I regained the use of my computer last week (new hard drive), but I haven’t had the opportunity to update this journal because last week was the final week of school I’ll ever have in my life, and the prelude up to the mother of all Australian exams – the HSC. In lieu of regular updates, I’m recounting the events of the past week.
Sometime after Sept 14
11 Boys were suspended from school for streaking in a g-string across the grounds of other girl schools. They took off at Lunch. In “retaliation”, only days after, some girls from MLC (or some similar school) jumped in a few cars and drove up and down the street at the back entrance of the school – they were horning repeatedly with half-naked chicks leaning out of windows and out of the occassional sunroof. The Head Master came out afterwards asking, “Did anyone get the plates?” Back of course – who the hell would be looking at license plates when there are better things to look at? :)
Wednesday (Sept 23)
We had a “farewell lesson” for our Maths teacher today. For those who don’t know, our teacher is the kind of teacher who wouldn’t know what a detention is. If you videotaped a single lesson he conducted, the stuff on that tape would get him fired (smoker drinker gamble with a massive beard – see the link under the “sponsored by” section in the side bar on the left). Anyway the gifts we decided to get him were… 2 packs of cigarettes (never been done before, ever, in this school :), bottle of wine, and a quit smoking pack with nicotine patch and tape. I’ve got photos of the event, and when I get heaps of time (ie after the HSC. I’ll devote one page to the occassion). That lesson was hillarious and will definitely remain in my memory for decades to come!
Thursday (Sept 24)
This was the second last day of school for me, and the formal day of school for all us Year 12 students. Today was the day everyone brought in their shirts to be signed, and also to get their Year 12 diaries signed (little books people write comments in – either wishing good luck for the future, or hurling bags-outs culminated from 6 years of school life). This day in school is traditionally termed as “muck-up day” (self-explanatory I hope). Now, in what may have been one of the worst decisions made by the school, they sent us home, without prior notice or warning, at recess (about 11am, or two hours into the day) – probably in an effort to thwart any muck-up attempts. Bad mistake. Many people were angry because they still had some shirts to get signed, and many had absolutely nothing to do (some went to the pub tho), so what did happen in the end?
Basically, you had hordes of students from our school roving all over Sydney, targetting other students’ houses, and other schools with eggs, water bombs and flour. Students in cars drove all around Sydney from Ashfield to Marrickville to Five Dock etc. PLC was apparently assaulted pretty badly – I heard that there were guys dumping flour in girls’ hair in front of parents and chucking eggs out car windows in “drive-by eggings”.
I was in on some of this too (only water bombs though, and only against people I know – eggs are too dangerous/messy and I didn’t want to get busted). After we were sent home, I went to a friend’s place (I live an hour away from school, remember – so I wasn’t going back that early). From there we took a car armed with water bombs to another friend’s place which we heard was “under seige” by a group of other guys in our grade. Anyway we drove into the street. No one there. So we coasted slowly down the road until we saw a couple guys with bombs in their hands. We were about to offload our bombs on them when suddenly, about 20 guys appeared out of nowhere – all with bombs. We sped off, of course, with only a couple bombs impacting. Making a trip around the block, two of us jumped out of the car with a bucket of bombs (“who wants to be a hero?”) as we made another pass. This time it was much worse – we saw the mob, decided not to chuck any bombs, wound up the windows and locked the doors, an jumped on the accelerator. I swear it sounded like cannons going off as the bombs smacked into the car – you couldn’t see out of the windows because of all the water. Anyway it turned out the attack had bloody well broken the windscreen wiper. After picking it up we turned around and slowed down to speak with “the mob” to see what they were planning to do afterwards (only one more bomb was chucked, and that was at the two guys who got down from the car earlier, and who were making their way back into the car).
Here’s another tale from a friend as heard over ICQ : “yeah, my car got attacked as well
sid stopped in front of us so we winded the windows down yelling “fuck u, dickhead, asshole etc then out of nowhere fuad blocked the road with his car….. then all 5 of them came out of the car with w bombs, u can imagine how desperate we were winding up the windows!!! it’s like one of those mafia thing u see on the telly” He was using powered windows too… “yeah, but u know it’s fast with only one [window], but all four at the same time it slows down a bit. one bomb got into my car BTW“.
There are many other various stories and experiences – but in our draconian school, they could potentially get people busted, so I won’t tell them here.
Friday (Sept 23)
An informal day, because, according to tradition, Year 12 got sent to the beach. However, today was horrible… overcast, cool, windy and rainy. The Head Master said before we left said, “The forecast says it’ll clear up by the time you reach there.” So 1 and a half hours later we reach the beach, get out of the buses and it’s still overcast windy and raining. After about 15 minutes of shivering under some shelter (I’ve got a photo of a group of about 50 of us huddling under this small covered area), we head back into the bus. Someone tried to ring for pizza, but we were so far out of Sydney that there was no mobile phone network available there. About 1 hour after that, we are on our way back to school. That was about it for the trip – except that we dialed Pizza Hut again, only to find they didn’t deliver to moving vehicles :) “Fine! We’ll try Pizza Haven instead!” was the hangup line… That’s about it for the interesting, memorable stuff. Certainly one of the most interesting and entertaining weeks I’ll have in my whole life.
Saw the Truman show last Saturday – very good film (that’s the brief synopsis). I also saw a teaser for Star Trek IX : Insurrection and I must say it looks good :)
12:00am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
