I think my room's got a nice smell to it. Turn the air-conditioning on, leave the room for awhile, then go back inside, and it smells quite like my former home in Illinois, and also a little like my room in Hong Kong. I've got this very exquisite "smell-memory" so nostalgic smells are always very nice. :)
Anyway i haven't blogged in some time...just a little laziness on my part lah haha. Recent happenings...I went out with Shawn, Yuen Kay and Andy for dinner, then met the usual group to watch Jumper and met them again on another day for dinner at this expensive Japanese restaurant that really wasn't worth the money (i forgot the name of the restaurant, so they're spared for now! >.<). Then there was my cousin's daughter's birthday that i went to 2 days ago where i played with all those cute little toddlers again.
Besides that, i've been spending time at home, reading books, posting on Facebook and MyAnimeList, playing random computer games, watching anime and reading up on economics (apparently an economics background will help when you study Law, so what the heck, i'll just study it)...quite a relaxing life. Unlike some people, i definitely think i'll never be short of things to do when (and if) i retire in the distant future. I'm just too acquainted with visual entertainment to actually RUN OUT of entertainment.
I also believe i've discovered why i can't read as much as i used to! I think it's because i've become too used to "studying" whatever i read. Like, instead of speed-reading, i'd read every word silently so i'd be able to absorb every detail. I do the same while reading anime subtitles, too, and i'd rewind and watch again if i missed out on anything. So i tend to take much longer than usual to read books and watch anime...which also results in me losing interest in whatever i'm doing much faster.
So i tried speed-reading the rest of One L (a book by Scott Turow) last night. And i ended up getting so engrossed in it that i read for 3 hours straight and only stopped because it was already 4 o'clock in the morning. Quite an achievement as compared to my 30-minute attention span previously. And i think by doing the same thing, i'd be able to watch, say, 5 episodes of anime a day instead of just 2 - using just a little bit more time as well. I'm going to have to read the last section of One L again though, in case i missed out on any details.
...I wonder why i have that sort of urge, though. :| Like i have this fear of overlooking even the most minor details on the most inconsequential of tasks...some kind of obsessive disorder, perhaps? 0_o
Ohwell, random things aside...i've decided to talk about the very odd incident that happened to me last wednesday.
If you didn't know, last wednesday was my driving test! My fourth time as well, and lots of crappy things happened to me then...
Firstly, i had trouble sleeping. I had been adjusting my body-clock little by little and managed to sleep at midnight and wake up at 7am the day before. But, on the night before the test, i had a
bit of insomnia. You'd think that taking the test for the fourth time would make me more relaxed, but somehow i was never more nervous for the previous times. I tried to sleep at 10pm, and then tossed and turned in bed till it was 2 in the morning. -.-
During that period of time, my heart pounded so hard i could feel my pillow
shaking. I'd feel warm and sweaty one minute and then shivering cold the next. I tried playing mind games with myself; telling myself that tomorrow's test was
not important, that it was easy-peasy, that i could always try again if i failed. All to no avail. Then i changed my game plan. I told myself to just pretend, in my mind, that i had already failed, all in an attempt to calm myself down. But instead the sweating got worse and the pounding of my heart got more intense.
To me, it was really the oddest kind of nervousness. My mind was calm but my body wasn't. Or rather, my
conscious mind was calm but my
unconscious mind wasn't. I don't think it was the test itself that got me so nervous; rather, it was the pressure i put on myself to get that 7-8hours of sleep that did me in. The only thing that stopped me from shouting at myself or getting angry at myself from frustration was the fact that this had all happened to me before; the incident on the night before my first A level exam and the night before my army enlistment had given me sufficient experience to deal with my anxiety.
In the end, i took a sleeping pill, tossed about again, and managed to fall asleep at 4.30am. I woke up a short while later at 7.15am to get ready for my warm-up lesson at 8.30. I felt like crap. I was so going to fail, i thought. Things were quite uncertain already but my actions last night practically INSURED my failure. I felt like a loser...the type of guy who couldn't handle stress, who couldn't perform at crunch-time, and who would never flourish under pressure. In fact i still do.
Surprisingly, though, my warm-up went well. No stalled engines, no bumped kerbs, only one mistake when i steered through the crank course while on 2nd gear without realising it, because i'd forgotten to drop gear before going in. And even that in itself is quite an achievement! :D The situation was much less than perfect but i was ready to tackle the test head on.
Later on, however, something really weird happened to me.
My PDL went missing.
PDL meaning Permissible Driving Licence (edit: PROVISIONAL, not Permissible. Thanks goes out to Celine for pointing that out). It's what allows me to drive during lessons and a must-have when you go for the test. I had given it to my instructor at the start of the lesson. He'd given me a plastic slip with my IC, receipt and PDL inside and i had gone straight to the test's waiting room to drop it into a basket. But later, the examiners told me that my PDL was missing, although my IC and test receipt was still present. I went back to check the path i'd walked on the way to the waiting room but it was nowhere to be found.
Really odd. I still wonder where it went. My instructor said that it wasn't with him and double-checked his car and pockets. My PDL's stapled to my 2 old ones so it's 3 pieces thick. I had held the plastic slip tightly as i walked towards the waiting room, and given the thickness of the PDL, i'm sure i would've noticed if it had fallen out. In fact, i'm willing to swear on my grave that it didn't drop out that time. And, in response to my mother's initial suspicion, i swear on my grave and on my life RIGHT NOW that it was never my intention to lose the PDL in an attempt to escape the test or anything else of the sort. Such a thing is way below me.
This leaves the examiners. I'm guessing that because my slip's 3 pieces thick, it got clipped together with another person's PDL and they didn't notice the difference between 3 and 4 pieces of paper. There's no way to find out in any case.
So, in short, i couldn't take my driving test last wednesday. After hearing the news, my dad told me to go and pray to dunno-who to improve my crap-ass luck with driving. But besides my lack of belief in organised religions, i've just got too much pride to do such a thing...after all, you can only pass your driving test once in your whole life (hopefully), and i want to pass with just my own skills; i don't want to pass and then have people say that it's because i prayed or whatever (as my dad definitely would). And do i care about what other people say?? Lol of course i do!! :D
My instructor and i pleaded with the chief examiner at the driving centre, and fortunately for me, he was kind enough to find an earlier time-slot so i could take my next test earlier. The test-date's this friday, in fact.
So in the end, am i unlucky...or was that actually a stroke of good luck? I had gone and screwed up my sleeping plans, so this event allowed me to get a second chance, with the test date just a little more than a week away. I had to pay for another PDL, but to be honest, i can't deny feeling a sense of perverse relief when the instructors first told me my PDL was missing. And back then, i didn't even know if i'd be able to get an early replacement test date - or if such a thing was even possible. I was pissed at how my PDL had gone missing - not a case of me misplacing it or whatever - but i was still happy, after the whole incident was over, to have been given another chance to correct my wrongs.
I hope things go well on friday; i really want to get this whole "driving" chapter out of my life. It's been almost a year since i started practical driving lessons already, and i'm just tired of the whole thing. In fact, it's starting to feel like NS, except that NS gave me money and now driving lessons and tests are COSTING me lots of money. >.< I'll be so happy when i don't have to go for driving lessons anymore.
To end off on a completely unrelated note...i believe i've found people to go to
MAROON 5's concert with!! But the cheapest seats, at $75, are really far from the stage, and the $125 ones are not much better. How sia...regardless, i better book fast before it's too late.
