Interesting times ahead

I got my stats results back today and they weren't as bad as I expected. Although it looks like my hopes and dreams of dropping physics to possibly sit one uni paper have been dashed because the exams for 2nd semester clash with NCEA exams, so it looks like I'm completely stuck at high school!

 

Anyway while I'm at high school might as well make the most of it. We had to try sing some Chinese pop music in Chinese class today. Some of the music the teacher played to us wasn't too bad. We're going to this Buddhist temple as a class trip with Chinese students from all year levels going (I think about 75 in total?). The Chinese teacher wants us 6 7th formers to be leaders of three groups. Oh no not Calum though...Calum can be on the video camera and film everyone yay! The temple is holding a video competition (lol) which the Chinese teacher wants to enter. Hopefully I don't miss out on all the exciting stuff like Tai Chi and meditation..

 

We got the programme for the accordion championships this weekend. There's just two people in the championship class I'm in - me, and this guy. This guy I'm up against though has been practising his programme since yonks ago and competed in the world champs late last year so I really have no chance. As long as I get second and don't screw up too badly! (Some people who are the only competitor in their class have come third in previous years!)

 

...oh just by the way...I'm a guy with dark brown hair brown eyes, arms, legs, one nose and a few fingers all there, looking for a ball partner preferably female (if male no strings attached please!...nah I'm straight) help me fulfil my 6th New Years resolution...

Nonononono

My friends are all starting to pull out of going to the ball! Shen is going to Malaysia, Jacqueline is going to Malaysia, Hyun and Joon aren't going (don't ask me why...a thousand possible reasons...) I'm not going with a partner, I'm going to be all by myself! OK so there's going to be other people than those four people so maybe it isn't as bad as I made it out to be..

 

Well I did crud in physics, (I'm feeling like not bothering doing it again and dropping it as I just don't feel passionate about physics!) worse than last year. History was a relief, I did better than I expected considering I only studied the night before, and in Chinese I just stuffed up in writing as the teacher said that despite my writing being all correct I 'played it safe'. Stats results are coming tomorrow freaky freaky :S

 

Orchestra rehearsal was pretty cool. There was this guy who played a saw! That was amazing. He could even use the conductor's baton to play it. Most of the music we played was British and it sounded great being in a proper orchestra! 

Testing

I just installed Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 to have a look, and it’s not too bad. It keeps saving files in a new format .docx so it becomes a hassle sometimes to have to change the document format to Word 97-03 format whenever you want to save. Anyway this is the first time I’ve tried posting a blog entry using Microsoft Word so I’ll just have to see what it looks like!

Anyway the weekend after exams has felt good, although because exams are over and you don’t have to study for anything, you get this kinda feeling that there’s something you’re supposed to be doing! For me I suppose that something is getting this student website up and running. I spent all of Friday at school collecting photos and information from around the place. I was originally going to scan a few photos from the school library archives but I was told I couldn’t scan any photos with people in it without their permission because of privacy laws, which meant I was restricted to only buildings! We’re hoping to get the website up within the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I’ll have the content sorted or else I’ll have to type it all up!

Apart from that nothing has really happened much during the weekend apart from music lessons, music teaching, sleeping in the car while mum food shops at Chinese vege shops, and going to church in the morning. Church is a pretty lonely place. I’m in an English-speaking Sunday school class, and there are three other students and two teachers besides myself. One other student can’t really speak much English, only mainly Cantonese, and the others can all speak Mandarin and Cantonese, and so they sometimes just end up speaking in Chinese! There’s no one there my age either so that’s a bit sad no one to make friends with…

Back to school tomorrow OH NO string quartet AND string trio rehearsal, and then choir rehearsal after school. I’m also filling in for the Auckland Symphony Orchestra at their Night at the Proms concert so I have to go to their rehearsal tomorrow night. We’re going to play Crown Imperial March, which our school orchestra has played (but sounds weak because of all the missing parts). It’s going to be cool playing it with 80 others rather than just 12!

Could It get any Worse?

Haven't posted anything all week because of exams. Anyway thank goodness they're all over, they couldn't have gone worse!

I had my first statistics assessment in time series and a Chinese exam on Monday. The time series assessment didn't go too badly till afterwards someone who had looked at my computer screen (CHEATING!!) told me I had typed in the wrong value! Chinese exam was not too bad. The listening exam turned out to be exactly the same one the Chinese teacher had given us a week ago for practice! All six of us year 13 Chinese students had finished our exam within the first two hours but we weren't allowed out early and so we had to stay in for another hour! The teacher told us that there were three options: recheck our papers, draw, or catch up on some sleep.

I didn't have any exams on Tuesday but on Wednesday morning I had a physics assessment. Because I sat year 13 physics last year I had already done this assessment, and so I was expecting to do the same experiment as last year (and I happened to catch the physics teacher setting up the same equipment the day earlier!). When I came into the room the next morning while everyone else was doing the experiment I did last year, the physics teacher gave me a special seat with a different experiment to do, while I had studied for the other one the night before!

Today I had history in the morning and statistics bi-variate data in the afternoon. History wasn't too bad, but while everyone wrote heaps of pages for at least one of their history essays, I only wrote two and a little pages for each of my two essays, and for the resource interpretation (where they give you a whole page to write on for each source x6) I only wrote about a paragraph for each! Hopefully I pass!

The statistics paper was in a different format to what any of us have encountered before. I managed to answer most questions but...we'll see. The statistics teacher told us at the beginning of the week that there would be a reassessment for both statistics assessments but by today she had changed her mind! I'm really screwed...

By the way our debating team had our last debate last night against Howick. It was the same team I went up against last year...and lost...Amazingly the Howick team remembered me from last year! The moot was

'That low taxes are preferable to extensive government services"

with us negating. Unfortunately...we lost by three points. So that's it for us in the ISAY Debating Competition this year!

Unprepared

Exams tomorrow! I definitely don't think I'm ready. I've got a statistics time series assessment and Chinese exam tomorrow, a physics assessment on Wednesday, and on Thursday a statistics bi-variate data assessment and history exam. I feel the least confident in statistics! At least there's only a week of this to suffer through!

After that though I've got the accordion competitions to prepare for. I had no idea how close they were till yesterday during music lessons my teacher told me we have one more lesson next week and then the week after will be it! Our trio and duet are so not ready! We can't even play in time yet and my brothers still can't play two hands together! Let's hope we're the only entries in our classes!

Choir is going so well at school! I counted the number of people at the last rehearsal on Thursday lunchtime and it peaked at about 34 people which is amazing! Not only does the number of people make the choir so much different to last year's but the sort of sound we're producing, which is a much louder and confident sound. Hopefully people will take notice of our school choir and it'll no longer be the laughing stock of the school! Now if only we could boost orchestra numbers by that much...

Last night my neighbour came over and we had a little chat which was cool because I haven't talked to her in quite a while. The night before she had asked me to go jogging with her the following morning at 6am, and so I tried not to be late for once and set my alarm clock and the cellphone alarm to ring at 6. I happened to forget where I put them (which meant I couldn't just switch them off that fast) and managed to wake up on time! However she never showed up! So I just studied history instead...