be changing teeth, but my old teeth actually never fell out and my new teeth just grew over my old ones, so I had to have 90% of my teeth surgically removed. My new teeth proved to be much more solid than my old ones, but they were all crooked because they grew over my old ones.

See if I were a plant I wouldn't need to eat and I wouldn't need teeth. This is why if reincarnation is real I'm going to be a fucking tree and photosynthesise all day every day until some fucker comes along and cuts me down.

Vaccinations

As someone currently studying med, my standpoint on vaccinations should surprise no one: yeah, I support vaccinations. I know the concept of mandatory vaccinations is scary for some people- because it's like, "I don't really know what this is, what are you injecting into my body, what if this is some brain-control agent to turn me into sheep"- and I guess it doesn't help that the people who are pro vaccinations are like scary-ass looking doctors who look really smart but sound really distant. Despite all that... vaccinations actually work, you know...

I'm writing about all this because my friend linked me to some news report- apparently polio is a thing again. And I'm looking at all these anti-vaccination protesters, and I just like, "do you even know what polio is? do you know what polio could do to your children?" Polio has been eradicated in most parts of the world, but imagine if it got reintroduced to areas where it had been previously eradicated, and we didn't have the antibodies pass down or w/e. Then it'd just be a nationwide alert to get vaccinated, and those who don't get vaccinated will either get the disease themselves or pass it on to someone else- and I guess there's nothing stopping them from doing both...

This whole anti-vaccination thing is like... so fucking stupid. People spend so much effort, and public health is such a chore- then at the end of the day it doesn't even matter because fuck it people are scared and paranoid. It makes you kind of exasperated, doesn't it? Actually, I read this thread on reddit about vaccinations, and one of the guys who commented claimed to work in the health field, and he said some pretty gross things along the lines of "if parents don't wanna vaccinate their children, then let them die and watch them suffer, it's natural selection". People saying stuff like that really scares me, especially when they claim to be health workers. I know you get this cruel kind of satisfaction from watching people suffer when they don't heed your advice- it's the psychology of the whole "I TOLD YOU SO" statement- but once we grow out of that stage, then what? The purpose of giving them advice in the first place was so that the mistake would not be made- people would like to argue that some things can only be learnt through error- but in matters like these, to err is to (very completely) fuck someone's life over.

It's not fair for the kids to bear the consequences of an ill-informed choice. Sometimes parents say they weren't informed about the possible risks of NOT vaccinating their children- and people are all "wow bs you so dumb making fucking excuses". Except when you think about it, no sane parent would want to subject their children to shit like whooping cough and measles and rubella over the minimal risks of what- getting a mild fever for a couple of hours after vaccination? Some feelings of nausea? Might want to vomit. I'd rather vomit for a bit than end up not being able to breathe. And whoever the fuck said vaccinations lead to autism- like, what the fuck man. Why would you do that. There's like, no pathophysiological pathway to suggest that- but thanks to whoever the fuck came up with that theory, we pour all this money into investigating whether vaccination does lead to autism. Guess what the conclusion of the research was? IT FUCKING DOESN'T CAUSE AUTISM.

Mmm, I'm still not very good at convincing people that vaccines work- and I can't very well name every single component that a vaccine contains. But like, I still eat KFC and apparently the recipe of their "herbs and spices" is like one of the most expensive pieces of information in the world, up there with the formula for coke. Even an apple, just a normal, organic apple contains cyanide and formaldehyde and arsenic. Not many people die from cyanide poisoning as a result of eating apples, do they (k forget Alan Turing- on second thought, this is a terrible example). After all this waffle, what I really want to say is... if you believe that vaccines work, and that you have some confidence in scientific evidence- don't give up on those people who are against vaccinations. This must sound terribly strange, coming from me, because I'm like really bitter and cynical and whatever the fuck, but you only need to teach those who don't get it, right. You don't want to watch people suffer from their ill-informed choices and watch the collateral damage spread a generation later. It's easy to say that you want to give up because people are so stubborn and stupid, but on the other hand people probably think I'm just another kid being brainwashed by the government or getting bribed by pharmaceutical companies.

At this point I kind of want to quote anime, where the protagonist's friend says "why should we save these people, they are so weak and useless". The protagonist, being the protagonist, says, "because only people who cannot save themselves need saving". I suppose it'd be bad to compare ourselves to saviours, but it's a metaphor. Do your best, spread the "the diseases you're not vaccinated against will literally kill you" message. You don't have to be a doctor to save lives..

Hah What Am I Doing

It's past midnight once again and I can't believe I'm still awake and blogging. I told myself I'd be awake before noon tomorrow but since I'm still awake now that was obviously a big fat lie. I also said I'd do work but I haven't really written anything- I've just been reading past notes and figuring out that I've forgotten like 90% of what I've learnt.

In my boredom I've changed the template to this blog once again. Remember how last time I changed the template I said I wanted something less depressing? Hah the irony was that I changed it to like the most depressing image there was on blogger template. I'm so fucking bad at this "let's not be depressed for x amount of time!" thing.

So it's really cold and I have the heater running full power- my landlord is probs going to be really mad about his electricity bills but idc. Out of sheer late-night loneliness I struck up conversation with my ex-room mate who I haven't seen for like a year and a bit, and it turns out he's generally happy and has a girlfriend and for some reason I end up asking him for relationship advice. He proceeds to tell me that I need to lose weight otherwise I won't attract anyone, and I tell him it's pointless because I'll just get dumped if I ever gain the weight back, and he then whips out his theory of "no first impression is really important, but if you get fat afterwards they'll already be in love with you so they won't leave you"--- and I'm just all "I guess I kind of believe that but I think I would dump someone if they were fat so his theory isn't very reliable".

Anyway the conversation quickly deteriorates to him calling me fat and me telling him he's too skinny. I don't remember how it ended but I resolved that I will not lose weight due to having a normal BMI and then I just randomly started talking to another friend. I look at the time and it's like 1am so that's when I realize I really wasn't going to get any work done.

I actually spent most of my day learning how to read an ECG, you know. It's a more difficult task than I imagined- I thought it was just a bunch of squiggly lines but it's like, really fucking complicated and you have to do all this graph analysis and it just felt like I was back in year 12 chemistry class, being bored to shits while staring at charts I didn't really understand. I just hate how there are so many different names for so many ambiguous things and I don't even know wtf is up. Like, why the fuck would you want to describe something as regularly irregular or irregularly irregular? Think about those terms- wtf does it even fucking mean?

Anyway I'm up at like 2am talking to my friend still and I'm at the stage where I think I've finally worked out why I'm still single after all this time. She related to me how she actually got together with her boyfriend, and going through her story, I identify all the points where I would've given up if I were her. I summarized my primary problems:

1. My pride and ego is just MASSIVE. If they don't like me I won't allow myself to be stuck in a state of unrequited love for too long.
2. I refuse to do anything if I know they like someone else or is dating someone else. That goes against some vague moral code of mine, and also because I'm too proud to compete.
3. I refuse to change myself to suit their tastes because I refuse to acknowledge any vague insecurities which may exist, also because I'm fucking fabulous and I don't want to go down the hole of feeling inadequate because too many times I feel that way already and I don't need another added blow
4. My standards are too high. Way high. Higher than the fucking sky. 

And yeah with that I've pretty much explained the reason for my state of being perpetually single. Thinking about it, it might not even be a bad thing- to remain single, I mean. I'm just at that stage in life where I'm obsessed with finding a partner, mostly because everyone else is doing it and then the other part is because I get lonely sometimes. I think if we fast forward another 10 years everyone would be obsessed with their careers and what they've achieved and I could then have something more to gloat about. Or we could be at that stage where my friends all have kids and they start comparing and I'll realize I'm still single. Either way, I feel like it'd be better to move forward, because being stuck in this stage of life is really fucking awkward. What, uni years are the best years of your life? Bullshit. Absolute, fucking, bullshit. I'm buried in work like I always was, I've made close to zero friends and I'm certainly not having very much fun. I know life is not all about fun or w/e but if you're not having fun what is the point of being alive? I'm not self-sacrificial enough to exist for the sole purpose of other people's happiness.

Once again I find myself yearning for the future. Time cannot past fast enough. 

Divergent

I went to the movies last night- I hadn't seen a movie in ages and I had the day off, so I thought it was a good way to relax anyway. I didn't really want to see Divergent but my friends had decided on it beforehand, and I didn't feel like being a complete asshole and objecting. Due to various reasons we were late for the movie- but after about 5min of sitting down I realized this was essentially a different version of The Hunger Games.

I didn't really like The Hunger Games novels- or the movies, for that matter, but I wanted to read Divergent after the movie. I don't know if they actors just do a better job or maybe the story is better- but I just liked it over THG. Mmmm, I don't think I can rightfully say the story was better, since I felt it was largely the same- but somehow the fictional scenario was slightly more believable than the one in THG? Also the guy who plays the male lead in Divergent was much more attractive than whoever played the male lead in THG.

Anyway I don't actually have any deep analysis to offer about the movie or anything- I mean it has valuable themes, but I just don't think that sort of stuff is worthy of appraisal. Not to say the story was shit, but I feel like teenagery novels should explore teenagery themes like sexuality, identity expression, conformity with the adult world and the sophisticated naivety harboured by the teenage mind. The film touches on some of those things, but for the most part it was just another one of those "the teenage hero who overthrows the big bad oppressive government" stories. It certainly is entertaining and somewhat uplifting to watch- but it's just not true. Like, real teenagers don't do that. Maybe one in a million do that- so they're the heroes we like to write novels about and make films about- but 99% of teenagers don't just decide "I'M GOING TO BE BRAVE" and decide to "get over" things.

So I can't talk about the topic of teen-fiction without thinking of John Green, so I'm just going to bring him up again. No no, I'm not gonna bash his work or anything, in fact I want to praise him as the author who almost got it right. Reading his works I felt as if he understood what the whole "teenage" thing was about, it's just that his expression of it in his work wasn't enough to encompass his own thoughts. That's just my opinion, anyhow- but to be John Green is one of those B+ English student who gets a B for hitting all the right points on an essay but doesn't get an A because he couldn't express his thoughts properly. 

Who knows, maybe someday I'll actually be really absorbed by teen-fiction: if someone manages to get it right. I actually felt that Twilight did a pretty fine job in that respect, except the whole vampire thing was totally shitty and it was just too ridiculous. I sort of want to write my own work and tell people: LOOK, THIS IS WHAT TEENAGERS ARE LIKE, but even though I haven't turned 20 yet I already feel like I'm too old. What we need is a prodigal author who writes their own life at 17- and then I'll shower them with praise.