Thursday, 7 November 2013

You Know it is Exam Time When...

There are so many exams going on at the moment. There are VCE exams and (I am not sure of this so do not judge me if I am wrong) the International Baccalaureate (IB) exams. Aside from these there are also all the end-of-year exams that come up for nearly every high school. There are several markers that can help you recognise when an exam is coming (if you do not know dates or are not very organised). Here is a list of just some of the ways you can work out if an exam is coming. If you have any more, do not be afraid to share them either by comments or the contact form to the right.


Work will begin to slow down in preparation for study and revision. This can be likened to the "silence before the storm" adage that works in many situations.

You begin to revise old topics in class. If you are doing this and you do not know there is an exam coming up, I am pretty sure there is. Your teacher would not be wasting precious class time on revision if it was not going to benefit you somehow.

People seem to get more distracted and pay even less attention. At least when there is normal work and students are learning something they need to pay some bit of attention so that they learn what they are being taught. However, since revision is going over things we already have learnt students do not seem to be as focused and spend a lot of class time playing games.

My brother watches even more television. It may not seem possible but a good indication of when exams are coming up is when my brother decides to re-watch some old television show just for the hell of it. When the DVD comes out you know someone is procrastinating.

People begin to stress out the night before and your inbox blows up with messages from stressed classmates doing last-minute fact-checking. This happens even before an assignment is due. Facebook just seems to become even busier. It really is an interesting phenomenon.

Posts like these begin to appear. Posts focused on exams like this one appear more on my blog. I know that last exam week every single day was a full post on one part of exams. You also notice a lot less short posts as I do not stay up as late and find it harder to procrastinate. Who am I kidding, I procrastinate anyway.

Do not leave all your studying to the last minute. See you tomorrow!

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

The Worst Part of Summer

You may have realised, if you checked last night, that there was no post visible. This was, for some unknown reason, true. However, there was a post published last night it is just that, for some reason, it did not show up on my actual blog. According to my Blogger dashboard it was posted but according to my blog it was not. I am very sorry for this and will try to ensure it does not happen again although this may be difficult since I have no idea what caused this glitch in the first place. I am also glad that I only wrote a short introduction to this post so this paragraph does not seem so long. Anyway, onto the post. Well, Summer is coming around again this year just as it does every other year. With Summer comes many things including heat, humidity and Sun. However, with the season of Summer also comes another annoying phenomenon that can make you look like a wannabe interpretive dancer. I am, of course, talking about the worst part of Summer: the flies.

 
Flies are just so incredibly annoying and they never seem to get the damn hint that you do not want them. Every year they come back and every year will kill a few hundred before a few thousand are born to take their place. They are just so annoying and can ruin any good day. As you may have realised, I HATE flies. Yes, I intentionally capitalised hate because I wanted to empthasise how much they annoy me. Even as I write this post a pesky fly has somehow being let in by my absent-minded brother and is flying around me right now. Some days I wake up and just want to go outside armed with a belt full of fly spray and then a backpack for back up. Flies are just so damn irritating. Why can they not be like birds or some of the other insects who live their lives separately to ours? Can we not just have a few years of peace? My message to you flies is to leave us alone, or face the consequences. I hear Mortein is on special next week.

Damn you flies! See you tomorrow!

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Weird News Tuesday

So the new weekly segment is here! You know when you read the paper, watch the nightly news or browse the online sites and you see a bit of news that makes you do a double-take? These are the stories that surprise you not because of their content, but because it was considered news worthy. Most of the time, this can be taken as a good sign in that there obviously is nothing too serious going on if there is still room for these stories. This new series brings in some of the weird news stories I have seen either throughout the week or have found on my search every Tuesday night. Let us get started straight away! We begin with a photo found on news.com.au. It is of the affluent horse-trainer, Gai Waterhouse, and her reaction to her horse, Fiorente winning the Melbourne Cup this year. It is one great shot.


I did not even scroll far to see the next story I am going to talk about. The headline reads, and I quote, "Giant firework penis lights up the night sky in Glasgow; residents love it". You have got to be kidding me, the story even makes a not-so-subtle reference to a "happy ending". You read it correctly, one of the first stories on a news site was that a giant penis lit up the sky and led to a few happy endings. The next story comes straight out of France and is titled "Stole a Llama, now there's drama". It is basically the story of a drunk group of men who stole a llama from a circus and then, just for the hell of it, took it on a tram. Now can you see some of the weird stuff that people consider news? Oh, and the Llama's name was Serge. I have no idea why that is important but make of it what you will. Scroll down to the lifestyle section and you will soon think you are on a porn website. The title of this story is "Teen sells her virginity for $27,950" and I do not need to go into any more detail about what the story is about do I? Can I just say that they are oddly specific. They go write down to the $50 when generally they just go for the nearest large number and say it is either more or less. Just saying, I bet a guy wrote this article. The author's name is not listed so I guess we will never know. Also, if you scroll further, you will soon find out that cat cafes are so last year and that the new trend is owls. I know I am generally behind the trends but seriously, did I actually miss the cat cafe trend? Damn it, now I have to move onto the Owls or else be left behind. Also, apparently there is a robot rock paper scissors champion somewhere out there. I am really not regretting scrolling through the news.com.au homepage. Seriously, this is all on their homepage. I thought this segment was going to be hard to write but apparently not.

The weirder side of the news brought to you every Tuesday. See you tomorrow!

Monday, 4 November 2013

Do Not Test My Patience

Do you want to know the worst time to test my patience? Even if you did not, you are going to. The answer is right now. I have had to put up with so much crap tonight that I am just over it. Plus I am tired. You definitely do not want to test my patience when I am tired. You would not like me when I am tired. So the moral of this late-night post: don't mess with me right now.

Have a great day, see you tomorrow!

Sunday, 3 November 2013

What Could Have Been and an Announcement

So today I did a lot of things so, as a result, today's blog post was neglected. Now it is going to be another short one created using the horrible android application for Blogger. On the plus side, I can listen to music while I write this. Anyway, so it is VCE exam time as well as a number of other exams. In light of this I was going to write a post on how to tell when it is exam time. However, due to the way in which this post is being created I am unable to do this. Check out for this post over the next few days. Also look out on Tuesday for something new that will be recurring every Tuesday thereafter. Yes, it is another themed day like "Random Thought Friday" but different. You will just have to wait until Tuesday!

I am very sorry when I have to write short posts like these. See you tomorrow!

Saturday, 2 November 2013

Random Thought Friday: Saturday Edition

So another week has passed and another Random Thought Friday has been missed due to reasons out of my control. Namely, losing track of time and basic forgetfulness. To make up for the lack of these posts I have decided to write one today, on a Saturday, to make up for all those we have missed. This is only the second Random Thought Friday post so enjoy and I hope to have another one up next Friday. However, I do not want to make any promises as sometimes circumstances escape my control. Hope you have a random weekend!


Thursday night was a pretty important night for my Leaders of the Future Program. As those of you who read last night's incredibly short post would know, Thursday night was the official launch of the program. It was a really great time as it did not go for too long (so we were not stuck listening to repetitive boring speeches) and the speeches they did have were all very interesting. We had our local member who took over Julia Gillard's area (the term escapes me) as well as a person high up in the Wyndham Police Force (Super-Intendant I think). We also heard from a past participant from a similar program over the other side of Melbourne and how the program changed him. It was a great night and I really enjoyed it. Talking about this program we finally started our group training sessions on Sunday with a hike up in the You Yangs. It was only ten kilometres but towards the end it got very steep. Still, I wish Kokoda was going to be like that. The You Yangs are going to be a stroll in the park compared to Kokoda. Still though, it is great to have a place like the You Yangs where we can go hiking and it is not too far away for us. Wednesday night we went Fartlek running which is where you run for a while, then walk, then run, then walk and so on. Ours went a little bit more along the lines of Run, Jog, Run, Jog, Run, Walk, Run, Jog, Walk, Run and so on so it was a little more challenging but it was a great time to continue cementing strong friendships with the others in this program. I said today would be a random thought post and, in a way it is, except for the fact that the central focus is on the Kokoda program. Still though, it was a lot of random thoughts on the topic that I never would have been able to stretch over a whole post.

I hope you guys see another Random Thought Friday this Friday. See you tomorrow!

Friday, 1 November 2013

A Tiring Week

You know when you have those really tiring weeks where everything seems to be happening at once? Well, welcome to my week. It started off pretty relaxed on Sunday with a hike through the You Yangs. Monday was CFA until late in the night and Tuesday night was the orientation evening for new students coming into the school next year. Wednesday was pretty relaxed except for another group training session for Kokoda. Thursday was really busy with Tutor, the official launch of the leaders of the future program and Halloween. Tonight was quiet but tomorrow will be busy with Piano in the morning followed by helping out at the barbecue.

I'm tired though so good night and sorry if this comes out just after midnight. See you tomorrow!