Mashed Potatoes

Short but sweet

A conversation just a while ago.

20:48 Y

r u coming to sch on mon or tue?

20:49 Jiann Meng

? no

20:49 Y

juz wanna inform u that u scored 97.5% in ur IKM

u r the highest

in Sri KDU n

  20:49 Jiann Meng

oh ok thanks

20:50 Y

97.5% is the top marks achieved in Malaysia

6 pictures worth 6000 words

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Studying

November the 3rd

This day is perfectly described by a Katy Perry song.

Let's learn Physics!

In Boston, lived Jack, as did Jill,
Who gained mgh on a hill.
In their liquid pursuit,
Jill exclaimed with a hoot,
" I think we've just climbed a landfill!"

While noting, "Oh, this is just grand,"
Jack tripped on some trash in the sand.
He changed his potential
To kinetic, torrential,
But not before grabbing Jill's hand.

The Farmville Project - Meh

Remember that post about me playing Farmville? I stopped playing about a week ago.

So here are some of the stats:

• 25 levels in 7 days
• About 2000-3000 clicks a day in order to farm much
• Severe boredom
• Fastest time it took to click on 400 squares was about 3 minutes of frantic clicking.

The Final Trials - Day 8

There was an EST exam which lasted for 75 minutes.

The End.

The Final Trials - Day 7

Modern Mathematics, officially known as Mathematics. It's not the most difficult subject in the world. In fact, when put next to add maths, it's really, really easy. So let's ignore the fact that I spent 3 hours plus doing simple mathematical problems on this day.

Instead, let's talk about the NCC review. This is basically our ICT test. It's not hard, but it's not easy either, because quite a few things tested were not taught by our teacher. Yes. Really. Thanks a lot.

Also, the paper is two and a half hours long, but most people finish in about 1 hour. Ain't so fun staring at the wall for an hour so there were quite a few things happening during the exam:

• Playing tic-tac-toe on the floor tiles using stationery
• Gossiping
• Gossiping with the teacher
• Drawing
• Taking toilet paper to draw on
• Sleeping
• Making noise

The Final Trials - Day 6

This is the killer. You might remember my blogpost about Physics papers and how average they were. I expected average so the weekend before the trials, I spent a total of one hour and maybe an extra ten minutes studying Physics. What did I do with the rest of the weekend? Did I just play on the computer and waste my time mucking around?

Of course not.

...

Ok, I did.

But in between the mucking about I found some time to study for Biology. Biology is to science what Sejarah is to humanities. Both are subjects filled with facts, facts and more facts (and more facts (yes, even more facts)) which you don't really notice as you are learning, but when you start doing revision, you suddenly realise exist. That is when you buckle down and try to rush as many facts as possible into your brain in one night's worth of studying.

Another thing pretty similar about these two subjects is the way you can read them as stories. Everyone who does well in thee subjects tell me that if you can remember what happens as a story, you will have no problem memorising.

 

Obviously their mind is completely different from mine because when I read textbooks as a storybook I fall asleep in about 17 seconds. The only way to study this is to, literally, talk to yourself and recite facts into thin air. It might sound crazy and you might look crazy but it works. I give this method the seal of approval.

Ok, let's get down to the papers. Paper 1 was a surprisingly easy paper. Questions were basic questions involving basic knowledge of each chapter, apart from two or three questions which are more challenging. Still, the paper was probably what I consider an 'easy' paper for Biology.

Probably the Biology teachers set Paper 1, saw how easy it was, and said, "This will not do! We're too lazy to remake Paper 1, so make Paper 2 harder!" And as it was decreed, so was the deed done. Paper 2 had some questions which were mightily tough, all of which was in the essay section. If you want to get >30 marks for the essays, you must remember in detail at least 2 of the following 4 topics:

• Purnett squares and sex-linked diseases
• The nervous system (all of it)
• Growth of plants and auxins
• Eutrophication and ozone

Anyways, after this, there is what is known as a '90-minute break' where students can relax and study for the upcoming pa-

"NO!" the school administrators say in words so emphasized that you can hear the capital letters. "YOU MUST NOT REST. THIS IS A SCHOOL, A PLACE OF LEARNING. YOU ARE ONLY RESTRICTED TO TWO 30 MINUTE REST PERIODS A WEEK."

"But there's nothing on now!" the students exclaim.

"THEN WE SHALL MAKE SOMETHING. DUE TO YOUR OBSTINANCE, WE WILL NOT FILL UP THIS TIME PERIOD WITH AN EST EXAM."

So 5 minutes after the paper, we sit for the EST paper. 20 minutes later, half the class is asleep. 35 minutes later, most people wake up and check the paper once. 5 minutes later, the paper is over and we can finally eat.

After lunch is the final paper of the Marathon Trial Examination Day. Paper 3 is generally not the hardest paper of the bunch. As long as you follow a certain format and know your basics, usually you can get a decent mark without trying too hard. I'm pretty sure the Bio teachers knew this while they were making the paper:

"You know, this paper shouldn't be too difficult. I mean, Paper 2 was quite difficult already and the students surely would be tired by now."
"You're right. Let's make it easy. Hmm, methylene blue and BOD? It's not too difficult and we've emphasised it so many times I'd be surprised if the students don't know it by now."
"Yeah. Let's use that. How about the other question?"
"HEY DID YOU NOTICE? THIS IS THE LAST BIOLOGY PAPER WE ARE MAKING FOR THE FORM FIVES THIS YEAR. LET'S MAKE THE QUESTION REALLY, REALLY HARD AND LONG!"
"Sounds good."
"I agree."

So they make a paper with a very obvious second question and a question 1 which is so difficult technically and intellectually that it took me one hour and five minutes to finish. By the end, we were verily confused over how many graphs needed to be drawn, whether hot or cold weather is good for beetles, and whether a flour container had 10 or 0 beetles during week 0.

For anyone who took the paper, here's two links for you: Confused Flour Beetle and Red Flour Beetle.

For everyone reading this, I don't actually know why you're reading about a description of one boy's day full of examinations. Maybe you just have nothing better to do or maybe you're a sadomasochist who loves torturing your eyes. Weird.

The Final Trials - Day 5

Physics, Physics and more Physics. Day 5 was the day of equations, formulas and logic.

Physics papers are probably the most average papers of all the exam papers I'm taking in SPM. By average, I mean that there is just nothing (except the word 'average') that can be said about the paper. All adjectives (except average) fail to describe it. Physics papers are not easy, not hard, not fun, not boring, not challenging, not a breeze, not quick, not draggy, not tiring, not exciting, not anything (except average). This makes it very, very hard to type a blogpost about the papers. I will try to write a short summary of each paper though:

• Paper 1: 50 objective questions ranging from rather easy questions to slightly hard questions. Overall the paper was quite average, nothing new or spectacular.
• Paper 2: 8 slightly easy subjective questions followed by 4 slightly difficult essay questions. Averages out to be a mediumish paper.
• Paper 3: So average I can't even remember the questions. If it was easy or hard I would have. :/