Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: brain, donnie darko, dream, einstein, film, horror, lucid, no such thing, psychological, special relativity, the shining, thought, thriller, wikipedia
The movie Donnie Darko has been sitting on my hard drive for a while but for some reason, even though I have been meaning to, have never been in the mood to watch it. Well, tonight I finally did and it blew me away. It’s a psychological thriller that mixes in ideas of time travel and alternate dimensions, and while this may seem weird or cheesy or… actually, weird is the operative word. But weird in a good way. In comparison to the last psychological thriller I watched, The Shining, this one didn’t have moments that left me scratching my head and thinking ‘what the hell just happened and why?’ or an ending that made me ask ‘what was the point of all of that?’ Rather, the movie progressed well and made me want more and the ending was surprisingly cathartic, albeit with some questions still to be answered. Of course, I carried out the mandatory check of the movie’s Wikipedia page that has become so common following puzzling films, and to my surprise the answers were all there, by none other than the director himself, a rarity with films of this genre. The film did have its scary moments – those jolting, ‘jump off your seat’ events that are a hallmark of the horror and thriller genre – but these images were repeated and eventually became understood as integral to the story. Unlike the continued appearance of the twins in The Shining (for the few that have watched it) that, to me, were seemingly used only for shock value (until I read the Wiki), the periodic appearance of the frightening image of ‘Frank’ in this movie soon became exciting rather than shocking. Overall, I’d definitely recommend it. If you’re a fan of thrillers or psychological films and you haven’t watched it, it should be the next movie on your ‘to watch’ list. Even if you can only handle slight horror, this movie shouldn’t be too frightening. And anyway, the catharsis is enough to assuage all fears at the conclusion of the film.
A weird coincidence that happened while watching this film was when Milo pointed me to an image post on his blog about ‘lucid dreaming’ and how to achieve it. Donnie Darko was based around ideas of alternate dimensions and ‘lucid dreaming’ can have the effect of the dreamer experiencing an out-of-body experience or the illusion that they are in an alternate dimension. In a nutshell, a ‘lucid dream’ is one where the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming and is able to manipulate or control the dream. This prompted me to think about my own dreaming experiences and in fact most of the dreams I have (or can remember) are lucid to an extent (read about one of these two posts down). After reading the Wikipedia page on the topic, I think I will definitely try this technique one day soon and see where I can go with it. I already know that I am able to lucidly dream (as many people are), so it shouldn’t be too hard I hope. It should be fun, and I’ll be sure to recount my experiences here.
How fascinating are dreams and how awe-some (and I mean that in the literal definition of the word, not the colloquial sense) is the human brain? The fact that our brain is able to subconsciously conjure up such imagery is amazing. What the hell goes on in there that allows this to happen? Why hello there, all you Psychology students.
One thing that occurred to me when investigating lucid dreaming was the thought experiments carried out by Einstein to test his theory of special relativity (which we learnt in HSC Physics last year). Could lucid dreaming be used as a method to discard certain rules of materiality while maintaining physical laws (though part of the point and fun of lucid dreaming is the fact that physical laws need not exist) to test these theories or to come up with new ones? Food for thought…
And on that very philosophical note, I will end this blog here. To anyone who I haven’t seen in a while or don’t see/talk to regularly (which, sadly, is a lot of people), I hope you’re all doing well, and to everyone else, as always, take care.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: asylum, car park, dream, empire of the sun, guitar, insane, library, michael jackson, nap, night, nightmare, rem, shop, sleep, store, terror, thriller, walking on a dream
I had the weirdest dream yesterday. It’s probably only the second long dream I’ve remembered recently. A couple of months ago I had a really vivid and long four-part dream involving Transformers, but I might recount that another day.
Anyway, the only dreams I’ve ever remembered are just like SY said in her recent blog (which prompted me to write about this dream): “I find that when you fall back asleep after being awoken by an alarm, you remember your dreams more easily..”
I’m really paranoid about missing things (or school back in the day) because I’ve woken up late, and so I use both my phone and an alarm clock. I started this system because there was a period of time where I got so used to my alarm clock that I was able to subconsciously reach behind me to turn it off while still in a sort of half-sleep, hence missing it and waking up late. So, I began to use two alarms where I would set my alarm clock 10 minutes after my phone alarm just in case. But then I got into the habit of using the time in between alarms to sleep some more (and those extra 10 minutes actually made me feel more awake when I woke up for real), and this is when I would often have dreams that I could remember.
However, yesterday was a different situation. After waking up early to go to Sydney Markets for some pre-Chinese New Year shopping, I came home wasted and found myself dropping off while on the computer. So I decided to have a nap, and that is when my dream unfolded…
The italic parts are what happened in the dream and the non-italics are things that happened in real life.
I walk into a store (not in a mall or shopping centre, but on the street) and it seems to be a weird hybrid shop that sells everything from guitars to boardgames. I spot a nice classical guitar with the price tag over $1,000 and I remember that I need to find one to buy for my brother’s birthday (my mum had a guitar that as a present the other day). The price tag is obviously too high so I go to the store assistant (a guy about our age) to ask him if there are any cheaper ones. But then a 60-70 year old man walks in and he is joined by two of his friends and they start chatting VERY loudly right next to the assistant and I. I go ahead and ask my question anyway, but the guy mishears me and starts telling me the days and hours that he works at the store, as if I am enquiring for a job (I have been trying to find a job recently). Soon the men stop talking but the guy is still going on about the job details, so I stop him and tell him what I really meant to ask. But he gets pissed and starts mouthing off about how he wasted his time explaining all the other stuff to me and that is when the manager comes over and sees what is happening. So I figure this is a good time to leave the store and as I walk out I see the assistant getting told off by the manager.
For some reason I decide to go back into the store soon after, and I go to the back where there is a desk with a computer on it, so I go to sit there (without using the computer). I stay there for a while but then decide to go outside again to check where the rest of my family is. I see them going into another store not far away so I go back inside and start using the computer (for what, I don’t know). After a while I decide to leave again but as I look through the store’s windows from the outside I realise I have left my phone and wallet on the desk.
So I go back inside to pick them up but the store has somehow turned into a library. As I walk past the desks I see people that I recognise (the only people that I remember seeing are Grubsy and Swami) but they don’t seem to notice or recognise me. I go outside and see my family walking into another store and so I follow them in, and it turns out that it is some sort of mall with a high ceiling. My family walks into Sanity (no idea why it would be that store in particular) and I walk ahead, coming across a staircase; the kind that spirals down in a square to get to a car park. As I walk down I pass a bunch of random people before meeting Janet at the bottom. She is wearing a black leather jacket (I think this was from seeing James’ new jacket).
We go out the door at the bottom of the staircase and we emerge into a large open-air car park. But somehow it is now night time and all the cars are lit up from underneath, some with their headlights on. Seeing Janet’s jacket and the weird light, I am reminded of the video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (I think my actual self thought of this and it became manifested in the dream). And so I make a joke, singing a line from that song out loud: “‘Cause this is Thriller, Thriller night”.
But then I look to my right and I see a big, flat-topped hill that has a really big blocky building sitting atop it, not unlike prison buildings. The buildings are all lit up with a sickly yellow light. Suddenly I hear some weird noises coming from the buildings and then the shrieking scream of a woman.
Then I see a woman with long dark hair and a white hospital gown running out of one of the buildings, presumably the same woman that screamed, and she is followed by a horde of other men and women dressed similarly, all running out of the buildings down the hill towards the car park while making lots of noise. It is then that I come to the realisation that the buildings are those of a mental asylum.
At this point we are both freaked out, so Janet and I rush towards the door we came out of but a hand reaches from inside and closes it. With the people still running down the hill we approach the door but it is locked and we are unable to get in.
Then I woke up.
The weird thing is, I’m pretty sure I was only half-asleep during the dream. I had parts where I would kind of wake up but I’d drop off again soon after and the dream would continue. Also, I found that I could actually somewhat control my dream. It was like my actual self knew that it was a dream and at parts I think I actually watched my dream self from a different viewpoint. When my actual self thought about something it seemed to immediately happen in the dream; like in that part about “Thriller”.
Another weird thing that happened is that I remember at times dreaming that I was asleep. This may have just been me waking up in a semi-conscious state, but when I tried to move my mind was telling me that I was moving but I found myself still in the same position after.
Is it normal for dreams to be remembered only when they are had in those light stages of sleep? Does this happen to anyone else? And has anyone else ever had any sort of control over their dreams as I had?
I’d love to hear your dream experiences, so leave them in the comments. But until next time, take care.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: assembly, blog, melbourne, new zealand, school, usyd, valentine's day, wordpress
Finally, I’ve decided to return to the world of blogging. I actually decided to blog again a couple of weeks ago, but WordPress was doing this weird thing where my posting panel was all wacked up. Did anyone else have that problem?
These past few months (wow, it’s been months???) since schoolies have been pretty awesome. I know before I left I promised a blog about schoolies, but to be honest I’ve forgotten all the details now and those who want to hear about it probably have already. But check my Facebook for the photos and you’ll get the general idea about what we did.
Anyway, since then I’ve had two family trips; a week-long one to Melbourne and a seventeen day trip to New Zealand. Needless to say, the latter was amazing. In my next few blogs I’ll be doing a travel blog with photos and everything, so stay tuned.
Oh yeah, during my extended hiatus we also received our HSC results, ATAR and university offers. And hence, I am currently enrolled at USYD for Arts (Media & Communications) / Laws. I look forward to seeing many of you there next year!
Today I, as well as many others from our grade and some from the grade above us visited James Ruse to watch the Prefects’ Valentines Day Assembly. I’d have to say our prefects did a better job, but their singing was pretty damn good (most of them). It was nice to be back at school to say hi to my friends in the lower grades. It was also a good feeling to know that we’re all out of it. I’d hate to be in uniform and going back to class at the end of a long, hot Friday. I also realised that I now know hardly anyone in the school. For starters, there are all the new year 7s that we’ve never seen, but being away for so long has rendered me unable to remember many names, even of those in year 12 now. Back when we were in school I could put a name to most of the people in the school, but now I’m totally hopeless. xD
Just a short one for today to kind of get back into the groove of blogging. I apologise if some of this didn’t make sense or was grammatically incorrect, I need to get used to blogging again!
Anyway, I hope all of you have been well over the long break and I’ll be back soon with another blog. (:
PS. I wonder if anyone even checks their blogs/feeds anymore? The blogosphere (and the frams) seemed to have died with the end of school.
PPS. Although my WordPress blog has been inactive for a while, I’ve still been posting my photographs and other little things on my Tumblr blog, A Scent Of Evergreen. The link is to your left.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: apartment, blood, fireflies, food, formal, horror, le montage, movie, owl city, party, pizza, prom, schoolies, sunrise, terrigal
It’s time for what I guess has become a weekly recap of my life.
Formal and aftermath…
This week was mainly about the formal, so I guess I’ll start with Tuesday.
Woke up at around 11am and basically just messed around at home trying to quench my boredom by watching movies, reading blogs, researching photography and playing games (killing zombies gets boring real fast, and I mean Left 4 Dead, not Plants vs. Zombies). It was all very fruitless, and that’s exactly how I’ve felt these past few days. While I’ve been at home I’ve done almost nothing; I try to pass the time with all those things. It’s true what everyone is saying, post-HSC gets a bit stale after a while. But things like formal and schoolies (leaving this Friday!) are here to break up the monotony of staying at home many days.
So I left home at 5pm with my dad driving and after a whole lot of traffic I arrived at Le Montage just after 6pm; early. At that stage it was just a sausage fest, and girls didn’t arrive until closer to the starting time. Used that time to take some photos of everyone then after Janet arrived we went inside. The venue was… underwhelming. The tables looked pretty crowded in the small room and the tables themselves were pretty crowded. I found it difficult to find a spot to place my camera while eating, so it ended up just going on my lap.
The formal itself… Photos, eating, photos, watching people dance, more photos… There’s really not much else to say. Left early with peoples to walk to the bus stop for the bus to the city, which didn’t come for quite a while, but we managed to pass the time with, you guessed it, photography. Bryan was our main model who posed a little too well for our fashion-style shots. Then took the bus to World Square where we got off and headed into our apartment on the 73rd floor of Meriton World Tower.
The apartment was… awesome. Walked in and it was a huge place- 3 bedrooms, nice lounge room with big TV (which unfortunately didn’t have a DVD player or compatibility with John’s laptop), and my favourite part: floor-to-ceiling windows. Quote James: it was a “photographer’s wet dream”, and he was not wrong. Before the formal I was debating whether I should bring my camera since I thought it would be a hassle, but upon seeing the view from the windows my decision was justified immediately.
Once again, I took some time to take some night shots of the view.
I won’t recount the rest of the night, but as others have already said, it was an experience and an eye-opener.
Most of us waited for the sunrise and watched it, and I don’t need to say what I was doing at the time:
After that, people started to crash and I fell asleep for a good hour and a half.
When I awoke, some people went home and some of us went to Pancakes On The Rocks for breakfast. I don’t remember the name of my order but I had two pancakes, two sausages, a fried egg, a grilled tomato and mushrooms. It was good after a night of eating chips and snacks. After that we headed back to the apartment and everyone left until Janet and I were the only two left. We had the lucky job of scouring the apartment for anything that had been left behind (did Annie find her wallet?), and there was A LOT of food and drinks left. My estimation is something like 20 cans of drink and 10 chips packets. So we loaded it all into three big plastic bags and Janet’s bag and decided to lug them home on the train so that we could bring them to schoolies this Friday (but not before having lunch at Pepper Lunch).
Photos at my Flickr:
17-11-09: James Ruse Year 12 Formal 2009
17/18-11-09: Formal Afterparty – Coming Soon! (I promise!)
I arrived home at 3pm and did the same old thing that I do at home. Decided not to sleep even though I was really really tired (I was literally half asleep and falling in and out of sleep during the bus ride home) because I didn’t feel like it for some reason and didn’t want to disrupt my sleeping patterns. Went to be at 11pm that night and woke up at 1pm the next day; 14 hours of sleep to make up for the lack of the night before, and then chilled at home the rest of the day.
Friday
On Friday I stayed home again but went to the Douglass Hanly Moir place across the road from Carlingford Court to have some blood taken out of me for a blood test to find out my allergies. After that we (my mum, brother and I) went to Carlingford Court for some afternoon tea.
Saturday
Awoke at 9am and drove to Epping at 10am to pick up Janet after her Intuition interview and headed to Chatswood, where we chilled and had Pho for lunch. We then went back to Epping to meet Mindy and Gabriel at Coles. We shopped for quite a while, for ingredients for home-made pizza, then went to Mindy’s place where we made the pizzas and boy it was delicious.
After that we watched two movies: In Her Shoes and A Tale Of Two Sisters. Two very different movies; one girly comedy and one… Actually they both involved two sisters I just realised xD, but the second was a Korean horror film, and it was pretty scary.
Sunday
Today I drove up to Terrigal with the family for a test drive to our schoolies house. Had fish and chips at Terrigal and then I did some photography at the water before heading back home.
And that is what I’ve done all week!
Anyway, I guess since I can’t blog next Sunday I’ll be blogging again after I come back from schoolies, which will be Friday week.
Have fun everyone. (: Now back to watching One Tree Hill…
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: basketball, battle studies, candy, chinese, city, darling harbour, eel, food, japanese, john mayer, karaoke, mall, market city, michael jackson, pepper lunch, photography, ramen, restaurant, shops, sydney, this is it, wagaya
Sitting here chillin’ with John Mayer’s new album Battle Studies playing. Picked it up today and I love it. It’s classic John Mayer. The record is kind of a heartbreak album, and yet it doesn’t have a sad tone at all, rather it feels optimistic even though there are songs titled “Heartbreak Warfare” and “Perfectly Lonely”. My favourites so far are “Half of My Heart” (with Taylor Swift) and “Who Says”. Watch the music video for the latter here:
Anyways, onto the brunt of this blog; a not-so-quick recount of the past week of my life…
Monday
Monday was a day at Parramatta with the boys (plus SY and Mindy). Did the usual outing thing where we headed to Foot Locker then grabbed something to eat before heading to the cinemas to catch This Is It. I really, really enjoyed the movie; I didn’t really want it to end. The whole movie is a compilation of footage from the rehearsals for his This Is It tour, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. I found it amazing that MJ’s voice was still the same at fifty years old as it was when he was twenty. And this was just his rehearsal voice (which is apparently his 60% voice according to Milo), so that’s crazy. Admittedly, his dancing isn’t as energetic as it used to be, but that’s to be expected. Still, I could watch that guy dance for ages. The backup dancers were pretty awesome to watch as well.
Another thing I found out was that MJ was a perfectionist. At one point in the film he’s shown advising the keyboard guy on the right way to play a song. To us, the changes he makes are almost unnoticeable, and yet he was so picky about wanting every little nuance to be perfect, exactly how it sounded on the record.
This is a definite must-see film for anyone who is an avid fan of Michael Jackson. For those that aren’t that into him, I wouldn’t recommend it (Michael: “I almost fell asleep”).
Tuesday
I awoke at 11am and went through my morning routine before catching a bus to Epping just after noon. From there, I caught a train to Town Hall where I met Milo. I had come with my camera and my new 35mm lens, ready for an afternoon of photography adventures with Milo and his new Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3.
From Town Hall we headed to Pepper Lunch for lunch where we both had a regular beef with extra egg (and took some shots of our food while we were there).
We then headed to Market City to meet Winnie and Leeanne and we were soon joined by Sandy. We had some time to kill so we all headed to Darling Harbour and spent some time there. Played in the water bowl place thingy and on the rope climbing thingy (yeah, I’m awesome at describing) and grabbed some candy from Sweet Doctor at Harbourside.
We then went back to Market City where Swami had been waiting for half an hour, and a few things happened after that which I don’t really remember then others arrived and we were all waiting outside Market City for the rest to get there. As a group we then went to Wagaya Japanese Restaurant for dinner. I ordered a Kimuchi Ramen (they messed up my order and it only arrived after like 40 minutes, but I wasn’t too fussed) and Eel Skewers. Both were really nice. Naturally, Milo and I snapped away with our cameras at all the nice food.
After that a group of us went to karaoke which was fun before catching a train back to Epping and home.
Wednesday
Janet had her VA exam which finished at 11am, so we grabbed some lunch and chilled after that. Not much to elaborate here. xP
Thursday
Sign out day. I got to school at around 9:30am and began my trek around the school in the boiling heat to get signed off by every department. Ms. O’hare only had time to sign me off at recess, so before that I went down to the courts for a bit of basketball. That ended when it was time for recess (and it was way to hot to play anyway) and I finished signing out after a while (waiting for Mrs. Pooviah to chat to everyone took ages). After that Janet and I headed to Parramatta for some lunch and window-shopped.
Friday
Drove to The Brickpit in Thornleigh at 10am for a day of basketball with the boys. It was good fun getting back into basketball and playing a good game for the first time in ages. We had to get off the court at around 11:30 to make way for a big group of primary school kids, so we all went to the nearby park and played on the mad flying fox and spider web rope climbing thing (like the one at Bicentennial Park if anyone knows of it). We also had a bit of target practice where a person (mostly Kris) went on the flying fox and we took turns at trying to hit them with Deva’s gridiron ball. At 12:30 we went back to the courts and played until about 1:30. Everyone then loaded into Kris’ and my car to Pennant Hills for some lunch. I had a burger with the lot and chips and a drink, and it was good since I was pretty hungry by then (it was 2pm). At 3pm everyone caught trains or got a lift in our cars to wherever.
Saturday
Went to my brother’s basketball game at Newington College. Got there an hour early so watched the 1st team play, which was cool (Kings got thrashed 80-something to 40-something). Unfortunately my brother’s team also lost.
After that we went to “Taste of Shanghai” (I think that was the name) restaurant in Ashfield for lunch. One of the waitresses was really pissy. Some of our cutlery and bowls were dirty (had bits of what looked like porridge on them), so we asked her to bring us new ones. She made a pissed face and a pissed sigh and took away the bowl, plate and chopsticks and handed it off to a different waitress who brought them straight back to our table. We knew it was the same set because the bits of porridge were still there. Anyway, the meal was good. Got a few different kinds of dumplings and things like that, so it was nice.
Sunday
Today I headed to Macquarie Centre with Janet where we basically window-shopped again. Picked up John Mayer’s Battle Studies from Target (since it was cheapest there), and also realised that I had been ripped off by Borders for Matthew Reilly’s new book ($34 at Borders, $25 at Target). Ah well, at least I had decided not to purchase Dan Brown’s new one yet, which also had the same price difference.
Anyways, I hope my recount hasn’t bored you too much. And if you didn’t read it all, I understand. At least there are pictures and a video to look at. xD
I cannot wait till Tuesday, where I’ll get to catch up with all you guys again; the last time we’ll all be together as an entire grade, and all looking good too. I’ll see you all there. (:
But until then, as always, take care.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: basketball, celebration, festival, food, lunch, malaysian, mamak, pad thai, photography, photos, roti, satay, shoes, thai
Yesterday was a pretty eventful day for me. So much so that I didn’t have the time or energy to blog about it until today.
The day began with me waking up at 10am. I showered and got dressed before scoffing down a big croissant with scrambled eggs, while having to forgo the mango and pancakes that was on offer due to time constraints (don’t worry, I had them today instead). We (my family and I) then quickly jetted off in the car towards Sydney Grammar, where my brother had a basketball game at noon.
It was a nice day. The sun was out and I can’t remember the last time I was out of the house on a weekend, without having to study.
My brother’s team (Kings) ended up thumping Sydney Grammar. I had brought my camera bag along with me, but the lighting was even worse than it was at Hills on Wednesday, so after the first few minutes of trying to get a shot I just gave up. And the game was really messy at the beginning anyway; hardly any shots went up for me to capture. Speaking of which, check out my shots from Wednesday’s game on my Flickr: Basketball @ Hills.
After the game, we headed over to the main part of the city for lunch. We decided to try Mamak (hi Belle!), the famous Malaysian restaurant that always has a long line coming out of it but we lucked out. When we arrived there was only one other group waiting (as we exited after our lunch we had to push past a fairly long line to get out) and we didn’t have to wait very long to get a table.
The food was great. For our family of four, we ordered 2x Roti Canai, 2x Roti Telur (roti with egg), 1x Lamb Curry, a dozen Chicken Satays and 4x Ayam Goreng (fried chicken). For drinks I had a Milo Ais (Iced Milo, which is kind of one of the staple drinks in Malaysia), and the way it was all served and the quality of the food reminded me a lot of meals in Malaysia, without the hot weather. I’d definitely eat there again.
After lunch I went to look for some new shoes. The first store we went into was called Espionage, and I immediately found the pair I wanted in there. They had my size, so I quickly nabbed them. This is the first time I’ve gone shoe shopping in two years. The last pair of shoes I bought were my white AF1s, so I’m pretty happy with how long my shoes last me.
We got home at about 4pm and I had half an hour’s rest on the computer before I hopped back in the car (this time with me alone at the wheel) and went to pick up Janet before heading the Parramatta for the Thai Festival on the Parramatta River, or “Loy Krathong”. I came armed with my camera bag once again, hoping for some nice cultural shots and the like, but it was quite a big let down in that category. I expected a big stage with lots of performances and a spectacular traditional floating of the Krathongs- tiny boats made of banana leaves with candles and flowers and incense on them- that I would be able to take some good shots of, but it turned out that the stage was a tiny platform on the other side of the river and the Krathongs were few and too small to photograph anyway.
The food was decent, but that’s another story altogether.
We arrived pretty early; at around 5:15pm (the festival officially began at 5:30pm), and there was already people milling around the few stalls they had. First we got a snack: one pork and one chicken satay, and both tasted really nice. When the others arrived (Mindy, Gabriel, Doug, SY, Sharon), we went to get some more food, this time Thai Green Curry and Pad Thai. However, the stall we were buying from ran out of Pad Thai just as it was our turn to order and the lady serving told us that it’d be a ten minute wait. So we told her that we would wait, but she told us to just line up again in 10 minutes. So we go off to sit in a grassy area and eat with the others away from the crowds and then return to the store some time later, where we find that the queue is moderately long. While waiting, Aryan, Peter, Dan and Bosco arrive (who, by the way, took an age to find the place), and then they headed off to sit with the others in the grassy area.
So as we were waiting in the line we thought it wouldn’t be too long before we got our food; there was maybe 5 people ahead of us. Problem was, there was only one lady serving (the same one from before) and the system was horribly inefficient and terribly flawed. What was supposed to happen is that she takes our order on one side of the stall, and then you move out of the way to the other side to wait for your food. Problem was, for some reason people started lining up on the “waiting for food” side and got served before the people in the actual line. The result of this was that the walkway got clogged by a HUGE queue, and we were stuck waiting near the front of it for about 40 minutes, without it even moving. FINALLY, I got to the front of the queue (Janet had gone to sit down since she was in heels and we had been standing there for an age) and can you guess what happened? Yep, they ran out of Pad Thai again. There was no way I was going to leave the queue and come back again, so I just waited there for the ten minutes it took to cook a new batch. Actually, that makes me wonder about their system. For some reason, they only START to cook a new batch of noodles AFTER the previous batch has run out. I have no idea why they didn’t start the new batch BEFORE the other ran out. So anyway, while waiting for the noodles I had a little chat with the guy next to me (40-ish man) and we had a bitch about the way the serving system (or lack thereof).
We eventually got our Pad Thai with chicken satay after almost an hour of waiting in line. Janet thought the noodles were a bit dry, but I think I blocked out that fact because I really wanted our wait to be worth the effort. After that we chilled and listened to the performances which weren’t that interesting. They had a Turkish band and Japanese string instruments at the Thai Festival. What the?
Anyway, that was the end of my eventful day. Got home at around 10pm and watched a few episodes of Scrubs before bedtime.
Today was much more relaxed; spent it chilling at home with my brother.
Hopefully I’ll have something to blog about in the coming days (headed to watch Michael Jackson’s This Is It tomorrow), but until then, do take care. Apologies for the long rant in this blog, haha.
PS. I know I’m reusing blog titles, but what the heck. xD
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: exam, friends, hsc, jason reeves, photography, photos, school, the end
The end is such a scary place to start
Everything is torn apart
I don’t know where to go from here
In the end, there’s no reason to pretend
I know you won’t be back again
I gotta find a way from here…
I don’t know where I’ll fall down
but I’m sure to hit the ground..
‘Cause it’s not over till it’s over
Every ending’s a new beginning
One more chance to get it right
One more chance to get it wrong
It’s not over till it’s over
Sometimes nowhere leads to somewhere
And it all starts again, yeah it all starts again
In the end
And it’s such a scary place to be
Everything is in between
I don’t know where to go from here
In the end I see it’s all up to me
To figure out where I should be
I’m going to find a way from here
And I don’t know where i’ll fall down
But I’m sure to hit the ground…
But it’s such a scary place to be
Everything is in between
I don’t know where to go from here
-“The End” by Jason Reeves
So it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here, and boy does it feel good to be back. I’d forgotten how fun it was to blog. I hope all your personal HSC experiences weren’t so bad. For me, initially, I found myself thinking “Hey, this isn’t so bad,” and I felt alright going to the library every day to study and all that; it felt good and it was fun catching up with friends. I spent a lot of it chilling with my best friend from primary school, Jonny, so that was nice since we don’t really see each other much any more. But when the exams actually came round, I think the magnitude of it finally hit me and it became a big deal. Still, it wasn’t too bad, but towards the end I was so burnt out and I just wanted it all to end. I’m sure I’m not alone with that.
The HSC was a very weird time. The concept of a real “life” disappeared and our lives revolved around study. There wasn’t really time to think about anything else, although I spent a lot of the HSC thinking about life post-HSC. Actually, that leads me to the weirdest thing about the past few weeks: the HSC warps time.
For me, time was a huge factor. I found myself checking my watch a lot more than usual. “How long have I been studying for?” “When’s lunch?” “Crap, just wasted an hour checking feeds.” Every time I wanted time to go quicker (“I wish it was November 4 already…”), minutes passed like hours. Every time I wanted time to slow down (“Sh*t! Three 5-markers to go in 15 minutes?”), minutes passed like seconds. And yet, at the end of it all, it seems like it all flew by. The night before an exam I’d be thinking “I can’t wait till it’s all done with tomorrow afternoon…”, and by the end of it it didn’t feel that long after all.
And now I’m here, at the end of it all, and it literally feels like it was just yesterday that I was arriving at the library and sitting down at my single table in the back corner. Man, I’ll miss that spot.
When I was thinking about writing this post-HSC blog, the song “The End” by Jason Reeves popped into my head. We’re at the end of our schooling lives. For thirteen years we’ve been going to school. 9-ish to 3-ish every day, five days a week, 40-ish weeks a year for thirteen years. Thirteen years out of the eighteen I’ve been alive, and it’s the end of it all. Jason Reeves’ song sums it up pretty well. It’s kind of scary now that we’re about to go into the real world and have real adult lives. That’s definitely not the main feeling, but I’m sure it’s in the back of our minds. The more important line in the song is “Every ending’s a new beginning”. The end of our school lives is only the beginning of the rest of our lives (hooray for corny clichés!).
But seriously, I’m pretty damn excited about the future (not to menti0n the three months of holiday ahead).
Hmm, I feel like this blog is really disjointed. I’ve basically been throwing random thoughts onto the screen, whatever comes into my head, so I hope it all makes sense.
Number one on my post-HSC “things to do” list was photography. So on Wednesday, the first thing I did after the Physics exam was head up to Westfield Parramatta, where I picked up a new Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G (yep, James’ lens). Haven’t had the best weather to try it out yet, but I promise there will be photos soon. That night I went to my brother’s basketball game at Hills for the first time in a long time. I tried my hand at some sport photography and found out just how difficult it is to shoot fast-moving sports in far from ideal indoor lighting. I only got a few keepers, and I’ll throw those onto my Flickr when I’m done processing them.
Apart from that, so far I’ve been a vegetable at home, just resting and recovering from the HSC by watching lots of movies and Scrubs. Today I slept in for the first time in what feels like forever and awoke at 12:30pm, as opposed to the steady 8am-ish I’ve been doing since I began my library adventures and all through the actual HSC. It felt so good, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this awake.
I’ve made a few changes to my Flickr. I’ve tried to clean it out a little so that it looks more like a photographer’s Flickr and less of a photo-dump. So unfortunately, I’ve made all my photos of friends/family private. The only way to access them now is through a “Guest Pass”, ie. a special link that allows access into the set. So if you ever want to have a look at the photos, either come back to this post or ask me for the links. Also, I finally uploaded the photos from the last Monday (Final Assembly) and Tuesday (shirt signing) of school. Here are the links to all of them:
22-07-09: Janet’s Dinner
03-08-08: KO Netball
20-08-09: Inglourious Basterds
29-08-09: USYD Open Day
05-09-09: UNSW Open Day
05/06-09-09: Deva’s Place
18-09-09: At School
18-09-09: Re-edits
21-09-09: Junior Uniform Day
22-09-09: An Ordinary Tuesday
23-09-09: SCR
24-09-09: Mufti Day
25-09-09: Party Time!
28-09-09: Final Assembly
29-09-09: Signature Day
30-09-09: Birthday Dinner
Anyway, I think that is all for today. To all of you still with exams, I wish you the very best. To all of you without exams, go out and have lots of fun.
Take care everyone.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: charcoal, chemistry, chicken, exam, final, footy, friends, holiday, hsc, library, maths, nrl, parramatta, recount, rugby, school, study
So, what’s been happening in the life of Jeremy these past few days, since we last met? You probably aren’t interested, but I’ll tell you anyway (and my future self when I read this again in a few years time. Shout-out to future Jeremy! Yeah, I’m weird). I love parentheses.
DIGRESSING, the beginning of our school-free lives has been pretty interesting, albeit hard work. Let’s go day-by-day…
Thursday
The day after our last day of school. Surprisingly, even at this point it hadn’t hit that school was over and that we would not be seeing each other daily at school everyday. And I was right not to worry, as the rest of the blog will tell you. On this day, I did about 10 minutes worth of effective study. Very productive. This day was also the day I talked to Janet when she came back from her Ancient History study group and found out how much work she’d done. This was a major turning point for me. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been truly worried or panicky about exams, and it was a really good kick in the butt that told me to get going with HSC study. And so the next day eventuated…
Friday
I headed to Parramatta Library at the early hour of 9:30am; the library’s opening time. It was really quiet, so I found myself a nice single study table and got to work. This was a super-duper productive day. Got through a couple of Chemistry topics, breaking only for lunch (Udon at the upper food court of Westfield) for an hour in the middle. In the later hours of my time there (3 or 4pm), Victor, who had previously been at Strathfield Library, came and sat with me until about 4:30. The day ended when I left the library at around 5:30pm. This day made me realise how much I love libraries. I get no work done at home, but while at the library I am pretty much working the entire time I’m sitting down. So I decided to visit a library every day for the rest of the holidays.
Saturday
I drove (loving my P-freedom) Janet and myself to Castle Hill Library, since it was a bit of a change from Parramatta. It was a bit less productive than the day before, but I still got a decent amount of work done (Chemistry and 4U Maths). Had lunch at Towers.
Sunday
Sunday was a fun day; NRL Grand Final day and a bit of a break from study and a chance to catch up with friends. After waking up late, I picked up Milo from his place at around noon and we headed to a charcoal chicken shop that he had recommended to grab some lunch; a place called El Jannah Restaurant in Granville. It was a nice-looking place, and what was awesome was that they had little translucent PLASTIC business cards, so Milo and I took one each to keep. Awesome. Bought two whole charcoal chickens and a large chips and took it to Kris’ place. Upon arrival, the house was empty since Kris had tutoring, but soon after, Matt arrived with Danny riding shotgun and then Kris with his dad a little later. We went inside and got out all the food and it was good. The chicken was great. I haven’t had charcoal chicken many times before, so I might not have a very developed taste in this aspect, but it was good. Milo commented that it was a bit dry, however, since he’s had it before and it was juicier then. Props for recommending the place, Milo.
Anyway, after we ate more people arrived and we watched the lower grade grand finals while playing on Kris’ laptop and trying to get a bit of study done (of which I did hardly any). When even more people arrived, we played table tennis outside for a bit.
When it was time for the final, we all sat down to watch while Kris’ parents cooked a barbecue for us (I know you won’t read this, but say thanks to them again, Kris!). Good food, good game, good night. Afterwards we played a bit more table tennis in the dark, and I also did a little bit of night photography. We tried light trails again, courtesy of Milo.
At about 8:30 it was time to go home and I gave Milo a lift while he tried shooting the traffic outside.
Monday
Public holiday so the libraries were all closed. Regardless, I studied with Janet and got a few 3U Maths papers done.
Tuesday
Tuesday was Mrs. Pooviah’s Physics and Chemistry Study Classes (or whatever they’re called). Physics was pretty informative for me (since I haven’t studied it since Trials), while Chemistry was pretty useless (since I have studied it) and I zoned out for a lot of it. In the break between, which was meant to be at noon but the Physics class went overtime to 12:20, a huge group of us headed in four cars (Ben’s, Kris’, Peter’s, mine) to Carlingford Court for lunch (I had KFC), before we all rushed back for the 1pm Chemistry class. After the second class, David, Don, Buddha and I went to Carlingford Library for some study from 3pm to 5pm.
Wednesday
Today I went to Parramatta Library. I thought the library opened at 9am, so I went to the bus stop at 8:23 waiting for that bus which arrived at 8:51, with the intention of arriving early to grab some breakfast beforehand. After driving my car around for a few days, I now really hate public transport. Somehow, the 8:23 bus never arrived. Hooray. At 8:45, the next bus arrived but drove straight past. Hooray again. In the words of the dude waiting there with me from 8:23: “Are you f***ing kidding me?!” So, the next one was at 8:53 which arrived a little early, and I hopped on that one. Arrived in Parramatta at around 9:20 and grabbed a Deluxe Brekky Roll from Maccas. I then walked over to the library but it hadn’t opened yet, so I sat outside the library with the many others waiting there, soaking in the morning air and sun while eating my breakfast. Perfect timing; the library opened just as I took the last bite of my roll, so I headed inside and grabbed my favourite corner table and got to work on some 3U Maths. At around 10:30 I had almost finished my paper and more people started arriving. I knew that there was an Ancient History study group today, but boy was I in for a surprise when a whole lot of other people turned up- there was also a PE study group plus others.
At lunchtime (around 1pm), Janet, Sharon, Bryan and I went to Westfield, where they got Subway while I had a Kebab and chips. I don’t think I want to go back to that kebab place, though. The guy there didn’t look too happy serving me and he kind of made it half-arsed. Ah well, it still tasted good. Just as we we going back to the library, we passed all the others who were heading to lunch. Then Bryan and Deva went together into Hungry Jacks to pick up some onion rings for Winnie. Upon their arrival, they realised that the girl at Hungry Jacks had forgotten to put in the tomato sauce. So they went back. And then they came back, holding a napkin with a phone number written on it, purportedly from the aforementioned girl. Then ensued a big discussion about whether it was a real or fake number, and who wrote it. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: the number had only nine digits. It was missing one. But anyway, for the full story ask one of them.
I got some more study after the break, although it was quite a bit less productive. Headed home on a 5:41 bus back to Carlingford.
Now and to come…
So, in the days remaining until the HSC, I plan to carry out my plan of visiting the library each day when possible (except Sundays, since they don’t open). Tomorrow I will be at Parramatta again, so I hope to see more of you guys like I did today. If anyone wants to drop in and say hi, I will be a Parramatta most days sitting on my single desk in the corner of the study area from 9:30am to 5:30pm (e-stalkers alert!).
I think this will be my last blog until after the HSC. So, if I don’t see you before then, good luck with your studies! I’m sure our grade will perform wonderfully.
Take care everyone.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: apprenticea, disability, down syndrome, injustice, justice, mediocre films, mediocrefilms, money, partner, perry brothers, ponceman, retarded policeman, video, youtube
Hey everybody. I’ll post a blog later on about what I’ve been up to recently, but first there is one thing I want to talk about.
The Retarded Policeman
Okay, so you’ve just read the title and your brain is thinking “???”.
The issue of the “Retarded Policeman” first came to my attention when I saw a video on my YouTube subscriptions page entitled “The Retarded Policeman: What Really Happened” by a very famous YouTuber called ApprenticeA. This is the guy that did the “Star Wars A Capella” video that was featured and got over six million views. Anyway, so I like his videos and so I was curious as to what his new one was about, but when I opened it it was clear to me that this was not one of his usual musical videos; it was just him talking in front of the camera.
Now, you’re probably wondering what the hell the “Retarded Policeman” is.
The “Retarded Policeman” was (and still is) a hugely successful and popular YouTube series about a… you guessed it; a retarded policeman. Here is the first episode of the series:
Now, there are a variety of reactions to this video. Some say it’s derogatory towards people with mental disabilities while others laugh at its apparent hilarity. I was in the non-laughing group when I first saw this video (and I still don’t find it very funny at all), but upon reading into it I realised that there was more to it than meets the eye. The actor that plays the “Retarded Policeman” (which I will refer to as RP henceforth) is a man that actually has Down’s Syndrome in real life. Although the series may seem like they’re (ab)using his disability to make money, the point is that a man with a mental disability is being given a chance to make something out of his life (a chance not given to most disabled people out there) through an acting career, and he’s making money at the same time. Yes, he’s making money; and this is the main point.
For those of you who don’t know, YouTube Partners make money off their videos for every view. There are advertisements on their video pages that collect ad revenue for Google/YouTube, and so the maker of the video receives a small cut of the amount received. From what I’ve heard, this amount is somewhere in the range of $2-5 per one thousand views.
So, $2-5 per one thousand views, got it? The RP series, to date, has gotten over 45 million views. If you can figure out how much they would have received from that many views, you’ll know that it’s A LOT of money. But here’s the catch. The series was a joint project between two groups: one being The Perry Brothers (PB), which includes Josh Perry, the actor for the RP, and the other being Mediocre Films (MF).
This is where it starts to get dirty. The series was posted on MF’s channel, and hence he received all the money, but it was agreed that they would split the profits equally, and that MF would cut PB a cheque every time he got a payment. This was all well and good for a while, since PB were very happy with their payments in the amounts of thousands, which they thought was an equal share, until they realised they were being ripped off. Turns out, MF was paying 5% of the total profits to PB, even though both parties contributed equal effort and cost in the project. And on top of that, there is the fact that Josh Perry is the leading actor AND he has a disability. 45 million views at, say, $3 per thousand views, is $135,000. 5% of that is $6750. So, PB: $6750, MF: $128,250.
Final Summation
The injustice of this hit me like a brick when I first heard about it. How could a person be so cold-hearted and just morally incorrect and greedy, especially considering you’re gypping the main actor who has a mental disability. I just don’t know how someone could ever do something so wrong, and at such an extreme level. Now, maybe I’m just believing one side of the story, but the evidence is pretty conclusive. The Perry Brothers have given their side of the story, as well as the numbers I mentioned, on their blog and in a video, while Mediocre Films have failed to provide any sort of counter to the evidence shown by PB. He’s posted a very short blog and an even shorter video that says nothing to back himself up at all; because he has nothing to go on.
But yeah, I’m not sure if anyone was even interested in all of that, but it was something that struck me and I felt the need to talk about it. I really hate it when people are taken advantage of and aren’t treated fairly; particularly the disadvantaged. Hmm, I guess that’s why I’m going to be a lawyer some day.
Anyway, if you read all that, I’d love to hear your thoughts about it and what you guys think about this whole situation. Do you agree with me or do you think MF has a case somehow? And, what do you think about the series itself? It is derogatory towards those with a disability? Or do you find it funny?
I feel quite cheap actually asking for comments, but this is the first time I’ve done it, simply because I want to hear what other people think.
But yeah, I promise I’ll post a normal blog tomorrow (or later). And I will also get around to uploading my photos from Monday and Tuesday. If you haven’t seen them yet, my photos from Wednesday night’s dinner are on my Flickr here.
Until next time, take care.
PS. Extra points for anyone who can tell me where “Final Summation” is from. Hint: YouTube.
the passenger seat 