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An illustrated regular |
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Friday, December 23, 2005
Let's just get this over with...
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
E emaka maya!
So the Christmas Carol concer was on Monday, and it went really well. There were, all choirs put together, about 515 pupils singing. I'm not sure, but I think there might have been maybe between 150 and 200 in the bands and orchestras (maybe even approx. 300, but I'm not good at estimating numbers!). It was a bit strange wearing the pretty much the same clothes as everybody lese (black trousers/skirt, white shirt and school tie. I tied the knot on my tie all by myself, by the way!). I might post a picture or two when they come on JGHS's website. Mom took a efw pictures for me, but they sat so far away that you can barely make anything out on the pictures, so I'm pretty sure the pictures that Mr Caddell (a teacher) took are much better.
Anyway. I think the senior choir did pretty well - except that we kind of almost screwed up a part of Say a Little Prayer - and O Holy Night was, according to members of the audience, choir and conductor alike, beautiful. And the senior vocal group did preeetty well, too (I'm running out of adjectives and adverbs, here: help me!). Our song, Noel Nouvelet (for those who are familiar with hymns - it's teh same melody as the Icelandic hymn Frae i frosti sefur) (it's originally French, but we sang the English translation. Typical, ain't it?) sounded good - the altos weren't as shy as they've always been at rehearsals (although they could've sung a little bit stronger, but hey, it's all bygones now. And it really did go well, all things considered).
The s2/s3 choir sang two songs that I personally would have loved to sing; Last Christmas, by Wham! (as I expect you all to know) and Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen (that is absolutely one of the most beautiful songs ever). The p7/s1 choir - the "Mammoth choir" as Mrs O'Brien called them, because they're about 300! The p7 pupils were from 3 primary schools in the neighbourhood, you see) sang Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day (I know! I know!!!) and some song that don't know the name of.
Out of all the bands and orchestras - Senior Wind Band, Junior Wind Band, Flute Ensemble, Percussion Ensemble, String Orchestra, Guitar Ensemble and Clarsach Ensemble - that also performed at the concert, I think the Senior Jazz Band were the best. They were perfectly awesome. And the most amazing thing is, I think, is that they are "self-rehearsed" (I think there's another word for it, but I don't remeber it), that is, there's no teacher that conducts them or is in charge or anything. They do it all by themselves, although the leader is one Anna Roberts, musical genius and straight-A student, who Mrs O'Brien told me, when I talked to her about joining the senior vocal group in August/September, is a "nice girl." And she is.
Anyways. Tomorrow is the last day of school before the holidays! Can you believe it?!? And it's only 3 days till Christmas! And I'm not really in the Christmas spirit yet! Alright, so watching Home Alone 1+2 and The Grinch really makes me feel Christmassy, the jolly spirit doesn't stick for long. Maybe it's this lack of snow and cold. I'm not used to this "warmth" (considering it's December, I mean). It's usually around or over 5°C, while it's around zero degrees in good ol' Iceland, I've heard. But no snow there, I've also heard. But hey, there's always hope! Cross your fingers and think Bing Crosby!
QotD: Anya: "Does anybody else feel that?"
Willow: "What?"
Anya: "The cold drought of paralysing fear." -Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Click on a trailer link at the bottom of this page to experience true beauty. |
Friday, December 16, 2005
Seven things
I have been "challenged" (how else to put it?) to list seven things of this and that. So here goes:
Seven things I want to do before I die:
>Meet Meg Cabot
>Be entirely rid of the darn epilepsy (that's not strictly speaking a thing I can do, but I want it to happen!) and get off the Neurontin and Lamictal
>Learn French - "The Language of Looove"
>Read the whole works of the Brontes, Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, etc. etc.
>Write at least one, and have published, novel
>Stay at least one night in a suite at The Witchery by the Castle (according to Dannii Minouge: "The perfect lust-den..."
Seven things I can do:
>Cook a variety of simple dishes (and not just microwave dinners)
>Sing loads of songs and hymns without any sheet music (or music at all, but that might sound kind of off-key :) )
>Recite entire conversations from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch
>Do the laundry (you will find that people my age can often not do that, as well as cook! A shame that is.)
>Sew simple things and change one article of clothing into another (a good example is a top that was originally a regular, kind of ugly, skirt, then a then-cool skirt, and then a slightly revealing top.)
>Totally unintentionally become a teacher's pet (*coughmsmalcolmcough*)
>Fillet fish for 8+ hours straight
Seven things I can't do:
>Drive (darn that epilepsy!)
>Understand any kind of science, in general
>Stop drinking carbonated sugar-free water
>Do push-ups on my toes (that sounds weird but you know what I mean, right?)
>Watch The Grinch without shedding a few tears
>Get rid of the acne that was supposed to be just a puberty thing. I'm pretty sure I'm past that phase, so why hasn't my skin cleared up? And why doesn't any skincare product work well on it?
>Start a conversation with strangers (I can talk, alright, but somehow I can't have the initiative)
Seven things about the opposite sex which charm me (isn't the answer to this question always supposed to be "everything!"?):
>Mysterious eyes (how can eyes be mysterious? I don't know, they just are.)
>Lips
>Voice (I don't go for the squeaky)
>Height (shorter than me doesn't work. Always having to bend down? Don't think so.)
>Personality (must be able to hold my attention; boring doesn't work either.)
>Political opinions (right-wing is a big no-no, even though he passes all of the above with flying colours)
>Hair (a do that adds to the "mysteriousness" (see item no. 1. I know that the appropriate noun is "mystery" but I don't feel that it fits in this context) can replace any of the above, excluding items no.5 and 6.)
Seven places I want to go to:
>Italy (especially Rome, Pompeii, and Milan)
>USA (mostly New York, but a road trip, visiting all the major cities and all the Springfields might be fun)
>France (the whole nine yards)
>Faroe Islands
>Greece (whole ten yards)
>Germany (I have to use that language which I apparently, compared to the other Higher German students at JGHS, am so good at)
>England (London and Stonehenge are the places of most interest)
Seven words or phrases I often say:
>Neat
>Shite (no to be confused with the word "shit" - this is not a typo)
>Jee-eesus Christ
>Oh. My. God. (cheesy, I know)
>Djoefulsins andskotans helviti (when I'm at school and feel a strong need to swear, I do it in Icelandic, since I think most teachers would frown upon it if I'd say the f-word in their presence)
>Whoa (when I trip on sth or almost lose my balance - same thing I guess - which I often do, I say this)
>Hi-how-are-you? (I've been house-broken to being automatically English-ly polite)
Seven things I see right now:
>My new Christmas outfit hanging on a kitchen cabinet
>Matti's Christmas present from me (the contents of which I will not reveal)
>My purse
>My dry laundry on the clothesline above the kitchen table
>The refigerator
>My tall mirror which I moved from my room and into the kitchen today in order to be able to watch what I was doing when I straightened my hair
>A half-full 2-litre bottle of Diet Coke
And that's it for today. Hope you didn't think reading this was a complete waste of time (although your reading this post at all indicates that you have nothing better to do... *visibleinsecurity*)
And now it is Maggie and Eddie's turn (here's to hoping they'll even read this!).
And my oh my, that darn mouse is getting more and more daring. Just now it was on the kitchen counter! I think I could easily catch it if I were to wait for it to appear, but I've no idea what I'd do with it! |
Mouse loose in the house
The mouse of the house has no shame. Before it only showed her snout late at night when it was dark (to my knowledge, i.e.), and it was just a coincidence if any of us saw it scuttling back behind the washing machine when we turned on the kitchen light. But just this week, I've seen it twice - in broad daylight, and it was so not running for its life. The first time was in the kitchen; it had somehow gotten itself up onto the window-seat, and then it jumped back down and then ran - not too fast - back behind the washing machine. And today, it followed me into the bathroom! It shamelessly ran from the door, and behind the toilet, where it disappeared.
It lives in our kitchen, below the lower cabinets, behind the planks that are between the cabinets and the floor. I know that's it home because even now I can hear it partying there; kicking and once in a while letting out the odd squeak. I can just imagine her being there, having made itself a cartoon-esque bed out of an empty box of matches, and dancing a la Jerry when it escapes the traps we set for it.
I'm not afraid of her or anything (though I did let a girlish squeal escape my lips when I first saw it, but now I'm just startled by it), and it doesn't annoy me either, but I still don't feel comfortable sharing a flat with a tiny little mouse. Now that I know that it's starting to dare to cross the kitchen threshhold, how can I know that it won't jump onto my bed at night while I sleep and cuddle up on my pillow next to my head?
QotD: "For a vegetarian, Rent, you're a fucking shite." -Sick Boy, Trainspotting |
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Talking Rubbish
I went to this eco-conference with 5 other girls from the eco-group, called Make Waste History Summit (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle) yesterday. It was... interesting. There were kids and teachers from 23 other high schools in Edinburgh, which are a part of this eco-schools Scotland thing. It was held at the Assembly Rooms on George Street, and started at 9:30. Nicole, the other 18-year-old at JGHS, and I thought it started at 9 AM, so that's when we turned up. Mrs Westerman, who is supposed to be "supervising" our eco-group, had said that we should just go straight there instead of coming first to school for registration, so we didn't all come together, as it seemed all the other people from the other schools did. They were also all accompanied by a teacher (I saw one grey-haired female teacher who had purple highlights!), which we were not. Mrs Westerman couldn't come, so we were there alone. And not only that; she is so unorganised (I hear - from an "insider" - that that's just how she is) that she'd forgotten to register us! Nicole and I went inside and told the women who were at a desk in the foyer who we were and from what school we were, nut we weren't on the list! We had to have handwritten badges with our names and schools, not typed like everybody else! That was so business-like; having a badge with your name typed on it. But not us. It was ok, though, that we didn't have a teacher chaperoning us; it gave us a little more freedom.
Anyways. At the conference we listened to a couple of speeches, watched a short film from Portobello High School, which has won not one, but two Green Flags, for their environmentally-friendly-ing of their school. Then we split up in five groups, and each group went to a different workshop. During the day, everybody went to three workshops. The ones that I went to were B, where we learned sth about how much energy/oil/CO2 can be saved by recycling milk bottles (I think this example was to inspire us to recycle more things, but obviously we couldn't calculate the savings of recycling all things possible. Me and two other girls called Sarah, from George Heriot's School, and Catrina (I think) from some other school, calculated that if you dreink 2 1/2 l of milk per week, you can save 79% of CO2 and oil by recycling the bottles. Interesting, no?
The next workshop that I attended was a performance from the Environmental Arts Theatre Company, called "Diary of a Crisp Packet." It was entertaining; the diary itself started very poetically: "I woke up today and discovered that I excist." I did not know that a crisp packet starts as a plant 60 million years ago, before being stamped down by a dinosaur, to sinking into a lake, to becoming oil, to being sucked from an oil well in the North Sea, to being sent to a plastic making factory. After lunch (free food!) I attended a workshop in which an environmental artist specialising in making sculptures out of billboard cardboard gave a talk about her work and showed us some slides of some of her sculptures. She even brought a few to show us! It was really neat.
Well, I think that's about enough for today. Oh, and while I remember: I had a haircut today - I now have chin-length hair. It looks, though I say so myself, good.
QotD: Highway patrolman: "What are you carrying two cases of soap for, son?"
Raoul Duke: "I wanna stay clean." -Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas |
Monday, December 12, 2005
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
Well, if The Sun says it, then it must be true!
This is such a sweet story, don't you think? I can only imagine how happy little Virginia O'Hanlon was when she read this!
This Editorial was reprinted in The Sun every year for fifty years!
That is the Christmas spirit.
Listen to this interview with Virginia O'Hanlon 66 years later. |
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Cindy Lou...
... there just might be hope for you yet! Go! Save your pal the Grinch! You know he's mean and hairy and smelly, and his hands are cold and clammy, but you think he's kinda... sweet. |
Yikes!
I'm baking gingerbread cookies. I used some recipe from the internet - not the one we usually use, because there was one ingredient that I couldn't find in any shop, and the internet recipe didn't have that particular ingredient. Heck, I wish I had just used the old recipe and skipped the sal volatile (hjartarsalt). This is a catastrophe. I made the dough last night, at midnight after I came home from babysitting.
So far so good.
Then I put the dough in a bowl, covered it with plastic cling film, and put in the fridge. When I woke up and had watched a little Saturday morning TV, I took out the dough, intending to make cookies that would bring out the Christmas mood in any Scrooge or Grinch.
Not so much.
The dough wasn't at all the way it was supposed to be; it was all sticky and completely un-rollable (if you know what I mean). But I didn't let that stop me, so I just used a spoon and shovelled small chunks of dough on the oiled oven plate. I figured shape didn't matter as much as the taste.
Boy was I right.
The shape is alright, but the taste - yikes. I think I used way too much clove (negull), so it does not taste well enough to cheer up Ebenezer Scrooge. I think I might need a little help from the Spirit of Christmas Present.
QotD: "For a thousand years I wielded the powers of the wish. I brought ruin to the heads of unfaithful men. I brought forth destruction and chaos for the pleasure of the lower beings. I was feared and worshipped across the mortal globe, and now I'm stuck at Sunnydale High. A mortal. A child. And I'm flunking math." -Anyanka, Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Christmas is in the air!
I spent the whole of Sunday wrapping Christmas presents with my little sister next to me, who repeatedly tried to grab everything on the coffee table (including, wrapping paper, scissors, presents and sellotape). It was a trying challenge - both trying on the nerves and muscles; that kid can be pretty strong when she's determined to climb over my lap in order to grab, e.g., a roll of ribbon that's on the other side of the table, as opposed to just walking around the table. But she wasn't allowed to rip it apart anyway. I got them all done, though - especially quick and good when she took her nap and when her parents kept her away from the living room, while taking a short break from constant studying. They are so much more conscientious than me.
I also watched a very cheesy and corny Patrick Swayze film on ITV, called Three Wishes. I tell you, his career peaked with Dirty Dancing. He was pretty good in Donnie Darko, though. Made a good fake-nice-but-really-a-creepy guy.
Do any of you have an Advent calendar? I've got a Simpsons chocolate calendar. It's a good excuse to eat candy before breakfast. Although I have (foolishly) decided to stay away from all other candy until December the 20th. I wonder if I'll be able to keep that resolution? I know that candy is not good for my complexion, and I want my face to be as pimple-free as possible at the concert on the 19th. Not that I'll be in the spotlight or very noticable or anything - I just want to look good. Who doesn't, when they're (albeit a tiny figure of a large number of performers) performing in front of 1500+ people?
I have also decided to go to bed before or around midnight on schoolnights. I've done so twice now, and it felt really good. Sure, it was just as hard for me to wake up in the morning, but the difference was that I felt proud of myself and was therefore in a better mood. And as you know, that makes all the difference!
There is one more thing that I have been meaning to write for a long time. In my PSE classroom, which is (I think) a Maths classroom, there is a piece of paper on the wall, with some kid's New Year's resolution printed on it: "I will try and behave in Maths." So cute.
Yesterday I put up very pretty Christmas lights in the living room - coloured in the windows (only one straight line, because they're really big, and three in a row, in a sort of an arch, you see).
It's such a bummer that if I want to hear some Christmas tunes, I have to listen to the radio on the computer, because none of the radio stations here (that I know of) play any Christmas tunes at the moment. I hope they'll start soon.
QotD: Mike Teavee: Who wants a beard?
Willy Wonka: Well, beatniks for one, folk singers and motorbike riders. Y'know. All those hip, jazzy, super cool, neat, keen, and groovy cats. It's in the fridge, daddy-o! Are you hip to the jive? Can you dig what I'm layin' down? I knew that you could. Slide me some skin, soul brother! - Charlie and the Chocolate factory |
Friday, December 02, 2005
My Mummy is a genius!
I know everybody says their mom's the best, but this is totally true. And I have solid proof.
Wanna know what it is?
Last night, her new book (she's a writer in case you didn't already know) Hrafninn (english: The Raven) got nominated for the Icelandic Literary Awards! (Or should it be Literature Awards? I'm not sure.)
See? She's totally the best. She herself doesn't think she's gonna win, because most of the other four writers that were nominated are veterans in the award-receiving-business, but it's still 20 % odds that she's going to win. And whether she wins or not, this is a great honour, to be nominated at all. It's probably going to give her sales a giant boost, and she very probably will be a shoo-in to get at least 6 months of salary from the artists' fund, which is a fund that every year grants writers and other artists monthly salary, so they can focus on their art. Mom has got the 6-months regularly. Perhaps this will win her a whole year! Wouldn't that be great?
One of my two history teachers, Mr Carson, is a total pushover. Last Tuesday, we were supposed to do a timed essay on Bismarck (To what extent was Bismarck the architect of a united Germany? and approx. ten other versions of that same questions. How many ways are there to word the same history questions? Dozens, apparntly.), but since we only had substitute teachers then, because Mr Swinburne is off, we managed to persuade him to let us do the essay on Thursday. On Thursdays (and Tuesdays, actually) we have double history the last two periods of the day. Such joy. Well, on Thursday, we were supposed to do this timed essay in the last period with Mr Carson and in the first period we were supposed to revise or sth. But for some reason there was no substitute teacher. So guess what we did for one hour? Nothing, that's what we did. Well, unless you count constant talking and biscuit-eating. This one guy actually "snuck" out (how can you sneak if there's nobody watching anyway?) after about 15 minutes of the lesson to go get two packets of biscuits! I don't know if he just went to his locker or if he went to the shops, but he was pretty quick. I believe I have mentioned my history class' obsession with biscuit break before. Heh. Anyway. So understandably, since nobody didn't do any revising, nobody was prepared to write this essay. And with a little cunning and persuasiveness, Mr Carson was "bullied" into letting us do the essay on Monday! Wonder how long it can be postponed?
Oh, and happy Saint Andrew's Day on Wednesday. St Andrew is Scotland's patriot saint, and apparently the day is celebrated among Scots all over the world (e.g. Denmark and Kuala Lumpur), except here. I don't recall anybody mentioning that it was St Andrew's Day on November 30th at school. I only heard about it on the news. Funny, huh?
QotD: "What's with the 'tude, dude?" -Lorelai, Gilmore Girls |
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