Freedom of Speech

I must say, this blogging world feels kind of empty without Richie! Let us all have a moment of silence in memory of what a great blog he shared with us... I just hope it'll come back soon!

School certificate approaches and so our teachers find themselves wondering what to do with themselves and the class they're supposed to teach. They have a few options -
a) make the class mindlessly do past school cert papers,
b) shove textbooks in their hand and say "STUDY",
c) lecture the class about how important (but not really) the SC is,
d) talk to them about nothing in particular or, last but not least,
e) let the students run amuck like the insane animals we are.

Whatever option the teachers pick, I find myself sitting in class wondering why I bothered to walk the few metres to get to school. But over the past couple of days, I've found myself in science having really interesting conversations with my friends. Among these discussion topics was freedom of speech!

So if you were to rant about your teachers on your blog (which, I might add, seems perfectly normal to me since the point of most of our blogs is to speak our minds) and your teachers happen to find out, can they really take any action against you?

We live in a free society where we supposedly have the right to freedom of opinion and freedom of speech, right? No, not really. Though legally we're allowed to say whatever we want, society dictates what we can and cannot say. Take away all the legal mumbo jumbo and most of us would still be sitting there like polite little children wondering what the right thing to say is. I read an interesting line somewhere on the net the other day - are we more afraid of being lied to or does our real fear lie in the possibility of the truth? Now I'm not saying that we should all start screaming about how much we hate someone's hair or how ugly we think someone is, but sometimes I just wish people would say what's on their minds. A lot of the time, people are left in the dark thinking they're one person for so long that when they do finally get a reality check, it's almost too hard to bear. So if someone is annoying the hell out of you, tell them! What point is there in letting them annoy you when you could benefit the whole of society (so maybe I'm being a little over dramatic) by telling them what your problem is!

I'm also sick of all the drama that goes on because two people can't face each other and really tell each other what they think. Instead, they store it all up there in their heads and finally, one day, they explode and everything is blown way out of proportion.

I hope that made some sense. Wow, that was the longest post I've written in a while!

- thelazydreamer

Time is cruel.

It' 10:43 pm and sadly, most of my studious friends are now asleep. Many of them will rise early in the morning to study, study, study. I will wake up in the middle of the night to eat before fasting and pray and then, yup, you guessed it, go right back to sleep.
I won't kid myself - I'm having time problems. Maybe it's because I'm fasting and I feel tired most of the time. But I come home from school, kill time until I break my fast and then watch television for another hour. Then I sit down to do work, but my gosh, getting myself to do work is a feat in itself. A lot of people think that I'm very smart, that I study a lot, but that's really not true. I'm not smart and when I do study, it's just a huge mess of nothingness that I forget the next morning. So... yeah, it doesn't help at all.

I hate time constraints. I hate deadlines hanging over my neck like a guillotine or something. I hate knowing that in a few weeks from now, I will be sitting my trials and YES I KNOW THEY DO NOT COUNT FOR ANYTHING, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to do well. But the problem is that I cannot manage my time properly, and I have so many topics to cover before than that just the thought of it makes me want to go hide under my bed. I have not had time to do anything I love - I have not touched my guitar or keyboard in weeks, I have not had the time to reply to my friends' letters, I have not had the time to sit down and write to my heart's content. All because of my stupid time management problems. Like I said to my friend today, my life revolves around eating, sleeping and doing work (when I manage to actually do it) but I want it to be so much more.

Please, tell me that someone out there feels the way I do. And please, someone tell me how to manage my time better :(

- thelazydreamer.

Silence

On Thursday a lot of people from my year and I went to the youth road safety forum (I think that's what it's called). At my old school excursions were quite frequent but apparently at MFHS they're pretty rare, so everybody was very hyped up! I'm not going to go through every single event of the entire excursion, but there's one particular part of the day that really got to me. There were 3 speakers who spoke to us towards the end of the first part of the day, and each of these 3 speakers had suffered some sort of brain injury from a motor vehicle crash. It was painful to watch them limp up the stairs up to the podium thingo and when they first got up there, they just waved by way of greeting.When they started talking, everyone in the entire arena just fell silent. And I'm talking everyone - as in, thousands of high school kids. Can you imagine what it takes to get an arena full of teenagers to shut up? These speakers were immensely powerful - their words weren't even symbolic or complicated or anything, but to think that some twist of fate had stolen their ability to walk and talk properly was quite frightening to me. They described what had happened to have gotten them to that point, and also what their time in hospital to get back on their feet was like. They stumbled over words and laughed at themselves and continued retelling their story as if it didn't hurt them at all to relive what must have been painful memories. They were amazing.

-thelazydreamer

Attractive Lawyer at Career's Day LOL

Today was career's day.

The End.

Nah, I'm kidding. Obviously I have an opinion about this. Firstly, let me ask you guys out there, when you talk to a woman, do you really stare at their chests the whole time? I ask you this because throughout the whole day, in each session, the teachers kept repeating to the guys that this was a definite DON'T. Well der, but it strikes me as kind of odd that the male teachers kept reiterating this.
Secondly, when you're talking to a person, where do you look? Apparently there's this triangle thing that encompasses the person's eyes and nose, and you're meant to look somewhere in that triangle while you're talking to them. See, I find staring at someone's eyes intently while they speak kind of awkward, but I do it anyway.
And finally, listening to people talk all day is quite tiring, surprisingly.
These lawyers came and they looked exactly what I thought a lawyer would look like - all "well groomed" as the teachers like to say, and suited up. I would actually like to be a lawyer - it's one of the jobs I've had in my mind since I started high school. Anywho, the lawyers - a middle aged woman and a young-ish guy - were struggling to keep our attention. I mean, come on, expecting a bunch of teenagers to listen to you for eighty minutes straight is kind of unreasonable. And then this other (*cough* attractive *cough*) male lawyer walked in and every single girl in the room just swivelled in their seats to watch him walk down the stairs and sit down at the front. Everything was silent, for those few moments. It was quite amusing :D Unfortunately, he did not speak. Guys, here's a tip - wear a suit and girls will be all over you.

hehe, I just felt like I had to retell this story.

-thelazydreamer

Zarin the Silent One?

Today was a bleh kind of day. It was mufti day, and I hate mufti days, because I hate figuring out what to wear and being me, I inevitably compare myself to others.

I think I just flunked a science test - I hate it when you start out thinking a test is easy and then you actually get past the second page.... How do I know I flunked? I didn't do a 10 mark question. =.=

Then in English, my teacher wouldn't help me with my speech. Thank God we have an extension on our history assessment. I'm feeling the pressure yet again and this weather isn't helping my bad mood.

So to the topic of this blog...

In primary school, I was a reject, sort of. I was depressed, I think, and had a really, really bad self esteem. I still do now, but back then it REALLY showed through. Then I started high school, things began to look up and I found a set of irreplaceable friends - friends that have the ability to make me laugh until I'm in tears. But I still wasn't happy - my school was a tiny one and I am a very ambitious person - so then we moved to Sydney. And here I am.

But throughout my weird schooling journey, I've always had the same problem: Apparently I am very quiet.

I asked A.N if I was quiet once and she said, "You're not quiet, it's just that everyone around you is really loud."

Is that true? Is that really it?

Whatever it is, it really annoys me. I speak, nobody hears me. I call somebody, they don't hear me and I have to literally scream at them until they turn around to pay attention to me. There's always been something just that bit more interesting than me and now it's pissing me off. I know that nobody has the intention of ignoring me or pissing me off, but it still does annoy me.

To be honest, I feel like sort of a ghost sometimes... especially in this new school, because people have already created 'bonds' and have histories together. They know who to hate, they know who to love, but I'm still trying to figure that out for myself. It's not going too well.

Add to that my inability to be 'heard' and it's just... not too great.

I don't know what's with my thoughts lately - like everybody else, I've been stressing about the huge load of schoolwork, but I've also been more self critical than usual, mentally comparing myself to EVERYBODY and picking out flaws about myself. Something tells me that this is extremely unhealthy, but how do I stop?

Z.

SLEEEEPY

Okay, so I'm not really meant to be online at the moment. I have to go to tutor in less than an hour (I started tutor just this term... gosh, I don't know how you guys handle yet another hour of school!). I had around four, maybe less, hours of sleep last night so my eyes are almost glued shut. Which is weird, cause at school today I was pretty energetic. Someone suggested this theory to me that the more you sleep, the tired-er? you feel. The less you sleep, the more energy you have. :S

Okay. Well makes sense, kind of, but NOW I AM SLEEPY!

ALL THESE ASSIGNMENTS ARE DOING MY HEAD IN! SERIOUSLY! WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE DUE IN WEEK 9, HUH? Will you teachers be laughing at us when we're all lying on the floor, so tired that we can't get up? IS THIS AMUSING TO YOU?

I'm going to do a full rant on assignments later, but no time now!

I just wanted to say that people at MFHS ... well the people I hang out with and have classes with... ARE SO SMART. seriously, I had debating trials yesterday and got to listen to a few more speeches today. You people are crazy smart. Seriously. I listened to those speeches with my jaw somewhere around my knees. They were so calm and collected, while I got up there with my arms and fingers shaking like hell! Not to mention my stutter! Damn you stutter!

Uh-oh, the father approaches. GOTTA JET!

Z.

Wow, that was fast.

So it’s that time of year again: back to school. And I’m telling you, this Australian summer is not making things any easier. Seriously, people were like DRIPPING with sweat today, nobody can get enough water, words start to swim before your eyes cause you feel so dizzy from the heat, and there’s NO AIR-CONDITIONING! For goodness sake, even the primary school has air-conditioning yet the high school doesn’t?!

So yeah, it’s that time of the year where you get ‘motivational’ (get-off-your-arse) speeches, where teachers and other adults tell you to get a move on because it’s getting toward your senior year and you have to ‘try your hardest’ and bla bla bla. That’s great and all, but … I just don’t like school! I CAN’T HELP IT!

But I full contact-ed my books and got my bag ready and decided, yup, this is the year Zarin. Try your hardest… WOO! It’s day two now, and I’m surprised at how fast this motivated and energetic attitude has faded away. I feel kind of.. I don’t know, tired all the time? Like there’s no point? What’s wrong with me? I just feel like someone’s going to upstage me anyway, so what’s the point in going all out? What’s the point if SOMEONE out there (namely parents) are going to get disappointed anyway?

I realise that this is an extremely crappy attitude… but I just feel so out of it.

Z.