Well, it’s a one-question survey, but it’s still a survey. The question is, what do you call the drink in the picture?

Results so far: (not including myself nor anyone in my family)
Iced chocolate: 11 (7 in Sydney, 1 on the Central Coast, 1 in New Zealand, 2 in Hong Kong with one of them being Australian)
Chocolate milkshake: 4 in the US, 1 in the UK – See, at least in Sydney, there is a difference between “chocolate milkshake” and “iced chocolate”. Chocolate milkshakes are blended, and they don’t have so much cream. This is what I call a chocolate milkshake.
Chocolate float: 1 in the UK, 1 in Africa
Ice-cream sundae: 1 in New Zealand – he insisted that it was an ice-cream sundae even after I said it’s a drink (“a really runny one, then” xD). One person in the US also initially thought so but changed his mind.
Milkshake sundae – 1 in the US
Two people didn’t know what that is. Well, some people did think it was a sundae, and one person asked if it’s chocolate or coffee.
One person in Sydney, one in the US, and one in the UK said “just a chocolate drink”.

There were also some people who didn’t reply. Well, that’s no surprise.

I did this whole survey just because someone on IRC didn’t know what I meant when I said “iced chocolate”. xD Looks like I’ve been reading Separated by a Common Language too much.

Why didn’t I write about my exams anyway? Let’s see… MATH1901 was harder than I expected, 1902 was easier than I expected, I left the LNGS1001 exam an hour early, and I left the ELEC1601 one half an hour early. I’ve also decided to keep doing advanced maths next semester (I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself), and I’ve also got next semester’s timetable. One more exam to go (this Friday) and that’s it for the semester.

See, the iced chocolate thing is so much more interesting… xD

I spent most of the week hosting Skype conferences. Talking to my #ennui friends is fun! Last Saturday I even called someone on his home phone and used up the $2.36 of credit that I had (not one-to-one, on conference with the others). I don’t think I’ll do that again. If he wants in to any future conferences, he’ll have to get Skype.

The good thing about talking on Skype so much is that I become more and
more comfortable with my voice. I used to hate my accent, but now I
feel a lot better about it. Then again, it helps that someone really
likes it. My #ennui friends’ accents aren’t all so easy to understand.
American accents generally make guys’ voices even deeper than they
naturally are, sometimes to the point where they’re harder to
understand. British accents are generally easier to understand. I also
know someone from New Zealand, and he does have a New Zealand accent,
but he doesn’t say “fush and chups”.

Obviously, that means I didn’t do anywhere near as much studying as I should’ve, but even then, I’m actually looking forward to the exams. I felt this way for the whole day, so it’s not because I’ve been to the gym or anything. Let’s see what happens tomorrow…

Well, there are exams after next week, but all lectures are over!

I did manage to ride my bike for this whole week, including the past two days even though it rained. However, just when I was almost home, I was blown over (yes, it’s that windy) and I chipped a tooth. Luckily enough, it wasn’t painful at all and from outside you couldn’t tell. That is, no scratches on my skin or anything like that.

I also brought my bike to the shop today to have the brake pads and the stand replaced, and I also bought lights.

Quite a lot actually happened this week. Let’s see…

Sunday wasn’t a very good day because there was a netsplit on serenia.net. I ended up talking on Skype with a few of the #ennui regulars though. Elven even said that he likes my accent! Now that’s the reassurance that I need, because I don’t actually like my own accent that much.

Monday was pretty good considering that there was no ELEC1601 lecture nor ENGG1804 tute. I came up with a question in the LNGS1001 lecture, and I told my friend. She said it was a good question, but I didn’t have a chance to ask. In the ENGG1804 lecture in the afternoon, the person sitting in front of me was listening to music and he had it so loud that I could hear it. Sheesh… why did he even bother about turning up?

On Tuesday, I actually turned up to the MATH1902 lecture even though it was the only thing I had for the day, so I ended up spending more time travelling than actually being there. Other than that, I surely got onto IRC very early, and the netsplit on serenia.net was finally fixed.

My morning journey on Wednesday was scary. I normally put my water bottle, the lock and the chain in the basket in front of my bike. It all bounced out when I went over a bump on the road. Luckily, the truck behind me stopped, so I picked up my bottle quickly. I was looking around for the chain, and then I realised that it was under the truck. There was enough clearance for me to get in and pick it up, so I said to the driver “don’t move!” and crawled under to get it, and then I apologised to the truck driver for making him stop. I was in the second lane at the time, so I had to pass the bus lane to get onto the footpath, and there was a bus coming towards me so it had to stop too, and the driver yelled at me. Somehow, that didn’t take up any more time than I normally would though. It was still a good day though. After all, there was the linguistics study group! As usual, Daniel was late. I was eating a dorayaki when he arrived, and apparently it’s somewhat exotic to him. xD We had to fill in an evaluation report in the linguistics lecture, and as usual I didn’t really have any comments. It was supposed to be “anonymous”, but I think just telling them what degree I’m doing kind of gives away who I am. (Well, not really. That was probably true for ENGG1804 because no one else did the same combination, but there’s at least one other person in LNGS1001 who also does engineering so I wouldn’t be the only one.)

It rained on Thursday! It was still dark when I was ready to leave home, so I waited around for 10 minutes, and I ended up arriving at the maths lecture 5 minutes later than I normally would, but still before the lecturer arrived. After maths, I went to the ELEC1601 tute for the quiz. I only got 2 out of 4 this time. The rest of the tute was fun though, because the tutor brought chocolate, and for each question that we answered we got to pick a chocolate (all individually wrapped, of course) from the bag. I got 7 altogether. The tutor mentioned that she likes xkcd comics, and that she goes on IRC a lot too… Now that’s someone I would’ve got along with. I should’ve asked her what channels she frequent. Oh well. Too late. I ended up riding all the way home in the rain, and when I arrived at home, the colour is washing out from my gloves. How awkward!

What a week! Oh well, at least I survived the first semester, but only just. If I was blown over earlier, I might not even have got home to type all of this.