Little-Wonder.Net - Personal domain and blog of Brenda Tan

Oh hai. So I’ve disappeared for a while - mainly because I’ve been up to my elbows in work clearing a backlog of assignments and even attempting to complete (or at least partially) some future dated assignments just for the sake of lightening the weight on my shoulders.

This is mainly because I’d be heading to Macau (and Hong Kong) for a short holiday with parents from tomorrow, for about 4-5 days.

Of course, I’d like to go there with a clear mind, don’t I?

Okay, maybe not quite. I’ve scheduled quite a few readings and topic revisions (and some coding for FYP) to be completed during the trip itself, which I’d work on mostly at night. The daytime will be strictly reserved for play. Heh.

Yesterday was particularly hectic, and I was particularly scared that I would be finished by the time the day is over. One make-up midterm (which was supposed to be last Monday which I missed because of my little A & E episode last Sunday and the ensuing medical leave, on top of two project meetings and a presentation that easily counts for 30% of my final grade.

If I were to grade myself on how I survived yesterday, I would say that I had barely scraped through.

Let me start with the midterm.

Two essay questions, with the time limit of “25 minutes total” emblazoned in bold right before my eyes.

However, I have absolutely no idea how I interpreted the time limit as “25 minutes each“. As such, I was still happily putting the final touches to my answer for the first question at 20 minutes, which was when the professor came along and snapped me out of my reverie by announcing that I only have “a few minutes left”.

Panic ensued.

I screeched (yes, screeched), slammed the paper over and started writing furiously for the second question which was … still blank at that point in time while the professor looked over my shoulder in puzzlement.

All that was on my mind at that exact moment was “WHATTHEFUCK WHATTHEFUCK WHATTHEFUCK?”

Needless to say, my handwriting on the second page was like chicken scratches. With a huge arrow drawn from my answer in green and a little message - Sorry for my terrible handwriting here!

At least I’ve managed to write down everything I wanted to write - although of course, one can never be sure whether I’ve managed to get every point. But come on, one essay question completed (more or less) in five minutes reasonably satisfactorily. Give me some credit lah!

Next, the presentation during Social Psychology class.

Basically, my team and I were pretty much gung-ho about the whole thing and I daresay we delivered a pretty good presentation overall.

(Albeit corny - because we were talking about social loafing and so we’ve added images of bread loaves on a couple of slides. Not to mention an honest-to-goodness fake croissant which we held up occasionally to emphasize the words ‘loaf’ or ‘loafing’. I think the class thought we were nuts.)

Plus, we were all dressed in red … to match the colour scheme of our slides.

All went well until the question & answer segment, which was when I started feeling woozy … mainly because we’ve been standing in one position for too long. I think I nearly passed out at one point, and my groupmate was hissing at me to grab the table. But later on, I keeled over slightly (and attempting to hide my discomfort from the rest of the class by cowering behind the table), was spotted by the professor who then instructed me to sit down immediately before I actually fainted for real.

Darn. Stupid illness.

I’m wondering how I’d cope in Macau, because methinks we’d be doing a fair share of walking. (And my tolerance level even for this simple activity currently stands at 15 minutes.) Considering the fact that I’ve been relapsing every day for the past one week, it’s pretty worrisome.

I raised the concern to my mum, who responded with - “It’s okay, we can always rent a wheelchair from the hotel.”

To which I screeched - “I am so not going to sit in a wheelchair. I have my PRIDE.”

(Knowing that people are sure to gawk at a young, healthy-looking girl with no broken limbs in a wheelchair, without knowing she has a heart condition. Nothing against wheelchairs or wheelchair-bound people, of course.)

Ah well.

Meanwhile, I’d ought to head off to complete my packing, as well as to clear my sleep debt before I catch my 2.10 p.m. flight to Macau tomorrow.

And I will definitely update from there since I have Frou Frou with me. With pictures, of course. ;)

Until then, have a very good night.