I have spent the afternoon setting up Movable Type when really I should have been studying physics. I think I just needed a challenge I knew I could do. It's only taken me four hours but it's begin to resemble something that is working - I can barely remember forms from uni and I used to know them backward!

Taken from theage.com.au:

A SUPERGRASS who trained with al-Qaida provided Operation Pandanus with evidence crucial to the arrests of 18 alleged terrorists this week.

What an interesting operation name. I do love my conspiracy theories, and the pandanus is a palm that is pretty much only located in South East Asia. I know because many of my favourite foods are made with its leaves ^_^ I wonder how they select names for secret operations?

For gods sake, I thought vectors in one dimension were bad, in two is a nightmare! My brain really really hates this! Argh! (Partly because I've only just relearned trig and I'm shaky and noob at it and everything is deeply frightening).

When I was at my most overweight (68kg - a bit much to carry around at 158cm), I had a BMI of 26. This year I decided to lose weight when it got to 24 - its one off 25 which is the beginning of the overweight range. I read somewhere that the best BMI to have is 21. So far I've lost 4 kilos, and it's now 22. If I want it to be 21, I need to lose 3 more kilos (and be 52kg). Which I will do, but at the same time it's kind of scary. It's scary to watch weight disappear from you! Your body starts to look quite spare, and those skinny supermodels on the tv start to appear quite shocking and grotesque, especially when you think about how much food they're not getting. In fact how young girls can wish to look like that is kind of gross, I know that parts of my body are feeling a bit boney and yuck, could you imagine giving a supermodel a hug? Yick. Then I look at people on TV who are taller than me, on shows like Better Homes and Gardens and look quite 'healthy', but then when I compare them to myself, they're still remarkably thinner. I know the camera adds pounds, hence they feel they should be on the lighter side but it's shocking to realise how thin people in the media truly are. I'm happy to be losing weight, this is the first time in my life I have successfully done it without resorting to extremes, but at the same time I'm really wary of it too. I want to retain shape! I like having hips now! All those angular people in magazines, I've realised, may photograph well with clothes hanging off them, but it just doesn't look good in reality. It looks weird. When clothes and a face are the object of a photograph, you want them to stand out. The angular folds of clothing hanging of a wire thin coathanger are photographed like that for a reason. They stand out, and our eyes like clean images they can make sense of. serp and I went to Chadstone today and I took a look at what people were wearing. The skinny teenagers in grey skinny leg jeans, dressy top and tousled hair were kind of drone-ish. The African women with their narry hips and curvy bums looked amazing. It's sad that what is considered attractive is actually quite unnatural and disgusting, sad that designers are too lazy and cheap to cut shape into their clothes. Many pattern companies are too - I have many patterns I can't use because they are practically straight lines - people are not!
The patterns I have on order are, from reviews, beautifully shaped and well fitting woohoo ^_^

Oh and in other news I bought a new domain and some hosting from jooster, it was so cheap and I have a design just sitting there wasting away so I signed up. And then I logged into that graphical control panel and ran screaming. Dear god how hard is it to categorise your services?!!?!? It's great that there are so many features but is it entirely necessary to run them all on the one page?
And which is better - wordpress or movable type? I noticed Cat uses movabletype so I downloaded that, but then jooster does wordpress for you so I just dont know, comments appreciated on that one!

You know, the first thing I'm going to do after the gamsat is sew up a really good coat. I just don't have the time or mental energy to do any sewing, let alone good coat sewing (that's a complicated kettle of fish).

But! Tonight I watched a really really crappy telemovie called Supernova, and at the end they were flashing up all these equations, somehow proving with ONE number that the sun was not going supernova bahahaha and one screen was filled with a partial pressure equation - which I recognised. And laughed at ^_^ It felt good!

I just sat down and worked out the gamsat registration date and prep course dates. Then I set a couple of goals (i.e. be done with year 11 physics in two weeks). I'm not sure how realistic they are - I've only got 1 and a half topics left, we'll see how we go with circuits I guess. I dont know if they'll be as difficult for me to grasp as motion. I must say I never really had this problem with chem! Although in hindsight, I guess it did take me a while to get my head around stoichiometry but now I don't find it difficult at all. (But let us not talk about oxidation-reduction, it makes me want to cry ;) I guess the concepts with physics are just so simple, that it should be easy. But if you don't know how to do something, you dont know how to do it. This is learning! A lot of the time I've figured it out for myself, even surprised the tutor in a couple of places. I'm allowed not to get it every time ^_^

I spent most of yesterday in tears. For the first time in my life I have discovered what it is to be mentally exhausted. Over the weekend I did a good ten hours of study. Then every day this week until yesterday I did 2 or 3 hours each day. It might not sound like much I guess, but I've never studied so much in my whole life. And yesterday, when I got to Mums, opened my physics books and my brain just couldn't work it out, I crumbled into very tiny pieces. Then I felt like shit, doing science makes me feel as though I am stupid! I know it's just a lot of repetition (at least for us mortals anyway), but I dont have time to do a lot of repetition. My tutor says I have to go through the whole lot just once and if I get stuck to just leave it, and we'll work it out. It brings up a lot of stuff from high school I guess. In primary school I was one of the best students - but it was a very small Catholic one (which have a really bad reputation for this). When I got to high school, I was instantly bottom of the class because I simply hadn't learned as much as everyone else. It was a huge blow. It didn't help either that MLC girls are bitchy and anything they can use against you, they will. This just brings up all those years of sitting in the classroom, staring at a problem and trying to hold back the tears because everyone else was getting it and talking about it as though it were normal, and I just couldn't see the answer like they could. In hindsight I should have gone to Genazzano, purely because I think they do catch you up, but at a different rate. Add to that mix Dad pissing off to Saudi just when I changed schools, and you can more or less see the point where I just completely gave up.

So yesterday, suddenly I was 12 years old again, holding back tears at problems I couldn't understand. I'm not stupid, I mean, I can't be stupid can I? I do well when I try so that tells me I'm not. I suppose learning science in a school environment is different. It's paced for a start. Every day that passes increases my panic because I'm one step closer to that fucking exam and I'm nowhere near ready. The reason I need to do all this once, is so that I know what I'm looking at on the GAMSAT. My sister and Mum were so good to me yesterday. Mum fell asleep for a while and my sis just sat there and talked to me (she has suffered bad anxiety in the past), and told me that I'd done a lot of study, and that perhaps my brain just couldn't do anymore for the moment. It's a lot more than I've been able to do which is good, but she said I needed to take a rest. Then she went home, and Mum woke up and I cried and she told me to take a rest too, and then we went to Doncaster Shoppingtown and looked at stuff. I felt much better when I got to the Myer Christmas section, and she bought me a little gold tealight holder with stars cut out of it. It is the prettiest thing and I told her that would be my Christmas tree this year. Then she bought some little glass stars for her tree too which cheered me up. Then we went and played with all the makeup and made mental lists for Strawberrynet ^_^ I ate food court food and then a funny face and we came home. I still feel a bit emo I guess, I wasn't able to do any study today either, I feel totally exhausted. I even went back to bed and got up again but I'm still tired. I go down to three days of work next week, so I'm hoping that will make a difference.

I just want this so badly. Mum told me not to worry so hard, that if I didn't go well this time I can always sit again - but I can't give myself that kind of exit. If I think like that, then I dont think that I will try as hard. I really really really want to do well next year, more than anything!!! So I'll keep stumbling along. But I just needed a rest, and someone to tell me that it was okay to have one.

It's official. Motion sucks and I suck at motion. I spent 2 HOURS on three pages this morning. Yesterday I did 12 pages :( I think I'm inching my way towards understanding but there are some things I simply do not get. Like how to calculate displacement when the graph is curved - I can't figure out the area of that! Not without some crazy rulers. My sis says it's called 'functional fixedness', when you can only see a problem in terms of its immediate uses. I was so stuck before and serp came and pointed out something blindingly obvious which made all this other stuff click into place, argh, so demoralised :(

Conversation I had with the nurse at work today.

Nurse: I was always taught to (insert something anal I can't remember)
Me: Were you trained by nuns?
Nurse: Of course!!
Me: Where did you train?
Nurse: St Vincents.
Me: So did my Mum!
Nurse: How old is she?
Me: 56
Nurse: She's much older than me, what was her name?
Me: Kerrye
Nurse: (pause) Your father is Graham.
Me: Yes!
Nurse: You look like him you know
Me: He died! (blurted this out of nowhere argh)
Nurse: Oh I'm sorry!!
Me: No no it's okay, give me a minute (rapidly starts swearing at herself NOT to cry)
Nurse: Your mother is a lovely person, I was a trainee of hers.
Me: Oh what a nice thing to say!!
Nurse: And your dad was a gynecologist, he was really nice too. Very tall
Me (pleased as punch): Thats the one!
Nurse: And your Mum was a tiny lady. Don't worry dear the same thing happened to me.
Me: ??? (then realising that everyone must have known that he ran off with a ho)
Me: Was he a doctor too?
Nurse: A surgeon (rolls eyes)
Me: Mine ran off with the ward clerk.
Both laugh bitterly.

What a spinout. I'm so pleased you know. Just the way she said "your father is graham", made me believe just for a split second, that he was still alive. And he is in that sense I guess, his history is still there. I told Mum later on and she said that everyone knew, but at the time she didn't know that all the nurses knew (because she hadn't been working for a while then) and were on her side and that she felt so isolated. She also said that her and Dads 'romance' was huge gossip at the hospital hahaha. I dont know, but working in health, and one day being a doctor really does make me feel like I am home. Whether that's a reaction to missing my Dad or not doesn't really matter anymore, I'm so far gone now that I'm happy with it.

(Except for grumpy doctor telling me off twice today for shit I already knew and had tried to fix which wasn't good enough :P Ahwell, happens in any job!)

Details of the office Christmas party today. It's at a country club. In Mulgrave. LIVE THE FUCKEN DREAM FELLAS. Seriously...country clubs, what the hell are they? The whole concept of a club makes me nervous. From a yacht to a country club, I have to say I'm doing well on the Christmas party scene but really, what the hell is wrong with an Italian restaurant somewhere?
Where the hell is Mulgrave anyway? It sounds like a long way to drive after a Christmas party. I know it's good for office politics to go to the party but jeeez I dont want to go. What the hell do you wear to a country club? Can I wear jeans? See this is all too much.

Also one of my newer workmates, I discovered, used to be a business analyst for AXA. Then she was on some cool research project there called the Genesis project. Then she had kids ^_^ She's a single parent with four of them. I asked her if she was ever going to get back into the corporate life and she said maybe in stages. Her youngest is three. I like her immensely, she dresses really really nicely, very classy, and shiny shoes ^_^ It's just funny who you meet. At my last job, everyone were just office drones. Reception work really is one of those jobs that you do where you figure out what the fuck you're doing ^_^

I was going to say something about how asking an airline what their luggage limit is before going overseas is plain common sense but I'm just not going to bother ^_^

Well folks I am finally up to motion! I have done lenses and mirrors, heating and cooling, and nuclear energy. It's just motion and circuits and then I can go on to the year 12 stuff ^_^ My tutor said I need to cover this stuff once. There's only about 5 physics questions on the gamsat but they're there, and they're (apparently) easy marks. I'm concerned that it is at the expense of more important topics like organic chem but that is my own fault and I'll work it out. I've also stopped saying "I'll do x hours of study today", and started saying "this is what I want done by today" instead. So far it's worked a hell of a lot better. My problem solving skills still suck, but I am getting an inkling that maybe they're coming together in my head - not sure yet.

Heh, yesterday after studying for a few hours my back hurt. So I lay down on the living room floor on my back, with my knees bent so my feet were flat on the floor. It felt very good and I felt very heavy. Then I promptly woke up an hour later with a very very painful bruised lower back (my pants had been digging into them aha). Honestly I just can't win! I forced myself to stay in bed this morning, I've discovered how a lack of sleep makes me really crap and anxious. Also this is the last week I am doing four days - woohoo! I'm going down to three days and while money will be horrifically tight, I dont care, it means I can study better.

The magic of words is such that, when we are unable to explain a phenomenon, we sometimes find a name for it—as Moliere’s physician "explained" the effects of opium by its dormitive property. So we "explain" superior problem solving skill by calling it ‘talent,’ ‘intuition,’ ‘judgment,’ and ‘imagination’ - David Zach Hambrick, 1998

I was feeling bad about my lack of problem solving ability yesterday. With physics, I can solve the problem if told how, and given the information - but if it is presented to me differently I fall apart. When I see the answer, I berate myself because it's obvious. I asked my sister if she was doomed, and she was quite excited as she'd just done all this in cognitive psych. She explained that no, I was not doomed, and the reason that practice makes perfect is because after a while of practice, your brain starts to generate its own shortcuts, as opposed to the awful plodding it does when you're a novice. I was quite relieved! In her psych class, she was the only one who got a problem right, it was created by Einstein and is quite hard. The teacher (who she says hates her) didn't even believe her at first but her friend stuck up for her. At any rate, she said the reason she got it right, was because she wrote down absolutely everything in the problem, and compared it with each other. She sent me her readings on the subject. The quote above is from a text that explains that the novice works from the unknowns to the given, while the expert works from the given to the unknown. It's so true and I find the latter so hard! But I'm so relieved to know that the more I practice, the easier it will truly get. The article explains that without accumulated knowledge and practice, expert skill is completely absent. Which is common sense really but I feel better to see it in writing ^_^

The article is here if you're interested!

Oh and I finished Pandoras Star. I should have listened to my brother. It was like reading The Reality Dysfunction all over again, sans the good bits. GREAT SWATHES of it could have been removed and nothing would have been detracted from the story. Oh and it may as well have been a fucken fantasy book at the rate he invented technology to suit the story. Part of what makes good science fiction is the limitations of the available technology. The society has large-scale wormhole technology, great. But that is also a limitation. You can't just go and get people to escape off a planet using a 'small, personal wormhole', that is er, 'highly experimental' and just happens to be possessed by someone who just happens to be on that planet at that place and time, allowing everyone to escape. Not to mention, highly experimental means that its unstable, and wouldn't work every time. It seriously drove me nuts, you can't do that! I like space opera but that is ridiculous. Oh and the jargon...it was worse than an episode of TNG. Okay fine, concrete in the future is called 'enzyme concrete', whatever. But dont fucking refer to the paved ground as enzyme concrete every fucking time! Use concrete, or the 'characteristic' ground. Oh I could go on. I could really go on. The book only started to get vaguely interesting in the last third. The rest was completely irrelevent backstory that could easily have been condensed into a prequel if anyone was interested (I'm not). Part of what makes a good story is the mystery behind the motivation of its characters. This is slowly revealed over time NOT IN THE FUCKING 2/3rds OF THE BOOK BEFORE WHERE THE STORY ACTUALLY BEGINS.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is the fact that I finished it. It's a big book so when I finally dragged myself through all the unecessary description, self indulgent sexuality, ridiculous technology, lack of knowledge of basic chemistry, and general boredom, I was expecting an ending. But no. I got a CLIFFHANGER. I GOT A FUCKING CLIFFHANGER AFTER READING A BOOK THAT SIZE.

The best thing about Arthur C Clarke and Harry Harrison is that they'll write a bunch of books in one series, but each book ends. The sequel generally adds more information to the first, but also generates a new story from that. 2001 is one of the absolute best examples (although I like 2010 much better). Right, I've come to the conclusion that Stephen F Hamilton sucks. He is all over the place and should be a fantasy writer. This was even more evident in this story, given that he had a race called the 'silfen' who could appear and disappear at will, talked in riddles and were tall and childlike. FOR FUCKS SAKE. I will get the sequel because I want to know what happens, and I'm sure some mysterious race will come in and save the day and I will be angry because they didn't problem solve their way out of it themselves but I refuse to be beaten.

I am actually reading a fantasy book next, my sisters request, called The Mistress of the Empire. It's written by Raymond E Feist who wrote Magician, a famous fantasy novel that I didn't actually mind. I think to be good in any genre you have to play by the rules of that genre. Whether it be the limitations of the technology, regardless of the fact that its the future, or of magic (which in good fantasy is also limited by varying factors), it must be adhered. The way the characters negotiate their situation is where the story lies. So many SF and fantasy writers are failing to realise this. I stopped reading fantasy because the same goddamn thing happened in all of them, and I felt like I was reading the same books over and over.

Rant over!! ^_^ (After that it's the Da Vinci Code finally :)

The four day hiatus of no study has finally ended! I'm so relieved, it really was a combination of anxiety, tiredness and hayfever. Last night I stayed up till 2am watching Boogie Nights (one of my favourite movies, no idea why), which culminated in me sleeping in until 11.30 - lately I have been waking up at 8am whether I want to or not, having a nap, then not sleeping, then waking up at 8am again. So I feel a lot better, although when I woke up a couple of glands were up on the front and back of my neck. Given the way I've been feeling for the last few days, I can't help but wonder if I was fighting some kind of infection? I felt sick on Friday night with a sore throat and burning sinuses but it never eventuated into anything.

So! I have finished heating and cooling, at the end of the two chapters I wrote out all the relevant equations - they filled two pages! I couldn't believe it! Now I am doing radioactivity. I thought I'd blitz the first section (it was on basic chem) and I did until I got to the questions at the end and my lack of understanding of calculators and GODDAMN DIMENSIONS let me down. The calculator will not let me cube a number in scientific notation unless I put the number in brackets. I was getting things wrong for ages and thinking I was retarded until I discovered this. It makes sense though. Oh and area...'find the mass of this radioactive element when it occupies 1cm^3). Honestly, it took me HALF AN HOUR to figure out that ALL I had to do was put in the original mass and multiply it by .01^3. There's probably a better way of doing it but I dont know, I'm just glad I managed to work it out. So now I'm taking a break, about to start on alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. One of the things that has been tripping me is a lack of knowledge of the greek alphabet, these at least are illustrated for me ^_^ I'm feeling a lot better today, the week long headache is subsiding (I wonder if it was an infection though?), although my back and neck are on fire as usual because I spend so much time sitting on my arse.