Of Cats and Ostrich Worms

So the baptism was over and such. Overall, minus the fact that I had mild chlorine allergies, it was more fun than I expected. Had a good old jaw with the cousins, and have a remarkable time throwing my youngest cousin (who celebrated her birthday on that day as well) into the swimming pool several times as a form of "dunking".

Have been having an OK time in college lately, and my sis got a new laptop, which is really cool and nice...Healthwise, my ear kinda hurts a bit, but I think it'll be over soon. Bio, particularly, was the only class in which we traded barbed insults and jokes. Seriously, at the beginning of semester 1, Mr Low was really shy and unsure about joking around with us, but this sem, I think he's gotten used to our class and thanks to our influence (ahem!) he's getting more and more sarcastic in that funny, bumbling, Mr Low way.

Some examples:

In biology, the last class, we were doing Species and Evolution, which sounds fascinating but can get really confusing if you zone out half way. So Mr Low was talking about genus, and species and how the definition of species is a group of organisms that can interbreed to produce fertile offspring, keyword being fertile. And he was giving us examples.

"...Two different species cannot interbreed to form fertile offspring....Check if, let's say, this tiger and an African tiger -- wait, there is no African tiger!" (It's true, google it. No current tigers in Africa, but fossils state tha sabre-tooth tigers lived there once upon a time.)

And then today, he was going through the whole biodiversity thing with us, where he was talking about different techniques for measuring biodiversity in a habitat, such as quadrat sampling and the capture-mark-recapture technique. So he asked the class in general if we ever did the CMR technique.

All of us gave an unsure, "Uh....no...."

He tried to jog our memory. "I'm sure you did something basic experiment like this back in Form 4, Form 5. You know, where you take a bowl and fill it with red beans, and then you remove a handful, and you mark with or something, and your beans are," he thought a bit, "your beans are, 'Rabbits' and --"

Cat interrupted. "Ha! Beans that hop!" And she mimicked a bean jumping around and the whole class burst into laughter and Kerrine was looking at Cat, with the look on her face that clearly spelt out "LAME".

Mr Low continued, trying to hold in his laughter; failed. "Then you put the handful of beans back into the bowl, and then you mix it around, to mean that your 'rabbits' are mixing around amidst the population." For some reason, everyone laughed at this. "And then you grab another handful, and you count how many beans are marked--"

"Oh, oh, I remember doing this experiment!" Shangeeth contributed excitedly. "Guys, don't do this experiment, you have to count all the beans, and mix it up, it's so immature lah..."

Mr Low grinned. "So I hope that since you are all, uh, mature enough, we don't have to do this experiment..."

Shan cut in again. "So what? The packet of beans is your entire population?"

This thing lasted the entire class. Mr Low was talking about crossbreeding, and how, maybe, people crossbreed different species of cows. "So let's say you have this cow that gives a lot of meat, and you have this cow that gives out a lot of milk, so you crossbreed that cow with the bull that gives out a lot of milk--"

And the whole class shouted with laughter because, really? A bull that produces milk?

Sir tried to continue. "Sorry, not bull. So you take the bull and you crossbreed it with the cow of the different species--"

"And you get a bow," Lyn commented drily. Bull + Cow = Bow (rhymes with cow)

So naturally, this thing with cows leads to the tale of how Lyn is so gullible, she fell for Shean-Woei's story about how brown cows have moustaches. And Lyn fired the "Do brown cows have moustaches?" question at Mr Low with such conviction that he hesitated a bit (because, h later explained, she seemed really confident that such a thing happened) and Lyn used his hesitation to argue the fact that see, she wasn't the only one who fell for it. And Cat commented that at least Mr Low was better than Mr Ling, the Physics teacher.

Of course, my class being the way it is, demanded to know about the whole Physics teacher thing. I was present when it actually happened, and I couldn't resist laughing when that day (which was also the day Lyn fell for the moustached brown cows story) Shean-Woei was telling us about it and she told the same thing to Mr Ling, expecting him to scoff. Instead, he gave her the reaction of the century: "Ha? Really?"

Later today in bio, Mr Low started telling us about this particular species of worm.

ML: There's a worm that buries its head in the soil...

Cat & Fi in unison: Earthworm!

ML: No, another one --

Cat & Lyn in unison: Ostrich worm!

Then, you can't just end this story without some more laughs. There was an in joke someone started during Physics when we were doing capacitors and capacitance when all of a sudden, Cat and Kerrine started laughing. Seems that Alex, being his old lame self, smirked at Cat and said one word:

Cat-pacitors.

Moving With The Beat

And yes, due to immense pressure from people I know, I will abide your wishes and update my blog. It's probably going to be done in a few parts, and after you read this, there mayn't be anything left to mention in my email correspondence to the special few. And my memory's so skewed up I'm not going to bother to do stuff chronologically. In fact, I'm actualy referring to my journal to help me fill in the blanks.

Here goes.

The big news is: I'm getting baptized this coming Thursday. On Malaysia Day, which also happens to be my cousin's birthday. Yeah, all us 5 cousins are getting baptised together and our fathers get to dunk us in.

Due to that, we had to go to this Baptismal class I think on the first Saturday of the month. Woke up late, and got so worried about getting there on time to find out that we were the earliest people there. The 2-hour class finished in one hour, minly because we didn't ask questions, and we finished up quickly and went home. Spent the rest of the day in front of the idiot box.

Then, on Friday, we had a biology test later, so I was busy studying in the common room in KE since the labs (my first class was Physics lab) weren't opened yet. After a bit, I went into the girls bathroom at level one to tie my hair up properly, hot day and all. Turned around and grabbed the door knob to realised that the door wouldn't open.

Die.

So I started pulling at the stupid knob, cursing, getting severely traumatised and really really panicked. Wonder, really, that I didn't hyperventilate. Called my pal; she's still very far from HELP. And as I finished texting her, suddenly I got a text:

Oi. I'm here at KPD E. Come and get me.

Thank God my sister was there to save the day. I furiously sent off a text: I'm stuck in the toilet. Knob won't open. HELP!!! Started pacing around the cubicles, checking my watch every five seconds.....Why isn't she here yet?


After what seemed like eternity, my sis came and rescued me. I am free! And for the next ten minutes or so, I watched in undeniable pleasure and childish delight as girl after girl walked into the bathroom and get themselves locked in. The fun ended when I had to go to the lab.

Lab was over pretty quick, just a couple of practicals. Then we headed off to Wisma Help for the Bio test. Seems that our classroom had been used as an exam hall, so all the tables and chairs were in that exam hall seating. The moment we entered though, someon started crying for the tables and chairs to be rearranged. "We don't want Mr Low to remember that he gave us a test today," was the reasoning since Mr Low had set our test way back before the hols, "so everyone, let's rearrange the tables. Someone, rub the white board. Afterwards if he see the 'Law Exam' notice on the board he'll remember!"

To me it was pretty stupid. I mean, it's a test, yeah? So what's the big deal? We'll probably need to sit in alternate positions anyway. I ignored them, and sat right in front of the teacher's table. All around me, everyone was bustling into action. People were busy rearranging the furniture, but since we didn't really bother about the arrangements, it ended up with all the furniture being pushed and crowded against the left side of the room, leaving the right extremely empty.

"Hey, Ely. Come lah, move your table!"

Me, indignant. "Why? We're gonn have to move it back later anyway. What if the next class coming in for exam wants to use it?"

"Then we'll rearrange lah!"

Suit yourself. I'm not going anyway. In the end I was overruled and they pushed my table to the side.

No use anyway. Mr Low came in, raised a bemused eyebrow at the oddly skewed arrangement of the class, and with a lot of sarcasm and logic reasoning, managed to "persuade" us - more of politely ordering us - to rearrange the furniture back to the way it was before we had our exam. And then since we'd totally forgotten how the arrangement was, Shean-Woei kept popping over to the next class to give orders on the rearranging.

Hehe. In your face.