So, I took today off. In retrospect that might not have been the cleverest move I have ever made, seeing as the first test of the course is tomorrow, but aside from induction and combinatorics everything has been horrendously bland repetition, so I'm hoping I'm not missing anything particularily important. I don't think I am, given that they were going to talk about basic trigonometry today and that only for two hours.
So, instead of trigonometry, here comes a blog post. My schooldays have been horribly taxing, but I've finally caught up with the material so that I'm no longer lagging behind. Both Chinese and maths are sort of in a good equilibrium now - I'm a little bit ahead in both subjects, only a tiny advantage that I'll probably lose in taking this day off, but losing an advantage doesn't mean gaining a disadvantage. Tomorrow's the first test, which I passed last year without any problem at all, so I'm pretty calm.
So what have I been doing with my time lately? I've been writing a story about three brothers, I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic, and I've been writing a few pages of random junk. And then, there's schoolwork and roleplaying games, which I'd say have been taking most of my time. I have lots to write about both, but I think maths would bore you more, so I'll fill you in on the roleplaying games instead; Anton and Madde make for an interesting two-man party. I always rather liked storytelling pairs of players, as there's room to give NPCs a bit of extra space that way, but Anton and Madde's styles of play can be difficult to intertwine sometimes. Happily, I'd say that this is running along smoothly. Madde plays Kalyna, a 16-year old adopted girl, raised in a family of petty dukes, and Anton plays Taran the Dynastic Dragon-Blood "Noble-who-gets-cities-as-a-birthday-present" who reveals to her that she's the will-be Empress of the World.
Last session was an interesting, and hitherto rarely seen phenomenon - it ended with Kalyna (Maddes' character) being kidnapped by an old daimyô at whose palace they had been staying as guests. He had complained that his wives all bore weak, mortal children, and when Kalyna arrived he wanted her to bear him "strong sons". Taran, obviously, was outraged at his heresy towards the future Empress, and tried to fight him - and failed. Despite me being a general sadist when it comes to my antagonists, it feels like the heroes rather rarely fail in defeating them: This time, however, it happened royally, which leaves the story in an interesting situation. Taran is knocked out cold and nearly dying somewhere in a ditch, and meanwhile the young Imperial Princess is imprisoned by a lecherous old man who's desperate to see his lineage continue. Neither of them are dead, both are just in very, very uncomfortable situations - it'll certainly be interesting to see how they manage.
Oh, and on a completely different note, I finished reading Anansi Boys. Excellent, excellent novel. I liked its pace, which seemed very fast but, when you go back to think about the novel, was actually probably pretty slow. It impresses me when an author can tell a story in nearly 500 pages without boring you at any point in the reading - that's rare, with my screwdriver-sized attention span.
I suppose that's a bit of my status report for now. I might also throw in a few fun facts, such as how interesting it is to study Chinese, how nervous and uncomfortable I get when I skip school even if I know it's stuff I don't need to attend, like today, and how I walk around telling myself "Dude, it's sin o/h, cos a/h, tan o/a. You know this stuff. Relax, mate". I wish I could portion out my diligence in reasonably sized chunks, rather than working tirelessly for 16 hours, sleeping like the dead, and spend the following day barely attending school and being nervous about it. Another fun fact is I've been visiting Anton's friends, who had a water-pipe standing around in their kitchen. And I've been doing a lot of walking. Seriously a lot of walking. My legs are like, bodybuilder legs or something. Except, you know, for walking.
So, until next time: Don't let the kazoos bite ya!
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