Tuesday, April 25, 2006 Suscribe to this blog


More and more and more! sanny @ 9:18 AM


Waa......it's been such a long time since I last update an entry here...just goes to show how lazy I am muahahahaha......

Contrary to that claim though, I've signed up for Japanese classes in order not to let my Japanese go rusty for wont of regular use. I'd signed up for two classes, one to prepare for JLPT 2, the other one for conversational practice; my colleagues at work had recommended me the school and one of them is in the Introductory Course class on Friday; my classes are on Fri and Sat morning so at least I've a buddy to accompany me on Fridays! The tuition fees are quite reasonable, about $190 per term (ard 10 lessons or 2 months); there are some Japanese learning Chinese at the language school too, which is located at Isetan so I can always go shopping (on Sat, cos on Fri the shops would've already closed by the time I finish my night class) after my lesson! Hohoho...

Anyway, classes had already gone into the 2nd term (Intermmediate classes & above are held yearly) by the time I registered, so in a sense I've a lot to catch up on my own...bothers! My 'baptism of fire' included having to take a mock exam on the very first day of class (Due to the fact that it's a mock exam day - for JLPT 2 class there's a mock test every other month I think)! Figure that...how very welcoming. As expected, a lot of vocabs and phrases were foreign to me, even though I could guess some of the meanings through kanji when available. Worse, being the careless git that I am, I initially shaded twenty or more so circles on the wrong MCQ sheet and the only eraser I had was my miserable mechanical pencil's teeny-weeny-does-not-erase-cleanly eraser. PILOT, please improve on the mechanical pencil eraser! What if that was a real exam? Luckily, halfway through the Sensei returned to the room and saw me forcefully erasing circle after circle and he lent me his spare eraser (which in actual fact does not erase cleanly either - either that or the pencil lead contains too much carbon -- PILOT!!! What's wrong with your products?! Kidding). Anyway I took the test with two others who'd missed taking the exam previously, so I'd only get to meet my classmates this week. All three of us barely had enough time to finish the whole paper (21/2 hr paper)

Oh, by the way..for that mock exam...I failed (225/400 - passing grade is at least 240)...boohoo...as expected...but the consolation is that even those pupils who've been attending classes since January also failed (I attended the make-up lesson on Saturday and the exam results were returned to the pupils then)...there's this one super cocky smart-alecky guy in class who managed to pass (267/400)...more about this later (shall lash out in Cafe)...gosh...can't stand it! I'm telling you, this kind of ppl only exist prevalently in this country.

On another note, we bought an electronic piano, finally! Need to buy headphones connector so we can use the big headphone while playing so as not to disturb the neighbours...that's the simple part. The problem is, it's been ages since I last played and all the while we never did take any official graded lessons, so you can imagine the unharmonious timbres heard all over when we took turns to try out the piano...Niki and James has yet need to learn to play the piano...although some of Niki's friends are self-taught experts (one of them's even able to emulate Maxim songs just by hearing those a couple of times...kaohz)...I doubt James has the discipline to practice anyway. Currently I'm just playing some of the songs from the songbooks I'd purchased previously. Now on FF songs and wanting to find my old Les Miserables songbook which is lying somewhere in Jakarta (I liked playing One Day More and Stars)...

Meanwhile, on top of all these I still have to finish my system analysis and recommendation report. This week I need to practice my presentation too...so stressed!

Herrghh...anyway now my aim, apart from acing my Japanese and stuff that stuck-up-as-if-his-Japanese-is-so-bloody-proficient-which-in-fact-isn't *whew* student some humble pie, is to learn to play the piano smoothly again (I heard that playing Bossa Nova songs is recommended if you don't want your mistakes to show, 'cos no matter how you improvise, it'll sound ok - but currently no such plans), learn other languages I want to learn, and exercise (+ housework - I feel quite compelled to do more housework after seeing my mom slog whenever she visits us - plus Mother's Day is coming). I don't know if I can cramp all these now but hopefully come May I'd have finished all my projects and can concentrate on actually doing all these things I've said I wanted to accomplish. Tomorrow I'll be going on an airport excursion...urrghh...late for home again.