I don’t feel like I’ve lost my place though. Guess the name of the song I got that line from! Yes, I’m finally 17. What a good time to turn 17, just one week after the end of term. A perfect excuse to not study that hard for the week because I was planning my birthday party.

Well, the party was fun.

I’m glad that Anne came, otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a party with no guests. I know it’s hard to get here – most people from school come from the opposite direction.

Yay, a present! I wonder what’s in there…

Ooh, it’s a box. Perfect for my mice to sit in for a group photo.

It’s my birthday, so of course I have a cake.

I went out for dinner too. It was funny how the waiter put the menu of today’s specials next to me.

Here’s the obligatory show of food:

Well, really, no time to waste now. I need to start studying tomorrow.

“…and I made it out alive and I started to live my real life. Now I’m happy and I’m free and this whole world belongs to me if you just hang on I swear you’ll be alright…”

No, not really. As much as I like that song, it surely doesn’t apply to me. These two years (well, not even two whole years, it’s actually only one year and seven months) at MLC have been great. No one has ever been cruel to me here (even maths questions first thing on Monday morning weren’t really that cruel xD), and even the most awkward situations will be happy memories.

Well, the very last day of school wasn’t a full day either. We were just there for a final assembly. The start was surely distressing: we had to line up outside with our blazers on, and it was really hot there. The school gave each of us an “Old Girls’ Union” badge and a school keyring. The speeches were funny but at the same time very deep and meaningful, especially the one comparing the school to a doughnut. xD Many people started crying, and I just can’t help crying when I see other people cry, except it was really hot there so my tears just dried out. At the end, we sang “High” together.

La journée, terminée. Mes copines et moi, we went to the city. (Guess where that came from! Another song reference, of course.) We went yum cha, even if I don’t like yum cha. I still ate a lot though. Well done to Kara for eating the egg custard tart! xD Of course, it was another time to take a group photo, and hence another “camera overload” situation. We took sticker photos too. It’s my first time doing that here in Sydney. It was hard to decide what to do next, but at the end we decided to go to Kino. I’m glad my friends took me there because it’s the biggest book shop I’ve been to, and I even found most of the books that I’ve been trying to find for a while, although there was one that was out of stock. I now have about 20 books that I haven’t read yet. Book overload!

I went home on time to get dressed for the graduation dinner. There was a service, which I’ve joked about trying to miss on purpose because I don’t like religious services, but I didn’t want to miss anything so I arrived on time. There was only about half of the grade that actually went, and most of the teachers that I knew weren’t there either (except for my maths teacher). I must admit, I was kind of hoping for the maths scientist to be there. Since he was the one who told everyone that I’m good at art, I thought it’d be good for him to see me in the clothes that I painted. Oh well. He was probably busy decoding my Morse code message. xD Anyway, the food there wasn’t very good especially when considering the price, but then the place was actually quite nice.

Needless to say, this was another “camera overload” time. Actually, this whole week has been a camera overload week because it’s the last week of school. Look at all these photos that I took!

Well, that’s it. En terminale, bye bye lycée. I was the one who travelled all the way from Hong Kong to Sydney just so that I can finish high school half a year earlier. Now that it’s over I might even miss the school. (For those who said “why do you want to finish school so early”: here you go, interpret this to say that I’ll miss going to school and say “I told you so” all you want! I don’t care!) I’m so glad I chose to come here. I probably talked more in these two years than I ever did at the school before – I can talk to almost anyone at MLC because they’re so friendly. I’m still glad that it’s over though. As much as I like going to school (yes, really), I’m becoming too settled, even too attached to this place. Even if roll call is fun, it’s also becoming awkward (I think I’m starting to scare the year 11s as much as the maths scientist does). I managed to keep the big secret from my physics teacher, and when she hugged me on the last day I can tell that it’s best to keep her thinking that I actually like physics.

I don’t know why I went to the sleepover. It was as noisy as it can be at school. Not that I expected it to be quiet, but they seriously had the music way too loud. To make it worse, no one else from the group that I normally sit with was there. At least there was a group that I played cards with. I can never remember all the combinations in Big 2, but even then I managed to win one game. There were rehearsals for the fun day assembly, but I wasn’t doing anything so there wasn’t much point in being there. They then showed videos at least until 3 am. “The Devil Wears Prada” was good, but I was too tired to keep watching the second movie. It didn’t help that I didn’t bring my glasses, so I had to take my contacts out at around 2 am, and I had to go to sleep after that because I can’t see well enough to do anything without glasses. Even after the movies were over, it was very noisy there. I don’t know why there were mobile phones ringing at these hours, and to make it worse, they were just left to ring. I got up at around 6 am, and I’m not used to sleeping so little. I got dressed and packed before most other people, which is probably because I don’t hang around waiting for anyone else. Now that’s one thing that didn’t change about me. Somehow, I was still glad that I went, if only because I didn’t want to miss it.

By 7 am, everyone was busy preparing for fun day. From painting themselves to decorating the school, there was just so much going on. The silver people were supposed to be the game tokens, but I didn’t really get how they looked like the dog, the shoe, the train and the other things. There were signs that corresponded to the squares on the Monopoly board, like the gaol (It’s only here that they say “gaol” and not “jail”, isn’t it? I’ve never noticed anyone use the word “gaol” before I came here.), waterworks, a “No Free Parking” sign, and then some street names. There was Monopoly money (with the principal’s face) scattered around the school. I had fun trying to take photos of people picking them up. I think the most funny of all were the “wanted” posters of the teachers. One of them was of a chemistry teacher who was wanted for playing with the chemicals. I say if anyone at the school is wanted for playing with something, I can’t think of anyone more deserving of it than one teacher that I mention way too often. (If you’re reading this, it should be really obvious who I’m talking about.) My costume was simple enough – I dressed up as a mortgage broker. I printed my badge from the ILC colour printer. That was fun and easy to make – just removing the background from the Monopoly logo and then putting text next to it. That was pretty much the only thing that made it obvious what I was. Some people had amazing costumes. Look at the photo with the people pretending to be a train! There were people wearing boxes painted as hotels and dice too. Those were so cute! The dice people reminded me of 一二三紅綠燈 (What is it called in English? Is it just literally the same name?) when they pulled their arms and legs in and sat on the ground as dice with just their head sticking out.

In period 1a, there was the final rehearsal of the assembly. The principal came in to watch the rehearsal, and I was sitting at the back. I must’ve looked really tired because she could tell that I was at the sleepover. The actual assembly went quite well, except for the times when the music didn’t work. I like the Myspace skit the most. I’ll have to say it’s because it made fun of the chatspeak that many Myspace users use. The one about the three teachers was cool too, especially the puns on one of their names. The thing about the vertical groups was probably true for some groups, but I think my group bonded fairly well, even if it might’ve been because we were united in hate to some extent. xD I didn’t get the “Oops I did it again” thing, and at the times when the music actually worked it was too loud, just like last night. At the end, all the year 12s went onto the stage to sing “Jitterbug”. I had no trouble pushing myself onto the stage because that’s how I normally push myself out of the swimming pool, which was probably why I ended up right in the middle of the stage. It was really awkward at the beginning because I was right in front of the video cameras (see the photo I took of the view from the stage – hey, that reminds me of “A View from the Bridge”), and the music didn’t start for quite a while, and then when it started I couldn’t keep up with it because I didn’t know the song at all, nor did I know how to dance. I just swayed along and pretended to know what I was doing. I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked absolutely silly, and I’ll probably be able to see for myself since the video will probably go on the bluesheet later on. Luckily, I managed to disappear into the back as more people moved in front of me. It felt like an earthquake on that stage. It was quite chaotic on that stage, but it was quite fun even if I don’t normally like this kind of squashed up situation. It was kind of like those swaying things at amusement parks, because the stage was shaking from all our dancing.

Periods 2a and 2b weren’t really much fun. My friends and I didn’t really want to do the treasure hunt or any of the activities planned for us, so we just went around taking more photos. We had fun with the huge die in Palm Court – I rolled my 20-sided die on it, and then I pretended to sit on it (I didn’t want to risk sitting on it and then falling through). I even tried to lift it, but it was too difficult to take a photo that included the die and me. After a while we were tired of walking around, so we settled down with some music and waited for the house lunch to start.

House lunch was fun. We had Greek food, which included Greek salad, bread, and kebabs. I chose the lamb which not many other people did before me, and the year 11s serving the food were quite happy about that. There was a special table just for year 12, and of course that meant another group photo, which of course led to the typical “camera overload” situation. Actually, there were only two cameras in this group of 12 people (we didn’t have a full class – two people were away), which wasn’t too bad. After we’ve eaten, it was time for the speeches. It’s such a shame that our head of house wasn’t there.

The teachers distributed the presents to the year 12s by vertical groups. The present was a star charm, which was very appropriate because the star has always been a symbol of Booralee. For some reason, those of us in group 2 were the first to get ours. The maths scientist actually introduced us by reading off a list of descriptions and then making the whole house guess who he was talking about. Now, since the first one was Jaki (Is this how she spells it?) and then it was Teresa, it was pretty obvious that it was group 2 in alphabetical order, so the next one had to be me. He was emphasising that he’ll need everyone’s help in guessing who he was talking about. The first clues were totally ambiguous, since he said that this person is “cute” and “nice”, which is very general. That even made me think that I was wrong about it being in alphabetical order – I never expected anyone to think that I’m cute. Then he said that this person is “good at art”. That really threw everyone off – since when was I known for being good at art? I don’t even study art at school! In a way, that’s a good thing – no one in the house can say that I’m not good at art because I don’t do art at school and therefore they don’t really know, but if he said that I was good at a subject that I actually did at school then anyone can say that I’m not really good at it. No, that probably wasn’t the real reason. When he said that, I knew it had to be me. He was the one to ask me if I wanted to be an artist. Oh, he must’ve been trying to let everyone know how artistic I actually am, despite the subjects that I do at school. After everyone clapped, I went out saying “Who’s going to know if you say that? They don’t even know that I draw!”, and he just said “Now they do!”. How nice. Now, as year 12 Booralee we gave cards to the teachers, and it turned out that no one knew how to spell the maths scientist’s name. Someone didn’t even know who we were referring to by that name. It was really funny – she never knew the name of the teacher that was at Tuesday house time with us every week. I was cruel enough to write “Don’t blow up the lab (reference to the whole “just can’t leave anything alone” thing) and don’t scare the year 11s again” on the card, but then I also drew the mice heart. The mice heart is now my standard thing to put in cards and those books that people give to others to sign (what are they called?) so it doesn’t really mean anything, but then in a way it has a meaning in this case. The drawing of two mice arranged into a heart shape that I now use to sign cards is a simplified version of one of the drawings in my sketchbook, and I remember when I first showed him that drawing, he gave me a maths question (the very one that made a year 11 say “A maths question first thing on a Monday morning? That’s so cruel!”), so that was a time when he still didn’t think of me as being an artist, and now I’m sure he does.

We were supposed to be dismissed at 1:30, but somehow the house lunch ended at 1:00, probably because our head of house wasn’t there. Come to think of it, I hardly ever talked to him for the last few weeks. I remember last year when I used to talk to him so much – almost as much as I talk to the maths scientist lately. I seem to have a tendency to talk way too much with roll call teachers. May be that’s why the vertical groups didn’t make much difference for me – I’m just full on demanding attention from the teacher anyway. May be it was fun for me because in the vertical group I have a teacher that half the class didn’t like, so I got a lot more attention that I should.

Wow, this is the longest post that I’ve written for quite a while. I should really stop going on and on about roll call. There I go again, I manage to talk about roll call even if I didn’t even have roll call today. xD

“We’re going to be doing our own work, just like on Monday…” As if! What an awkward question to get in roll call. Since we planned to go out for breakfast during the very last maths lesson, it was kind of awkward when the maths scientist asked me what my maths class will be doing, especially since I’ve been specifically told not to tell him. I’m not so confident about how well I can lie, and from the way he smiled it looks like that he could tell. It was also awkward when he chased me around trying to draw dots on my old uniform (which has been signed all over) because of all the discussion about Morse code. How appropriate that the maths teacher actually asked me how was roll call. The breakfast was great though. It was funny when our teacher asked for a table for fifteen, especially as the café looked as if it’s not big enough to for all of us. Luckily, there were a row of tables at the couch that we could move together to make a group table that was just enough for all of us. Of course, I asked for a class photo to be taken for us, since if I have to have a class photo for any class it’s this one. After all, at one time we had classes together five times a week, extra-early Tuesday mornings and after school on Fridays. Just like every time a group photo is to be taken, we had to the “camera overload” situation, since everyone who had a camera with them would want it on their camera. I have spares after recess on Wednesdays, so I stayed in Westfield during recess, although I went back even before period 2a was over.

I stayed under the umbrellas until lunch. Of course I did. It’s my last time sitting under the umbrellas during my spares. The chocolate lunch wasn’t really that good. One of the chocolate cakes have something in it that made it taste bitter, and I took so much that I couldn’t even finish it. The rest of the lunch time was photo time. Hardly anyone turned up to English class, so I didn’t get to take a class photo. The people that did turn up to class just went around invading other classes and taking photos anyway. Someone in the class decided to show a photo album to the English teacher, and after that I started showing her my sketchbook and the photos on my camera. I got the usual comment “why didn’t you do art”. I even showed her the songs I have on this site. (I can’t show her this page because it’s blocked by the school proxy.) She said that they must’ve gave me a lot of chocolate during lunch since I’ve said more than I did over the past year in that one lesson. I suppose it’s because how we always had a lot of work in English lessons, and then we had combined classes and all that. I’m not quiet at all now. See, I even went to the other class, and since they all knew that I like to sing, they asked me to sing. This time, I didn’t sing the song that I was known for. Instead, I sang “Hang on Kids”. Hey, if I can’t have everyone else singing it with me in the fun day assembly, at least I can sing it all I want while I’m still at the school. It just sounds right for the last week of school. I suppose it’d be more (contextually) appropriate to sing it to the other years, but then I don’t think they would want to hear that.

Let’s see… The best of the photos from today:

Well, I’ll be back at school for a sleepover in Potts Hall tonight.

Tuesdays have always been short days ever since I came to MLC because I’ve always had spares after lunch. Today was no exception. The party in physics was surely fun. Again, I played music from my speakers. “Dan ma fusée” is actually relevant to physics because it’s about space. I pointed out “you can’t do that!” to the teacher when the line “J’vais plus vite que la lumière” came up, but she didn’t understand French. At least I also had “Why does the Sun Shine” in English which was also relevant. Somehow, I took my sketchbook out so the teacher asked to look through it, and I ended up telling her a lot about my outside classes and all that. My physics teacher is actually really nice, but I never really had a chance to talk to her about random things because there’s always so much to do in physics. At the end I asked for a class photo, and the teacher went to ask the teacher from next door to come and take it for us. It ended up that everyone else who had a camera wanted it on their camera, so she had to take the same photo six times with different cameras. That was such a funny scene that I wish I took a photo of it. Seriously, camera overload!

There wasn’t really much point in having a faith in society class on this last week, and we’ve had our party anyway, so I got all of 2a and 2b as spares. Of course, I sat under the umbrellas. The maths teacher who came to cover the class 2 weeks ago walked past, and he asked me if I was doing maths extension 2. I hesitated and he just said great. How awkward! It was even more awkward when he came back past the umbrella again because he asked me if I was doing something about de Moivre’s theorem, and I was reading “The Unfolding of Language”. Luckily, he was interested in the book. He even sat down to talk to me, and I played some of the French songs because he was actually into languages too.

Everyone insisted on sitting outside during house time even if the ground went up to as much as 45 °C because G07 smelled like wood, except for the maths scientist who always stays away from sunlight. Well, he’s a mathematician, so he doesn’t need sunlight because he can use sine and cosine to get tan. xD No, not really. He was wearing long sleeves, so he had to stay in the shade. Of course, I was playing with my lasertemp as usual, and I told him how hot it was outside. I actually stood in the shade for most of the time because it was so hot, unlike some people who tried to sunbathe. I also kept all my stuff in the shade, because my black bag is going to heat up a lot if I left it outside.

Somehow, I still have so much to write even if it’s such a short day. Roll call wasn’t really that special today because the maths scientist was talking to a visitor the whole time. Oh well, that probably just shows that I normally get too much attention. There I go again, more about roll call even if nothing happened.

The economics party was great. It was sunny, and we had plenty of food. The fruit that I brought turned out to be quite popular too, even if two other people also brought fruit. I brought speakers so I could share my music with the class. It’s not often when I get a chance to let other people listen to “Hang on Kids” and “Dan ma fusée”. One thing I like about my economics class is that we can talk about anything. Since it’s the end of the year, the topic naturally goes to future plans. Apparently, most people in this class think I’m going to do science research. Well, in some ways it’s better than having someone insist on telling me that I want to be an artist.

Speaking of art, I actually had a chance to paint today, because it’s part of the chemistry of art option. The teacher commented that at least our chemistry is better than our art. Well, I can tell you that I can paint better than this if I had more colours to choose from. (Of course, I can always say “I’m a night person and I just can’t do these things properly during the day”, and I’d be able to back it up with everything I did in my outside classes.) These ones weren’t mixed that well to start with, and they go murky when mixed. It also looked better before it dried. At least this one actually looks like a flower, unlike that time last year when everyone thought my flowers were leaves.

Plans were made in maths class for the final lesson. Somehow, the teacher thinks that I’m going to tell the maths scientist, and she looked my way and said don’t tell. I asked her if that was directed at me, and she said yes. As if I would tell? I’m not going to ruin the plans. There’s enough to talk about in roll call without mentioning these things. Today there was a visitor. Come to think of it, I must’ve looked quite silly in front of the visitor, pretending to be angry at the maths scientist for various little things the way I always did. Well, it doesn’t matter since it’s the last week of school anyway. There I go again, more about roll call, even if so many other things happened today.