Going to the hospital

I went to the hospital today with my mum to visit my grandpa, who had surgery to replace his fractured femur. This is the first time I visited because of exams and he seems to be recovering quite well. I think there a few scares about a possible infection before but the doctors said everything was looking okay.

Besides not being able to speak English, he's partially deaf and has a bit of dementia which makes him pretty temperemental when there's no family around. My parents and two uncles have pretty much set up a rotation so that there's almost always someone in his ward. It makes me wonder whether I would do the same thing in their situation.

Also interesting was that my grandpa is staying in the orthapaedic trauma ward, which was where I did my Year 10 work experience. I actually recognised one of the hot nurses.

In other news I have started playing the Crysis 2 single player campaign, which is really great.

English

People often say that maths (like integration and stuff) is useless because we will never use it in our daily lives, and because we'll never go to Mathland where the language is math. True. But math enthusiasts have presented a good comeback in saying that math teaches us reasoning skills and logic, which it does (okay some of the topics don't do that at all but things like math induction and circle geometry do, plus theres superannuation questions which we do use in our lives). So now i know there's a point in doing math. OK. Fine.

But what about English? It was probably while writing my 3U essay and thinking how I didn't think Lost in Translation was about navigating the global at all (I thought it was about two people who coincidentally meet and are in the same predicament and are able to understand one another but that's beside the point). While writing this essay, I thought how close it came to ruining my entire enjoyment of the film (I actually really liked it when I watched even before we had to) but luckily I watched it again and thought it was still really good. OK this is getting off topic. My point is that when are we ever, EVER going to use the skills in English in our daily lives? It's not like we're going to go to the cinema and say "Oh hey, look at that use of lighting symbolizing his salvation from his own crisis of identity in a globalized world". And would we ever write an essay after high school? Ever? Personally I think that English in primary school was a lot more useful. We wrote how to write a letter, we learnt vocabulary, we learnt actual grammar, stuff we actually use. But maybe there are reasons to English that we learn in high school. Point them out for me in the cbox.

In short, I think English in high school is not very useful. I mean, it's not like we're ever going to go to England is it?

Office Quote of the Day: Now that I own the building I'm looking for new sources of revenue. And a daycare center...? Muahahahahahahahaha... [pause] Well I guess it's not an evil idea it's just a regular idea but, there's no good laugh for a regular idea.

P.S. OK really i made this post just so I could include that Simpsons reference because I laughed really hard at it when I saw it on YouTube today.

That is all.

A novel refreshment for this strenuous exam period

http://apps.facebook.com/cokezeropromo/

In case anyone hasn't noticed, 7/11 is giving away Coke Zeros.

I claimed mine today and the cashier was like 'Anything else?' and I was like, 'Nope' and then it was kind of awkward. But I got a free drink.

Yay!

Crysis 2 is out! This post was mainly posted because having an emo-looking girl at the top of my blog made me uncomfortable.











[FILLER SPACE]

MONDAY

I'm not sure why, but I really like this video.

Despite the many cliches, I guess it hit a strong emotional note with me. It's pretty melodramatic but still manages to seem sincere. The song title I don't like though.

Anyway, English today went okay. I thought I wrote quite nicely, though I also thought that of my Belonging essay which turned out to be terrible. However, I had a lot of teacher feedback this time so I hope that shows through.

Studying for chemistry now, though I will try to squeeze in some maths past papers today too. Haven't done much of those this time around.

Some more cool stuff

Firstly, two more guitar recordings by Edwin.

Racer X - Technical Difficulties, guitar solo cover.



Again, there's no video because of technical difficulties. lol.

And some blues funk improvisation.



Finally, here's something I made to practise my editing skills for 4U english (ok, to be honest I was bludging). It's an edit-together of videos of my cousins from my phone camera, with some upbeat jazz music on top. I have appropriately titled it 'Krazy Kids'.



Amazingly this took about 2 hours to make, despite its simplicity. I tried to be as perfectionist as I could in cutting the shots nicely. Personally I think the video's pretty cute, though I'm a bit biased because they're my cousins (and it's my video).

Edwin's Guitar Improv

This is an awesome blues guitar jam that Edwin recorded and sent me.

It is also on Facebook.

It is also Edwin's birthday today. Happy Birthday Edwin!

Making exams fun!!!

Since exams are coming up here are a list of things I thought would make exams fun. Listed by subjects (asian subjects only):

1. Maths: This should be fun anyway but you can set yourself questions by thinking of a shape you want to draw and then finding an equation which will make that shape. E.g. the Dark Knight symbol will involve sideways parabolas, straight lines and upright parabolas. These functions can be piece-wise or if you're really pro you can find a single equation for your shape (still haven't found one for Batman yet).

2. English: This is going to sound irresponsible since these are our HSC exams but who cares? Life's short. Just watch lots and lots of movies and claim it's for English. And you might actually use one as a related! Win-win :)!

3. Physics: Get your mum or dad to get you to build one of these and claim its for physics. Just make sure you don't let them know that they really didn't need to build it. Or actually you could tell them and watch them get super mad. Or just build it yourself.

4. Chemistry: Diet Coke and Mentos and claim it's for chemistry. Try making a rocket and you can claim its also for physics! 2 in 1!

5. Economics: Swim around in a lot of money and claim your studying cash flows in a local area.

Office Quote of the Day: It's going to take a lot more than a bullet to the brain, lungs, heart, back and balls to kill Michael Scarn!

That is all.

Crysis 2

I was planning to write about how much I love the movie Lost In Translation and how analysing/writing essays about it has not turned me off but instead broadened my appreciation of it. But that will have to wait. Yesterday I installed and played the PC multiplayer demo of Crysis 2.

I have been excited about this game for a very, very long time. In fact, in May last year I made a post about it under the scandalous title of 'Technology porn'. Since then, I've probably watched the E3 trailer at least ten times as well as interviews with the Crytek developers. Here's a trailer for the multiplayer:



And a trailer for the single player:



From what I've played on the multiplayer demo, its certainly an amazing game. It's really fast-paced because everyone moves so fast. Fortunately on the demo, everyone's new to the game so you're all exploring out all the features of the game rather than trying to win. Not much else to say really. I'm getting impatient as I type because I really want to get back on.

If anyone feels like installing the multiplayer demo after reading this, you can get from one of the links here. My IGN, as always, is MrLumpy.