Although there's a show by the same time, I haven't watched it. I'm simply borrowing the name, that's all. I've often wished I could slow down time, stop it, even rewind it. But there's always things that need to be done, things that are expected of me or that I expect of myself. And when all is said and done, it's the end of the day.

It's been a while since I've gotten to write, so I certainly don't update this blog much anymore. Maybe it's because I feel like I'm just shouting at a wall - seeing as there's no one left to read this except myself - but then again, perhaps the reason why I'm the only one here is because I hardly write anything, or at least nothing particularly of interest. I don't really have the urge to write anymore. It could be because I'm taking Writing for Publication and have written much more than usual this school year, so I've drained any creative energy I had.

Or maybe it's just gone to other pursuits, not necessarily useful ones, considering my capacity for wasting time without getting bored. Well, at least I'm writing for a change. Maybe it's a start.

I've just arrived home from a trip to China, visiting relatives, as is necessary every couple of years. For a long time I'd made up my mind to hate the country, or at least the city of Shanghai, which is mostly due to what memories I had of visiting it. What I remember is...

- Being forced to dine with relatives that I had nothing to say to and who smoked indoors, and gave me gifts that I didn't want, but could not refuse because that would be bad manners

- Not wanting to eat anything except for egg tarts, which were very unhealthy. I was not interested in Chinese food, and still am not, for the most part.

- Being given huge sums of money by relatives, which made me feel uncomfortable because I didn't deserve it, and my mom always tried to take the money from me (she insisted it was for safekeeping, but I was always suspicious)

- Rude people in general (being shoved aside without apology on the street, in the subway station, and such. And vendors yelling at me if I didn't buy anything.)

- Spitting on the ground (you would hear this gagging noise and some person would spit a blob of mucus on the ground. Yuck! At least my old history teacher had the sense to do it in the trash can)

- Being stared at (store workers that would just watch me as I browsed the merchandise. Not comfortable at all)

- Near-death situations (cars, bikes, and people ignoring the red traffic lights, cars insisting on cutting you off when you had the "right of the way". Pretty funny this time since an old man said a very rude word in Chinese to the drivers)

- A general feeling of uneasiness (because of how rushed the locals seemed to be, combined with cigarette smoke and an ugly grey sky)

All of these things were still there this time, but maybe I had a different outlook now. Or maybe I was just tired of hating it. I did get to go to Beijing this time, and Beijing was pretty nice since it had parks - and cats living in them! Beijing even had a blue sky, which astonished me. But it was way too cold, and unfamiliar, and taxi drivers tried to rip us off or would refuse to drive us because of the horrible Beijing traffic jams. I guess I'd become familiar with Shanghai...I'd been there enough times to recognize the sights and sounds, and I even found that I liked nighttime there (it reminded me of Las Vegas, with the lights XD). The place hasn't changed so much. It's me who has changed.

Labels: beijing, blog, change, china, comparison, consequences, energy, familiar, lazy, memories, night, perspective, rush, shanghai, time, writing

The mention of Saturday school would normally bring a different sort of image to my mind. Saturday school is sometimes given as a punishment to students. Some teacher will be supervising the students attending on a Saturday and you can do homework or read a book or something like that. I have no idea what it's really like, nor do I have much knowledge of detention, but although it doesn't sound too bad, I think it would be a pain to have to go to school on a weekend, and it'd also be a blemish on your record (supposing that you had committed a offense to have gotten into Saturday class, right?).

Well, this was sort of a voluntary Saturday school. It had been mentioned briefly on the school announcements that there were flyers in the office regarding a language arts workshop. At first I had not been particularly interested, because my language arts teacher attended a workshop for teachers, but the info taught didn't really apply to her teaching because it was a little too basic (better for elementary school than the upper grades, anyhow), and this gave me some distrust in the ability of a workshop to actually be a help to me. But at urging from my mother, I dropped by the school office to look for a flyer, and found that there were none.

My mother took it upon herself to look up the workshop, presumably on the Internet, and so she registered me for the workshop. As I have said, I was rather reluctant, but I think my mom has inherited my grandmother's stubbornness, and there is no point arguing with her. She insisted that it would be a good experience, and I had decided to try new things in my life (I am not much of a risk taker, but I thought I would miss a lot of good things out there if I didn't...) so I ended up being won over.

This morning I was still groggy. Waking up around seven or eight o'clock in the morning is not unusual for me, but since I was sleeping poorly lately (due to me being sick with a cold) I would wake up and then go back to sleep until about nine. I have never been one for sleeping in that much. My brain always seems to think it is a school day so I often wake up around eight or so, since my mind must be unconsciously saying, "AHHHHH!!! We're late for school!!!" and forcibly getting me up. And sometimes I have to use the bathroom in the morning. If it is late enough in the morning I will not be able to fall asleep again. (But I can't just not drink water. I get dehydrated easily and if I don't drink water I will wake up with bad breath and an icky feeling in my throat.) I can't wait until we go on vacation this summer. Once I get home I plan to not adjust back to Pacific Time so that I can do what I did last summer after my vacation. I would wake up in the afternoon, and go to bed at midnight or some other late time. In this way I got more sleep than I could ever have gotten if my body was following Pacific Time. I hope I can do this again this summer. I have a small chance of growing taller if I can get a ton of sleep.

For the workshop, you could choose two out of three classes offered in the morning, and everyone attended the same class in the afternoon. I picked blogging and oral storytelling for my morning classes. The afternoon class featured comedy. I suppose I should not reveal too much of what I had heard or else anyone reading this right now would not have much reason to attend such a workshop.

I will, however, say that the instructor of the blogging class, who is a professional blogger himself, says that it's easier to get the attention of people with a shorter post and having the text in the beginning be related to the title of the post, whereas having a longer post is to the benefit of people who are already readers of your blog.

He also said that there are different kinds of bloggers - people who write for the sake of writing (who just have to write, it is their passion) and people who write to get read (because, let's face it, it's kind of rough if you're writing and no one ever cares. It's like shouting at a wall or something.). But there are also a few who are a mixture of the two, who write both for writing's sake and for people to read it. I guess I would be the mixture type of blogger.

The instructor seemed to be much more supportive of Wordpress as a place to blog as compared to Blogger. He said that as Blogger is part of Google, even if you asked them a question you wouldn't get a response, but if you need to know something about blogging, you can just drive over to San Francisco and ask the Wordpress folks. Although I have thought about making a Wordpress blog, I am not sure if I want to switch over because I have kept this blog for such a long time...It would be such a pain to make a change.

Labels: blog, blogger, brain, classes, dehydration, help, insomnia, language arts, plan, punishment, saturday, school, sleep, summer, time zone, vacation, water, wordpress, workshop, writing

CORRECTION: Whoops, this is actually the 299th post. My bad.
This post marks 300 posts in this blog. It's amazing how much I've been able to write over time, and I'm glad that I got this far. I hope you've enjoyed the ride too.

I thought I had better back up some of my posts on my computer, in case Blogger ever blinks out of Internet existence or my blog accidentally gets deleted or something like that. I was looking through my posts and I realized I had used the title "Walking on the Moon" twice. Oopsy. I try not to ever repeat post names, but I unintentionally do so... I guess this is what happens when your quantity gets too big. As for the quality, I hope it has not gone down over time. When I look back at some of my posts, I think, "Oh, that was a fun time, but it feels like so long ago." There are some times when I don't have much to write about, like the post "Ansel Adams", when I was lacking for inspiration, and it was a drag to write the post. (I felt like I should write something, to prevent me getting rusty from less practice writing) And there are also times when I have so many things to write about, I'm churning out posts everyday and I feel like I'm on top of the world. I wonder if I can grasp that feeling again.

There's something I'm always wondering about, and that is my appetite. It seems that even if I eat too much at one time and get full, later on I'll feel hungry again. (I might not really be hungry, only as soon as I see something yummy, I feel the urge to eat it.) I guess I have to ration what I eat since it seems I will always get hungry at certain times regardless of how much I ate earlier. This is rather dangerous and makes me feel like a fish or something. I bet my fish would keep eating beyond their capacities if I gave them a ton of food. (That's why I tend to "starve" them by only giving them the bare minimum at feeding time. I don't even feed them daily.)

While I was walking home today, I overheard a girl talking about how her dog had vomited. (Sorry to give you that mental picture if you were eating) I kind of thought about how people really still behave a lot like animals. I've heard dogs can sneeze and cough too (not sure about cats), like us. Both animals and humans scratch themselves when they're itchy. And we certainly do vomit as well. In the end, no matter how humans try to control and dominate and become "civilized", they're still animals.

I remembered something today that I hadn't thought about in a long time. When I was in elementary school, I used to go the YMCA daycare on the campus after school, where I stayed until my parents came back from work and could pick me up. There were sometimes questions we could answer, for instance, since I mentioned itches earlier, there was once a question, "Do you scratch an itch or itch a scratch?" We would write our answer on a slip of paper, as well as our name, and put it in a plastic box. Then, one day, one of the people working at the YMCA (we called them "leaders"), would randomly pick out a piece of paper where the question was answered correctly (I believe it was sorted for correct answers first), and then the person or people chosen would get a prize of some sort. It feels like a long time ago now.

Even sixth grade seems far away. I still have plenty of memories, but they gradually become fuzzier over time, more surreal, more distant. After a while I end up thinking, "Those were great times. And I'll probably never have them again." I still enjoy things in my daily life. But it's rather clouded by all the knowledge of the world you get, because when you're young everything's fresh and simple, everything is clearly defined. The lines get blurred when you're older, unless you can still keep that innocence, and I long for those days when things were not complicated. I don't know if I can have that kind of life again. I think that you don't realize how nice it is to be young until you get older.

I feel worn out of having to deal with stresses and concerns, and that's why I want to retire. I'd thought that if I didn't have to work any longer, and be able to focus my attentions on the little things, things that I want to do but don't get around to doing, things would be easier. Maybe they would be, and maybe they wouldn't. I'd still like to see for myself. And I don't want to wait more than fifty years for it.

Labels: 300, appetite, blog, complicated, fish, food, innocence, inspiration, life, memories, old, retirement, scratch an itch, simplicity, stress, time, walking on the moon, winner, YMCA, youth

Today, something of interest happened. The most interesting thing was that it was practically right under my nose, and I didn't notice at all.

The event in particular occurred around 10:09 am, Pacific Time. It was something caused by the Earth. By the tectonic plates beneath the Earth. The friction between two of them, which happened to be CONVENIENTLY located in California, must have built up again, because the event I am speaking of is an earthquake. Find more information about it here.

I didn't feel the earthquake, so I didn't hear about it until the afternoon, when I called my mother.
Mom: Did you feel the earthquake?
Me: No, when was it?
Mom: Around 10:09.
Me: Hmm...I didn't feel anything.
Mom: Really? But it was pretty close by. We had to evacuate the building.

When my parents came home, I double-checked with my dad. For him it was even worse since his company building is even closer to the earthquake's epicenter. My mother found it surprising that I didn't feel a thing. Someone she knows who lives in the neighboring town felt the earthquake (then again, that town is a bit closer to the epicenter than mine).

I guess we were safe from the earthquakes. Either we were far enough away, or the design of the classrooms is quite sturdy. At the time, I was in one of the "portable" classrooms (although I believe it can be moved around, and it looks kind of boxlike and the ceiling isn't as high nor are the windows as large as a "built into the ground" classroom) and I heard once that portables are more earthquake safe.

But then, if the other students had felt the earthquake, wouldn't they have mentioned it when talking at brunch or lunch? Perhaps it wasn't felt at all? Maybe it's not too bad to live where I do. (Though it is still certainly within the danger zone if an earthquake is in a different place. I mean, I was in an earthquake in late October - the day before Halloween or something close like that - a few years ago, and I definitely felt that one. But it had a slightly higher magnitude) But I still always feel like it's dangerous living in California, since in the movie 2012, the first place to go was California.

Some places are worse off when it comes to natural disasters, though. I keep email correspondence with an old friend of mine who moved to Taiwan years back. She said that not all that long ago they had a huge earthquake, but their building was fine, as buildings are designed to be earthquake-proof, even apartment buildings, which can reach high heights. There are also typhoons in Taiwan. Sounds like a pretty wild place; I guess the Earth's pretty excitable over there. I don't really understand why one of my friends says I should visit Taiwan sometime if it's so dangerous and it's pretty polluted. I don't even know where I would go there, besides Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world (is it still?). But if you know someplace cool to visit in Taiwan, let me know.

I've also wondered whether I should visit Korea. What I mean by Korea is South Korea, since I'm not sure whether North Korea is an ideal place to visit. Anyhow, though, I only know of one place in Korea, and that's the capital, Seoul. I'm afraid I'm not as well-versed in the world as I had previously thought.

Luckily, I had some good loot this year from Christmas. XD Although I am Santa, I have elves who give me gifts. One of the things was a world atlas, which is something I wanted (I already had one, but it was a thin one with not much information that I ordered through the "book orders"). If I were retired already, then I could spend more time looking at it...Sigh...

Ah, before I end this post, I wonder if you have noticed the new blog layout, which I put up just yesterday. (If you are new to visiting this blog, then you might not have known). I've made a few changes to the coding, because the original text size was rather small, which bothered me... And the layout is aligned to the right, so if you expand your screen it will still stick to the right of the Internet window. I hope that doesn't trouble you. I thought I'd try a different color this time.

Labels: 2012, atlas, black, blog, building, california, catalog, classroom, earthquake, font size, layout, location, natural disaster, portable, taipei 101, taiwan, typhoon, world

I was trying to think of a title for today's blog post, and it just wasn't coming to mind. Sometimes I have multiple titles I think of to suit the subject matter I'm starting the post off with, and other times I can't think of anything worthwhile. This is one of those times. (It's ironic, because I already have the title thought out for my very last blog post. I hope I never have to use it, because I don't want this to come to end. It feels like my happiness would come to an end too)

What I mean about the title is related to anime. I was watching an anime called Someday's Dreamers. It's not that recent (I think it was a 2003 anime or something) and it's not really that exciting. But it is nice that there is a dolphin in it. After all, despite the scary dream about dolphins I had once, they are still my favorite animal.

Well, because Someday's Dreamers isn't that recent, probably no one is going to find the Japanese version and make English subtitles for it. I have only been able to find the English dubbed version so far. It's really annoying having to hear it in English because if the voice actors/actresses don't pronounce it well, you can't tell what they're saying. At least with the subtitles you could just read it straight off. But it was funny because one of the characters has a voice actress who speaks with a sort of British accent.

I was also watching an anime called Emma, not that long ago. It was more unique since it's about a time in England, more than a hundred years ago. The main character is a maid. Her name is, rather predictably, Emma. And then she meets a guy called William. Personally I don't like him all that much, but oh well. William is the son of a wealthy businessman, so he's part of the gentry. I don't want to spoil the main theme of the story, so that's as much as I'll say about that.

I found it amusing that one of the characters in Emma was a guy called Hakim from India. It's so weird to see an Indian prince in England speaking Japanese. And all the British people speak Japanese too. Well, the manga must be from Japan, and the anime too, so I suppose that's just the way it is.

On to other news, because I am not planning to squander my whole post talking about this. Recently, I had gone to the mall with my parents to a buffet for dinner on my mom's birthday. We spent a short amount of time browsing Macy's, since my mom was looking to buy a coat, preferably a waterproof one. I noticed a desk and some Christmassy themed things around it. There was also a mailbox of sorts (not one of those with flags that people have for their houses, I mean the sort of mailbox that is usually blue that you just dump your letters into if you don't want to go all the way to the post office), and paper and pencils to write a "letter to Santa". I was greatly offended because I AM Santa, and I have never received any of those letters, so Macy's was pretending to be me. So I wrote a letter that said so and put it in the mailbox. Hehehehe.

Sometimes I get the old nostalgia for Applied Arts again. Two of my friends are taking Advanced Applied Arts. They have been making some pretty nice stuff in cooking, like ice cream (though it melted over the course of the day, unfortunately). I miss Woodshop too. I was always allergic to the dust and kept sneezing during clean-up time, but still. After a while even the smell of glue and wood can grow on you. It's not like I don't like French...In fact, I guess I'm glad that my mom suggested I take it. (Sometimes it's okay to let other people decide things for you. Arranged marriages sometimes work out better than "love marriages", because they're more practical, rather than being based on a whim) But that doesn't mean I don't miss things sometimes.

Labels: anime, applied arts, arranged marriage, blog, christmas, dolphin, dubbed, emma, english, ice cream, india, japanese, letter, macy's, santa, someday's dreamers, subtitles, title, woodshop

"Homemade" movies have been coming together around me. My piano teacher and my parents want me to record my piano playing. My teacher says that I can share it with my children when I'm older (since when you get older, you can't play some songs anymore. Lack of strength? Lack of skill? I dunno). My parents just want to send my music to my relatives in China so they can ooh and ah over it. So my family has been using our new (sort of) camera to record the songs that I'm playing currently. I keep laughing or getting nervous, though, and so I don't think any of the recordings were really as good as I can play if I'm feeling good. Oh well.

And then my piano teacher actually arranged for her top students to have their songs all recorded and put together in a DVD. We would dress up - like dresses, or perhaps a suit if you're a guy - and then we'd go to her apartment, and one of her students recorded us, and then he made it into a DVD. I just got the DVD. The cover picture is nice-looking. But all the piano players and the teacher have their picture in black and white, so it made me feel like I'd already died and it was a memorial DVD. D:

One time I was reading Fruits Basket, and in one of the novels, I was looking at the fan art section in the back. (I don't know if the original Japanese manga has a fan art section, but I know the English manga does.) Actually, I think there was someone from the town where I live. It was amazing. I guess it's a small world after all.

It was the Moon Festival recently. I had forgotten until my mom told me. (But really, it's late this year. I thought it was normally in September) Some of my parents' friends came over to our house because of it. Apparently, one of the families (there were two, though one person was missing because he was sick) had another friend who owned a cat and a dog. They went over to the friend's house, and then their son (who was also at my house, but didn't do much besides play his DS) was bitten by the dog. The dog wasn't even vaccinated since their owners thought it "wasn't necessary since the dog never left the house". And the cat was crazy too, trying to attack people. I guess that's why my parents' friends are against dogs going unleashed in our town. If they already can cause trouble when they are leashed, then having them unleashed would make it worse. But I think it would be cool if there were places dogs could run free, and maybe "touch upon their wolf heritage" or whatever. I mean, I heard there are places where there are beaches for dogs to run free. It would be cool if someday I could have a dog and go there.

I was taking some photos at home and one of them came out kind of weird. I spilled some soup at dinnertime once so I decided to take pictures while I had the chance. When I had the flash on, the photo turned out kind of interesting. (Click to enlarge photo. It's really big!)


This blog has already been running for a whole year. In fact, the anniversary was only a few days ago, on September 30th. Let's toast to the future of the blog! (Unless you want it to go down. If so, I don't even know what you're doing here. o_O;; )

Labels: anniversary, black and white, blog, cat, Dogs, dvd, fanart, fruits basket, homemade, manga, moon festival, movie, music, photography, piano, record, songs, vaccination

Yesterday I saw a terrible, terrible thing. Why, it was so perfectly dreadful I had nightmares for weeks. (Nah, I'm just exaggerating about that. If I saw it yesterday, I could only have nightmares for one day) It wasn't rape. It wasn't murder. It wasn't a kidnapping either. It was... PEOPLE BOARDING A CAR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!!!

Sorry for the caps lock use. It's not often that I do that. Well, I should explain what I saw in more detail. As I was walking home, I was almost at a crosswalk when I noticed some familiar figures in the middle of the road. It was my parents' friends' son and daughter, getting into their father's car. By doing so, they were blocking the cars behind them, since you're not supposed to board in the middle of the road, you should pull over to the side so you won't be causing a line to slowly build up behind you. (Otherwise people like my mom will honk at you. Like my mom honked at someone in the morning who was behaving strangely, because they could've moved forward but they just stayed still, and when I got out of the car I could feel pairs of eyes on me) It was even worse that I knew the offenders. I mean, it's one thing to see strangers committing a dastardly crime but it's quite another if it's someone you have actually had conversations with in the past.

Speaking of other crimes, theft seems to be something common at school. Recently a classmate of mine was acting suspicious and then the Weepul my friend had (Weepuls are basically pom pom type things with faces on them. This one looked like an ice cream cone! Was pretty cute) had vanished. There is no real evidence whether the suspicious boy stole it, but who knows...They say that theft frequently happens among middle school students...Also, I haven't been able to find two of my pens. (I'm pretty sure I dropped it or it got lost in the black hole called my backpack, but still, you can never be too sure these days.)

I can now officially celebrate the rebirth of my GIMP. It had not been working yesterday. Probably I had too much brushes or accidentally deleted a file that was crucial to it. So I ended up having to back up my brush files and then delete the GIMP and remove the files belonging to it. Then I reinstalled it and used the backed up files to restore a little of the brushes that I used to have. Now it is working right as rain and I am quite relieved. What else would I use for graphics if I didn't have GIMP? Photoscape? (Doesn't have enough brushes) MS Paint? (Doesn't even have an airbrush tool or anything complicated) Photoshop? (Costs money except for 30 day trial and I don't know how to use it)

Guess what? This is the 200th post! Wow, I can't believe ◆ k a i s o u m i z u has managed to get so far. Bring out the beer - er, I mean, Calpico. (An artificial drink from Asia which comes in various flavors. My favorite is strawberry)

Labels: 200, blog, brushes, calpico, celebrate, crime, file, gimp, honk, middle school, ms paint, pens, photoscape, photoshop, post, road, rules, theft, traffic, weepul

There's no need to be concerned, because I don't gamble. I once tried to in the Venetian hotel quite a few years ago, when my mom and I were eating dinner at a restaurant inside the casino, and I wanted to press one of the buttons on a nearby slot machine, but then a worker came by and said I couldn't. How disappointing. Slot machines make cool noises, kind of like the newer checkout machines at the local library.

The inspiration for my blog post and title today was cars. Yup, cars. I often see doubles of the same car. Today when going to school, in front of my car were two Lexus (dunno what the plural form is...Lexuses? o_O;; ). They were the same exact kind except for the color.

And there are a lot of Subaru Foresters, I have discovered. I have seen a couple of them in my area, same color and everything. And one time I came with my mom to work at her office since there was no one to watch me at home (and I have no siblings, so I am not trusted to stay by myself, except for this summer when I was doing just that). Well, my mom had parked her car next to another Subaru. It was also a Forester except it was a black one. I know they have to sell a lot of a kind of car or they would discontinue making them but I still get amazed if I see the same kind of car. I see the Mercedes we have hidden in our garage sometimes too.

There are a lot of twins, too. A pair of twins who are both geography whizzes are in my village this year, along with a girl who apparently has a twin (but I haven't quite figured out who her twin is. I assume she has to be in the school somewhere). Maybe there's more twins in my village that I didn't notice yet.

Anyhow, on to other news. The blog layout has been changed since unfortunately the one I had in mind isn't working as well as would be nice. So maybe I'll just try and format it for Nutrinopets or something, because I often use blog layouts for my profile there. This time I got it from createblog.com, which has Blogger layouts, though I still prefer to go to blogskins.com most of the time. I thought the toast was very charming. And I really like bread. XD

I've moved my playlist and it is now underneath the posts, at the bottom of the page. It will autostart so pause it or turn off your sound or turn off the playlist's sound if you don't want to hear it. There's also a Youtube video so you can have images and sound together if you would like. I picked out Colorless Wind sung by Yuuki Aira, which is the Sola anime opening. It's one of my favorite songs. (There was another song I wanted to put up but I couldn't find it...Sigh...)

Labels: automobile, blog, car, casino, change, colorless wind, forester, gambling, las vegas, layout, lexus, mercedes, playlist, slot machines, subaru, toast, venetian, video, youtube, yuuki aira

My mother and I have been butting heads (not literally, just figuratively) over the dilemma of what backpack to use for the next school year. I have the option of my trusty black Jansport roller backpack, or my brown can't-sit-up-straight "regular" backpack, also of the Jansport brand. The roller backpack seems that it would be easier to use, what with not feeling the weight on your back, and thus improving your posture. But roller backpacks cause people to trip (sometimes a good thing, not always, does anyone remember the time I almost killed a PE teacher?), and often get unbalanced so you need to stop and flip it over every time it gets upside down. Plus, it seems that a lot of people are addicted to my roller backpack. If I have it, then they will insist on pulling it, or pushing the handle up and down for amusement. And the roller backpack is hard to use on stairs. I wonder about it myself but I have decided for now I will use the brown backpack since we should not be carrying much in the beginning of the school year (well, except for maybe textbooks, but I'm pretty sure they won't give that to me on the first day...right?).

Other things are also questionable about the next school year. For one thing, I wonder if I will be walking home by myself or with the girl (I guess I could say neighbor since she lives on the street parallel to mine) I walked with last year. I guess maybe my mom or I will have to call them and ask about it unless they do on their own. I heard that the girl (keeping her name disclosed, though I used her initials in some other post) wants to ride a bicycle so I hope she will get to (for her sake and also a little for mine as well). If I am by myself I will not have to worry about inconveniencing her by stopping to take photos with my cell phone all the time. (Though I'd rather use a camera than a cell phone, because my cell phone can't take as good photos. But I'm not sure if you're allowed to bring cameras to school, and even if you are, not a good idea to keep it out since people might want to use it to take photos of me or themselves or even steal it)

I'm going to go back to the subject of my vacation since I'm sure I will forget most of what went on then unless I keep a record of it (if you think about it, my blog sort of serves as a scrapbook or something for me. Oh yeah, I heard one of my teachers last year liked scrapbooking, though that is pretty irrelevant). One of the people, whom I shall refer to as Harry, was with us while we were in Melbourne. He has two children, Lukey and Vanessa, Lukey being the younger one. I am still not exactly sure how Vanessa is spelled. You see, Harry probably liked tennis or something, because he wanted to name his daughter after Venus (one of the two Williams sisters). But something got messed up and an A was added or something because her name is not Venus after all. I thought it was kind of interesting, though maybe my name's reason is more clear, as when I was in elementary school one of the YMCA day care staff liked to called me "Sydney Australia" or just "Australia" sometimes.

Labels: australia, backpack, blog, jansport, middle school, name, pros and cons, roller backpack, scrapbook, sydney, vacation, venus williams

It's a relief to be back home again, actually. Being far away from home can be nice, since it's a way to drag myself away from the computer (ha, ha), but there's really no place like home, is there? Home is where the heart is. Which means home is the rib cage. (Okay, so that was a lame joke from Animal Crossing: Wild World. I spend too much time reading the bulletin board anonymous messages.)

Once, while I was on vacation, I had a dream where I was on the computer and found out Blogger had changed. It looked kind of like Freewebs (they apparently just call it Webs now?) or Photobucket for some reason. And when I tried to find my blog, I couldn't get to it. I'd get an error and it would be like everything had disappeared, all those posts... I was really frustrated and panicky in the dream, but then I accepted the truth and decided I would start fresh with a new blog. So I was going to make a new blog with Wordpress (another site you can use to make blogs, I believe). Then I woke up and realized it was only a dream.

Occasionally, I wonder if I should change the name of my blog. I've had this name, ◆ kaisoumizu, practically ever since I started the blog. I was thinking of something like True Blue or Beyond the Sea (thus explaining that thing at the top of your Internet which says ◆ K A I S O U M I Z U - somewhere beyond the sea, when you visit my blog) but it could already be taken. And anyhow, I'm really used to having this name, and you readers out there probably are too. D: So I suppose this is just another wishy washy time for me, where I will think about doing something but not do it ever, or at least not for a long time.

Seeing as I have a lot to say about my vacation to Australia, anyhow, I'm going to spread it out by talking about some in the future posts this summer. It's not like I really do anything exciting during the summer much anyhow, what with my summer classes being over and me lazing around at home. I figure if I dedicated a whole posts to Australia it would be a very long post. And y'know, my posts are already pretty lengthy on average. XD

I should give you some background information while I'm at it. Here's the places we went to.

San Francisco → Sydney
Immediately after, Sydney → Melbourne
Several days later, Melbourne → Gold Coast
Two days after, Gold Coast → Cairns
Another two days, Cairns → Sydney
And eventually, Sydney → back to San Francisco.

For the entire trip there was my family, my dad's friend and his wife and son, and another of my dad's friends. While we were in Melbourne we caroused around with more people, though... And in Sydney we met some people as well.
Here is kind of a key since I will be mentioning various people in the future posts. It's a bit confusing, so bear with me.

Dad's friend "David" (not his actual Chinese name), his son "Michael", and his wife "Meggie" (not her actual Chinese name)

Dad's other friend "Andrew", his daughter "Whitney" (he has two, but one of them was not with us the whole time), and his wife "Casey" (not sure if I spelled that right, I think so, though)

Dad's third friend "James" (and we briefly saw his wife, "Cindy")

Dad's fourth friend "Harry", his wife "Louis Vuitton bag" (because silly me has forgotten her name, or maybe I never heard it?!), his daughter "Vanessa" (I dunno if it's spelled like that, because there's a story behind it. Will tell later), and his son "Lukey" (we call him that, dunno if it's really Luke)

Dad's fifth friend "Gary"

Mom's friends "Lily" and "Dog Owner" (yet again I dunno his name in English), and their two sons, whose names I forgot, so I call 'em "College Bookworm" and "PSP Final Fantasy Dude", plus the sons' grandparents (because I forget whether it's Lily's or Dog Owner's parents) who I just call, "Old Lady Who Won't Let Dog into House" and "Quiet Old Guy Who Walks the Dog".

Besides that there was my aunt's classmate and her husband, and I don't know their names so they will be called "Guy Whose Face Appears Stressed When He's Not" and "Lady Who Had a Son but Doesn't Really Like Children" (my nicknames get longer and longer!) and their son is who I call "Friendly Megane with Tasty Chewing Gum" (megane being a person wearing glasses).

Phew, there were more people than I expected to write about.

Labels: australia, blog, disappearance, dream, home, ideas, name, nickname, people, post, return, vacation

That's what I'll be doing this evening. I was unhappy by the fact that we are flying United Airlines (I like to try different airlines, especially since ANA, the Japanese airline, was cool) and also that the flight is at 11 pm at night or something. That means I have to stay awake all day and then during the night too. (I'm supposed to sleep on the plane flight but I usually have trouble doing that so when I get off I'm dizzy and jetlagged) But at least we get some good seats. It's the kind of seats which are at the front of a section so you can kick the wall. (But you're not supposed to, even though you'd be sorely tempted) Qantas has cheaper tickets right now but I heard one of the Qantas planes had a problem recently and my mom's friend or acquaintance is paranoid, as she told my mom, "It's a good thing you're not flying Qantas! It's not safe!" I guess my personality is constantly changing little by little since some time back I would be paranoid too but now I just care about the money. Maybe I'm getting more selfish. XD And yet at the same time I'm more generous too. Weird.

Last night I had a dream. Somehow, I was back at Kennedy Middle School. My PE teacher was Mr. Robinson again, and I was wearing a Kennedy PE shirt, but my regular pants. It seemed like no one noticed. Mr. Robinson had us line up in two lines depending on our number (which is, in turn, based on our last name, I think) so I lined up in the first line. Most of the students were lazy and tried to line up in the first line even though they were supposed to be in the second line. Then Shiroi Hime (in place of her name) ran by, gave someone a high five, and ran off again. o_O;; Later on, I went to a shop that sold food. I think it was pastries or desserts or something like that. A lot of people were waiting for it, while me, a girl I didn't recognize, and someone who I'm guessing is probably my friend visiting, were at the front of the line. We argued over who should order first and finally the one I didn't know ordered. You could type in your name so then the clerk would give you a small circular badge with something handwritten on it (I bet this is influence from me watching the movie Up...) and I accidentally entered Sydney Grunge Ji. Everyone gasped. I started panicking since I hadn't meant to write that. Then the clerk said something about not knowing anyone who was emo. I was just very confused at the end of the dream. XD To me, when I hear the word grunge, I think of a style of brushes to be used on computer graphics.

I had my hair cut not that long ago. I didn't think anyone would notice because 1) It was during the summer when I don't see that many people I know, and 2) only some small changes were done to my hair. My dad cut it this time, instead of me going to a barber like I usually do. He just cut it an inch or two shorter, and thinned it out, and that was about it. So you can't really tell the difference since I normally put up my hair in a ponytail...Besides the fact that the ponytail is less thick and less short, and that's something that requires studying me a lot to know.

Anyhow, back to the fact that I'll be gone. I'm leaving this evening for the airport and will not return until around...August 3rd? So there probably won't be any new posts from this blog for a while (unless I manage to get on my dad's friend's computer while his kids are at work - it'd be unfair to use the computer when normally they're not allowed to). I bet probably there will be little to no comments because of that, too. XD Well, I hope you all have a good rest-of-July, and I will see you later!

Labels: air plane, ana, badge, blog, computer, danger, dream, grunge, haircut, line, name, PE class, personality, ponytail, qantas, store, travel, united airlines, vacation

...For my poor Christmas tree, which perished on Thursday, July 2, 2009. The tree had probably already been dead a long time ago, since it isn't one of those "live Christmas trees" (you know, a small one in a pot which you have to take care of during the year and hopefully it'll grow big enough to be ready for Christmas next time since it's too small to really hang decorations on) but I still feel like it was a funeral. Even though I didn't look at the tree much besides when I'm practicing piano and my eyes are wandering, it still became something familiar in my house. Now that it is gone, there is a lame, regular plant in its place.

The reason why my father dragged the tree outside, rid it of its branches and leaves, and cut it to pieces to put in the Yard Waste bin, was apparently because it was a fire hazard. The tree has been there ever since Christmas, more than half a year ago. It is now very dry and so my parents worried that if we leave the home it could catch on fire and burn the house down. (Our insurance doesn't cover the whole house's cost, so it wouldn't be worth it) And yet even though I never gave the tree a name it was in a strange way dear to me.

I have turned to a bundle of yarn for consolation. Yes, yarn. After reading a book I developed a minor interest in sewing and figured someday I might try it. Maybe in the summer, seeing as there isn't much for me to do during this hot, boring season. I have purchased a bundle of light blue yarn. (We have some other yarn at home but I think all we have is some pink yarn) It is quite soft and I am almost reluctant to use it, but then, it would be nice to learn how to sew. My mom knows how, or at least so she says.

Other things I did today were visit the San Jose library, and also buy a bike at Target. We normally go to the library on Saturday, but seeing as tomorrow is the 4th of July, the library will be closed. As for going to Target, I already have a bicycle, but since I have taken my mom's one, we had to get another one. I used to have a smaller bicycle but I find that the one I usually use now is easier (at first it was hard to use because I was too short but now it's about right). Luckily we have a coupon and besides it's on sale this week. My mom wanted the purple color but they were sold out already (apparently it's a new color and very popular) so we had to get a pink bicycle instead. My mom thought it would be okay to use a male bike but I figured it would be a little weird. Have you noticed the difference between male and female bikes? (Besides how they usually have different colors. Take a look at two bikes or find pictures and you'll see what I mean. That bar thing that runs from under your handlebars to under your bike seat has a different shape.)

Recently I have taken a renewed interest in Ouran High School Host Club. Apparently it has come on DVD to North America and so my mom was lucky enough to find Part 1 in the library (part 1 contains episodes 1-13) so I've been watching it while I exercise, read books, or just when I'm bored. I've been wondering if I should just try harder to find a good Ouran theme for my blog, and then always have Ouran icons. It would be pretty cool and once I did find a nice Ouran theme. The only problem is, with that layout, you can't see the name of the blog title. It's really a shame.

Labels: anime, bike, blog, christmas, danger, death, fire, holidays, independence day, july 3, layout, library, ouran high school host club, sewing, tree, yarn

I've heard this phrase in several places. I mean, even in Pokemon if you talk to a certain trainer after you defeat her she'll say that. And it is true, you will meet her again, because in Pokemon games you tend to travel around a lot, and besides she always stays in the same relative place.

But anyhow. The reason why I named the post this is that I have "met my playlist again". Previously when I tried to put the code for it into my blog, it wouldn't work. It'd end up in the wrong place, or it would ruin the rest of the coding so the layout wouldn't look right. Finally I've gotten it to stay. Only 30 seconds of Imeem songs really is just terrible. You can't even choose which 30 seconds of the song you want, though I have to say Imeem has more different songs than Playlist. I am so glad to get my playlist back up. True, I have maxed out my song total but I can just delete broken links to put in new songs. Or just make a second playlist. (It would be really funny if I put two playlists on my blog and they played at the same time) My Playlist doesn't exactly match the blog layout (because I am too lazy to find a background or something that would really match), and it's too big to really fit in the div, but whatever. I've gotten it to automatically play on shuffle, so you will hear a random song everytime you come onto this blog. (Just leave your speakers off if you don't want "speaker shock". I have a post somewhere in the past about "speaker shock".)

We saw two open houses today. It seems like this is unofficial Open House Weekend or something. When we were driving around doing things like going to lunch, the library, and so on, we saw a street corner with quite a few Open House signs. More than the usual amount, anyways. We decided to see two of them on Phar Lap Drive which is a steep residential rode connected to my own street, Mann Drive. Phar Lap is loads of fun to bike down because it is so steep, but it is a real pain getting back up again. By the way, I heard there is a long, sloped road in Hawaii somewhere. You can rent a bike or something and ride down the road. It is steep enough that you don't need to peddle, you just enjoy the wind rushing by, but it's not so steep you'd fall and die or something. So I would like to go there sometime. But back to the point. I don't want to get distracted.

There are two houses that I am quite fond of on the street known as Phar Lap. They are across the street from each other. I have written about one of the houses in the post known as ◆ fight, love, live. It's April 18th if you want to check the end of that post. So, the house I have seen before is Spanish-style, with cool things like being able to spy on your neighbors, a view of a creek, and a place next to the shower stall in which you can grow flowers. It even has a home movie theatre which I had not noticed last time. (Anyhow, the house price was like 2.5 million before, I think it was reduced since no one has bought it yet.) The other house, which I just saw the inside of today, is also European style. It appears to be long and thin. It has a small swimming pool and there are many, many balconies. There's a lot of stairs in the house. We had to go in through the back entrance since the realtor was temporarily out, probably doing something. It had many bedrooms (the bedrooms are small, but still, we could always convert some of them to another use), and an inlaw unit downstairs with a bathroom, hidden bed (it's a cabinet which you can use as a bed), kitchen, and TV with nice movie-like chairs. And upstairs was all the rest like dining rooms and the four other bedrooms and several nice bathrooms. This house costed 1.98 million and the price is negotiable so it is a good deal! (That is, if you can get a loan and are able to pay it off)

My parents seem to like the house we saw today better. They are both nice, really, but with different things. My dad says the architectural style of the second house is more unique and stuff. Well, I'm just annoyed by all the stairs. How are you supposed to get up and down them every day? I suppose it would make me more fit, at least. And my mom says if I really want a house that looks like the first one we should just remodel ours. My dad's friend's wife is an architect and she may be able to figure it out. (Still I would feel bad to have an exact copy of another house, you know?)

That reminds me, sometimes I wonder about getting my dad's friend's family to adopt me. They live in an apartment and already have an older son who doesn't talk much (all he really does is talk to his dad, or watch basketball) but maybe I could sleep on the couch. Dad's friend is an engineer at Cisco, my dad helped him get hired, except my dad says "The -namegoeshere- at work is nowhere near as great as the -namegoeshere- I know." Very cheesy, but I guess my father knows best, since they are good friends. And then my dad's friend's wife is a friendly person who likes to cook. Plus, their family wanted to get a cat if they can find the right cat for them. So this is my best chance to get a cat (since you usually can't have a dog in an apartment, and my mom doesn't like dogs). Perhaps I should consider being adopted.

Labels: adoption, again, architect, bike, blog, comparison, family, goodbye, hawaii, house, imeem, meet, music, open house, phar lap drive, playlist, pokemon, short, slope, speakers

I see that people are as selfish as ever. They all want ice cream because it's free. I know this since I showed up around 5:30 pm yesterday at the school, because I heard there would be free ice cream. However, many students were already there because they'd gone to the Cougar Fest (the Kennedy kids stay after school to do activites like pony hopping, rock climbing, bungee jumping, hoop shooting, and other things. I heard there were even Wii games. Probably just Wii Sports, though, and you get that for free when you buy a Wii). I paled looking at the long line of students, and my dad and I made a hasty getaway. We ate some cookies and cream ice cream at home instead.

I wish the Nature Center had been unlocked. I would like to show my dad sometime since he likes gardening. He wanted me to put his name and "A husband, a father, and a gardener" on his gravestone. So I thought it'd be cool to give him a tour of our school's nature center, which is a garden of sorts that is sometimes used for scientific studies, especially in seventh grade (our classroom has a back door leading to the Nature Center). There's all sorts of nice and not-so-nice things like two ponds (one is broken and man-made. The other is...thriving. One time we had a pair of ducks land in the Nature Center. They might want to mate there), many plants (ginkgos are my favorite trees since their fan-shaped leaves are kind of pretty), and benches (sometimes we have fern plants there, or "plaster of Paris" to use to make molds of fossils o_O;; ). It's better than a stuffy classroom all day, anyhow.

I have been watching drama, a Korean one called One Fine Day. My mom checked it out from the library so I took a look at it. It started off in the city of Sydney so of cuorse I had to watch it, because I watch things that have my name in it (like Finding Nemo, a cool animated movie about a clownfish). Dramas are strange. There's lots of yelling, cheesy background music, etc. I'm too used to anime, which makes Korean seem foreign to me. But I think my mom and I know some words in Korean now.

Ching-jang-neh-yo (that's how you pronounce it, not how it's spelled XD) is boss or team manager?
Abuji - Father
Amani ("Ama" for short?) - Mother
Neh (how do you spell that) - Yes
Deh - Either "no" or "pardon?" depending?
Oppa - Brother (I was confused about this at first. A character is called Gun but his sister calls him Oppa)

I have changed the layout of the blog. It is now Koda Kumi themed. I found it on Blogskins.com which has some pretty cool skins. You have to hunt for them sometimes, though. I have trouble getting my playlist's HTML code to work here, so I have put a link to my playlist in the click away section, and instead put an Imeem song 30 second preview thing instead.

Labels: blog, blogskins, cougar fest, drama, ducks, finding nemo, gardening, ginkgo, ice cream, koda kumi, korean, language, nature center, one fine day, playlist, pond, school, sydney, theme

...That can only be cured by gold! Okay, sorry, I'm not Cortes or one of those Spanish explorers who tried to get gold from American natives, but oh well. I thought this was suitable seeing as one of my friends said our history teacher wasn't at school because he had a disease of the heart. "Actually, he wanted to see his daughter's school play," she later said. And for a moment I was getting excited, what a bummer - er, what a relief. We don't want any teachers dying. (Like that time Mr. Blair was all sad and serious and said that when you teach for many years you see teachers dying. Luckily, usually it's just the old ones, but sometimes teachers die of sickness.)

Today we did some dissection in class. It was just flowers, though I was very thrilled to be handling what looked like a small knife. Mr. Brown warned us that if we played with the scalpels we would be sent to the Principal's office and later expelled since scalpels are dangerous enough to fall under the Zero Tolerance rule. So are scissors, according to our school planner's rules section, but I still bring them anyways. XD You have to come prepared...right?

More about the scalpels. Mine had some strange brownish things on it. I thought it was bread since Mr. Brown eats in class so maybe he was cutting bread with it. However, Mr. Brown said, "Don't mind the frog guts, these scalpels used to be used to dissect frogs and pigs." Yikes. They always say the frogs died of natural causes but it seems more likely they were killed for the sake of school. After all, last time I went to Hawaii we saw some dead frogs on the road, which had apparently been run over by cars. Ouch.

My backpack, as well, is a lethal object. Though it may seem like a regular rolling backpack it is actually a bodyguard of sorts in disguise. If someone ever tried to cut me in the lunch line, I think I could try to accidentally run over their foot with the wheels or hit them in the ribs with the handle. And oftentimes when I'm walking in the hallways, if people try to get past me they have to face my backpack. They end up being shoved against other people or tripping. This is my way of teaching the lesson of personal space. :o But I suppose if I ever had children they wouldn't like being smacked by a backpack just to "teach them manners".

This morning I woke up and couldn't breathe through my nose, so I got a tissue and tried to clear it up. Instead I got a nosebleed. -_-;; What a nice reason to get up early. It bled a whole a lot and for a while but I went back to bed with some paper stuck in my nose and finally it stopped. I don't get nosebleeds as much as I did when I was in elementary school, but still quite a lot, especially when the weather is dry. I guess that will never change. I just hope I won't get skin cancer or something due to my multitude of health problems.

I've been thinking of doing some updates to my blog, like changing the layout (it's been here a few months by now, I think) and also adding things to my posts. For instance, I might teach something that I find interesting every time, or I would start writing a story. (I've been wanting to write a book of sorts for a while, but I don't have the patience nor the inspiration. Whenever I get a good idea it's a nighttime or at school and I can't just write it down on my desk or my pillow.)

Labels: backpack, blog, danger, death, dissect, flowers, frog guts, health, layout, lesson, nosebleed, revenge, scalpel, sickness, story, teacher

When I was young, back in elementary school, the teachers taught me that March could arrive with two kinds of weather...A lion (bad weather) or a lamb (nice weather). I suddenly thought of how some Twilight fans keep spouting the phrase "And the lion fell in love with the lamb" what with Edward being the lion, Bella being the lamb, or whatever. I was told that Stephenie Meyer got the inspiration for her Twilight books from a dream she had. I thought maybe she had a dream about springtime, and then thought of the lion/lamb idea.

My grandmother is sick too despite practically being across the world. I guess it's because the weather is suddenly so much warmer and it is springtime. I can hardly remember how cold it was just a month ago. The tulips in my backyard are blooming now, so it is very nice to look out on them while sitting at the dining table. Most of them are red, but one of them is pink. I wanted to take a picture of them but in the afternoon they started closing their petals. I panicked and thought they would be dead tomorrow, but my mom assured me that they just close up for the night and open once more in the morning. I hope she's right, since I want to take a picture before they're gone. (People in California don't seem to grow tulips much, maybe the climate or soil here isn't right for it. In Washington D.C., you'll see tons of tulips, in front of hotels, business buildings, and even planted around statues of Civil War generals. That's all well and good, but seeing tulips everywhere makes you get bored of them. It's better over here since not everyone grows tulips.)

Today I went to the library. I had to return a lot of books, so I couldn't resist checking out some new ones. I tried to go to the second floor of the library to tell my parents I was done, but I had trouble getting up the stairs and even dropped my books twice. Luckily they did not fall all the way down, so I could pick them up and keep going. Either my sickness is putting a damper on my health or I really need to see a doctor.

Then my family went to a mall near their offices. My mom bought a shirt from a place called Charlotte Russe (some of the stuff looks alright but some of the stuff is scary. The music is a bit loud. They have shoes you can try on, though). Maybe I won't go shopping for a long time since nowadays I don't even buy anything. Besides, I'm trying to save money. It's not going so well since I can't get hired by Jamba Juice or Target yet, and I only have $12 allowance each month, and most of my teeth have fallen out by now. Oh well, it's better than nothing. I let my money sit and collect dust in real life AND in computer games/web sites.

I would've posted my blog a lot earlier but then something really, really stupid happened. So I started typing this post a pretty long time ago, but I took a break from the computer and went off to do something else. Then I came back and typed the rest of the post. I tried to publish it, but it turned out during the time I was gone Blogger had logged me out. So I had to log back in. And then all my text was gone. I had to spend a long time typing it again. I'm still seething, since this isn't the first time a similar thing happened to me.

Labels: blah, blog, books, income, library, mall, march, money, season, sick, spring, stairway, tulips, twilight, washington D.C., weather

It seems like I can never find the "perfect temperature" today. If I put on a coat, I start sweating, but if I take it off, my allergies/cold seem to get worse. I wonder what to do. (I don't want to use the medical nasal spray my mom keeps in the office since it hurts. It's made of seawater or some other weird substance. o_O)

Right now it's my Staff Learning Day, but it seems like some colleges are having their week of spring break now. I guess they don't have February Break (otherwise known as Midyear Recess) like my school dose. I guess that makes sense, seeing as the purpose of our week off in February is so that kids won't miss a week of school just because they want to be skiing in Lake Tahoe or something.

Earlier today, a man (presumably one of my mom's coworkers) tapped the side of the cubicle (since there is no door to cubicles). I thought he had something serious about work to discuss but it turns out he was bringing my mom an advertisement for a good deal on a vacation to Hawaii! First there was pizza the last time I came here, and now a vacation ad from a newspaper?! Does anyone work at my parents' offices?! (My mom sometimes goes shopping during her lunch break, and my dad checks his email and writes on his own blog...Apparently he has some friends who "look forward" to reading his blog)

Anyhow, I've noticed that my mom keeps two of the apples that I brought her from school on top of her computer. One has wrinkly skin because it's probably rotting inside and the other one looks okay but doesn't feel very hard when you touch it. I compared this to my grandma and my mom. My grandma is old, and has wrinkles and a hunched back, so you can tell, kind of like the first apple. My mom looks younger but she's aging, if you look at the grey hairs beneath her dyed head. My mom was miffed when I made such a comment to her. D:

Now, I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with KK Slider or not, but he's a well-known in the Animal Crossing games (now available for Game Cube, DS, and even Wii). He started out as a poor street musician named Totakeke, but now he's famous. In the Game Cube he sits on a crate next to the train station (pretty miserable when it rains, if you ask me) and in the DS he gets to use the stage in the museum cafe. As for the Wii (the game for that is called Animal Crossing: City Folk) I haven't tried that yet, so who knows. (I want it, and one of my friends who lives in Taiwan said she would get it if I got it and liked it, but I don't know...I mean, I might not have time to pick weeds and go fishing every single day.)

Back to my mom's office. Looks like her plant isn't dead yet. I was surprised seeing as my dad has the "greenest thumb" in the family (which reminds me of an inside joke I had with my friend in Taiwan. She used to live in CA. One day she was bored and decided to water the plants herself instead of turning on the sprinklers. Then the plants died. So I say she has a "dead thumb"). I was reading my planner a few years back, and it said in one of the corners, "Never go to a doctor's office that has dead office plants." I wonder if that advice is sound.

Labels: animal crossing, apple, blog, break, decay, free time, health, kk slider, memories, nasal spray, pizza, sick, simile, ski, staff learning day, vacation, video games

All folks living in the USA should set their clocks an hour forward, as in 9 am would become 10 am. You could set it tonight, or tomorrow, whatever you prefer to do. I wouldn't have remembered, except I read a forum post about it...Apparently people in other parts of the world don't really know the reasons for Daylight Savings. D: I'd heard it was something to do with energy saving, or whatever. I don't really care too much, hehe, though it would be easier not to have it.

This morning I woke up really early, so I tried to go back to sleep again. I don't actually know if I did sleep, since I'm constantly thinking when I'm conscious. Well, oh well. By the time I truly got up it was around 9 am.

I finally got to go to the Valley Fair mall again. It was quite a while since I was last there. It turns out they opened a new Ann Taylor Loft where the Sharper Image (an electronic store place) used to be. It seems like a lot of clothing isn't cheap even though it's supposed to be a bad time for the economy what with lay-offs. I guess the stores still charge a lot since people still want to shop, judging by how crowded the reduced price racks at Nordstrom are. xD

Anyhow, my mom and I were planning to buy a pair of shoes (or, more like just my mom, since her feet are smaller so the shoes are better for her) but then it turns out my mom's feet are different in size, so one shoe was tight and the other fit?! I guess that must be true, as my mom's legs are different lengths, even. o_O;;

I just heard that my grandparents have been reading the blog yet again...I guess they always do because they have time. This time they said my playlist was too loud. Perhaps I should change Morning Grace back to the first song because that was quieter, at least in the beginning of the song.

If you have a Wii, and the game Wii Fit, you'll eventually unlock Plank, Push-up, and Jackknife Challenges. (All strength exercises you may have done in PE class. Jackknife is similar to a sit-up, except when you come up, you make what's supposed to look like a V shape) What's really funny is how the Wii Fit trainer always gets beaten (that is, if you can keep doing more exercises every time) and how she collapses, then mutters about underestimating your strength or whatever. I am endlessly entertained as every time I do one of the Challenges again, she insists she'll "try her very best this time".

For dinner, we did some shabu-shabu again. It's basically you have some soup being cooked on a burner, at a high heat. So you can practically cook while you eat. You dip various items such as meet, noodles, or even flavorless mochi into the soup until it's cooked all the way through. I first tried this in a Japanese restaurant. (By the way, they gave us vanilla-flavored popsicles for desert. They're small but tasty.)

Labels: blog, daylight savings, food, nordstrom, playlist, relatives, shabu shabu, shoes, sleep, song, trainer, valley fair, wii fit

Yesterday morning, I managed to drag my mother away from her laptop. It's actually not hers, but it's one that my dad got from his office, intended for work, except my mom uses it to watch Asian movies. Normally she gets glued to the screen, so that she doesn't pay much attention to me (which can be good or bad, depending) but I managed to force her into trying some Wii Fit. She doesn't get enough exercise despite insisting that she takes walks with her engineer friends after lunch.

We started off with a bit of jogging. I ran as fast as I could (or more just shuffled my feet very quickly) which made my mom accuse me of cheating. I just shrugged it off and finished in record time. For a few minutes I watched my mom. She jogs really, really slow so it took a while. Then we tried some strength training, since both my mom and I need some toning on our triceps (upper arm). She wants to use the 2 lb weights instead of the 3 lb weights but the 2 lb's are somewhere else. Probably lost, like the majority of my possessions. Then we did some yoga. Kind of like my dad, she can't do the Spinal Twist. Whenever I mention this to my parents they insist it's because of my much younger age.

I spent this morning and afternoon at my mom's office. I was planning to make my blog post there but I got distracted by playing my DS (The game? Harvest Moon DS). I am trying to rescue 60 sprites (little elfish dudes who were sent to another world by magic) so that my game can go on but it's slow work, especially since it's winter. (Funny, since it's winter over here, too.) I can't grow any vegetables or fruits in this lame weather.

Road signs nowadays look very pitiful. One of them was a green rectangular kind sticking over the highway. But the sign was twisted sideways so that it was leaning against tree branches, and a large amount of the hard green part was missing, so that it seemed like someone had mangled it. And then there was this blue sign (kind of like a triangle shape, but not quite) and it said Highway 280 on it. The sign was upside down, though, so it looked like 08Z (a warped z, because it was a 2).

I recently heard from my mom that my grandparents have been reading my blog. I thought this was hard to believe since they don't know that much English, but my mother reminded me that they have a Chinese-English dictionary, and retired people have too much free time (most of them, anyhow). Then my grandparents send me emails, but they're written in Chinese so I just stick them in a folder and forget about them. (Sorry, Gran & Gramps. But I can't read Chinese.)

Labels: blah, blog, computer, exercise, family, harvest moon, nintendo ds, office, road, sign, wii fit

...Or so I thought. I was busy typing up my factoring story for homework, and then I thought my eyes were flashing or something! So I looked at the lights,and one of the lightbulbs flickered and then went out. But now it's back to normal. I wonder if it was my imagination or it really did almost run out of energy a second ago.

As I am feeling very unhappy (because I am presenting my speech for my Japan project tomorrow) I don't feel that much like doing homework. So instead I figured I'd put in another blog post, and listen to my own playlist in the meantime. I just figured out that I had two of the same song (Anata ga Ita Mori, the ending theme of Fate/Stay Night anime) so I deleted one of them. Wow, I have too many songs - a total of 26 now. And that's just weird since 26 was my classroom back in fifth grade.

Here's the cooking schedule. It's pretty plain this week, much to my disappointment. But then again, next week will be winter break, and after that barely any of the trimester is left. I can't believe I'll be moving onto woodshop soon. (One of my friends is going to make me a clock, except she said she would make an easy one, to save herself effort)
Monday - Nachos Supreme (we made dip out of beef, spices, beans, cheese, etc.)
Tuesday - Chocolate Hearts (not hard to do. Just melt chocolate and pour it into molds. Then leave it in the fridge for a while)
Wednesday - Dairy Cow DVD (something like that)
Thursday - Dary Cow thing again.
Friday - Some exercise notebook or practice? (Dunno what that is but it sounds boring)

So you see, though cooking is really nice since you can look forward to it when you wake up, and it's free food, sometimes you have a dull time because we have to watch a bunch of cheesy videos and fill out worksheets.

But at least we watched something interesting recently. It's called the Meatrix and it's pretty funny. Here's the link.

Meatrix

Meatrix 2

Meatrix 2 1/2 (ignore Korean subtitles)

Labels: blog, cooking, elective, factoring, homework, japan, lightbulb, meatrix, music, speech, videos

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