Gavin

My brother Gavin, 21, came home yesterday from university in Cambridge.

I think he's here for about a week, and then he goes back.

He's both annoying and funny. Mainly annoying. With some funny thrown in.

Me, Gavin and Dad played some table-tennis today. Gavin lost every game, Dad won every game but 1 and I won my games against Gavin and 1 game against Dad.

Not bad.

We also played Scrabble last night, which I won. Gavin lost. Dad came 2nd.

Score.

RJ

Work Experience

We got some info about our work experience this morning.

It will take place in late October of this year going into November.

I haven't really thought about what I'd like to do, so I'm going to research it a bit.

We have a talk about it next Wednesday which should prove interesting, I hope.

One can do naught but wait.

RJ

Food Coursework

Yes, I admit it, I'm doing Food as my short course GCSE.

I wanted to do French and Spanish both long course, and Food was the easy way out for the short course.

I want to announce that I finished my coursework about 15 minutes ago!

Score!!!

About 10 minutes after Ben.

I'm hoping for an A for it.

It is worth 60% of the entire GCSE.

It's only really half a GCSE anyway...

I would be a little annoyed with a B.

I guess we'll see.

RJ

Maths Olympiad

Oh, God.

So hard. Most of it.

2 hours. 6 questions.

I could do the first 3, and I'm sure I got them right, and the last 3 were really hard. I still ended up with an answer with all my working written out neatly of how I got the answer, but I'm sure I got the last 3 wrong. I do hope to get some marks for all my working out, though.

I think the first 3 were fairly challenging, but pretty easy in the end.


As an example, here is the first question:

What is the lowest positive integer, made up of only 1's and 0's (in base 10) which is divisible by 12?

If you got 11100 then you are right. At least I hope you are, as that is the answer I got and submitted.

Basically, to get that answer, you have to think about the number in simpler terms.

To be divisible by 12, the number has to be divisible by 3 and 4.

To be divisible by 3, the digits of the number must add up to a multiple of 3.
To be divisible by 4, the last two digits of the number must be divisible by 4.

As the number can only be made up of 1's and 0's, the 1's must add up to a multiple of 3, as adding 0 to anything doesn't change it. Therefore, there must be three 1's as the idea is to find the lowest positive integer.

As the number must be divisible by 4, the last two digits must be divisible by 4. There are already three 1's in the number, and 4 does not divide 01, 10 or 11, so the last two digits must be 0's, as 4 will divide 100.

Thus, the number is 11100.


And that was just question 1. When I first looked at it I though "What??" but half way through another question I figured out how to solve it so I quickly went back to it and wrote it out.

I don't know when I'll find out how well I did, but I'm hoping for a bronze.

I'll probably be disappointed if I don't get anything, but I'd be satisfied with a bronze.

So now we play the waiting game...

RJ

Orthodontist, 14th March '06

I had to go to the orthodontist today, in London, near the Barbican Theatre.

I like to think of an orthodontist as a qualified dentist.

The orthodontist is actually the sister of my dentist. So there you go. My dentist said I ought to go and see an orthodontist, and so recommended her sister. The dentist probably gets a 30% cut of the profits from recommending people to her sister.

So I got on the train after school today to Moorgate, to meet my dad. We had dinner in McDonald's, and then took a taxi to the orthodontist's.

We got there 10 minutes before my appointment, but as she was not seeing anybody else at the time we went straight in.

She had a quick look at my teeth and sent me upstairs for some x-rays. Four x-rays to be exact. Two little ones of my jaw, and two big ones of my whole head, essentially. For each I had to have my teeth in a different position, so they can have a good look at each tooth and all that.

This is one of the little ones:



Unsurprisingly, the teeth labelled baby tooth are my 2 remaining baby teeth.

The surprising part is that I have 2 remaining baby teeth.

More surprisingly still, the reason I still have those 2 baby teeth is that, as seen in the x-ray, there are no adult teeth under them to grow and push out the baby teeth, meaning I'm stuck with these baby teeth.

But for now, that's no problem as they're in excellent condition. I'm probably going to lose them at about 30 or so, and have to get some kind of fake tooth installed, but thanks to excellent modern technology, they can just "glue" a fake little tooth thing to the sides of the two neighbouring teeth. Nobody will notice it's not a real tooth unless I tell them, so I'm not complaining.

I've also got some crowded teeth in the lower set, but the effort required to fix it is not worth it, as it would only be a temporary solution anyway, and unless I wore a retainer for most of my life, the teeth would revert back to how they are now. Unless they get much worse over the next year, I probably won't get anything done to them.

The teeth in the far corners of my mouth are my wisdom teeth. Odd angles, but it's apparently normal. They'll start coming out when I'm about 18.

I'm going to see her again in about a year, by which time I've got to have made up my mind about what to do with my teeth.

I'll probably just leave them how they are.

RJ

Joe's Party

Well, I went to Joe Shea's birthday do earlier this evening. (Joseph Shea to those who haven't seen him in a while.) It was good fun.

Went round his house to start with, messed around on his guitar for a bit. Mike, Nick and James West were also there.

Then we went to Stevenage to see Big Momma's House 2 which was... well... it was better than Chicken Little. It is however ranked the 100th worst film on IMDb.

We were going to go to Frankie and Benny's for food after the film, but the wait was ages, so we decided to get some food back in WGC. We went to the arcade in Hollywood Bowl to wait, and I actually left with a profit, for the first time ever, probably. I was watching this group of 2 or 3 girls playing the 10p machine, and not winning anything. Once they got bored and left I quickly went over to the same machine and put a 10p coin into each slot (three) and won about £1 or 10ps. Not bad!

I also saw the guy from school hanging around with some Stevenage chavs. I don't know his name though. I don't want to know his name. He's in my year, and he's an idiot.

Then we went back to WGC and got some pizza in Pizza Hut, which was good.

Then we went back to Joe's house and watched a bit of TV, played on his guitar a bit more, then came home.

Was a good day.

RJ

General Update

Not loads happening over the past few days...

I spoke to Afro-guy (Joel) earlier today, he said he had a good time in Spain, which is good.

I got a practice paper for the maths Olympiad, the actual one from a few years ago I believe. So I'll have a go at the questions. There are only six! And I'm going to have 2 hours in which to do them, so they'll be very difficult.

The Olympiad itself is next Thursday, so I'll have to really try to get an early night on Wednesday, but that's what I say every day, so it's not gonna happen.

Next Wednesday is an inset day, which means day off school! Score.

I was worried that the Olympiad was on the inset day, but luckily it's not. So there we go.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing on the inset day. I might be going round to Asha's house to watch some films or summat with Ben and maybe Nick (and Asha, obviously).

Well, the people who do Italian (lucky people!) went off to Venice, Italy today for 4 days, I think it is. Among those who went were Lizzie, Sam D. and Flora. A bunch of other people went too, but they're the only good ones. Heheh, but I don't actually know who else went, so...

I hope they have fun and eat plenty of pizza!

I'm also expecting a few presents... :-)

Beam me up, God.

RJ

Table-tennis

I went down to the Orchard Tennis Club today to play my dad at table-tennis, as they have a table there which is seldom used.

We decided to play a best of five match.

He won serve, then won the first game. I won the second game. He won the third game. I won the fourth game. He won the fifth and final game, meaning he won overall by 3-2 to him.

I don't know if you realised, but each person won their service games, so if I had won serve at the beginning, who knows how the match could have gone...

The games were very close and it won't be long before I'll be able to beat my dad every time.

I'm also hopefully going to be playing Jack a lot at table-tennis over the next few months.

RJ