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 Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 3:15 pm
You guys make me curious.
Over in Britain, how does your level testing or w/e work? Here in California we have the CM (certificate of merit) for piano and CMEA (calif. music educator's association or something like that?) which is more strings/winds/brass and/or chamber ensembles and orchestras... you guys have anything like that there?
Also, whaaaaaat I thought Cooking Mama was fun!
I think facebook is a good way of keeping track of old friends and also if you need to get in touch w/an acquaintance for w/e reason (school, maybe?) and don't have any contact info at hand, fb's good for quick reference on AIM, cell phone, etc. or as a last resort you could post on their wall...
@pokemon topic: is it just me, or do the pokemon keep getting weirder and weirder?
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Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 4:50 pm
Chibito7 @Mini: 'Cause I posted it up late. ;P I'm so slow. It was just the one photo of us playing Twister anyway, lol. Pokemon became a hit in England when I was about eight, nine... maybe ten. Maybe you were too old by then, Mini? ^^;; @sin: Really?! O: Oh, you deprived girl! Catching them was always such a high. Then again, we had a guide (:3) and eventually used a lot of cheats from online too. ^^;; But yeah, they were definitely hard to catch. @cbc: I've only ever owned hand-held games consoles. My parents wouldn't allow things like Playstations and Wiis. *sigh* Oh well. I don't really mind, though I think my brother did/does. Well, I admit to watching the Pokemon anime (the 4kids version) when it first came out, as the first few seasons were absolute classics. But at that time I didn't have a gameboy, and I wasn't aware that Pokemon was actually a game. xp By the time I found out what the fuss was all about I was too old to get much enjoyment from it. Besides, I'm more of a PC gamer than a handheld/console gamer. @Liani: Maybe you don't see the point in Facebook now, but by the time you get to year 12, you might have made dozens or even hundreds of friends who would be hard to contact them all by phone, email or sms. And then once you leave school, tracking them down might be impossible. Just yesterday I found a few of my old classmates from primary school, who I never heard from, let alone seen, for more than ten years. If Facebook had been around back then, I wouldn't have lost contact with all of my former friends at school.
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Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 12:16 pm
@ Elfy: I never switch on my phone apart from ringing my parents to pick me up after school, I never check my home email apart from about once every 3 months, and as for my school one i only use it to send stuff to the teachers and to myself to print at school. I don't really care about not being in contact with friends from my old school, because I've had 5 old schools (counting the Chinese nursery/pre-school) and I can't even remember even being at my first two :S
And anyway, the first time I created a Bebo account, I took one look at the "fill-in information" page and nearly died. WTF I can't be bothered to fill in all those gaps of School, Home, Hobbies, Favourite Gaming Platform etc. Total waste of time.
Also I was kinda put off by this weirdo guy from my old school messaging me like 20 times going "OMG, I L13K F0UN J00 0N TH15 V1D30, CH3K 1T 0UT". And I was horrified to discover on there that all my old friends have turned into chavs. They talk in text language, and even write their essays in text language. Which is kinda putting me off being in contact with them any more.
@ Fwoom: As far as I know, we have two main music testing boards: Trinity, which is really easy and you only have to play 4 pieces in front of an examiner, 3 that you have prepared for as long as you like and the 4th that you get sent to you a set amount of time before the exam. And I'm not sure about the mark scheme because i don't do Trinity.
The second is ABRSM (short for "The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music). They publish a book of set pieces for every grade every two years, and you have to pick one song from each of the A, B and C sections, or you could do the alternative pieces for each section instead, listed in the book. In addition to that, you have a book of scales that you have to learn for each grade, and you have to do sight-reading. The last part is the Aural, where it's basically testing your ability to listen and respond to music, whether it be singing a passage or clapping the rhythm (i suck at Aural).
I think all three pieces are marked out of 30, the scales out of 21, not sure about the sight-reading or Aural. At the end they add up your marks. 100+ is a pass, 130+ is a merit, and 150+ is a distinction.
And the grades go from 1-8, and there's a music Diploma (which basically means you can teach) after that. But i heard that only 1 in 10 people pass it, because you have to pass every section and the pieces are all 19 minutes long. My fingers would have expired by then.
Although ABRSM is way more difficult, it's also way more common than the Trinity one. I've only met one or two people who do Trinity.
Oh and also, ABRSM does exams for Jazz, Ensembles, Performance Assessment (I think that's what it's called... cant remember. And it's for people aged 21+), Prep tests for people who just started playing whichever instrument, and I think they do something for choirs as well.
O.O I wrote an essay.
And yeah, I agree, I think they're running out of ideas for pokemon. There was nothing better than the original 150, though.
But the legendaries are still quite good, up until Diamond and Pearl. WTF is with the "controlling space and time" thing? Doesn't that mean that they're undefeatable?? stare
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Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:09 pm
@Liani: Lol, people I've talked to always either hate or love the Wii. ^^;;
Looool, I love Cooking Mama on the DS. I bought it in HK. Not at all challenging game, yes, no quality, but it's perfect for little girls and for eighteen-year-olds who are bored and want something pointless to do. (;
Animal Crossing is pretty good, but you have to play it every day and I got bored after a while. That's for the DS, though.
Harvest Moon was another one I was absolutely bloody obsessed with.
I also love the Sims on the computer, but just don't have the time.
Facebook is all right. I check it every day like mail so I have it on my homepages. But I don't go on it more than 15 minutes a day... if less. Lol. I like updating my status. It's fun. xD I don't usually put pictures up, but my 'friends' do. (;
And ditto Fwoom. (: Not that I talk to people often, loool.
@Mini: I first discovered Pokemon as an anime. Then the cards. Then the games.
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Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 6:41 pm
@Liani: Wow, you're a really solitary person aren't you? xd I was sort of like that when I was 13. I almost never used my phone, didn't have a personal email account, and my school email was just used for homework or to communicate with teachers. And like you, I went to five different schools when I was your age, including kinder. So naturally I didn't have the chance to make any close friends.
Lol your former friends have all become chavs. rofl Maybe Chavdom has become endemic in Britain. Fortunately, most of my former school mates have avoided becoming Bogans.
@CBC: You were into Pokemon cards? Ah, that's one craze I avoided. xp Pokemon cards were so rampant in the late 90s that all of the local schools banned them.
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Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 2:35 am
Too many convo threads to follow.
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Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:22 am
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Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:22 pm
OMG! Pokemon cards! I have Pokemon cards ^.^
My friend doesn't even know what anime is, and she got a really rare shiny Mew card, and I was just like "WTF YOU COULD SELL THAT FOR LIKE £1000!!!!!!!" and she was like "Really? I got it for free" and I almost died on the spot.
@ B&B: Oh yeah! Harvest Moon is one of those must-have classics for all ages (much like Pokemon, actually). My friend has it on DS and says that although it might not be the most exciting game in the world, it's really addictive.
Did you watch that trailer of Haunting In Connecticut that was on the Gaia announcements? I was about to go onto something else when I saw that it was another one of those stupid freebee promotions, but i saw the rather disturbing picture and was like WOW! IT'S A GHOST STORY! But when I watched the trailer, it was really cliched and didn't sound that scary... And they put on it that it's "based on a true story"?!
I don't know if Americans' brains work in the same way as ours, but they seem really superstitious. I mean, WOW, a demonic messenger guy is SO gonna appear in real life...
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Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 10:27 pm
pokemon cards got banned in my school in primary.
o:
so did yu-gi-oh cards.
and beyblades.
and yo-yos.
and those yugioh-wannabe-cards-called-magic cards.
. 3.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:23 am
@Liani: It is so addictive! I was really sceptical at first - a game about farming?! xD But my cousin's girlfriend recommended it so I was like, Sure, I'll give it a go. It turned out to be the most addictive game ever. xD
@sin: Lol, same for my school. School got sick of people reporting stolen Pokemon cards and the like.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:16 am
OMG. Beyblades. I remember in year 4 they were really popular with the boys. I was standing in the lunch queue when someone tried to spin his beyblade across the railing thing, and it landed in the rice pudding :S Oh and there was this guy who spun his beyblade through the air and it went into someone's eye and they had to have surgery...
The head subsequetly banned beyblades.
But then we just found an alternative- those spinning tops where you have to stack them on top of each other while they're still spinning? And when someone got into trouble for having them, the head goes "I thought i banned beyblades?", and I think he said something like "they're not beyblades, they're SPINNING TOPS!!!!!"- can't remember exactly.
The head was so pissed that she banned all toys from school stare .
Oh and Yu-Gi-Oh was really popular too, though I never knew why it was so brilliant. We had 5 playgrounds and one of them was totally dedicated to people playing Yu-Gi-Oh. They even stationed these random year 5s at the gates and goes "if you don't have Yu-Gi-Oh cards, then you're not allowed to come in". It only lasted for about half a breaktime, because the dinner staff shooed everyone out and I think the head banned all playing cards as well a while after that, like B&B said, with the stealing.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:49 pm
@liani: ooh that's interesting. so you only have 8 levels? Certificate of Merit has 10 and I think after 10 you can technically teach if you want, and if you still want to participate, there's panel which is no longer just level testing but a competition (i.e. if you get past the first round you can go on to regional or state or w/e). CM includes a written exam also though, on theory, and the last page of that is usually "listening" which I think is similar to your aural? They'll play a scale or something and you have to check "major" or "minor" and then they play some intervals and you choose between "3rd" "5th" and "7th" and then they might play a passage and you have to check the right time signature, stuff like that.
How many sections are required for music Diploma? v_v it sounds intense
@b&b and sin: My school did too!! They also blocked tamagotchis way back in the day... did you guys ever have those? The little Japanese virtual pet things.
All the stuff's no longer blocked now that I'm in high school, and the "cubers" (rubiks cube guys; there are enough of them that band together that they actually count as a clique =.=) are playing Magic all the time.
What is a beyblade. o_____o;;;; it sounds really dangerous.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:21 pm
Lol we're talking about trading cards now. xd I admit to dabbling into Yugioh cards a few years back when the craze was at its height. But that was only because my brother had a shitload of Yugioh cards and when we were bored we decided to duel each other. I never bought any cards myself, as it would have been an absolute waste of money.
Scarily enough, a lot of school kids still collect and trade Yugioh cards, and Pokemon cards. I don't recall Beyblades ever becoming popular here, and yoyos were a fad from ages ago. However, Magic the Gathering (which IMHO is many times better than Yugioh) is very popular amongst high-school and University students, mostly amongst the geek community.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:14 pm
Anyone watch Yugioh the abridged series on youtube? A bunch of guys just dubbed their own voices onto the scenes and made it the guy romp it truly is~
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Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:45 am
lolrubikscubes.
there's a bunch of little guys on my train who sit in the corner and solve rubik's cubes for the entire train trip.
lol
yu-gi-oh cards got banned 'cause people started playing for keeps.
and the older kids would trick the younger ones into coughing up their really good cards.
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