Refraction

Okay people, since I’m lazy and because I’m always, always, always busy, I’m going to make a list of things, in descending order of priority, that I will be doing over Winter Break. If you want to get together for some of these things, either leave a comment or send an email telling me when you can make it and other such things. I’ll see if I can maybe get something organized.

For everyone’s information, I am not free until 11:01 am on Monday morning.

I think I’m also working on Thursday, which effectively kills my day.

So for this week, that leaves Monday afternoon, Tuesday, Wednesday, and possibly Friday. When does school start up again?

1) Go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
(And um, I don’t suppose I can beg/borrow/steal Prisoner of Azkaban from one of you? I still haven’t seen it. Oh, and I still don’t have a DVD player either. *cries* So the options are either ripped into computer format or VHS. And I don’t think anyone uses VHS anymore.)

2) Go see Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (if it’s still playing! And it doesn’t really look like it is… oh wait, Denman’s got it. I guess it’s starting to hit the second-run theatres?)

3) Go see RENT (come on, you know you want to! It’s a musical!)

4) Go see the Beauty and the Beast musical
(Sign up for a Student Rush card. Although the tickets may sell out anyway :notsure:)
(And hey, it’s a musical!)

5) Go to the aquarium (I have a free ticket I haven’t used which expires at the end of the year.)

Sorry for the dramatic post title, but I’ve just finished writing my matrix algebra exam, and with a lot of luck I should be able to pass the course and never think about matrices again. Ever. Unless I decide to continue in coordination chemistry, but then at least it will actually have to do with applications and not theory. ARRRRGGGH.

So yeah, I guess you could say it was a hard exam.

I’m at the Arts library right now, about to pick up a few good French books to a) study for my French exam on Monday and b) just read, in general, over the winter break. Ahhhh French :love:

The keyboards here are weird. I miss my “Home” and “End” keys.

And being the idiot that I am, I just looked up Honours Chem requirements (I don’t know why, I’m planning to drop it, anyway. I think it’s more that I’d rather withdraw under my own… ah, what’s the word? I mean that I’d rather withdraw than have them kick me out of Honours. For obvious reasons.)

1) At least 30 credits – check; I think I’m taking 36 (NEVER AGAIN NEVER NEVER NEVER)

2) A minimum overall average of 68%. – Hopefully check.

3) A minimum average of 68% in your chemistry courses. – Hopefully check.

4) No failures. – Really really really hopefully check.

So…

I realized it’s getting close to a) Winter Break (OMGYESFINALLYSTAR :star:!) and b) the end of the year. The combination of these two things always makes me want to use up all of my holds at the public library, because, well, why not? I mean… they’re free. And I have the time to read.

So now I will have waiting for me (hopefully right after exams are over):

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The exam apathy is sinking in. I’m worried. :notsure:

In taking one of my many, many breaks from studying coordination chem (I seem to be able to study properly only at school), I had what I call a “word moment.”

So we all know that Notredame cathedral is famous, yadda yadda yadda. What I didn’t realize until about ten minutes ago is that Notredame comes from “notre dame” – Our Lady.

Can’t believe I didn’t see this until now. How very lame of me. :tongue:

Speaking of little French things, it pays to know French… at least slightly. I had someone ask me once, “What is a faux?”

“Er,” I said, “it’s French for ‘fake’.”

“… It’s not some kind of animal?” The person in question had bid on an eBay auction for a faux fur jacket, and evidently she thought “faux” was a variant spelling of “fox” or something.

Then there was the Frenchie who explained “faux pas” as coming from “il faut pas,” which makes some sense but doesn’t fit with the spelling. One does wonder, though, if that was the original etmyology of the term.

It’s been forever since I’ve done one of these. I’ve also basically been studying since 7 am this morning, so I think I deserve a little break.

1. What did you want to be when you grew up? Haha, at what point are we talking here? I went through various stages in my career ambitions. The major ones, as I recall (in some rough order) – paleontologist – marine biologist – lawyer – mathematician – psychologist – writer – journalist – linguist – chemist. There were, of course, weird one-off things, like jockey 😀
2. Did you follow through? If not, what happened? I don’t know. I haven’t thought seriously about being a paleontologist for good long time now. Ditto for marine biologist. As for the others, it was mostly either that I didn’t think I’d be much good at it or that it wasn’t really going to make me happy. Or, in the case of linguist, that I wouldn’t be able to parlay it into anything useful.
3. Is your life turning out the way you thought it would when you were a kid? If not, is it better or worse? Ah, it’s a little worse, I guess. I can’t really say much about it except that this is not what I’d expected. I don’t know where all my ambition went. I used to be so… get-up-and-go. Now I’m so … it-can-wait.
4. Paradoxes aside, if you could time-travel back to when you were 10 years old, what would you tell your 10-year-old self? Oh dear. I can’t believe that’s almost a decade ago! Um, probably not to take myself so seriously. XD I was a very serious kid in some ways. Not so much in others.
5. Do you think the child you were, would like the adult you’ve become? No, I’d hate me. I think I talk down to kids and I’m just no fun and … yeah. That, and the kid in me would totally have jumped into the Faculty of Arts feet first and taken Bio as my science requirement, forget Chem 😛

And in other news….

I need to make a list of things to do after exams:

• Do Christmas shopping
• Go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Actually, I should watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban first
• Go see RENT
• Go see the Beauty and the Beast musical
• Watch Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbits

Edit, sometime later:
I realized that most of these things I need to do involve watching movies. I might as well add:

• Watch Infernal Affairs in Cantonese before Hollywood…. Hollywoodizes it
• Read Pride and Prejudice
• And hey, while I’m at it, watch Pride and Prejudice
• Read all those French books I borrowed in May
• Read that Essential Linguistics book I borrowed last week
• Go do something remotely Christmassy like Bright Nights
• Buy a nice scarf
• Clean my desk
• I know there’s some other movie out that I want to see, but I just can’t remember its name right now
• Watch In the Mood for Love and see just how indie HK films can get
• Learn a little something about economics
• Learn a lot more stuff about organic chemistry
• Re-organize mp3s on the computer (since it got formatted, I haven’t bothered sorting anything I’ve downloaded. All my mp3s get tossed in “My Music.”)
• Finish Dots and Diamond. WARNING: ADORABLE CUTENESS AHEAD :kawaii:

So how’re everyone’s exams coming along?

I had analytical chem today, which I totally overstudied for. I’m kind of sad I won’t be taking it next term, actually! The prof for that course rocks. And if I wasn’t such a failure in the lab I might actually think about taking further courses in analytical chem…

Speaking of labs, I have determined that it’s ORGANIC that I’m really screwed for. I hope I didn’t fail the lab, because if I did, well then all my studying comes to naught.

*shakes fist at TA*

*shakes fist at intimidating organic prof*

*shakes fist at the smart people in the class–any class*

*shakes fist at people only taking four courses*

*shakes fist at people who live on campus*

Oh, what am I saying?! I need to go study.

I have a friend on LJ who writes about half of his entries bullet-point style, so I think I’ll take a page out of his book and apply that here. It makes things easier for me, anyway.

• I wish I knew more about [iksi:d]. Actually listening to their music, I realize I’d like to hear more.
• I’m so glad I don’t have my organic lab tomorrow. :biggrin:
• I bought myself a little timer so that I can actually ration my studying properly. I find that it helps to break things up into chunks and work on them a bit at a time rather than try for a marathon study session of three hours. It keeps my brain happy, anyway. Until I decide to take a nap. It always turns into a four-hour nap. I’m terrible. I need to drink coffee or something. Oh wait, my mom’s Hello Kitty tea does a decent job keeping me awake.
• I love foobar2000 and how it makes it so easy to input info into mp3 tags. What I don’t like is iTunes, which can’t read these properly for some reason and displays ???? ????????? instead.
• Speaking of ????, she has the same birthday as Sarah! 😯
• I have one week until my first final. :nosey:
• I love French :biggrin:
• I wish that finals weren’t coming up so soon. Now that I’ve been galvanized into semi-decent work habits, I find I’m enjoying my classes a lot more. I also just enjoy attending the lectures of some of my profs. Actually, I enjoy all of them, except matrix algebra. I swear this is true. I love going to class; I hate writing tests.

They’ve cancelled the sixth season of Teen Titans! And I haven’t even seen the fifth one yet! ARRRRGH. 😡

Oh, and we never did get to evaluate our organic chem TA. :devil:

If you’ve ever wanted to see a Taiwanese music video, here’s your chance. I found out that the network at school is a LOT faster than my own, so what I did was I downloaded this and sent it to myself to be downloaded again at home (these files are usually removed quickly.) Anyway, there should still be about 25 left.

Here’s the link:
http://s12.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3V19K9YCDVE4U3UYQE9TXS7SES

* When you download the file, change the extension to .mpg
* The video is for F.I.R.’s new song, and no, I haven’t watched it yet. But F.I.R. rocks (my favourite Mandarin band) so give them a shot.

Go ask Sarah for a translation 😛