Not A Normal Teen After All.

Exams have started since yesterday, kicking off with English essay and History essay papers! History was a total disaster for me! Given 2 and a half hours to complete multiple subjective questions and to come up with 6 essays, I'd say I've done a pretty good horrible job! Only managed to think of 5 essays - 4 of which were made up by my own intepretation of and messed up Historical facts - and left pretty much the rest of the subjective questions blank. Amazed by the fact that I was still able to think after all those digging of historial dates and names, I told myself during the last 15 minutes of History paper when I had almost given up in exhaustion to actually pen another untrue fact about Islam and its forefathers, this so wouldn't happen if I had studied and memorized all those uninteresting bits of the Islamic leaders.

Well, it's not that I totally don't want to study. I just find it extremely hard to pull myself away from whatever I was doing to pick up the book and study. Do any of you out there feel the same way? Picking up the book and opening it is one story but studying and memorising it is another. The worst thing about having difficulty in studying is the lousy feeling I get in the middle of and after exams, where everyone huddles around the smartest kid to discuss the answers. A little dose of guilt, regret and anger seems to build up in me when I'm sitting for a particular paper which I find very frustrating when I'm unable to come up with the answers. One thing's for sure, I'm not the kind who doesn't study and doesn't give a shit about the exams and turns up in school salivating all over the paper. Definitely not! I get more worried than I usually do when I don't study - almost close to pissing in my pants a few minutes before the paper starts when I'd be flipping the books at the speed of light, desperately hoping that everything would absorbed in my mind in those few seconds of study. Talk about being last minute!

I've given it a thought and realised that I'm not the normal average teen who attends tuition for the entire year and does well for his exams and celebrates his days after that. I'm just worser than that. I'm the kind of teenager who doesn't attend a tiny bit of tuition, scores badly in exams, listens to Christmas songs in the mid of October and fills up time with photographing, reading, blogging, and catching up on TV series (America's Next Top Model Cycle 6 have already started since last week on Channel [V]). Seriously. I have no idea where all those traits come from - neither mom nor dad practices such incredulous acts - but I'm still hard on all those new releases of Christmas albums (even Rihanna recorded a Christmas song of her own!)! It's been a month and I thought the crazy Christmas spirit would just fade away by now, but it's been keeping strong as ever, ever so often having the urge to get the Christmas tree down and put it up in the living room!

Back to reality exams. The only reason I felt like writing today is that I (think) I did an ok job on my Science and Malay paper today. Hey, my first time in actually completing the whole Malay paper without the answers of the person sitting beside me or behind me (I'm in the front row). As I said, I'm not the perfect student and copying in exams is just one of the things that makes me more of a disappointing student. Not that I'm saying I did very well for the paper, but I did put in my own effort into it, which includes, writing nonsense on the test pad as answers to majority of the questions that involved traditional poems and Malay idioms! After seeing all those nicely scribbled nonsense on the (7 written pages!) 4 pieces of paper which I neatly tied with the ominous white string provided by the invigilator before handing it up to the front desk, I have taken a certain strange liking towards my Malay paper. Purely for the fact that it was able to make me write that amount of nonsense neatly! =P

Anyway, despite the fact I still have Maths and Economics paper to study for for tomorrow, I'm taking my own sweet time. I have absolutely no urgency in picking up my copy of Maths or Economics to start mumbling to myself all those things that needed memorisation. I'm editing pictures in Photoshop as I'm writing this. The entire Deepa Raya holidays has been seeing me like this. No surprise there. Though, I must say, things WOULD be different if my (new) neighbours downstairs were not carrying out their renovations that whole week of holidays. It's always GRRR and BRRR or DRRR or BANG! BANG! BANG! from 11 a.m. right till 6p.m.. Sometimes, when I'm trying my best to concentrate, it only makes me feel like someone was drilling right through my head. I wouldn't have anything against it if it didn't make that much of a noise or vibration or even caused that thick amount of dust residing on the surface of my table when work's being carried out.

See, one of the windows in my room is connected to the air well of the 5 storey building. Eventhough the window of my room is shut tight with the curtain pulled across, the particles of busted debris and cement still manage to escape through those tiny air holes from the window. Outside at my kitchen, we have this huge cage, divided by only a sliding door from the kitchen, that works as a store room for us that juts out to the air wells also. The dust collected there was similar to having a whole coating of snow on our brooms, kitchen utensils and etc.. That's not all, it also leaves the entire house smoked during their working hours, especially the floor, with a powdery feel under our feet. Let's put it this way, footsteps can be created! And I thought that constant drilling and smashing of debris was harsh! Hell, it made listening to music in my room animpossible thing if I didn't want to go insane with extra sound effects! Wonder if my neighbours felt the same way when it was our turn?

On another note, I think I'm falling sick (again!). After all those days of hoping to fall seriously ill before the exams so that I might be excused has finally come true. I mean, not being able to make it for exams sounds like a better reason than failing right? Didn't expect it at all but I started coughing in class during my Malay paper but just ignored it thinking it was just temporary. Still felt pretty well until just now when I realised the cough wasn't just temporary seeing that I have been coughing non-stop for the whole afternoon. Just started sneezing a couple of minutes ago. What more to expect? The throat feels tight and itchy already! Not sure if mom would allow me to skip exams if I actually come down with something by tonight. Not that I like being sick (akak's not here to remind me to take my medicine) but anything goes to skip examinations. Though, at the back of my mind, I blame the new tenants with their renovations - the throat feels like there's also dust stuck in between the trachea. Once again, I'm not the normal average teen.

It's getting more often now that I think about my failed future because of failing these exams, turning out to be jobless and feeding off my parents or Grace the rest of my life, looking dirty, smelly and wasted! Eeeek! Horrifying, horrifying, image. Let's just hope it doesn't come true. I still have to clean my room off the dust on all the surfaces and laundry to do. Now that akak's gone away, I'm in charge of my own room and mainly, the laundry. Imagine me waking up at 5.30 a.m. at the sound of the mobile phone alarm to do the laundry before getting ready for school. Absurd but true. It's the only way I can get my school uniform washed in time. It'd be too late by the time I get back from school. But I think I'm getting used to it. It's only been two days, too early to draw any conclusion, but I'm keeping my mouth shut instead of complaining. Dad's in charge of the cleanliness of the entire house, including the rubbish bin and floor, while mom's in charge of the kitchen and ironing. Pretty good system, eh? Oh, the sad life without the nanny.

That it for now, I think. Nothing more else to chatter about. There' still another part of the All Souls Day Weekend where we had another trip to the river with more cousins on that day itself. October is coming to an end (or has it ended?) and November's here, which only means another 2 months till Christmas! Is it safe to listen to Christmas songs now? Nothing much to look forward to in November except the Year End Holidays (and the end of the finals!)! How I can't wait! Oh, and akak's return! The end of the month - 31 days to go! Now I'm just hoping that fall terribly ill and skip the rest of the exams I don't fall sick.