That is what the city of Vancouver was described as. Last night was the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Vancouver is apparently one of the most populated places that far north. I have visited Vancouver once in the past, years back, when my family was visiting my dad's friend's family. I can't remember that much about it anymore. I guess I was too young back then to appreciate the beauty of Canada anyways. I'd like to visit Canada again, but I'm not sure when I'll get a good opportunity.

My memories of that time are really quite hazy because I thought I had visited a tower in Vancouver. However, that had happened in Seattle, not Vancouver. I remember that my family was going to eat lunch in the restaurant of the tower (Space Needle, I believe it was called) but there was too long of a waiting time so instead we went to a small shop where I bought a bagel. It was a good bagel, I recall.

Well, I should probably get back to the subject of the Olympics before I lose my thought process. I watched the people representing each country walk in. Everything was announced in French first, then English, which I was pleased by. There aren't a lot of countries interested in the Winter Olympics compared to the Summer Olympics, but I'm still excited by it.

I noticed that some countries seemed to have a lot of people, like Russia, Germany, the USA, Japan, Canada (but of course, they're the hosts!), and so on. On the other hand, some countries only had one or two athletes. And India, despite having such a huge population, still had very few athletes (though there was a decent crowd for China). Is India not that good at sports or something? D: I do hear that they play cricket, though. But that's not really a winter sport.

I'd really like to go the Olympics myself sometime. Particularly the Summer Olympics. It's true, you can easily watch from the comfort of your home, and the camera can get closer to the people than you would be able to from your seat in the actual stadiums, but it would be nice to really be there. To really see and hear everything for yourself and to be able to look wherever you want, not just what the camera shows you. And to really be able to wave back at the athletes as they come walking out.

You know, I've dreamed of myself doing athletic things like skating or running. But I wonder if I'd ever be able to achieve such a thing.

I once said that I was interested in becoming a janitor to my parents. I think being a janitor is a noble job. You keep schools and other public places clean, even though it's hard work that must constantly be done and not necessarily for a great amount of pay. In fact, I would rather be a janitor than a soldier. A soldier is a noble job too. But I think sometimes when you get out there, and kill innocent people, and see people's fear, and be horrified by death and starvation and disease, it wouldn't seem so spiffy. I would think, "Is it really worth it for the 'great good' to be doing this? People are really, really suffering."

My father told me that he didn't think I could be a janitor because I didn't have the stamina. And he even went so far as to say that my talents would be wasted if I became a janitor. That may be so, but it was discouraging to me. I really hate to be told what I can't do. People's expectations and words can really build fences around you, fences that are barbed and would injure you terribly to climb over. But I guess that's part of what makes it exciting to chase your dreams. It's showing people that you can do things no one thought you could ever do and overcoming challenges to become a better person that is so great, kind of like people who are addicted to getting adrenaline rushes... I want to do something amazing, to leave my mark on the world, or to at least feel a sense of self-accomplishment. I think just having a small taste of victory would be enough to make me feel like life was worth living. Perhaps being a janitor doesn't seem like the most stunning, life-changing job, but you never know. One of my school janitors was able to run a 4:25 mile, back in the day. I could write a book about my experiences. I could start changes in the school The possibilities are endless. How else can a mountain be made out of a molehill?

Labels: aiming high, bagel, canada, challenge, countries, dreams, glory, hard work, india, janitor, limits, memories, mountain, olympics, potential, seattle, soldiers, vancouver, winter, wish

My school's principal is going to become the principal of some elementary school I've never heard of next year. I feel very strange since back in elementary school, our principal also moved to another job in the school district, so then we had to have a new principal. The new principal was not well-liked since she made us wait at the lunch tables to be dismissed. It was pretty annoying, and also, she didn't really solve the problem with trash we have at our elementary school. (Trash isn't everywhere, but there is quite a lot of plastic wrappers and bent forks and stuff like that. Same thing at my current school) Anyhow, I was sort of relieved when I moved to middle school but pretty intimidated too. I had the misconception that several hundred kids where in one big room, with the teacher at the front talking, and she/he had to have a microphone otherwise we couldn't hear. So boy was I surprised to see we had regular classrooms. ^-^;;

Anyhow, back to the principal. In my first class my teacher said there was going to be an important announcement. I thought he meant my other teacher getting married, but nope, turned out the principal was saying that after 7 years of being at Kennedy, he would be moving out. So he played rock paper scissors with everyone and he picked scissors, so I beat him with rock (so did many other kids). Then the principal said how all the Kennedy students rock. How corny. (Note that I usually say cheesy or cliched but I wanted to say something different for once.) Still, I do feel kind of sad. He wasn't a mean principal or anything. Even though where I sit at lunch, we usually block the aisle and when he comes by he tells us to move to the sides, I've never seen him throw a fit.

Right now I am eating a bagel. I used to eat them a lot when I was young, either with regular cream cheese or strawberry cream cheese (I don't know for sure but probably the flavor was artificial). This bagel is oddly sour but still tasty. My school sells them too; however, I usually don't trust the school food. Nowadays at the place I get lunch, they have small pretzels (no, not the crunchy kind that is like chips). I tried them but they taste disgusting unless you dip it in sauce or eat it with seaweed. (Someday I will patent my new invention, seaweed pretzels!)

I feel like playing Dance Dance Revolution nowadays. I only have the Mario Mix kind at my house, which is not that good since all the songs are, well, Mario game songs. Still, playing DDR is fun. I just have trouble stepping back. (You know, the arrow that points downward.) If you don't know what DDR are is, here's a quick rundown. It's a game that is basically stepping on parts of a mat to the beat of music. When a moving arrow is overlapping exactly with the nonmoving arrows near the top of the screen, you step on the mat. (There are arrows on the mat, too, to help you out.) Hard to explain so you should just try it yourself in an arcade or at someone's house.

My parents' companies are major cheapskates now that the economy is tough and less people are buying their products (Broadcom, my mom's workplace, had a major customer before, but that company has shut down, so people at Broadcom are worried). But I don't think the situation is really bad since at Broadcom, when they finish a project, sometimes they go play lawn bowling. I've only played a simulation on the Internet so someday I might want to move to San Francisco and go to the Golden Gate Park to try it. (There's a wikipedia article about lawn bowling, so go ahead and search it up.) Also, I heard one of Apple's products will use Broadcom chips, and you know how popular all that iTouch, iPod, blah blah blah stuff is. And I even heard that the Wii Remote uses a Broadcom chip.

Anyhow, though, the reason why I say they are cheapos is because they no longer provide water bottles. They used to always have those but now they only have soda! So you have to get water from a fountain or something. This is annoying since I like being able to carry around water bottles, not one of those weird plastic cups. They should encourage people to drink water, not sugar and caffeine (my definition of soda). Otherwise the workers will get all hyper and not be able to concentrate. I heard if someone gets distracted at work it could take them maybe 15 minutes to get back on task completely.

Still, though, my dad thinks my mom's company is the best company in the world (I bet he's the only one who thinks so! Broadcom is so unknown most people have never heard of it, whereas a lot of people in my area know what Cisco is). I mean, right now, my mom came in with a slice of cheesecake. Apparently someone had some leftovers. I guess that's why she works here and not some other job.

Labels: bagel, broadcom, cafeteria, career, cisco systems, DDR, disposition, food, lawn bowling, principal, rock paper scissors, school, seaweed pretzels, surprise, video games, water bottles

Top ↑