Annoyed Citizens Anonymous, Or, On The Judicious Use Of Running Away

And you must laugh or I will snicker at you.
*snicker* *snicker*
[Han: *snack*]
Well, this is shaping up to be a very long post and I've just read an article on how to use the jump cut, so let's experiment.
Allons-y.

Well, what can I say? Firstly, I just did a French test earlier today. We'll attribute all outbreaks of French to that. Secondly, I like squeezing in references (that was planned), and I, well, still think "Geronimo!" sounds stupid, or at the very least, not brilliantly appropriate
Well, it's high time I started posting again. It's been a long time, friends, enemies & neutral parties. Let's work backwards.
So, I just finished the survey. Damn well annoying it is too. I don't like surveys. At the very bottom (no, above the comments, what few there are) are some of the more...vitriolic feedback. Did I ever tell you that I was bad at doing evaluations?
So then, in last double-period Maths, first Mr Woodhouse walked in and started talking about the rankings and 3-unit maths, blah-di-blah-blah. Basically, as Mrs Briggs boiled it down to, if you're on the bottom end of the class Year 10 equivalent of the bottom of 10E, if you don't shape up, your application for Extension 1 Maths may be knocked back. So then that sparked a discussion about scaling and stuff and when the subject selection form was due. So, the obvious happened when Ms Connors walked in to say that she wanted us students to attend the Parent Information Night next week - she was fired with questions. Oh, BTW, the subject selection form is due August 6th.
Not much happened in English. We kept on reading "The Importance of Being Earnest" and watching bits.
In Ag, the first of the presentations started. Hmm...might have trouble on the confidence front if, well, yeah.
In French, we had the Unité 5 test. I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR THIS.
In Science...more inactivites and tangential talking with Mr Kowalski, part 221?
In IPT...we've apparently started our Transaction Processing "option".

Yesterday...did anything happen yesterday? Oh, right, Parent/Teacher Interviews. For the sake of my life I ran away. That's why I wasn't there. Oh, and I managed to lose 4 seconds off my 1.6 time (now 12:24) and 1 kilo. Not much, but an improvement, all the same. (and I'd just eaten a pie.)

On Wednesday, we lost 2-1 to Baulkham Hills. Again. Hey, at least we scored a goal. Then we watched Oatlands get owned by play...erm, this random school from out Blacktown way. Kings-something.
In English, Ms St Louis decided that we were very rude to the sub on Tuesday and needed a good ol' talking-to. Turns out McFadyen gave us something we'd already done.
In Ag...we lopped cauliflowers and pulled out the rest. Then we drew names out of a hat box to decide the order of the talks.
In Maths...I staggered in 27 minutes late, well-winded, because I'd been late for the car (not my bloody problem I had a health problem) and ended up with a little booklet.


On Tuesday, it was the Brain Bee.The ultimate test of neuroscience. So, first I missed the bus by 15 minutes...yeah. Then I just caught it at Granville. Nearly got run over by a car. (I invoke Quantum Immortality here.) Then, I was at the back with Kerrie, Ben, Matthew and Victor, with occasional appearances from Jim. (Claudia arrived at UWS by herself, presumably.) Then I guess I did OK in the Individual quarter-finals. (Oh, look! Free t-shirts!) Then came the team semi-finals, to which Matthew played a little guessing-game with Johnny and I about the answers. Then we had recess, of fruit, fruit tarts (well, passionfruit), custard tarts and cake. Which was not a lie. (Although the promised lunch barbeque was. I DON'T LIKE tomato/egg/cucumber sandwiches!) And then we had lectures and the team finals. Which I promptly slept through. We came third. Behind Baulkham Hills & PLC. And then we had lunch. The sandwiches were horrible. Knew I shouldn't have eaten those apple pies at recess. The quiche and cake, to a lesser degree, was alright. Then we had the tour of the (computer) lab, where we got to shock each other. Only stood up to 3 mA, moi. I decided to go sit with the Newcastle Grammar people to mingle a bit, because everyone was sitting with their own school, isolationists, all of them; which meant I got paired (grouped?) up with two girls named Sarah and Sam. They were nice enough, I suppose. Don't think I could go up to 20 mA, though. Then it was time for the individual finals, where Beryl, Johnny, and surprisingly, Jim got called up as part of the final 12. Then they were all eliminated (Johnny by way of several silly mistakes, although I didn't know some of them myself), till Jim, a girl from PLC (named Mercy) and a chap from BHHS (can't spell his name, but he was the clear winner) were the only ones left. Roshan later said that Jim lost because of two silly mistakes. Then again, he managed to come third, behind BHHS chap and PLC girl (yes, I noticed), so he did alright. Silly certificates, though. (Cheap printer paper.) He'd won an iPod, from which he became inseparable (and with which he ran the 1.6).


Oh, and I just posted a lot of old drafts that I found cluttering up the top.
And Jim has a webcomic. Huh. Don't have a tag for him. WTF? There is one now, at least.

Anyway, here's a little rant from the survey (delivered on pg. 15), published for your edification:

Have you seen the way they use laptops? Word processing and workbooks! We could just as easily write it out by hand, though it's likely that most people would complain a bit. I ask you, is it any wonder that students are putting them to slightly better use by watching videos? There are plenty more programs on the laptops. Teachers: USE THEM. The most we got out of it was probably when they were new and teachers wanted to experiment with the programs. Now that it's all old news, nobody wants to try out the different programs and there aren't any incentives to do so! And also, the intranet is underdeveloped; many sections are basically "This is a new page, yet to be filled out by people who can be bothered". In short, the Education Revolution that Ms Gillard promised us back in '07 still hasn't arrived. We're basically still only using the laptops in place of desktop computers - to trawl Wikipedia and regurgitate said info onto assignments. The OneNote thing is an afterthought, used only in certain theory-based classes.

And on the next page:

Q. 3 - Were these questions tailored for the options picked on the first page? Because I still don't see my Year 11 subject selection form; I don't remember a Year 10 camp, Gloucester or Peer Support, etc.
Q. 6 - Yeah, pity we CAN'T ACCESS THEM ANYMORE. We students used to be able to view the Sentral calendar. It would help a lot if we were able to access this. Not everyone has full access to the grapevine of information that is the teacher confiding details about when the test has been fully written.

 Oh, dear...well, the events calendar is only for students, so we can't really look at when we can expect a reasonable cut-off date...anyway.

And for added Curriculum Review snark responses, see the link. Erm...here: http://sites.google.com/a/jamesruse.nsw.edu.au/central/misc/curriculum-review/files/stafff_mtg_160310.pdf?attredirects=0

Huh. The "blacking out names" policy is now dead, buried and cremated. In that order. Yes, Jim, that is the reason why we have a very burnt patch of ground out thataways.
Arrivederci, and à bientôt! *wave*

Mon dieu, j'ai besoin d'un boisson

If you, like Xiong, ghost my blog, absorbed the whole of TVTropes AND read some French (or have access to Google Translate), you should get the reference.
Maybe I should down the entire contents of the champagne bottle in the fridge downstairs in the kitchen. (On the first floor here, avec my more reliable computer.) Not much has been drunk out of it, may I add.
Well, merde.
Haven't done anything remotely productive in the holidays. And now I'm going to get owned by the Geo test.
On an unrelated note, have I stated often enough that I love my massage cushion?
On another unrelated note, I like my Firefox Persona/skin. It's like, nice and floaty. And did I mention that it looks like an elaborate version of a fleur-de-lis? Very relevant, that. To my novel, that is.
...wait, what. There's a fleur-de-lis skin for Firefox?
Meh. It's just not classic like mine is. (I didn't create either of the skins, BTW, I'm just using it.)
It is very remiss of me to [synonym of "forget" starting with "o"] to install Australian and French dictionaries for Firefox on either computer.
Merde. Neither dictionary is compatible with this version of Firefox (3.6.3).

I'll split off the novel discussion into a separate post, yeah?
This is a medium-length collection in semi-list format of long updates on my life, eh?
Today was the first day of school. I'll put it in a tag, too.
What a nice bookend to the holidays.
Anyway, I have a new favourite song album, I can't pick a song, most of them are good. It's called Pays Sauvage by Emily Loizeau. I borrowed it from Parra library last week. Also, most of the songs are in French.
Anyway, about school.
Meh. Wasn't as bad as expected. LOL, W_____ didn't show up for the French test AS USUAL. Instead we got a sub and our first "Ça Va?" magazine. It's not as hard as expected, but I've only had the barest of flips through. Damn, wish I could have free entrance to Parisian museums, like the Louvre and Versailles. (Hey, that's what it said. Not to mention that free entrance to Versailles would be useful, also for the novel.)
Ag, c'est comme d'un seau [bucket] d'eau froid. SO MUCH. IT'S SO MUCH STUFF I SHOULD'VE DONE. Merde.
Science was two periods of "WTF, Mr K________" as per usual. I wonder if he's even going to bother to explain what induction is. Like Han (last time), when he was talking about Tesla, I was like, "Tesla coil...". Yeah, not much there.
English was moderately cool; we had a video. Which I promptly slept through. Hey, what d'you expect? I'd only had a few hours of sleep.
IPT...ah, shit. No comment.
And that was my (out-of-order) day.
Did I mention that Sunday Doctor Who was cool?
Especially the food scene.
Music's random, though.
Font of opening title's kinda random too.
Right, I should get back to Geo, then IPT.
EDIT: J'ai oublié! Bon anniversaire, Becca!