Distracted

I'm leaving to the Gambia in two days on a school trip. Should be great fun. And the weather's smoking hot.

I should've mentioned I also felt it yesterday morning while I was still in bed, then? I was honestly afraid to stand up because I was already spinning in my bed. The whole room was spinning. But like I said, it's much better now.

I was thinking of an inner ear infection too, especially when my right ear suddenly started feeling blocked, but the thing is, I only have it as severe as I posted in the morning, right now I'm feeling way better. Hell, I just took a shower, which involves a lot of small head motions, without any issue. I did have a slight fever yesterday, but now it's mostly over. I'll go back to school tomorrow, hopefully it'll be over, and otherwise I'll go see a doctor tomorrow.

I think there's something wrong with my sense of balance at the moment. I literally cannot walk straight, it feels like I'm completely wasted and it's so bad, it's nearly making me motion sick to just walk from one room to the next. What the hell just happened to me, I was fine on Monday and then yesterday morning it suddenly came up.

I doubt there's one conclusive historical answer to this, but I think there are multiple factors that come into play. Automatics are easier to learn, and considering the driving age is lower in the US, that might be a factor that comes into play. A theory I read on Yahoo answers (yeah, I know), said that it might be because Americans view their cars differently than Europeans: while the former see it mostly as a tool to get from point A to B easily, the latter enjoys the car itself more, and it's commonly known that manual transmissions are more for the car lovers since they give a higher sense of control. Also, since points A and B are usually much further apart on the American continent (in 4-5 hours, I can drive from here to Paris, to Amsterdam, to London, etc, while in the US that would probably not even be enough to get out of my state), ease of use might factor more into the choice to buy an automatic transmission. Also, keep in mind that odds are, if your parents drive automatic transmission, you'll drive automatic transmission too, since in many cases they're the ones that teach you to drive.

Our exam is half an hour of driving with an examinator in the backseat. Here, I don't think they give a damn about the way you shift, as long as you have control over the car. The system's pretty fair, except they're way more strict on young drivers such as myself. I still can't help but feel annoyed at my failing, since I know I drive safer than a lot of people on the road right now.

's our cover of the Flobots' that we performed on my birthday. I'm the bass player/vocalist. It's kind of surreal to see that we've gotten just under a 100 likes in the first 4 hours our band's page was on Facebook. I didn't link there because I don't feel too comfortable putting that kind of stuff here. Not that I don't trust you or trust my own privacy settings, I just don't like connecting my Facebook to my anonymous accounts.

Failed my driving exam today. Apparently I didn't slow down enough at places where there's a road on the right side. I'm bummed because I was feeling real confident (especially because my friends and my family all told me I drove well). Oh well, I can try again Thursday morning, and I'm feeling even more confident for that exam since I know now what my pitfall is.

The drinking age for beers and wines is 16, but for stronger drinks it's 18. But now I can finally take my driving exam (which has been scheduled for tomorrow since November), vote and legally carry small amounts of weed with me (well, not 100% legal, but the police won't punish me, nor are they allowed to take it from me).

The gig went great, got compliments all night, the crowd sang happy birthday for me and I enjoyed the rest of the evening as well. One of the things that sticks out most in my memory would be when my friend suddenly dared me to go jump on a trampoline, which was of course covered in 2 inches of snow. Must say it was a very special experience.

Yup, pretty freaking cold here too. The window in my car is frozen shut. Last I saw, it was -8°C, which is just incredibly frikkin' cold by Belgian standards. I don't remember it ever going under -5°. On the subject of that test they did, you have to understand it was a multiple choice test, there were only 4 choices and you could easily eliminate most answers by just looking at the picture and seeing hints (like the picture of Netanyahu that had an Israeli flag behind it, and at least 2 answers that just couldn't match the picture). For World War 2, there were 5 dates I think, of which 3 in the 20th and 2 in the 19th century, and apparently still that many people actually situated it in the 19th century. The test wasn't in-depth at all, nor do I feel it was a reflection of our history lessons. I've done the whole thing, and there were some questions that were a tad more difficult, but I managed to fill in most of it without issue. The whole point of the test wasn't to test how well people know their history, it's to measure the level of general knowledge of, and I can't stress this part enough, the people who will in 5 years be teaching our children. This'll thus become a vicious circle, where 20 years from now scores would be even worse. You need that kind of general knowledge (the test covered many things superficially, from politics to important historical events to basic geography) to be able to make sense of the world around you. If you don't know what socialism or liberalism stand for, which was also covered, how can you possibly vote (and in a country with obligatory voting, that is kind of a big deal.) I just had a marathon rehearsal with my friends, and it sounded awesome, even if I do say so myself. We played 2 songs for a friend and he was really impressed. Just another confidence boost before the big gig. I won't be able to post here tomorrow, since I'll be out of the house all day preparing for the big gig and celebrating my birthday. Edit: 20 guests? What happened?

Try me, it's amazing how useful Google Translate is. This is the original source, but the full article is in the magazine the site's for. A respected Belgian newspaper, and the reaction from the minister of education. For added believability, the study was performed on about 1000 students by a university that's grouped up with the Catholic University of Louvain.

I could give you lots, but they're all in Dutch so I doubt you'd learn any more from them.

Apparently 30% of teachers in training couldn't indicate the US on a world map, 64% didn't recognize a picture of Mao Zedong and 10% actually situated WW2 in the 19th century. And we're supposed to have one of the best educational systems in the world... Worst of all, it was actually a multiple-choice test. I'm really hoping the figures are somehow wrong, because this just made me lose my faith in our education system.

The first gig of the band my friends and I have been dreaming of for years is now just a few days away, along with the birthday I've been looking forward to for years (the big 18). Today we had a rehearsal with just the guitars and bass so we could work out the structure of the songs and it's boosted our confidence big time. For those wondering what we'll be playing, they're all covers: Blood Sugar (Pendulum), Steady As She Goes (Raconteurs, with a bit of a drum 'n bass influence), Handlebars (Flobots), Invaders Must Die (The Prodigy), Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes) and Make it Bun Dem (Skrillex & Damian Marley). It's a pretty eclectic setlist, but we're feeling confident we can play a good show, though of course we're still stressed, especially since there'll be a lot of people we know watching us.

Related to that, when shows (I've honestly only seen this on MTV) blur out things like T-shirts or billboards. This can cause some ridiculous scenarios where half the screen is blurry.

What's up with all the extreme temperatures all of a sudden. Now it's started snowing here, which isn't that common of an occurrence (though it's been happening more and more the last few winters it seems.)

It was 6am by the time I posted that, and I'd started drinking with my friends around 8 pm, so I wouldn't say I'd wasted it at all. The most noteworthy thing I saw last night was probably that one guy who just fell straight off his barstool and on his face. I also found a random hat. Picture of hat. :P [spoiler=Hey, I never said it was a nice hat] I'm not putting a pic up of me wearing it, I don't want to break the internet.

It was 6am by the time I posted that, and I'd started drinking with my friends around 8 pm, so I wouldn't say I'd wasted it at all. The most noteworthy thing I saw last night was probably that one guy who just fell straight off his barstool and on his face. I also found a random hat.

It's saturday nigh t and I'm straight drunk for the first time thi year. Yay

Happy birthday Mads :) I'm turning 18 myself in about two weeks, and I'll receive one of my the best gifts I'll ever get. My three best friends and I have been trying to start a band for years now, but never really got past fooling around a bit musically. This year being our senior year, we made it our goal to be able to perform at the seniors' show, and we started taking it more seriously, suddenly finding our own sound (electric guitars mixed with drum 'n bass beats, which sounds better than it seems). Anyway, to get to the point, on my birthday there happens to be a benefit party organised by our school (we're linked to schools in Gambia, and its a yearly habit to travel there with a group of pupils and give them some financial aid while we're there), and since three of us are going to Gambia this year, we suddenly found ourself having our first gig planned. It's really strange to actually know that we'll be standing on stage in 2 weeks, something that was once just a distant dream one day. Now let's just hope we don't mess up, because being 4 best friends, it's still hard to actually rehearse seriously and we've been having a lot of trouble with equipment all year. I do have faith though, because we can sound good (at least in my ears) if we want to.

I'm pretty sure dyslexia has nothing to do with vocabulary, but those are some pretty basic words. Shyla, that's horrible. My condolences.

Except for that one time I actually had to startle myself awake before I started drooling over my schoolbooks, I spent today mostly awake. I did have a lot of spaced out moments where I didn't know what the hell the teacher was talking about, but it's still the first day of the semester so it's not like I missed anything real important.

I completely [bleep]ed my sleeping schedule since New Year's; staying up till 4 or 5 am, then sleeping till 2 pm and staying in bed another hour so. Now it's 4:30 am and I need to wake up in less than 3 hours for my first day of school. Crap. Edit: never mind sleeping. I'll never be able to drag myself out of bed after just 2 hours of sleep.

I've heard it from multiple sources, including some in-depth lessons at school, so yeah, it's legit.