Friday, August 11, 2006
Thirty-One
Today's word of the day is piebald, but this computer is so slow I can't be bothered to find out what it means. Check it out yourself.
.....
Ok, so I went home with Munirah today, along with Fiq and Anna and Loi and Dinah. Anyway, Mun Loi Fiq and I were waiting at the bus stop for bus, so to pass time, we played this Maths game. You know, the one that goes like ths: Person A thinks of a number. Then Person B has to say, "Ok, plus the number you think of with blablabla, then minus with blablabla, then you get Bla!"
So I played the game with Mun.
Me: Think of a number. Any number you want.
Mun: Ok...
Me: Just don't make it too big, cos it would be difficult for you to do the equations and everything. You know?
Mun: Pasallah! *after a couple of seconds* Ok, dah.
Me: good. Now add the number with 3...
Mun: Ok....
Me: Then minus the number you were thinking of.
Mun: Right.
Me: You got 3, right?
Mun: Yes!!
Ok, so that one was pathetic. I tried another one on her; a proper one this time.
I instructed her to pick a 4-digit number, then to shuffle the number so that she would have 2 4-dogit numbers. Next, she had to minus the small one off with the bigger one to get
another 4-digit number, and out of this 4 digits, she has to circle one number.
"But don't circle a 0," I said, "Becayiuse then it would be another circle in a circle and, uh, I wouldn't be able to understand it when I read your mind." Loi rolled her eyes.
"Like for example," I continued, "If you choose 1234 and shuffle it to 4321-"
Loi burst out laughing. Mun gasped.
"How did you know?!?" she asked wildly.
"Know what?"
She showed me the paper she had written on: the first one she wrote was 1234; the second one
was the shuffled 4321.
"Ok ok," Mun said, "Try again."
There were a
lot of other troes after that, but I never did manage to correctly guess the circled number. Once it was because I calculated wrongly, but mostly because she did the procces wrongly.
"Mun! You can't minus 8888 from 9999! You're supposed to shuffle the numbers! Not write new ones!
"Mun! 5421 mane boleh shuffle jadi 2124!
"Loi, calculation is wrong. It's supposed to be 11 when you minus it off, not 10."
It was just before we got off the bus that I finally got it right. I taught Mun how to do it, too.
By the way, today was poem-sharing for English, except that these poems were the ones that we were suppoes to write over the holidays. I think I mentioned that before here, right? The first poem that i tried to write took me 3 days, and even then I got so stuck that I threw it away and wrote a new one, which took about just an hour or so. Waste time je buat the first one.
There were, surprisingly, a
lot of depressing or sad poems. I told Mas that I didn't like them.
"You have to see it from the writer's point of view," Mas said, "If you were the writer of a poem that's depressing, and someone told you that they didn't like it, would you be happy?"
I thought about it, then admitted, "No."
"Ah see?"
"But," I continued, "Later on I would understand why because people don't like them, because my old poems
are depressing, and now I don't like them."
"Alah Dee ni."
"Just don't argue with me lah Mas."
"No. I WANT to argue with you."
I don't think that people write poems because they are depressed or sad, though. I think it's because sadness and depression are the easiest emotions to write about. It's not easy writing happy poems, you know, even though you are a very happy person. It's just easier to write sad stuff.
.....
4:05 PM
