The post is way too long, so I have split into two parts. :p The more interesting stuff will be in Part 2.

I hardly wrote anything in my blog during the summer, nor did I really use my brain much, except for imagining what kind of schemes the people/creatures/organizations around me have been putting into action. Certainly not the most useful way to use my time and energy, but it sure is fun coming up with conspiracies. I'll start out with the scariest and most true one...

Someone is Trying to Hack Into my Email
I haven't been using my Gmail lately, and for a good reason...After I came back from a short trip, I tried to log into my Google account, but I was told that my account had been temporarily closed due to suspicious activity. I had to have the Google automated service call my phone so I could get a verification number which would allow me to reclaim my account. I found out that somehow, a spam email had been sent to pretty much all of my contacts without me knowing about it. (Luckily, it seems that the emails probably didn't get through to the recipients.) I don't know how this could've happened. Is there some sort of virus? Or maybe someone really does want to ruin my life, one part at a time?

The rest of them are pretty much coincidences. In other words, mostly nonsense. :p

Surprise Parties and Birthdays-that-are-all-around-the-same-time are the "In" Thing
Everyone seems to be throwing them these days. One of my friends said she just threw a surprise party for her friend; actually, though, it's mostly the middle-aged folks who seem to love surprise parties. In just one week, two of my mom's friends threw surprise birthday parties. My mom even asked me if we should do that for my dad. :\

Oh, and it turns out many of the Vocaloids have birthdays (or anniversaries of their releases, whatever you'd rather call it) around the same time of year. Lily just had one a few days ago, today is Miku's birthday, and tomorrow is VY1's birthday! Is this just a lucky time of year for companies of Vocaloids or something?

Not to mention one of my friends just presented me with a birthday gift, so I guess people have really gotten into the birthday spirit...

Doctors Are Out to Get Me
I have the feeling that my doctor may not be as mellow as he has previously seemed to be. For one thing, he charges me lots of different things - my mother says we have to pay for the visit to his clinic, the shots I've been receiving, and some third thing that I'm not sure about. (Our insurance is supposed to pay for most of the costs, but apparently it hasn't come through yet.) Then there's the fact that the doctor now leaves the door to his clinic open. I thought it was because he wanted the germs of his patients to spread all over the place so that more people would get sick and would have to come to see him - and ka-ching goes the money...But actually, my mom insists that the doctor just wants to avoid turning on the air conditioning.

I think dentists are pretty evil too, though, or at least orthodontists are. My dentist/orthodontist (he does both) tried to convince me to get braces every time I went to see him. I asked him if I would suffer any health problems if I didn't get braces, but he said I wouldn't; however, getting the braces is supposed to make me look better. Ha! I said no thanks. (He still says that I might regret it someday, though, and that it's not going to be fun to get braces when I'm an adult. But I don't plan on doing so. Maybe my teeth are imperfect, but hey, I can bite just fine with them.)

Kpop's Hidden Motives
My friend bashiri came over during the summer and showed me a Music Mondays Youtube video, a show created by the couple Simon and Martina which expresses opinions on k-pop songs. I watched their episode for the song "Hot Summer" by f(x). They mentioned a street sign that said Flaxton Street. Since I'm not all that familiar with k-pop, I can't confirm this, but apparently this Flaxton Street makes an appearance in several other k-pop music videos. Besides that, the Music Mondays hosts pointed out that everyone in the "Hot Summer" music video is Korean, so apparently, people in Korea are able to dance in the blazing hot summer while wearing leather clothing and don't even break a sweat. Even the song lyrics and title are supposed to be really catchy, I guess, because after first hearing the song, whenever anyone mention the words "hot" and "summer", I immediately wanted to start singing, "Hot summer, ah hot hot summer."

Labels: air conditioning, birthday, braces, conspiracy, dentist, doctor, email, f(x), hot summer, kpop, money, party, surprise, theory, vocaloids

Is there such a phobia? Because I probably had it, not long ago.

A week from now, on Monday, I will officially make the move from middle school to high school. It's a change that I have been feeling uncertain about. It seems like the clock will really be ticking once I enter high school. My mother is now pressuring me to take classes and study for the SATs and attend seminars. And now I'm being urged to...

- Talk to my teachers (which is a bit hard for me, since I'm not that outgoing as of the past few years and I feel like it's really shallow to befriend your teachers just to get a good recommendation letter for college)

- Make a "professional" email (I don't want to have to check three different emails. I already hardly check one of them - and besides, I figure I'll get spam mail if my real name is in the email's name. And I would really be angry if people were judging me by my email. I know, in this world, first impressions can mean everything, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.)

- Attend extra classes outside of school (my mother insists that a lot of other people are taking them and I have to in order to keep up. But I don't like the idea of that either, because it feels like I'm using money in order to get ahead in school. Just because other people are doing it doesn't mean it's right. Well, I suppose I may be the only one who has such warped and illogical morals.)

- Stop wasting time on the Internet (that's something I intend to work on myself. For instance, I am planning to quit Crunchyroll. Maybe not completely. I might come back once in a while, but I will probably stop visiting on a regular basis. I've already started to think of my "farewell" message. It's painful for me to leave something behind, but not as much as I would have thought a few months ago. It's time to move on. I no longer want to be chained to it.)

And I don't really know what to expect of life in high school. Back when school was still in session, all of us 8th graders went over to the high school campus (it's pretty much across the street, so it's nearby) and listened to some people talk about various parts of the school. They encouraged us to join clubs and participate in leadership activities and whatnot. Near the beginning of the session, the students said, "Well, I bet you think from what your siblings and friends have told you that it's all about studying." Then they paused, and added, "Well, it is sort of like that..."

I certainly hope not. In this country, what with some of the best universities being located here (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley, UC LA, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Pomona, Northwestern...), the competition gets too fierce. If you ask me, it's like in middle school they're preparing you for high school, and then in high school they're preparing you for college, and then in college you're being prepared for...Your job? The rest of your life? I'm not really sure. (As for when you've got yourself a steady job, I think you're just waiting for retirement. XD) I have heard that some of my fellow students have been taking classes during the summer, such as Geometry, so that perhaps they can move up a level in math and will not have to take Geometry in high school. (I don't see the need to rush. Why not take it easy? You should be able to take Calculus by your senior year if you just go the grade level route.)

Well, I'm sure there's a lot more to high school than just studying for tests all the time. (It's not like I study as much as I should anyways, since I often think to myself, "Eh, I'll probably end up studying something that isn't on the test. I'll be wasting my time.") But I have no idea what everything else is like either. I've looked at the school lunch menu and read the policy, but what does that really tell me about the people there? How can I know what I've read in novels really reflects the high school I'll be attending? Will it be similar to middle school or a whole different universe? I guess the only thing that can be done is to experience it for myself. I am no longer afraid, or at least less so than before. But I'm not completely looking forward to it, either.

Labels: change, classes, college, crunchyroll, email, expectations, fear, first impression, future, high school, internet, judge, life, moral, preparation, quit, SAT, studying, teacher, uncertain

I've never actually watched the movie by the same name, but I still wanted to use this as the title of this post. XD

I am sure I have had a lot more than one missed call in my time, whether it be on my cell phone or on my home phone. For one thing, I don't really have my cell phone turned on most of the time, so it's highly likely that if you call me there, I won't pick up. D: And then I'll see your call four days later or something ridiculous like that. (Unless I'm staying home by myself, in which case it's better to keep my cell phone on to make it easy to stay in contact with my parents, so they know I haven't been kidnapped or that someone has broken into the house)

And as for the landline phone, I don't always pick up the phone. Oftentimes I just let it ring until the answering machine goes on and then listen so I know who's calling. It gets annoying when people call asking for my parents because they want to sell something to them or something like that. And it's also annoying when we get automated messages from the library or people running for political positions. (Well, I don't mind getting messages from the library so much. XD)

It was pretty funny because one time we were listening to the answering machine and then the superintendent's voice came on. He was encouraging people to vote for Measure B or something like that. My dad picked up the phone and said, "We've already voted for it," but the superintendent kept talking. That's when he realized it was just an automated message. (Well, I guess the superintendent is busy, so he can't really be giving personal phone calls.)

But hey, just because someone's got a lot to do or is a well-known public figure doesn't mean they can't take a little time out of their schedules. My math teacher sent an email to Steve Jobs to inform him about a problem. iPhones don't work around the area where my school is (actually, probably all cell phones using AT&T don't work in that area. How annoying).

So my teacher asked if any of us had parents that worked at Apple because he wanted us to get our parents to bug their superiors and somehow or other get Steve Jobs to reply to his email. He said, "If Steve Jobs sent me an email, I would reply to it!" And we were thinking to ourselves, "Yeah, but it's Steve Jobs".

But it turned out that Steve Jobs had read the email and had forwarded it to someone in a major position at AT&T (unfortunately I cannot recall who it is). This person then wrote back to my teacher saying that there was a tower planned to be put up later in the year, but it might be postponed. If necessary, a smaller mobile tower might be set up to give coverage to the schools. It's the kind that gets used when there are natural disasters or something like that. Apparently it's actually pretty big even if it's not quite a permanent tower. It would be pretty amazing if that happened. Kind of makes me think of the butterfly effect that was being talked about in language arts class, which is where something small can cause events to happen and eventually leads to something big happening. (I actually had a layout for the blog up before that was called the Butterfly Effect, haha.)

Labels: answering machine, apple, automated, busy, butterfly effect, cell phone, coverage, email, famous, hole, layout, mobile, movie, one missed call, parents, phone, steve jobs, superintendent, tower

It's supposed to be a play on the title of a movie, No Country for Old Men. Not sure if you caught the reference, though. (I haven't seen the movie either.)

The old man in particular is my father. (No offense intended to him, but he is getting on in his age.) My math teacher sends newsletters to the parents of his students about what he's been teaching, and lets them know about upcoming tests. My dad had stopped receiving the newsletters, so I brought a piece of paper to the teacher with the information needed for him to resume sending emails.

My father's memory and concentration seems to be off, because he didn't write his email address properly (missed three letters of it) and the teacher told me, "This email doesn't work." It's kind of sad that my dad doesn't even know his own email. (It's true that I sometimes forget my passwords, but that's because I keep so many of them.)

I wonder if anyone really writes letters anymore. I mean, my parents said they used to send Christmas cards, years back, but they don't any longer. (In fact, they don't really send Christmas e-cards either, which could mean they are losing their holiday spirit or are just getting lazy.) I remember when I was younger sometimes we would have a pen pal activity - each person would write a short letter to a person in another school that they were paired up with. I remember that it was a lot of fun...But we usually only exchanged one or two letters, and that's about it. It'd be much better if we could send them actively all year long. It might help improve our letter writing skills and it would be fun.

Today, my history teacher started talking about how us students aren't taking the opportunities that are given to us to sharpen our skills. He said that many kids are members of social networking sites and use instant messengers, but often they use chatspeak and don't bother to capitalize or punctuate properly. When they do add punctuation, it's probably a bunch of exclamation points. My teacher said that he had practiced typing and gotten really fast at it. But here we have plenty of chances to practice what with the time we spend on the computer, and yet we don't take it. (Reminds of this quote: "Opportunity comes knocking more than once. You just have to ready for it." I think it was in an old school planner)

I spent time in two different history teachers' classrooms recently - my regular history teacher, and another one who I've never had before. The reason is the rain...My PE teacher decided he would teach us about the cons of smoking, alcohol, and drugs while the weather was bad. We would go to that teacher's room (let's call him Mr. T) since it was his prep period (each teacher has one period where they don't teach, but are supposed to be making preparations for class or grading tests). Mr. T seemed to eat a lot of the kind of food called Cup Noodles.

Today my PE teacher left two minutes early, leaving us in the "care" of Mr. T, because he needed to go to the classroom for the next PE class (he uses a different classroom each period since the teachers have different prep periods). Mr. T decided to ask us what we had learned during our time of having PE inside.

Student: I learned that D talks a lot. (D stands for a different student's name)
Mr. T: You didn't know that before?
You know what's really amazing? D talks so much, but none of what comes out of his mouth has any meaning. The ratio of how much he speaks to how much of it is important is staggering.

Mr. T had brought in some food today, as well, in Whole Foods bags. Someone said they had seen cake and pizza. "What happened to your diet, Mr. T?" piped up D. (I did hear that Mr. T wanted to lose weight...) Mr. T said, "Hey, I'm fairly skinny, right?" (Well, I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But he ought not to have that attitude. Otherwise, the pounds will pile up again.)

Labels: christmas card, cup noodles, diet, email, father, letter, memory, newsletter, no country for old men, opportunity, password, PE class, pen pal, practice, skills, talkative, teacher, typing, weight

I'd known this phrase from reading books, but I'd wondered what it meant. Well, finally I got around to looking it up. If you say butter WOULDN'T melt in someone's mouth, it means the person keeps a cool demeanor, and is not "warm" enough to melt butter. Usually this phrase applies to women. Sometimes it means that the person is quiet, meek, and has a sweet temper instead of emotional coldness. Whew, this phrase kind of confuses me. It's not like "barking up the wrong tree", which I believe means that someone has got ahold of the wrong person (ex. Someone stole a watch, and the person who was stolen from bothers a person who they think stole it, but it was someone else who stole the watch).

I was playing Animal Crossing (as I do every weekend, to make money to pay off my house mortgage) when I was talking to one of my neighbors. He said to me, "This may sound surprising coming from me, but letters make me nostalgic," after he showed me a letter (which was actually written by me, using a different name XD). Another neighbor said he'd heard about something called "e-mail" on TV (remember, this game was created 2001 or 2002) where people could send messages to people in other countries.

This reminded me of how I used to keep in touch with one of my friends from first grade. She moved because her parents lost their jobs and couldn't find a good one in California. So now she lives in North Carolina. We used to exchange letters and postcards, and it was nice to communicate that way. There's something charming about writing letters. But now almost everyone uses email instead, so I communicate with long distance friends through that instead. It doesn't have the same feel, though, and oftentimes people don't respond to my emails for a very long time. Or never at all. So I almost wish that my language arts teacher would make us have pen pals far away, like in another state or country, except we could write whatever we wanted. I mean, the skill of letter writing is started to be lost. One of my friends asked me what you need. (Well, the Dear -soandso-, and the ending which could be Sincerely, Best Regards, Yours Truly, XOXO, etc. is obvious. But I mean the address, the first and last name of the receiver, and things like that. It seems like people don't even know that anymore. I'm extremely disappointed)

I've eaten a lot of sweet foods these days. My dad brought back cookies and egg custard tarts. (Apparently someone was trying to kiss up to him with the egg custard tarts) My mom brought back a chocolate chip cookie as well, and then last night my dad's friend's family (they come over a lot ever since they moved to my town) and my mom's old Shanghai classmate came over. So we served cheesecake. I got first dibs even though I'm not a guest. Ha! I picked a chocolate chip cheesecake. They're all pretty good - the flavors were plain, chocolate chip, tuxedo, and triple chocolate. However, I will need to do some serious work in PE to burn it off. By the way, if you aren't sure what an egg custard tart is, here is a picture.

Labels: animal crossing, butter, cheesecake, chocolate chip, cookie, delicious, dessert, egg custard tart, email, food, letter, mail, melt, plain, sayings, scrumptious, tasty, triple chocolate, tuxedo, weight

I've been reading a book called Little Women, so I feel this unexplainable urge to sound old-fashioned, even though the book is driving me insane. (I can't seem to finish it no matter how fast I read it) If you do not like my weird writing today, let me know, but if you don't mind it, I might someday type a post like this again.

My day began without any disturbance. I had quite the pleasant time in my art class, talking to my fellow students while trying to fix my yellow paint (it had turned a disgusting shade because I have used it too often to try and make a different green). Yash, one of the people sitting at my table, fell off his stool (those black-legged stools are awfully dangerous). Mrs. Masero, the art teacher, laughed at me because my response was so bland - I just looked at Yash the way I would look at an interesting-but-everyday-sort-of-thing, as if people crashing to the floor was an everyday occurrence. Math class had nothing worth mentioning today, save the fact that I am sitting with the same boy I sat across from last time. Even though we were supposed to change seats, apparently I have "lost out on the lottery", so to speak.

At brunchtime, Marina, one of my email-and-school correspondents, met up with me and bid me talk to her. She gave me one of her delicious homemade cookies, and then asked me if I had come up with a character yet. (She wants us to exchange emails and write some sort of random story, fast as possible.) Apparently we only have a little while to do it. I am not sure what possessed her to choose me as her partner for this two person email story. Perhaps she had little voices in her head, St. Margaret and St. Catherine, just like in Joan of Arc - which leads me to the next portion of the day.

After brunch came third period, in other words, history class. For one reason or another, we had a substitute teacher today, so we just watched a rather odd video about Joan of Arc. Since Joan was being burned at the stake for "witchcraft", she kept on shrieking in agony. What was amusing about it was that it wasn't the actress screaming, because the screams and the actress's mouth movements didn't match up! While the person screaming was yelling, the actress's mouth was closed, and opened to lip-sing a bit late.

Science had not much happening except for our Chapter 5 test, which I shall omit from this entry, and instead move past lunch to 5th period Language Arts. My friend and tablemate was very anxious for the cookies the teacher had promised, but these cookies did not show up until the end of class. It turns out we are going to work on summary writing right now. Even the teacher admits that summaries are just simply a bore, but she must teach us about them because summary writing is a necessary skill.

The last event of the day may be considered the most interesting - and alarming. All of us thought PE would pass in a normal manner (besides the fact we were starting our wrestling unit). But actually, a traumatic accident occurred. Somehow, a student from another PE class had collided with the volleyball net and fell onto the ground. She could not get up and so even my PE teacher, Ms. Rawson, tried to assist the poor fellow. The student's own teacher, and later even the principal, came over, and called 9-11. I was told that the student had a seizure, and was even hauled off in an ambulance! Even later, in the locker room, some of the ladies continued to discuss this recent turn in events. Almost as if life were simply a great big soap opera.

Before I conclude today's entry, I shall mention the shrieking I heard as I walked home from school this afternoon. Some person - or persons, who I believe was a girl, would occasionally give a few high-pitched squeals. Whoever it was, was obviously taking great relish in destroying my eardrums, and those of the persons around me. Were I not such a polite and well-mannered sort of girl (yes, that is exaggerating, no need to tell me that), I would have run back and socked the poor person in the face. That is quite untimely, I understand, but I still would not pity the person(s) if they ended up with a sore throat.

Labels: ambulance, art, books, classes, colors, email, injury, joan of arc, little women, paint, PE class, saint, scream, seizure, stool, summary, teacher, video, witchcraft

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