i realised to my horror today that knowledge is always so quickly and so constantly slipping away from us.

i cannot remember what the three types of levers are, whereas a primary school kid can tell you the answer.

i cannot remember who the guy with the conch is in Lord of the Flies.

were antonio and bassanio (Merchant of Venice) gay?

i cannot differentiate (2x +3) / (x -1). neither can i integrate it.

i've forgotten most of my chinese proverbs.

what are left are scraps of mnemonic memory, the things that you recite to yourself in a singsong fashion, or arranged in arbitrary patterns which have meaning in some other field or even some other language. like the surface area of a cone is *singsong* pi r l plus pi r square.

conclusion: WE SHOULD MAKE EVERYONE LEARN EVERYTHING BY ROTE.