Chapter 12 - The Near-Death December v3.0 (The Last Brainstorm of 2010)

December the 27th, year 2010. Few days to spare till a good year ends. New year, new life, and when it's new, starting over is basically the only task, apart from finishing ever-growing piles of useless homework, and getting used to having a new life takes a long time, even for a beast. The brainstorm come about when all Steve wanted to do is to have all the fun he wanted before school messed his life up. He wanted to have fun. Okay, but how? That's a very big question. Easy to answer, but hard to think of one.

'Yo!

Wat's up?'

'Nothing.'

Apart from staring and breathing, there really were nothing to do. You can tell by the conversations he and his friends were having. Blasting songs was one, blogging was another, visiting 'Facebook' was another. After he's done with all three of them, what else can he do? Exactly. 'Nothing'.

Chapter 11 - The Near-Death December v2.0

December was coming closer to an end, and there were signs of presence of fear of the awesome holidays ending faster than expected. The 'best' part of it were the fact that the following year happened to be the year he had to sit for a useless examination which happened to be a so called 'important' one.

Nothing to do, but to wait for the day he had to touch a book again. Holidays are meant to be relaxing, am I correct? That was what Steve thought. He'd save the presence of books for school days, and relax after finishing his so called 'important' pages of homework.

That day, Steve had urges to have fun before useless school came along and conquered his days of being at home. So he called his neighbour out for a cycle.

He blogged about what happened so far.

Chapter 10 - 'Idiots Never Have Good Things, Because They Break Everything Before Anyone Ever Knew They Had Any Of Them' v1.1

4.10 in the evening, left the building and headed for a friend's house to pick up some really good gifts. Reached there at about 5 in the evening. After few minutes, started the journey and reached the repair centre at about 5.30 in the evening. Left the repair centre at about 6 in the evening and reached home at about 6.30 in the evening.

Well, from then on, Steve was officially separated from his beloved smartphone for at least a week. That experience made him realize that no matter how careful and responsible he can be, accidents will always happen, and if it happens all the time, it's either time to be more careful and responsible, or it's because he's an idiot in taking care of his belongings.

Chapter 9 - 'Idiots Never Have Good Things, Because They Break Everything Before Anyone Ever Knew They Had Any Of Them'

Yes, the title says it all. All Steve could ever wished for are gadgets in his life, and of all gadgets, he had to drop the smartphone and crack the glass. So then, he followed Edward to the university, since it's near the repair centre.

5.29 in the morning. He was awaken by his mother, SilverMoon. It was a helpful move, because even if his alarm clock would've bugged him at 5.30 in the morning, he would've woken up, in his dreams. He bathed in heated water, and after a few steps to the sink, the cool air cooled it down and shivered him to death.

7 in the morning. Left the house. Reached there, and smelled the fresh scent of cow dung around the lake.

About 9 in the morning. Visited Edward's so called 'office'. Not bad actually. Smaller, but cooler than expected. 4 stolen white boards, 1 vandalized glass, and all happened to be written on with erasable white board markers. In that room, there happened to be an aluminium cased Apple branded laptop, a pink Vaio, and a black Dell. All were brought from home by few people, including Edward. Those were just laptops. There was a Dell branded desktop sitting in that room. Not bad for a workstation.

About 11 in the morning. Went to a lab filled with large and beastly Apple desktops running on 3.06GHZ Core 2 Duo processors. In basic english, that's good.

1:31 in the afternoon. Learnt new words from a book he had to suffer searching for definitions on the net every stop he makes, and every stop happened to be every few sentences. Stopped reading and blogged about what happened so far on those beastly iMacs, and did a grammar check on his hardly-known, hardy, bashed up, plastic beast at home.

Chapter 8 - The Near-Death December

Yes, December is unfortunately coming to and end, which means the start of school begins in a few weeks. So much for keeping long hair when you're forced to keep it short once school conquer the holidays. Makes you ask yourself, 'why for goodness' sake has your hairstyle got to do with education?'

So during these few weeks at home, Steve did nothing. He was thinking of exercising during the holidays, but when the holidays came, the laziness spoiled every inspiration he had.

Nothing much happened during the one and a half months, except his beloved smartphone slipping off his hands and ended up landing on a hard table in a restaurant, hurting it's screen, which was then broken, and was in extreme need for a repair, or else the whole handset would've been plain useless.

Holidays, better do what you got to do before you run out of them and crave for more.

Chapter 7 - Flashbacks

Yes, a flashback of what happened on the last day of school. It's not just any flashback. It's a flashback which made Steve laugh his head off.

It all started when he brought his phone to school, since many people were doing so, when others were bringing cards and board games, since it was the last day of school. That day also happened to be the last day of afternoon school for his year.

In school, at one corner. He texted Dorothy, since she was at home. They started texting, and every start comes to a stop, so after they stopped, he played some games and spent time with his friends before it was going to be few weeks before he could see them again. When it was time to unveil the papers with all those results, he asked the teacher about Eddie's results, as asked by Eddie to do so, and found out that no one was allowed to see what their friends got. So he texted Eddie about the rules, and after a text, he just went to a corner closest to the teacher, which so happened to be right behind the teacher, as what he usually does sometimes when he's bored. When Eddie replied, the message tone came out of his pocket, and the teacher heard it, loudly and clearly. He just laughed, since he couldn't do anything, and since it was funny.

Went home, told SilverMoon and Edward about his experience of getting caught texting for the first time of his phone's illegal visits to the school.

Remember, it's just a flashback.

Chapter 6 - *Negative* (Job+Homework) *Equals* v2.0

"Hey! :D"

"Howdy! :D"

"What's up?"

"The sky."

"Wrong. Ceiling."

"Alright alright! Nothing much. Just feeling bored."

"Yea same. *sigh* "

Everyday, same sentences pop out in every conversation. Steve managed to get out of it, by changing topics after a 'hi' or a 'nothing much'. Well, that was only chatting with friends online. When he was at least a meter away from his scary yet good, fan-screaming, come-to-life-after-every-death, gaming computer, exciting things happened, for example, sleeping, listening to his iPod, watching television, doing chores, cleaning after himself, cycling, eating, texting his friends (not too much, because he knew that there were possibilities of few things happening, and that was either his wallet would've hurt badly, or he'd run out of credit, and need more), etc.

At night, his persistency to annoy a friend of his, broke down, and made him give up doing so. It was either that friend of his don't get annoyed very easily, or she already knew that he was doing his very best to do so. Next day, same thing, same time. Tried to annoy her, and one word says it all. 'Failed'. Put 'badly' behind 'failed' and you can tell how badly he had done.

Chapter 5 - *Negative* (Job+Homework) *Equals*

Steve wasn't waiting for this day to come, where he'd be free all day, with nothing to do. He also didn't expect it to come so quickly.

First day of the holidays. Not bad, yet not good. The Beatles, a band from the 60's, helped brush the boredom away. Learning more about them gets scary when he read about The Beatles splitting up in the 70s, and when he read about John Lennon who got shot and killed on the 8th of December in 1980, which happened to be exactly 11 years before his brother, Edward was born, but when he listened to them play together, fears went screaming and running away while joy conquered his emotions. Of course, it worked better when he listened to Christian Rock bands like Planetshakers and Hillsong.

He blogged about his extremely boring yet extremely relaxing day in the afternoon, and checked for grammatical errors ay night.

Chapter 4 - Cut

Friday. This time, Steve didn't skip classes. He went there, even with the thought of not doing anything, since he had returned all the text books, and since it's few more days to the end of school.

In school, he knew staying in class will be boring, and since his form teacher was kind, unlike those evil teachers who were rude to him just because they think being teachers are so awesome (which obviously isn't the way), he helped her bring report cards (or whatever they are called) to the other teachers to be signed.

While he was waiting for one of the teachers to finish signing the cards, he bumped into one of those evil teachers, Sha-Sha. She was rude to him about his long hair and his untucked shirt. Of course his hair is long. He cut his hair in around September to have his hair long in December, and of course it's untucked. He was running everywhere to look for some teachers to have those cards signed. In his transport on the way home, he just thought, she must be single, because if she isn't, her husband must've been scolded a lot, for no reason.

At home, he complaint about that evil Sha-Sha to his mother, and warned his mother about that teacher calling her on the coming Monday, because he'd be attending his last days in school with his friends with that long hair, and doesn't care about that monster catching him. Hopefully that monster resigns.

Chapter 3 - Skip

It was Wednesday. Steve skipped school in pride that day. He left home and started the journey for a passport renewal with his family. It went well, until they went there. It was crowded, and where there are crowds, there are noise.

After his mom, SilverMoon filled up the forms, they went to a nearest restaurant for lunch. That's where something unusual happened. In a hot environment, without air-conditioners and not many fans around, Steve then imitated what he heard on the phone when calling a company to ask for someone to speak to. It was meant for his mother to hear to proof to her that calling a company to ask for someone is already easy for him, but unfortunately, the waitress heard his imitation, and laughed loudly all of a sudden. Since the way she laughed was funnier than his story, he too, laughed loudly.

Back to the crowded room. Waited for another two hours. It's been a fortunate day, because the whole time he was there, he could listen to a band called 'Planetshakers' on his portable media player, which was called 'iPod Nano', which happened to be designed by the same company which designed Edward's iPod Touch. After they got their new passports, Edward went to his University, or his so called 'office', while Steve and his mother went home.

At home, he received a text message from his best friend, Eddie. Fortunately, it was good news. It was about him getting more than enough marks to get an A for average. After he saw what he got, he went to his mother's room, made some noise, and told her what he got. Of course, it wasn't as good as what his God-Sis, Qao Minn, usually get, but it was real, and he got it himself without cheating.

It's Thursday, and he skipped school again. This time, it was for a trip to the dentist to check on his braces. The dentists did whatever they wanted to do with it, except ripping them out, as wished by him. He thought the service there was not that bad, but also not that good.

An hour later, it was time to go home. That went good. At home, he used his gaming PC which died and revived few times and blogged about his days of skipping school. That went good as well.

Chapter 2 - Results v2.0

Steve never left his routine. Woke up, relaxed, prepared, went to school, and got his results for the examination. In school, trouble starts, and this time, it isn't part of the routine. Marks were still being given out to the students. Fortunately, many of those results weren't as bad as he thought.

He played volleyball with his friends during physical education. That went good, although he wasn't good at playing that game. At least that help stopped the shivers which were brought over since the teachers unveiled the results.

Back to the routine. Caught his transport at 6.40. Since he was the earliest to catch it, and had few minutes to spare before others came along, he chatted with the driver. He thought the driver was a kind person who was obviously no where near having the same attitude as one of those brats from class.

Home. The safest place to hide for him. Before the transport left, he thanked the driver in Tamil, which happened to be the driver's native language. As surprising as it sounds, he got it right, and the driver understood him. He wasn't really the best in speaking Tamil in the house though. Remember the visionary Edward? He beat him at speaking Tamil many times over. Now that's interesting.

Chapter 1 - Results

Steve, a teenager at 14, woke up one day, and just realized that that day'll be the day his results would come rushing to him. He hid his fears and worries somewhere safe. His mind, of course. If he could overwork himself to do something beyond his expectations, for example, getting an A after a few C's in a tough subject for one of the monthly examinations, he might as well just brush those unwanted emotions aside and move on. As his brother Edward said before, there's no point thinking too much. Just wait for it to happen, and we'll think from there.

1.05 in the afternoon, class starts. Fortunately, it wasn't the start of the rush of the results. It was only time to return the borrowed text books that were given to each one of the students in the school. That went good. When it was time to unveil the marks, the trouble starts. It was the end of the world for some of his classmates. He knew he didn't do well for the exam. Though he did his very best, he just wasn't confident. When the first B came up, he lost part of his confidence to get straight A's, but still hoping to do well in others. When the second B came up, he felt dead and just gave up hoping.

One of his classmates was said to be cheating during the examination. He heard the news from some of his friends, who heard the news from their friends. He never thought cheating during finals is possible, but after all, these are just speculations.

6.40 in the evening, it was the end of classes for today.

Genesis

It was November 2010, Steve, or who he'll possibly be in a few years, the single Reverent Pastor Steve, never realized he'd come this far - reviving his blog after a click on the delete button. A day after he murdered his precious blog, he then had great ideas on subjects to write about, or let's just say, write forever.

After a quick shower, he got out of his room, finding his PC dead. The problem is soon known to be a graphics card issue, because this problem was already happening since he fried his graphics card and upgraded it to a graphics card twice as good to withstand the games he was playing, which turned out to be defective. In luck, he found his brother's iPod Touch which so happens to be one of the best smartphones in the world without the capability of making phone calls and text messages, lying on the same table his computer was on. He went to his mother's room, telling her the problem, then laid down in a corner while using the iPod Touch. He then convinced his mother, the good hearted SilverMoon, that it was time to get himself an Apple branded computer, or what it's named, Mac. On the iPod Touch, he went to a website called 'Facebook' and contacted his brother, the visionary gentleman whose name shall be Edward, who is in the room beside his. When he's lazy to call his brother for some help, to him Facebook will do the job just fine. He did managed to revive his blog on the iPod Touch, he did change the title, but one thing he couldn't do on it was to make a first post. It just wouldn't put the cursor in the box.

When it was time to sleep, he gave his beloved gaming PC one more chance. He turned it on, and it soon got to life. It was working perfectly. That gave him a chance to use one more hour on the computer to fix the looks and feel of his blog, on a slow internet connection. He didn't get the chance to post, though. He did all he wanted to do with the blog next morning.

So that's just an idea on how it all started.