Peek-a-boo!

So, I've decided to grace this blog again with my fleeting presence. The Internet is such a vast place, and hence it is only by pure chance that I manage somehow to end up at my own blog from time to time. On special occasions like this, I remember the need to update it. So here we are - two months on, and you wonder what has happened.

First, I'm happy to announce a change in my sleep habits - I'm no longer a nocturnal animal, baybeh! I'm up at the crack of dawn every morning, and this is all on my own initiative, as I don't even need an alarm clock or another person to scream at me to wake up. I guess this inevitably happens if you have to wake up 7 days a week for school, which sounds like a nightmare and really is a nightmare! I've been shuttling back and forth classes for weeks now, but the arrival of the school mid-year exams really was a welcome. Exams ended just yesterday, and I have a full week of holidaying before school-school classes resume. Meanwhile, I have to endure the torture of home-school and Bandar-school.

I'm joking about the torture part - I absolutely love it! How can floundering in the dark trying to come to grips with an esoteric physics or mathematical problem not be fascinating and fun? I've even built some arm muscles in the last few months carrying those heavy tomes of physics with me just about anywhere. Thank god I don't have to study for Biology. I once tried reading a borrowed Campbell Biology textbook (weight:7.2 pounds) in bed, and I woke up sore all over the next morning. I didn't fare too well either with Wade's Organic Chemistry (weight:6.2 pounds) and never got past the fourth chapter. However, with the slightly lighter Halliday's Fundamentals of Physics (weight:5.7 pounds) I'm doing better. So there you have it: the only reason why I think more highly of Physics than any other science is that the Physics textbooks are much lighter. Of course, Mathematics will always rule supreme, owing to its extremely slim books, like the featherweight Ivan Niven's Mathematics of Choice (only 11.2-ounce!).

Speaking of maths, I'm way, way behind schedule with my home-school mathematics (Further Maths). This could be disastrous as I'm sitting for a real exam in October, so I'm really feeling the heat. The stumbling block that has stalled my efforts is Linear Algebra and Matrices. I feel like pulling my hair out everytime I read that part of the syllabus. My teacher is a real incompetent who has extremely limited resources (and is a real buffoon too and also owns this blog!). NONE of the available textbooks I've seen carry a chapter with Linear Algebra. It's always Groups and Isomorphisms, or Hyperbolic Geometry, or maybe a modicum on determinants and matrix multiplication, but the CIE exam board decided to be a real smart-aleck and outdo the other examination boards by introducing this much hated chapter into their Pure Maths syllabus. I've been reduced to scouring the sometimes hidden maths department pages of universities for their notes on Linear Algebra. (Thank You to a friend who directed me to the UNSW Linear Algebra page, which I found to be useful).

Ah, I just remembered it's not all holidays for me this week as I have to go back to school on Saturday for a maths class. It's corrections day for the Pure Maths paper we did just yesterday. I found the paper to be extremely simple, so this worries me to no end as I get complacent with an easy paper and am bound to chalk up a series of mistakes. Oh well, at least I've something to work for in school-school.