Dec 21

Bitter Disappointment should have been the title of this post, but since I used it up last week, I”m going for the more-neutral “TCE Results 2008″.

When the results arrived in the mail, I wasn’t planning on open them. I was far too scared to.

Anyway, I did, and the results were horrible! I was really, really not happy with my results.

With a TER of 88.9, I was 1.1 off what I needed. One point one!

After looking over the report, I realised that I had completely stuffed up my exams. Computer Science, in particular, was fairly horrible – I went from an EA (one B internally) to a maximum CA.

Thankfully, Maths Applied was just as expected. No nasty surprises here, and Physics was also better than expected (max CA).

Chemistry was just horrible as well – I managed to score a max SA. Yay! </sarcasm>

So, where to from here?

Well, my options are:

  • Repeat Year 12 (by doing Year 13). Obviously, this would suck the most. I love Calvin and all, (don’t get me wrong, Calvin is awesome) but really – I don’t want to be there for another year, especially if no-one else I know is there. The fact that none of my friends are there would help keep away distractions, however – but it would still suck immensely.
  • Do something else. This option also sucks. I hate engineering with a passion, and even though UTAS offered me a place, I’ll be dammed if I’m going to take it. No way.
  • Wait and see. Now this option I like. I won’t recieve offers from the mainland uni’s until early 2009 anyway, (round two offers for Adelaide and Victoria are the 5th of Feb 09), so I’ll just have to enjoy what time I have left.
  • Do something funky to get into the course I want. I haven’t fully explored this option yet, but apparently I can do a normal degree (science or something) at my Uni of choice for a year, and then transfer into the course I want in 2010. This would mean that I can essentially “waste” a year, and it would provide me with an oppurtunity to have a pseudo gap year, but really – dentistry is a five year course anyway! I don’t want to be like Dean, who managed to turn a three year course into a nine (?) year one!!

So yeah, at the moment I’m playing the waiting game – stuck in a sort of Facebook Limbo.

That’s enough about me, though. I’d love to hear how you went in TCE results 2008, so if you want the rest of the world to know as well, shout out in comments!

Points don’t matter. TER does, and that’s really all I care about!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 17

Heheh – two exams today, so this post is brought to you by the freshbytes lackeys who seem to have nothing else to do but study… Apologies for not putting it up sooner, I wanted to get some sleep.

You hear the horror stories about how calculators can die suddenly due to a loss of power during end-of-year exams, and you worry.

You hear how harsh the TQA are on spontaneous calculator battery death (as we’ll call it), and how they don’t tolerate any excuses for spontaneous calculator battery death.

You hear how someone was sitting on an EA before they went into the exam, but are now only going to get an SA because they suffered spontaneous calculator battery death.

Well, okay – so I made that last one up, but I’m sure it has happened to someone, somewhere at sometime in the past!

Right – so I wasn’t going to let that happen for me. No way. I needed as many points as I could get, and spontaneous calculator battery death would just lead to a whole world of pain – namely, year 13 at Calvin (that, in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad, but having to do year 13 in the first place would be)….

Anyway, as you shop for batteries, there are a lot of questions to be pondered, such as:

  • What brand of batteries should I get?
    This question is quite important as if you’re paying for the brand, then you’re doing it wrong, especially when it comes to mundane things like batteries. I managed to pick some nice red evereadys as they have worked well for me in the past – and if good performance is for this particular brand, that’ll bring me back to that brand, time and time again.
  • How many should I buy?
    This is also an important question – if you have other devices in your house that use a large number of specialised batteries, you should probably buy them in bulk so that you always have some of those batteries on hand when you need them. Running out of batteries sucks at the best of times, and well, you can never have too many batteries! Of course, there is a limit, so don’t rush out and buy cartons of batteries – after all, you need to be realistic.
    I ended up going for an 8-pack of AAA’s as they were on special.
  • Should I buy rechargeable batteries?
    If you’re asking yourself this question, you probably should – provided you’re prepared to lay out the extra initial cost of the rechargeables, as well as a charger if you don’t already have one… Supposedly rechageables are more cost effective, but in reality, you’re paying for the power that you use to charge them, too!
    I didn’t buy rechargeables as the batteries were for a caluclator – and I’ll probably use it once every couple of months after exams are over.

Anyways, that’s about the end of my battery-buying advice. If you’ve got any more tips that you feel I’ve missed, then shout out in comments!

As for school, well, I’m smack bang in the middle of exams. Chemistry was last Friday, and I’ve got Maths Applied and Computer Science tomorrow (Monday). Thursday sees the Physics exam, and after that – the Magazine needs to be done, I’ll work a heap, and work on a couple of projects I’ve got planned… Yeah, my holidays are fairly jam-packed as is.

On the Radi8 front, we should have a couple of good events to finish up the year with, which should be good.

The song for this week is Michael Buble’s Everything – from his album Call Me Irresponsible. If you’ve got iTunes, hit the links – they’ll take you to the correct iTunes Music Store page.

Other that that, I’ve got nothing.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 24

A couple of days ago, I was stinge-ing (pronounced st-IN-ging) a lift home from a friend, and he had to go to the bank.

Now this then entailed me waiting in the car, which was totally fine by me, but then he said: “You can always go buy a pie…”

He said it with such a look that said: “…and I want one too!”

Now, I didn’t go buy a pie – primarily becuase I didn’t have any money on me, nor my wallet, but I was thinking about it later – I asked myself the following question:

Had I had enough cash, would I have bought him a pie without him asking for one?

Unfortunately, the answer to that would be no. I’d love to think that I would have, but in reality, I’d have an outside chance of doing so.

And that’s where the problem, dear reader, lies; I’m a selfish person. I freely admit that, evidenced by the real-life scenario above.

Obviously, this isn’t a good thing. Now I know that buying someone a pie without them asking isn’t exactly life-threatening, but it’s the principle (that I’m selfish as all hell) that counts. By not buying my friend who was generously giving me a lift home (as he has done many times before), I was violating my own set of rules.

Most of the time I’d like to think that I have a good grip on reality – but the reality of the situation is I wouldn’t have bought my friend a pie, but not because I’m intentionally selfish, but because I’m un-intentionally so.

At least Radi8 was good – Radi8 turned one! We had some games (an sort of mini-Radi8tion) and Black came last, with Red taking out the cup. We had $50 worth of chips from the fish and chip shop on Hawthorn Drive, and after that, small lifegroups time followed by another inspirational message from an young American who spoke at the Hillsong conference.

Speaking of which, he said: “I’m preaching just as well as you’re responding!” To which the crowd shouted and whooped it up. Which is what you should be doing here.

In any case, chemistry homework is far too much, there’s only so much you can write about Zinc, and I’ve almost written it all.

Song for this week is “Do Wah Diddy” by Manfred Mann – truly excellent stuff.

Freshbytes – where our grip on reality is increasing every day.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , ,