Of Afternoons, Painful Teeth and Decisions.

Somehow, to be comparing THREE History essays to plain old blogging, I prefer the latter on this extremely warm and lazy afternoon. The rainy season looks like it's packing its bag to make way for the sun. Afternoon temperatures could get quite stressfull at my place, adding to the already very humid room of mine. It's almost impossible to get by my afternoons (dry) without the fan directly pointed towards me. My player's currently playing N'Sync - Bye Bye Bye. Definitely not helping me to cool down my afternoon, I know.

School's been pretty much a drag nowadays due to my lack of sleep. Could barely throw in any attention in class without closing my eyes. The heat hasn't been helping me much with trying to stay awake in class while my mind silently sneaks away into some other land before I find myself drooling all over the Maths textbook. My bioligical clock's pretty screwed up also. It's hard for me to sleep at night and I find myself daydreaming (most of the time) to the depths of an afternoon nap. Even reading Harry Potter (I'm still not done with it!) in broad daylight just means an afternoon filled with yawns and teary eyes. What else when it comes to History!

Other than that, pretty much nothing's happening.

Grace have been busy (still) packing. Which reminds me... We're all going down to KL this weekend. Family roadtrip to send Grace for university. Not sure where we're going to put up for the night, yet but I've got a feeling mom has contacted her friend to accomodate us for one night. Exciting? Not when you're sending your sister off to some unknown place for the next three years! Of course, things would be so much easier if I was the dominating type and I just can't wait for her to leave the house so that I can take over! Not me.

Another thing is, I've been chosen to represent the class for the Annual Inter-Class Public Speaking Competition. I've mentioned this before. I never did create an essay to prepare for this competition. I thought that the competition was going to be dropped off considering there wasn't any news or warning from Mr. Goh. He proved me wrong when he popped in into the class on Monday so suddenly that I almost fell off my chair that I was two-legging on, bringing the dreaded news. This time, it's different. I'm not even sure what you call this. We're supposed to only go up on stage and read a passage provided by the judges and be asked 2 questions. Save me the trouble of preparing my own speech and memorising it to only find myself staggering and stuttering on stage this Thursday!

The idea of reading in front of the whole 4th Form students isn't really comforting despite the fact that I've already gained enouh experience reading Sunday readings as a lector in church. The crowd is different. At church, I only read to the people interested in hearing the Word Of God. Here, I'm reading to a whole bunch of students who don't even give a shit about the passage but to the person reading it. Oh trust me, when I say they're going to judge me and make me the subject of ridicule for the rest of the term. I've always been a good judge of character. So far, it has never failed me - well, maybe once or twice down the road of judgement. =P. Still... I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. Why did I even volunteer in the first place?!

Being ridiculed and rejected have always been the two things that I never quite did handle well besides getting judge wrongly.

The only ticket out of this is to tell Mr. Goh that my teeth really hurts and as much as I want to do it, he'll have to get a substitute. It does. After my monthly dental check-up (to tighten the braces and check for improvements) last Sunday, the doctor made me wear a heinous pair of rubber band over my braces to straighten the position of my bottom jaw. I'm required to change a new pair everyday, which I'm facing difficulty of doing so every morning before I buckle my belt in front of the mirror. The rubber bands are the size of an ant and I'm supposed to pull it all the way round from my bottom wisdom tooth to the K-9 tooth and down to the bottom K-9. Yeah, you can almost hear the elasticity of the rubber stretching to hold my big mouth together.

My teeth as it is... restricted from talking.

It really restricts movements of my mouth. The farthest my mouth can open is to the extend that I can fit a only piece of paper in. Put it this way, my baby finger can't even fit in through the tiny opening between my top and bottom sets of teeth when I desperately try to open it, with the fear of the rubber band snapping and hitting the insides of my mouth! Piak. It definitely affects my speech and my pronounciation. I can neither yell or scream and I'm mostly speaking through gritted teeth. Think of over-exaggarated s and blurred speech - like through the buzzer. The only time I'm allowed to take this off is during meal time and when I'm brushing my teeth. The time taken to complete both activities have suddenly increased over the past few days. Even when the rubber band is lifted, my speech is still affected like 10% and I can't sing anymore! The mouth automatically pulls itself together everytime I try to open my mouth to imitate Mariah Carey!

So do you think I should just shut up and let someone else represent the class for the competition or should I just carry on without the rubber bands on Thursday? I'm really not fond of going under the spotlight. You know me, I'd rather sit in the stands and be a spectator than to steal the limelight and have everyone make fun of me!

This whole lack-of-confidence thing has got to stop! Urgh. As I've been told by someone, I still have to work on alot of my personal issues and attitudes. I'll leave that for next time, if I ever feel like saying anything. My speech in school and elsewhere have been reduced drastically since the beginning of the week. I just shut up most of the time unless I'm required to speak. Nobody could understand what I'm talking about even if I were to open my mouth.

Now, I've gotta get back to my History essays and ponder over the competition.