One of the songs I like is a song called Mad World, sung by Gary Jules. (#37 on my Playlist, if you want to hear it) I first heard this song during my summer classes in 2009. My painting teacher often played music, since it kind of helps the creative process and is just relaxing in general. One of the songs that I heard was Mad World.

Well, as I mentioned in "What Seems Unique is Actually Common", I had to find an example of slant rhyming in a song...I thought through what English songs I knew and remembered Mad World. I looked up the lyrics and discovered that yes, indeed, I could use it.

Then today on announcements a video made by a few students encouraging us to help Haiti started playing. And the song in the background was Mad World!

I've been having lots of instances of deja vu lately. I wonder if this means something is coming or if I simply have a weird knack for having such instances.

Recently I've started to think more about entering contests. There's a part of me that says, "What if I can't do a good job? Is it really worth my time to make an entry if I won't win?" And there's another part of me that says, "You never know until you try." I don't know which one to listen to. I really want to change myself and become more proactive rather than reactive. But I have lazy tendencies and a lack of time management. I'll have to work long and hard to change that.

I've read about things like pumpkin growing contests, such as in the book Squashed, by Joan Bauer. But I've never really seen that around my area. We don't really have carnivals or fairs except for maybe Christmas in the Park (and that's not my town). In fact, I don't know if we even have the Lunar New Year parade anymore...

Ah, yes, it is almost the Chinese New Year. It will become the Year of the Tiger, which is my father's year. I heard this year will be unlucky, at least for Rats such as myself. But I wonder if you can really trust horoscopes. (I've sometimes asked my mom to read the ones from her Chinese newspaper for the Western Zodiac. Actually, they are true more than half the time, at least for me)

One time I was talking with someone and they didn't know about the Moon Festival. I was surprised, considering that China has a huge population and I figure that would make people more aware of it and its traditions (not to mention any other Asian countries that celebrate it). But then again, in most of the USA, there aren't that many Asians. I suppose where I live is kind of an exception. (Though I have read books where it is said there are Asians - of the Orient, not necessarily India - gathering in Seattle...)

I also heard once that there are some Chinese people (perhaps they know my parents, I forget exactly) living in a different part of the USA and some people don't like them all that much. I asked my parents if it was pure and simple racism, but my mom said perhaps some people felt that people from other countries were taking away their jobs. (After all, jobs get outsourced since people elsewhere may be willing to do the same job for less pay)

Ugh! You should work harder, then, and take it as a challenge to yourself. You see, although bigger population means more jobs, jobs cannot grow fast enough to keep up with population (just as the amount of food grown cannot keep up with the population either). So, living in our world means we have lots of amenities and useful devices but it also means we have even more competition for resources. It's the sacrifice you have to make, living in the modern world. But this also means you can fly even higher. (Well, I suppose in older times, since there were different social classes, there was a really huge difference between the poorest and richest, whereas nowadays some economies are designed to be more socialist than capitalist, but...) I believe people should take having to compete as an asset and not a disadvantage.

Labels: asian, carnival, china, chinese new year, competition, contest, deja vu, economy, horoscope, job, mad world, moon festival, outsource, pros and cons, rat, song, summer school, tiger

Remember, if you will, the post Money Can Make or Break You. (Or read it for the first time.) My teacher called us students germ factories. I am really and truly getting to see how this is true. Lately, the weather has been rainy and cold, and sickness has been spreading like wildfire. Unfortunately, those few who got sick originally did not stay home like they should have, and thus spread germs further and further. I have been fine up until now, and actually in relatively good health considering my lack of sleep and deteriorating eating habits, but now I'm starting to feel a lot of discomfort in my throat. Although I haven't lost my voice or started coughing yet, it might be only a matter of time. I am as steamed as can be. Unless this is a late punishment for something I did, I feel as if I am being hurt for something when I didn't deserve it, if you catch my drift. I mean, I as well as the healthy students were just attending school like good children until we were cursed by those who insisted on not staying home.

I know there are many reasons for students not staying home from school. This became clear during French class, when my teacher even said, "You should be at home, not here." The kids cried out, "It's our Asian parents!" (Very stereotypical, but I guess it makes sense to them.) The teacher said, "You must make your...Asian parents understand that by going to school, you spread sickness to other perfectly fine people. We are all stuck in a small, confined space with the windows and door closed. There is nowhere for your germs to go."

Then a classmate presented a different argument. "Both my parents work," he said, "so I can't stay home." The teacher didn't find this to be a problem. "You are old enough to stay home by yourself." I think this is true. I just saw a young boy (I am guessing maybe somewhere from five to seven years old) riding his bike, by himself. He seemed fine. What a nice independent young man. XD

And then there is another category of people, such as myself, where it is the student who really didn't want to stay home. One of my friends fits in this category since she went to school despite her mother saying she could stay home if she wanted. But she, unlike me, is more dedicated, which is admirable. For me, it would be nice to stay home, but I think it is too much of a hassle. You have to make up tests and PE and other junk, and it's just not worth it unless I'm very sick.

It's bad enough that there's a bug going around (two of my teachers are ill and one is recovering). But it's even worse that there was a CHICKEN POX warning. My teacher asked a student to run to the office to get some papers to pass out to us. When the papers arrived, he asked us to raise our hands if we had ever had chicken pox. There were only a handful of students who did (perhaps five? Six?) and they were all male. My teacher seemed surprised. "More of you should've gotten it." (Hey, is he suggesting that we're bad for NOT getting it?! Nah, that can't be :p) When I told my mom later, she said, "Of course we wouldn't, there's a such thing as vaccination." (But if that's the case, did those victims of chicken pox not get properly vaccinated? Or did the vaccination fail to work?)

Then the message came in saying that four students in my grade at my school had gotten chicken pox and that we may have been exposed to the disease. Within 2-3 weeks, infected people would start to show symptoms. I was immediately scared because one of my worst fears is disease (particularly something like chicken pox that would really, really force me to stay home from school, and it would cause trouble for my parents since they would have to stay home from work to take care of me). Then again, if I did actually get chicken pox, then it would protect me from getting it again. (Apparently, if you have chicken pox once, you're safe from it, because your body can recognize it and exterminate the virus quickly)

I guess now is the time to quote Thomas Paine's work called "The Crisis"... "These are the times that try men's souls." (And women's, and children's.)

Labels: asian, chicken pox, danger, disease, germ factory, immune, infection, make-up, parents, quote, school, sick, sickness, sore, the crisis, thomas paine, throat, vaccination

Lately my teachers have changed their tune (no, I don't mean that they have a theme song) - in other words, they've started talking about the importance of making yourself appear different from other people.

Both my history and math teachers told us that just doing the same thing everyone is doing will not get the colleges interested in us. My history teacher described 85% of the high school I'll probably be going to as "Brown eyes, brown or black hair, between 5'3" and 5'8", 4.0 GPA, not doing any sports - oh, and playing an instrument" (in other words, a lot of Asians D: ) and he said that the colleges don't care if you are identical to everyone else. You'd have to display your uniqueness or they wouldn't want to have you in their school. And my math teacher said that colleges want people who will do great things after they go to college, because then the colleges will become famous. (So I think probably in your application essay, you ought to tell the colleges what you are planning to do in your life, not just what you've already done)

In fact, even my language arts teacher seemed to be aware of this "Don't be like everyone else" movement, because of the quote of the day she picked. The quote was, "The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is." This quote was said by Charles M. Schwab, apparently. Well, I'm pretty sure the teachers must be in cahoots. I mean, I've sometimes seen all three seventh grade math teachers in the same room together, doing who knows what (planning the math? The 7th grade math teachers all teach at the same rate, and give the exact same homework).

Well, anyway, I've been studying the holiday spirit lately since it is almost Christmastime. It seems to me that people start setting up their decorations after Thanksgiving, sometimes even earlier. I saw that the classrooms of my history teacher and language arts teacher from last year are already starting to be decorated by Christmas lights. However, some people have rather...strange holiday spirit. My history teacher is a prime example.

Some students (certainly not all) give their teachers presents before winter break starts, as I don't know if we have an official week or day for giving teachers gifts. It's supposedly a way of showing appreciation, or it's out of "obligation", or maybe people think they can bribe the teachers into giving them good grades... But my history teacher says he doesn't want anything. He says that whatever he wants is not something that us students could give him anyway. So he'd rather have us work hard in his class or show him our "charming smiles". He told us to tell that to our parents, even if they don't believe us - and then he said we should say, "So you think my smile isn't charming?!" and the parents will say, "No, no, that's not what I meant at all, dear."

It's the thought that counts, but he said that it doesn't show thought at all if you give him a Starbucks giftcard because he doesn't usually drink coffee (he does eat the breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks, though). I think that my math teacher last year also didn't want Starbucks coffee, but it was a completely different reason - she had some kind of problem with caffeine, maybe an allergy (dunno how to describe it), and she couldn't eat chocolate, otherwise she'd get a migraine headache.

I still have to think about what I should get for the other teachers, though. I think it might be nice to give them something, but I'm not exactly sure what I should buy. Getting them a Target giftcard would be way too typical. But I don't want to get them something that they don't like. And it would be too obvious just to ask them...

Labels: asian, caffeine, charles schwab, charming smiles, chocolate, christmas, christmas lights, coffee, college, different, gift, giftcard, plotting, quote, starbucks, teacher, unique

Well, the common phrase is "Thank God it's Friday", which even inspired the restaurant called TGI Friday. In fact, I saw a poll one time and it seems the majority of people pick Friday as their favorite day. (Personally, it's not my favorite day, because I still do my homework on Friday so I have the weekend free...) But it seems to me that Black Friday, which was just three days ago, is not necessarily the best day of the week to go shopping.

I didn't go shopping on Black Friday because of a few things... For one, my parents said there probably wouldn't be good deals at the stores, because this year, because of the suffering economy, stores didn't stock up a lot, so they aren't desperate to sell off their merchandise right now. There might be better deals around Christmas or some other later time. Also, the stores were probably going to be really crowded, and my family didn't want to have to deal with that. (Thus, we escaped to the museum, as mentioned in the post "A building full of life and death")

On Saturday, since my family was going to be visiting the house of their friends (the friends had a new house, which the previous owners had lost through foreclosure! Scary), we took a detour to Great Mall, figuring we could buy a few things. There were already warning signs when we were driving there. At the turn-off that eventually leads to a different mall, Valley Fair, a lot of cars were stuck waiting. We went to the mall, and were having trouble finding a parking space, but luckily my dad snagged one later on when someone else was leaving. I had expected that everyone had gone shopping yesterday, but it was a wrong assumption, just like when I assumed that no one would go to the California Academy of Sciences on Friday because they'd be busy shopping. D:

We only ended up buying one thing (I did see a few items of clothing I liked, but it wasn't worthwhile because either the price wasn't really, really cheap or the clothes were not unique) which was, surprisingly, some earthenware. We got it from the store called Daiso Japan. There are a lot of Daiso Japans popping up in my area. I've seen three of them. I like Daiso, but I can't really read the labels because it's in Japanese, and my ability to read it is practically zilch.

The good thing about going to the mall was that Hershey's was giving out free chocolate at several locations that day. They had several flavors of Hershey's Bliss, such as Raspberry, Milk Chocolate, and Dark Chocolate. I think all the flavors are yummy but my favorite is Milk Chocolate, as is typical for me. No one really cares if you come back later to take a second chocolate from a place you've already taken chocolate from. My parents think Hershey's must've lost a LOT of money that day, giving away chocolate.

Then, after a few hours squandered in the mall, we went to my parents' friend's house. It's not a bad house, even if it is one-story (I've always wanted to live in either a multiple-story house or an apartment...My house has two stories, but there is only one room upstairs which we use mostly for storage). I was surprised to see that the family keeps a chicken. The chicken is almost 8 years old now. They raised her basically since she was a just a chick. She actually lays eggs. I heard there used to be another chicken except it was eating by wild animals...Raccoons or something...Yikes. My parents' friends set up some Christmas lights around the chicken coop and stuff like that to scare off the animals.

It seems to me that middle-aged Asian people really like to watch soap operas and other TV shows. My parents and their friends were having an exciting discussion about places to watch dramas, like PP Live and PP Stream and things like that. (I am familiar with them since I have seen my mother using them. Even my dad watches dramas sometimes, though he's more of a movie person) In fact, when my mom and another friend (there were two other guests) recommended a website, the host dashed off to his computer to check out the site. I didn't see him for quite a while after that, except for when I passed his office when heading to the bathroom...Wow. He was watching dramas, I think.

Labels: asian, black friday, chicken, chocolate, christmas lights, daiso japan, drama, friends, hershey's, house, mall, shopping, soap opera, wild animals

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