How's your geography?

Yeah, you read that right... how *is* your geography?

Whenever people mention geography, I have two scenes/memories that pop into my mind:

1. I am in Form 1 (equiv to 7th grade?) borrowing a friend's Geography notebook, this friend being in another class and having Geography a day or two before me. Why borrow her notebook? So I can copy the notes in advance! Uh huh... geography class was actually a class of dictation! The teacher would read out, and we had to copy down what she said, then later study (read: memorize) everything that we'd written. Ugh. So I wanted a "free" period during Geography, just for once... didn't work.. turned out my friend's class was just two sentences ahead of mine :-(

2. I am in Form 4 (equiv to 10th grade?), and I *gasp!* had been distracted from that Geography lesson by these birds that were probably building a nest up there in the rafters/ceiling of the classroom, and therefore I was looking up instead of giving my full attention to the front of the class! Oh my, what a crime! I think the poor trainee was trying to assert her authority or something... totally misfired! She called on me, asking me to stand up while accusing me of "daydreaming about my boyfriend" instead of paying attention in class. I was so amazed at the stupidity of it all that I didn't bother even answering her: so I just gave her one of my (in)famous faces that I hope efficiently conveyed the contempt I had for her.

She got flustered, stopped talking.

I sat down.

She said I hadn't been given permission to sit down.

So I stood.

And she continued the lesson, with me standing.

And I continued to look straight at her with this amused smirk on my face.

A few minutes later she asked me to sit. I did, and continued to have this insolent expression on my face, targeted straight at her.

The bell rang, she left the clasroom, and that was the last lesson we had with her... I believe she exchanged classes with another trainee, and we never had her again.

Did I cause that to happen? Nope, she did! :-D

This is one of those *s*a*t*i*s*f*y*i*n*g* memories of my schooldays, btw :-)

On a related note: it was a bit of a shock for me, when I signed up for a Geography class in the U.S. ("Cities of the World") in my freshman year, to find that it was *not* about memorising the capital cities of various countries. I actually learned a lot about how different the (old) cities in Europe are (think the heart of Zurich, with those narrow cobblestone streets barely wide enough for a compact car!), compared to the (recent) cities in the U.S.: sprawling out, in a grid pattern; how the collective psyche of the nation actually can dictate how a city is built, and how it develops... take the U.S. with its seemingly never-ending supply of land... is it any wonder that their cities spread further and further out, hello suburbia!? I never looked at cities in the same way again.

And my opinion of the Malaysian "system" of "education" got lowered even more (thought that would be impossible, can't go any lower, but hey, it *did* get even lower!!). I don't think *anything* I sat through in my 11 years of schooling had any (positive / profound) effect on me...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway... so what brought about this trip down Geography memory lane?

THIS (Go ahead... click and enjoy!)

My results: got a score of 84%, avg error of 84 miles, and a total time of 514 secs.

How did you do? Share lah....

For those who didn't click yet: it's a web-based game testing your knowledge of the 50 U.S. states: you drag and drop one state at a time onto the map, and you'll see how far off you are. It gets progressively easier as you get more of the states on there, of course. My weakness is all those states up there in the North East: so many tiny ones!

But wait, the story doesn't stop there...

Me being me, I wanted to see what else this site had to offer... so I went to its main page (www.sheppardsoftware.com) and was gratified to see so so so many other educational web games! Haven't checked them out yet, but will certainly do so when I have the time.

For those at work, try it out lah when you have that 45mins to pretend to look busy before 5pm rolls around ;-)

Okay, happy exploring, my dear readers! Cheers!