I was really depressed today. But I know a lot of IBers are. So instead of ranting about how upset I was, I’ll try to cheer everyone up :)

 

How To Cheer Yourself Up:

1. Blog.

 

2. Read Mr. Semicolon Tsunami’s “What is Killing the Good-Natured Women?” in the prestigious and jaw-dropping Churchill’s Big Bang Science Journal. You’ll die laughing. Distribution of the Journal next Wednesday (thanks Elly)!

 

3. Find your inner German self. i.e, adopt a German name.

i.e. “Wolfgang Wienerschnitzelhaus” – ms.domo arigato

“Bonschowitz kooreigünter” - bonjeune koo

“Henoritz Deschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff” -  henhen.

“Adolf Achtungpanzerkrieg” – leader of justin’s witness ha ha thanks lollipops and rainbows =D

 FUN FACT: Guess what ”donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan” means? “Danube steamship company captain”! LOL

 

4. Join the online cults: toothpaste for dinner, xkcd.com, the bane of my existence explodingdog, FML (thanks Elly)  is all I can think of so far. Obviously Facebook is a given for the procrastinators of IB. Any other suggestions?

 

5. Listen to music but who doesn’t?! This has always, always worked for me.  Today I listened to Wilco, Joanna Newsom, Damien Rice and indulged in music I haven’t heard for centuries (Weezer, White Stripes).

If you want to feel magically rejuvenated, inspired and motivated to take on anything (that includes EE’s) then listen to the beautiful clarinet melodies in Solo de Concours by André Messager.

…I’m trying to play it, but the tempo’s too fast! X_X

 

6. Play sports. Churchill’s Track and Field Team, Gloria M.’s exhaustive workouts, or biking to save the environment. It’s those endorphins ;)

7. Get excited for IB Formal! What song did you request?

 

Yup that’s it. Gotta fly!

 

Edit//: If you haven’t looked in the previous post…

Rethinking Land Productivity, Undernourishmet Around the World and Counting the Hungry: Latest Estimates are on buckets of photos!

Do you remember Thomas-oh-so-dreaded-Zengottia’s “The Numbing of the American Mind” from ToK class? I know pretty much everyone was irked by the Real-or-Hyperreal-Project, but something happened today that reminded me of the article:

Judy Woodruff is especially good at this, her particular little head nod, or shake, as the case may be, and the way her lips tighten up a tad. “If it were up to me as a human being I would never leave this coverage of thousands of dying innocents, but, as a newscaster, of course, I have to.”

And her speaking voice says, “All right, Jim, we have to go to a break now, but we will be following this story as it develops–and thanks again.” “Thank you, Judy,” says Jim, echoing her gesture, and we understand that he, too, as a human being, would never allow us to move on from so ghastly and demanding a reality, but it isn’t up to him as a human being either.

It isn’t up to anybody, actually. That’s the one real reality. Moving on.

It would be irrelevant to object by asking, “Well, how else are we supposed to do it?” There isn’t any other way to do it. That’s the point.

So, for example, you don’t have to wait for the anchorperson to change the topic. You can change it yourself, and you don’t have to sigh or tighten your lips as you make the transition. But you do.

So I was at IB Geography class and we were watching an agribusiness video. Nothing new, but the video, which was really dry, informative and not using the North-Americans-Are-Cruel-And-Africans-Die punchline, got me really depressed.

Why? Because it was so dry and informative. Here we have a 30 minute video on a topic on an international crisis that has been ongoing for decades, and we speak about it in the same tone as we would about Capitu’s undertow eyes. The video drones on about how corporations (Ralston Purina, Del Monte) have wiped out rainforests, endorsed severely low wages, encouraged chronic hunger, and afterwards we can do nothing but forget about it.

This is not another rant about kids today being selfish, nor is it another “Corporations are Bad” sort of thing. We really don’t have a choice. Like what Zengottia says (gosh this sounds like an essay), what else are we supposed to do it? For us, at that moment, there really isn’t anything we can do but sigh and reflect for a moment before switching to a ligher tone. You can take up a cause, of course – for the motivated beings – but with so many problems in the world, how are we supposed to judge which is the more important cause to take up?

So you might just throw your hands in the air and say, yeah, the world’s screwed up. That feels terrible (not to mention you’re taking the easy way out). But what else?

It also hit me when I got a stack of IB Geo handouts thicker than an elephant’s leg and was told to take notes on ALL of them. I’m complaining, saying it’s impossible and I’ll never remember the plethora of statistics and data that’s flung upon us and we’re somehow supposed to remember ALL of it by May 2010, and I felt mortified when it hit me that our handouts were on malnutrition (Counting the hungry: latest estimates and Counting the hungry: long-term trends in the developing world.)

Totally selfish of me to complain, right? And yet, if we complain about EE’s, it’s okay because it’s not directly related to malnutrition? (It’s related to deforestation!) Forget EE’s, what about AP’s and school and whatever in general?

I’m not saying we don’t have the right to complain. But what’s the right way of living without being a hypocrite? What’s the right response to it? What do we do?

=(

If you want to be cheered up (haha how ironic), check the next post.

Strangely tired. Slept for the entire afternoon, woke up at 8:00 pm. I was in a random mood, and so I ate coffee beans and strawberries for dinner (combined together tasted like cough medicine) while watching a documentary about coral reefs. Then I felt guilty for not being productive and did 11 pages of overdue calculus homework. It was hard trying to concentrate over the blaring trumpets of Miles Davis. It’s 4:10 A.M.

Anyways. Just a few housekeeping duties:

1. The PDF file to the ToK handout for the movie What the Bleep Do We Know?! Thanks to Sophia, Kimberley and Kurtis for pictures of the handout.

2. IB French Journals – we have to do up to Journal #63 (Thanks to Chris’s facebook note and everyone who contributed to it.) That means 9 more journals to go for me. Hooray :P

3. Scanning ALL IB Geography handouts (I got to take them home because I was sick all week). Coming soon!

4. Haha. Funny conversation yesterday (names changed):

Suzy:  omg. Astrid’s blog is in Google.

Me:  NO WAY. What did you do?

Suzy:  I googled Dom Casmurro and Pedro and there it is!

Kingface:  Cool. Now go put up an advertisement for our ACT project!

1. Sleep like a nocturnal animal. As soon as Spring Break hit, I went back to my regular nocturnal hours (sleep at 3 a.m, wake up at 12 p.m). I ended up feeling grumpy and cantankerous for the entire day. So, the next day, I woke up at 6:45 a.m to coach and shout myself hoarse at younger swimmers at PNSC’s Swim Camp. Felt much better :)

2. Delay the math and geo homework someone was supposed to do 2340 weeks ago. *shifty eyes*  I try to schedule, with mixed results. I am making flashcards for IB Bio and Geo like crazy because there’s no time after this week. Studybooks are pretty helpful – basically you memorize your notes and self-test yourself to see how much you remember. It eats up a lot of time though. And I usually end up doodling in my studybook anyways.

3. Completely forget about World Lit and EE’s until now. I googled our World Lit books, and you can imagine my surprise when I see that another blogger has put her entire World Lit (Dom Casmurro and Pedro) and EE on her blog.

And here are some stats on subject areas for EE’s…

History: 6

Biology: 3

English: 6

Geography: 1

Math: 2 (a mystery!)

ToK: 0 (haha, just kidding.)

4. FORGET TO DO FRENCH JOURNALS ZOMG!!!!!!!!

 

Okay, let’s be positive: What To DO During Spring Break:

1. Do what takes a long time. I got a new laptop a LONG time ago, and this was the only time I could move all my files and folders from the old to the new. I also did some obsessive-compulsive bookmarks organizing and found some stuff. In case you’re interested:

Biology
Animations - it really helps, especially in the genes/nucleotides section.

Good ol’ Sparknotes saved me when the awful “Inquiry to Life” textbook ceased to be comprehensive, which was often…

IB Biology Homepage 

Click4Biology which has some good stats analysis on it

Statistical Analysis

Choosing a correlative test mostly I needed it for geo, but works for biology too.

Free statistics calculator which is dead helpful. For example, it can calculate Spearman’s Rank Correlation  and prevent any silly mistakes like these ones I made:

AHH! Why I thought 0, 0, 0, 0 and 0 were ranked as 4, 8, 9, 11 and 16, I have NO idea. I still haven’t stopped pulling my hair out for that.

2. Have fun. I had plenty of that this week! Yay! =)

Let’s see. Past five days:

 7 nosebleeds,
8 boxes of kleenex,
4 rolls of toilet paper,
27 coughing hysteria (hysterias?),
48 pills of Tylenol,
120 mL of disgusting cough syrup,
3 days of school absence,
1 lost party (DANG! :’( ),
and 4315872983471 textbooks and projects to make up.
 

Who would waste time complaining about IB? I’d rather write two World Lit Essays and an Extended Essay rather than live the past five days again.

It’s been total hell. I remember hacking away and coughing at night for so long I fell asleep by the washroom sink. I think my nose is permanently red.

There’s only one day left to Spring Break, but as usual there are two quizzes. Teachers, these days…

 

Astrid.

I was sick for the past four days. and i didn’t go to school today. and today everyone picked their World Lit books.

 

I think I am stuck with Dom Casmurro (shudder) and Pedro Paramo.

 

 

Dear God, I hope our World Lit essays don’t meet the same end…

 

 

I feel the same when I have to know that “if present rates of inflow of water into the Aral Sea continue, the Sea will continue shrinking until its surface area is just 6000 square kilometres, and its salt concentration will be 175 grames per litre, or about five times stronger than sea water.” Curse IB Geography.

 

 

It’s okay, everyone, Term 2 is over! Hooray!