so yesterday passed by pretty quickly, in that pt gave us the last half hour of his pract period off, and since i wasn't planning on seeing bng for EE, i just waited around before going home with clarence (did that for the first time since dunno when, monday and today too, and elendrus was with us on monday), not before meeting yewjin/mervyn/et outside the dean wing... some of them are watching simpsons this friday, not sure if i'm going...

today, as all wednesday week Bs are, was HL day, and once again i spent the 40mins of TOK that's in between my 2 breaks doing nothing productive (just read the second review of HOUSE at dempsey road, this time in last week's 8 days that jim returned me during history)...

but the crux of my post today will be a little snide, and i will name names, but i'm not gonna regret it... so sue me for pointing things out that i happen to notice (and trust me, i notice most things that go unobserved)

so during HL 1 - english A1 strand 2, we proceeded with our IOPs as usual, and gabriel started off with a conventional topic that was presented quite brilliantly, and then songyeong presenting a rather unconventional comparative analysis which struck a chord with me considering i did GOST as well (seems there are 4 of us in class doing this text, much to my surprise when i read through tedkin's list yesterday)...
then it was jaime's presentation on two east-west stories, and unlike the previous two, this presentation lacked direction...
let me clarify that i'm in no way saying this arbitrarily, but i'm picking up from where bjc left off, where he kept up a steady stream of questions (that till the end remain unanswered, quite appallingly) that were meant to find out what exactly the presenter thought the writer of said stories was trying to convey to the reader, particularly in terms of whether said presenter's assertion that rushdie was opposing religion in an aethistic context was justified...
but that's hardly what i'm trying to drive at (though nonetheless it is something worth commenting on, no?)
what i'm really building up to is this -
(ok before i get there let me perhaps explain why i'm particularly flamboyant when i write about said presenter - on a clear day in july, the monday of term 3 week 3, pt told our class that the top HL English A1 student was her, and so duirng the break post-lesson, i was sitting with some .13 ppl in the SAC, and when she walked up, i was like "hey jaime, congrats on english"... and guess what the response was? no "thanks", no "nah it wasn't all that great"... it was strange grim expression, no utterance, and a subsequent about-turn before she walked away... for a moment there i was slightly shocked before i remember some of my levelmates telling me that another person had done something similar earlier in the year, so i didn't think much of it, besides b**ching to some other ppl about it, as is my moral duty to make known to the select group of ppl all things worth b**ching about that go on in our school, but i guess now's as good a time as any to post it up here)
i took frequent breaks from reading the texts that the presenters were touching on (as well as finishing off the last 2 acts of hedda gabler, but i have a knack for hearing what's going on while reading something else, coz how else would i have survived aom's econs lessons), and as i took a look around the class, most ppl were paying attention (its a mutual thing, i'd never want anyone to sleep in the midst of my presentation), but nonetheless there were a few, in particular gerald on my far left... he even slept during the Q&A, a feat few ppl could achieve...
but (and this is one hugeass but) when jaime's presentation came up, said sleeper was all awake, applauding her effort at the end of it like it had been the gospel reinterpreted or something...

so there lies the irony, perhaps even the hypocricy in it all - sleep during your classmates' presentations, wake up during said other-person's presentation...
i'm not the most enthusiastic standee when it comes to showing my appreciation for a presentation/performance, but at least i do what i do in equal measure, regardless the person in question...

maybe i'm just being b**chy coz i was annoyed after what happened a few weeks back, but there lies the beauty of having someone do something to give you the poetic/dramatic/blogger's licence to compound everything for ppl to read, innit...

in other news -
chem test on energetics this friday, everyone seems to say its pretty hard, so yeah...

impacto,
John.