Today's homework was to write a poem about ourselves. The poem started and ended with "I am -namegoeshere-." In the poem there are eight other lines. Four of those lines are true things about ourselves and the other four are lies. I thought it was interesting that my teacher wanted us to write lies about ourselves. Was it for fun, so we could pick out which parts were right and which parts were false?

I've never been much of a poet myself, I'm afraid. When I was young I tried my hand at writing a poem. I think I still have it tucked away in a notebook. Now that I look back at it, the poem seems rather meaningless and rough. I guess that things always look different when time passes, though. Drawings that seemed good to me when I was younger just look funny when I get older. And seeing pictures of myself a few years ago, I think, "Wow, I looked really different then." (But after a while I always looked similar in the pictures. I suppose it means I'm getting old.)

Sometimes I wonder if it's better to always tell the truth or if it's okay to lie sometimes. Most of the time telling the truth is the better thing to do - it shows you have integrity, and people who lie tend to get found out anyways (unless they're good at lying. I mean, I heard all the best thieves are never caught).

But telling the truth can be a harsh thing. Sometimes this happens to me, or I see it with other people... A person asks their friends, "Do you like my ____?" or says, "My drawing is so terrible!" And their friends would just say they liked it or that their drawing was bad right away. I wonder if they really mean it or if they're like me...Sometimes, even if I don't really think as highly of something as the person asking me does, I just say "It's nice" or something like that anyways. I figure they'd be offended if I say "I'm not really that fond of it." I don't want to hurt their feelings, so I just pick the safe choice and pretend.

But how much longer can this go on? How much longer until it all unravels? I can't always live my life like this, can I? And yet speaking my mind could be costly too. I don't know what I would rather do.

There's also a different situation, one I haven't come across yet, but still a possible one. Say there is a person who actually has some health problems. In fact, they have a terminal illness, but they don't know it - but some people close to them know. The person would become depressed and listless if they found out about it, but as long as they think they're not going to die soon they are able to live their life happily and blithely. Do you think they should know because they deserve to know their own fate? Or should the truth be hidden from the person so they can enjoy what life they have left?

Anyways, on to a different topic... Today in PE class, my PE teacher spoke to us about a girl who has one of the school records for triple jump. She is still in the school (in fact, she is in my grade). The teacher said, "I've heard a few people suggesting she's been using steroids. That's not true at all. She trains really hard every day with a professional coach, and worked to make her legs and body strong. Don't say that she's been cheating and taking the easy way out by using steroids. She has really good work ethic. I think people who are saying that she uses steroids are just jealous. And yeah, it makes sense to be jealous, but you can just say, 'Wow, she's good.' You don't need to mention steroids."

There are some athletes out there, such as a few baseball players, who use steroids. Some folks think that athletes who have used steroids should be taken out of the Hall of Fame or whatever records they got into. My PE teacher had an idea for it...He said he should leave both the records of people who used steroids and those who didn't in the records, but that the people who used steroids would get a * next to their name. I think that's a pretty good idea. That way everyone will get credit, but people who decided to use steroids would have some shame. I think it's only fair. If you do something dishonorable, you have to pay the consequences. (I believe in poetic justice. But it's not always dealt like that in life.)

Labels: athlete, baseball, death, fate, friends, happiness, innocence, justice, lie, life, opinion, PE class, picture, poem, pretend, record, steroids, thief, time, truth

Lately my father has been watching baseball instead of golf. He usually watches golf, but since it's almost winter, the golf season is over (I mean, you can't really play in the snow, and besides it's harder to get a cold golf ball to go far than it is to get a warm golf ball, if those Comcast Sports Science videos were worth anything) and the only places they could play would be, like, Hawaii or something. So now, since it's currently still baseball season, my father has turned his attention to that sport.

This means that there are even more similarities between my father and my history teacher than ever before! D: Now both of them are baseball fans who are/were teachers (after all, my dad used to teach, and he might be better at that than being an engineer, seeing as he likes to talk =_=;; ) and both of them often get distracted by their computers. (When my dad is on the computer, if I try to talk to him, he probably won't hear me...) In fact, just the other day I saw my dad going on this website he likes. He was doing some virtual gardening, pulling up weeds with his mouse cursor and stuff. And then he put some food in this place where he keeps his animals. He has weird animals like peacocks. Looks like my dad is a zookeeper now.

The other day, in science class, we watched an interesting video from the History Channel. It was about great engineering disasters, and we got to watch planes blow up and dams break. What I thought was the funniest (I know, it's not funny if people get injured or whatever, but in this one no one died, except there was a car on the bridge) was this bridge in Washington. When it was windy, the bridge would roll about. Search for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on Youtube if you want to see what it's like. Anyhow, the bridge collapsed in a wind storm, unfortunately.

My mom and I like a kind of bread sold at some Chinese bakeries called a "polo bun" (it's pronounced differently than that, though). It's sweet tasting and sort of bumpy. It looks kind of like a melon bun, which is something I saw in the anime Shakugan no Shana. I've always wondered if they are the same thing or not. I've been wondering a long time, so if anyone's eating a melon bun, let me know. D:

Weather is something I mention occasionally in this blog, and so I'm talking about it today, too. Not long ago, it was really hot outside, but now it's cold and my hands are freezing while I type this. I really hate it when the weather keeps changing. I heard that it was hot right now in Shanghai from my grandparents. Is this one of the natural weather cycles of the Earth, or is this caused by global warming, I wonder? There are still people who say that global warming doesn't exist, or that it's being offset by the natural ice ages of the Earth anyway. (But then again, we haven't had an Ice Age for a while...It's suspicious.)

Sigh...I had to switch cell phones. We're changing from Sprint to AT&T because my mom's friend was laid off. Because of him, we were able to get a discount on the phone service, but since he's not working there anymore, we won't have the discount any longer. My mom decided to swap to AT&T since it is cheaper and she says that people who used AT&T say it works fine. Still, I do miss my old cell phone. This would be my third one now and I hardly know how to use it... Plus, I feel like it's bad for the environment, getting new cell phones. I mean, it takes energy and resources to make a cell phone, after all.

Labels: animals, baseball, bun, cell phone, gardening, golf, season, similar, sports, tacoma narrows, teacher, virtual, weather

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