Not that long ago, I learned that there was a Municipal Rose Garden in San Jose, and that there was no tickets needed to get in - it's free! I decided that I had to pay it a visit, and so on Memorial Day, after visiting my mom's friends, we drove on over to the garden.

This garden must've been around for quite a while. There are little signs on the ground that tell you when a certain kind of rose was planted. There are roses that have been around since 1980, for instance. And there are also new ones planted in this very year, 2010.

The way the garden is designed is like a circle, with a fountain in the middle of the garden. There are roses of all sorts, small ones that don't look that much like roses, and a kind of rose where many red ones grow together. And there's a funny kind - I think it was called Oranges and Lemons? - Click here for a picture.

After we left the garden, I felt rather sleepy. Somehow the fragrance of the roses made me feel tired. Or maybe it's something else. I've been sleeping oddly lately. We got some blinds installed to help keep the room dark in the mornings so that my brain would not realize that it was daytime and that would help me sleep in on the weekends. Over the weekend I would stay awake thinking during the night, then eventually fall asleep, only to wake up early in the morning, and then fall asleep again for a while. I don't think I was getting very much sleep. Or I was just sleeping fitfully. I really have no idea.

Speaking of sleep, I recently watched a movie called Paprika. It's about dreams and how someone has stolen a DC Mini, a device which allows you to see people's dreams and even enter them. It was a rather disturbing movie, but the ideas of it are interesting. I wonder what it would be like to see into people's dreams. I think such things are under development already.

My dad says that you can see roses several times a year because they "get confused and end up blooming in the winter". But I don't think that the roses are confused. I believe that it is their gift to us. To give us a little beauty in a world that is often ugly.

Labels: age, beauty, blinds, confusing, dreams, flowers, free, garden, memorial day, mistakes, movie, oranges and lemons, paprika, rose, san jose municipal rose garden, sleep, variety

Today, my parents and I went to the library. Instead of checking out books, I decided to go on a photography spree. There's a courtyard in the library which I've only visited a couple of times.

I noticed something on the ground - a snail. It was moving along slowly, leaving a wet trail behind it. I decided to take a photo of it. Slow-moving animals are a lot easier to photograph, if you ask me. Then I wandered off and started taking pictures of the flowers. I realized there was something funny on a flower...It was a tiny slug. I took some pictures of that one too.

Then I walked around some more and stumbled upon a few more snails. I was getting a bit disturbed by this point. There seem to be a lot of snails and slugs around. I saw some things that looked a lot like dead worms or slugs, which was even freakier. I was both fascinated by the snails and creeped out by them. Some of the snails were pretty big, almost as big as my thumb (imagine a small person's thumb with a snail shell on it). I took lots of pictures before I got tired of staying outside (the sun had come out and it was getting too warm).

I have a theory for why the snails are there. (True, it rained the day before, but that is too boring and logical.) The library needs money to buy books and keep their system up and running. They have decided to profit through exporting goods. Seeing as they already have plants in their courtyard, the people at the library thought it'd be a good idea to make use of this courtyard by raising something there. They decided to get the business of French restaurants by selling them snails to use for escargots. And thus the library worked on a plan to mass-produce snails. The money from the snails would be used to buy new books (hence the Measure A funds or whatever it was).

After going to the library, my family and I went to a local Chinese supermarket. It's always quite the popular place. My mom likes to buy things there because if you buy a certain amount of stuff, I think you can get a coupon for food. (I'm not talking about groceries. You can buy food and it will be cooked for you. The line for it was really long) It was a good day to go because there were quite a few samples. There was some carrot/apple juice (interesting, it wasn't that bad, actually), noodles, and even a bunch of snacks. Apparently the snacks part is pretty uncommon.

I saw all sorts of foods, some of which reminded me of my childhood. There were those Yan Yan snacks, which are like sticks which you dip in chocolate (or strawberry?). I also saw Pocky and a Pocky imitation (there are a lot of Pocky ripoffs, so I've seen...) and there was Hello Panda.

Hello Panda is little cookie type things which contain chocolate in their centers. My dad says they used to be much harder, but apparently kids were choking on it, so the Hello Panda snacks are now quite a bit softer.

I went around eating lots of things, and got to try Meltyblend, from the company Meiji. Even my mother thought Meltyblend was good. (But then, she seems to like chocolate. She really likes Kit Kat especially.)

I just love free samples. I don't get much chance to have them anymore. Whole Foods doesn't seem to have many cheese samples any longer, which saddens me. I hear Costco has samples, but I haven't been to Costco for a long time either. I remember we had to have our receipts signed or something before we left the building, and I always wanted the people to draw smiley faces...Those days seem so far off now. When I was younger, I had more free time, less worries...The world used to seem so fresh and fun. I'm still making good memories, but now I'm not seeing things through "rose-colored glasses", which is really a shame.

Labels: animals, costco, courtyard, escargots, flowers, food, free, hello panda, library, meltyblend, money, photography, plan, pocky, receipt, rose colored glasses, sample, snacks, snail, whole foods

I usually wouldn't put up a teacher's first name like this, but then again, his first name is already on the Internet, and the title wouldn't work unless I did. (By the way, I've never actually watched Edward Scissorhands, all I know is that it's a Johnny Depp movie)

My teacher doesn't have scissors for hands, but he does have scissors, that's for sure. I was waiting for the lunch bell to ring, and I was standing in the shade of a building because the sun was pretty warm. (The weather can't seem to make up its mind whether to be cold or warm. Get it? Weather, whether? Sorry, lame joke.) Shirayuki no Kimi (SnK for short) is also present.

My teacher went inside his classroom and opened the blinds a bit, then he walked around inside for a while...And came out holding scissors! He held them in a dangerous fashion, too, with the sharp edges pointing away from him. That's not nice. If he tripped he could impale someone with the scissors. In fact, he even made snipping motions with the scissors, which was pretty suspicious, if you ask me.

But then he turned around and bent over the flowers in front of his classroom, and then he snipped off the dead part of a plant and tossed it carelessly over his shoulder. And once he was done with that flower bed, he went over to the one next door and did the same thing.

In the meantime, SnK and I added sound effects every time he snipped something, to make the scene more dramatic.

That reminds me, though, according to the student planner, scissors aren't allowed at school (at least, the students can't bring them). But I'm not sure if that means all scissors, or if that means you can bring the kiddie scissors (the kinds that don't have a metal part, but instead are all one material, and which are hard to cut with). Also, there are some mistakes in the planner, like how the old principal and vice principal's names were not replaced with the names of the new principal and vice principal. I think there are spelling errors as well. I suppose they don't think it's all that important to actually do a good job writing the student planner's content, even though they do think it's important to make us read from it in the beginning of the year. (In fact, we had a quiz on the content of the student planner in my science class)

Something odd happened to me on accident when I was about to type this blog post. I hit the wrong keys on the keyboard. I am using Google Chrome right now to type this (I usually use Mozilla Firefox, but I'm on a different computer so I don't want to log my dad out of his blogger account). Well, then I came up with a window that was something called "incognito" browsing. It said that with incognito browsing, you can use the Internet but nothing you do will be recorded in your history, and stuff like that. And it had a cool symbol of a sneaky guy in the corner. But I decided to get rid of the screen. (I can't figure out how to get it again, though. But that was interesting, nevertheless.)

Labels: browsing, danger, edward scissorhands, flowers, gardening, google chrome, incognito, mistakes, name, scissors, sharp, sound effect, student planner, teacher, weather, whether

This question plagued me because I went to Trader Joe's one weekend (we were entertaining guests at my house and needed some dessert to feed them). By the entrance to the store were some plants for sale. The little white sign next to it said oriental lilies, but they looked plenty like tulips to me...Maybe it was the wrong label, or the tulips label had fallen off or was stolen. Here are pictures comparing the two kinds of flowers.

Oriental Lily


Tulip


See, not really like each other, hm? At least different enough to be able to tell them apart. I had been planning to ask about it (since some of you may have gardener friends or relatives) but I guess a simple image search did the trick here.

We are still going on with Human Growth and Development education in my class...It is getting a little old now, having to watch videos of developing fetuses and little cells which look like either tadpoles or some part of an onion. We have moved on to hearing about HIV/AIDS. This part of the year always freaks me out. I have a strange tendency to be frightened by the mention of any dangerous disease. See, HIV is especially bad because 1) It has no known cure, only medicine that can "slow down" the spread of the disease. 2) It can be passed on without knowing about it, if someone didn't realize they had HIV. 3) It can be passed on from parent to child! How horrible, if you're a child with HIV, having to eat many pills a day, and you'll probably die anyways after some years. 4) It hijacks your immune system. 5) It is a virus, not a bacteria. (I mean, viruses aren't even living organisms... I wonder how they came into existence in the first place)

My teacher showed us an amusing book that is teaching people about the importance of commas. I'm sure you have some idea of how to use them: When listing things in a sentence, or separating parts of a sentence (like taking a breath if you're saying it out loud, sort of?), or right after saying Dear so-and-so in a letter...You get the point. Except people tend to misuse the comma a lot. So an author wrote a book called Eats, Shoots, & Leaves. The author is Lynne Truss, the illustrator is Bonnie Timmons. Look at these two sentences. (May not be exactly the same as in the book)

Panda - A bear-like animal originating in China. Eats shoots and leaves.

Panda - A bear-like animal originating in China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

The meaning is drastically changed depending on whether you put a comma at all and where you place it. The first sentence is correct, since pandas do eat shoots and leaves (bamboo, to be more specific). But the second sentence means the panda should eat something, shoot with a gun or bow and arrows, and leave wherever he/she is. (I hope you got the joke. If not, the author has failed)

Labels: AIDS, comma, comparison, disease, flowers, grammar, hgad, HIV, humans, immune, language arts, oriental lily, panda, sickness, trader joe's, tulips, virus

My beautiful orchids are reaching their demise. I used to have three of them. One was purple, one was a lighter purple, and this one is white. The plants are still alive but the flowers have fallen off. They've kept their petals for at least a couple of months, but now they're shriveling up! Maybe I should try to get the seeds if possible, and fertilize them, and then plant them in a new pot. The problem is, orchids take a lot of time and patience to raise. After all, I heard it takes 5 years for them to reach their mature, beautiful look that people prize. It's hard to believe they are so cheap at the farmers market and flea market.

I need to put a stop to my dad's evil schemes. My mom went grocery shopping and she came back with a pack of Bud Light beer. I got really mad at my mom since I disapprove of my dad drinking alcohol (yeah, I know, beer doesn't have that much compared to whiskey, brandy, and stuff like that, but still). Then my mom said if she didn't buy it for him he'd buy it himself for a bad price. No wonder my dad has a Computer Science major instead of Economics, he isn't exactly a bargain shopper.

One time I managed to foil his plotting. I saw that he'd bought some cigarettes, he said it was because a colleague wanted them, but I was feeling doubtful, so I secretly snuck off with them and hid them. My dad and mom are displeased with me but I don't even remember where I put it so if they torture me (like they did in the Spanish inquisition if they thought people were hiding something) I won't be able to reveal anything.

I'd like some suggestions for my next blog theme. I was thinking something seasonal or anime-related, but who knows. (I already have some blogskin users bookmarked so that I can easily access some spiffy layouts) Seeing as I am too lazy to make an image and code a blog layout I figure I will have to use a pre-made. So if you have an idea of what to look for, please let me know in the Cbox. ;)

My mom thinks that bikers are weird. Whenever we drive to piano class on Sunday, we always see a bunch of bikers. The male ones usually wear this odd biking outfit which flaps a little when they go fast. They all look like they have sharks or pieces of rock on their heads because of the helmets. Because they keep biking even in the blazing hot sun, my mom thinks they're really addicted and perhaps have no life. I was kind of jealous of them, actually, since they seem happy and they make friends because they have a "common hobby".

Here's today's lesson. Last time the whole post was basically me lecturing about Apocalypse type happenings. This time I want to point out the difference between principal and principle. I have noticed some people write principle when they are talking about the school headmaster. It seems like no one paid attention in Mrs. Weber's third grade class. :( Anyhow, here's the difference between them.
PRINCIPLE - This is basically a guideline or idea which people generally accept. For instance, a person could have good moral principles.
PRINCIPAL - Someone who is the head, for instance, a school. Don't forget, he is your pal! (That's a cheesy phrase I heard somewhere. XD)

Labels: addiction, alcohol, beer, bike, cigarette, flowers, hide, language, lesson, orchid, principal, principle, purchase

...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

I can tell, because the poor little guy had keeled over in front of the local high school. I am not sure how he died, but I have a few guesses... 1) He was run over by a car, but someone picked him up and moved him to the side. This might not be true because picking up a squirrel with your bare hands could result in you catching diseases from it. (Animals may not look sick, but that doesn't mean they don't carry bacteria or viruses) 2) Some mean gangsters from the high school somehow managed to catch the squirrel and torture it. 3) The squirrel was in some way electrocuted while running along the sky highways. (My nickname for electrical lines. Squirrels and birds may be seen using them for travel or rest.) Don't ask me the specifics since I am not an eyewitness, and besides I don't remember anything from fourth grade, the year when we learned about electricity. XD

Recently I have been reading a book called Alanna: The First Adventure. It is the first book in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, written by Tamora Pierce, who tends to write books that are "medieval fantasies" (or so I call them, as they have things like knights and fiefs and pirates, but they also have magic and creatures) I already read a bunch of Tamora Pierce's other books, like her The Immortals Quartet, Circle of Magic Quartet, The Circle Opens Quartet, and Protector of the Small Quartet. Notice she is a big fan of writing quartets. Also, the books tend to have more heroines than heroes, if you ask me. The lead character in three of her series is female. The other two series, three of the four main characters are female. :o I wonder if it is a coincidence or not.

I felt rather foolish in my history class yesterday. My teacher, Mr. Blair, handed us out an 11 point quiz, which I was very surprised by, and began to panic because I had not studied the paper he handed us yesterday well enough to actually take a quiz. I couldn't remember what the names of the popes who fathered children were, nor could I remember if all indulgences were signed by the pope... So I landed myself a beautiful score of 5 out of 11. Mr. Blair said he would offer us a special deal. Since his candy supply was running low (Apparently, the "card club" kept using it up) he said we could buy points to apply to our grade, if we payed him 25 cents per point. So of course, we all bought some except for a few kids who didn't buy any at all (maybe they figured it out, or they just didn't want to spend money). I bought 6 of them, myself, to fix my most recent grade, but some students bought so many...One bought 20, another bought 47, then one bought 48, and a boy actually bought 88 of them.

What happened at the end of the class was that Mr. Blair yelled at us, "You don't owe any money! You're not getting any points for your grade! If you did the quiz, you get 5 points automatically, it won't hurt you! The point of this activity was to show you that you can't buy your salvation. What I did is just like indulgences sold by the Catholic Church." Then all the realization hit me...I'd seriously thought Mr. Blair was really going to let us boost our grades. D: But then again, one of my friends say he might be fired if he was caught doing that, so I suppose not.

My school has a place called the Nature Center. It is kind of like a garden in a way, except it's more like you're in the wild seeing as the paths sometimes have plants blocking the way. Even though one of the ponds is broken and doesn't have any water, I still think it's a pretty cool place. Why, my science teacher even said one of the reasons he works at my school is because of the nature center! There's many trees, so we got to identify conifers, firs, Douglas firs, ginkgo trees, and various oaks. I had no idea what those wormlike, hard things were before. Now I know those are the so-called "male cones". o_O;; Also, Mr. Brown says that due to a mutation, we not only have purple irises (Iris is a flower) but also white ones. Both are quite pretty even if the white ones may look rather plain in comparison. There's a pair of ducks in the nature center right now, and the teachers are hoping that they'll stay and have ducklings here. If I were them, I would find some other place. Schools are filled with rowdy people, and this is no exception. XD

Labels: books, candy, coincidence, death, ducks, electricity, flowers, indulgence, money, nature center, points, quiz, squirrels, tamora pierce, tree

Usually you probably hear the term "Live, laugh, love" instead of "Fight, love, live." Filoli Website

But that was the phrase popular at this place I visited recently, called Filoli. It's a California estate built in...the 1900's, I think...by a family, the Bourns. They were trying to get away from San Francisco (where they had previously lived) because a great earthquake and fire had ravaged much of the city, so those people with enough $$$ started building homes in the countryside. It took from 1915-1917 to build the house, which was modeled to look like an estate in Ireland, and also like the architecture of England, both of which Mr. Bourn (at least, I think it was him) was inspired by.

Anyhow, back to the phrase. The name Filoli was very puzzling to the Bourns' friends, since they didn't know what it meant. They thought it was an Italian name. (Yeah, right. The Bourns weren't from Italy.) Actually, he just took the first two letters of each part of his motto, which happened to be "Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life." If you ask me, that wasn't very creative, but oh well. At least he didn't just call it Bourn. (Notice a lot of people name their companies and other things after themselves...Like HP, otherwise known as Hewlett-Packard.)

The main reason my family went to Filoli was because of the gardens. They were really something. There were many, many gardens, and so if you come at different times of year (By the way, Filoli is open from mid-February to October) you might be able to see different flowers. When we went, it was tulip season, which delighted me to no end. (I have this strange fascination with tulips...) If you hurry you might be able to get there before all the tulips start to die. Some of them already lost their petals, like the ones at my house (it's really quite sad, but my dad still thinks they look pretty, even dead). They come in various colors like white, light pink, dark pinkish/red, dark purple, light purple, and even yellow with red parts. Too bad the roses haven't bloomed yet. The ones at my house have started to. I suppose that Filoli just follows a different seasonal pattern from my neighborhood.

Keep in mind that Filoli does charge admission. I was unhappy to hear that since I always want to get in free, but of course they need to make money to keep the place running. (My mom says that a museum in Las Vegas closed down since they had no budget. I wonder what kind of stuff they had - slot machines? Elvis Presley portraits?)

Still, it's a nice place. The house where the Bourns (and later the Roths, who moved in later) used to live has 43 rooms and 17 chimneys, according to one of those retired people tour guides (no offense to them, but they look rather...old, since they have white hair and all). I don't know why you would need so many chimneys. There must be a lot of fireplaces in the house or something. I only have one fireplace and we don't even use it. The house has a bunch of old-looking furniture and portraits. It looks kind of like the Hearst Castle, or a more modern looking version of those European palaces. Outside there's a small rectangular pond, and even a swimming pool. (Wow, I guess people liked swimming pools even back then. It was pretty big and clean, but I hear sometimes people fall into the pool, particularly little kids who just run around in circles. Personally I like the pools at Hearst Castle better since they have interesting designs.)

I wouldn't really want to live there, though. Instead, I'd rather live at this house I just saw today. It was an open house (you know, for sale so you can look inside if you're a buyer). It looked like an adobe house, sort of. It was only one story but there were many rooms. The furniture was very beautiful and the master bedroom had a little room connected to it where you can look outside (great view, the Stevens Creek is right there, and maybe you could spy on your neighbors :o). If you wanted you could set up your computer in that room so you would kind of feel like your were outside even though you were inside. Seeing as I am an indoor person, but like to have a view, that would be cool for me.

Labels: backyard, bourns, fight love live, filoli, flowers, garden, house, money, name, open house, phrase, san francisco, swimming pool

One of my friends, who I shall refer to as Miyu-chan right now, told me that some people on a website didn't think too highly of me. This is due to me sending a lot of friends requests to people and not necessarily talking to them. (Though it's not easy to communicate with more than two thousand people, if you catch my drift.) Miyu-chan said some people do like me, though. I wish everyone would. It doesn't feel good to have people frowning on you, even if it is just the Internet, after all.

Here's the cooking schedule. At least, some of it. I don't remember Thursday and Friday.
Monday- Prepare Pie (You can choose lemon meringue or pumpkin. Pumpkin is simpler to make and I like it better)
Tuesday- Finish Pie
Wednesday- Sustainable Farming (Whatever that is. It could be a worksheet or a video)

On to some...weird happenings. As I was walking home, I observed several things. One being that the people living in a house have changed their window decoration. They always hang a picture of some sort in the window. For a long time they had a picture of colorful flowers. I like that one better than the new one, which is a snowman and some blue stuff.

Also, I hurt a tree. I saw the pretty white blossoms and buds and decided it would make a good addition to the ikebana arrangement I'll be doing for homework. But afterwards I felt bad because the tree might be upset and the branch will eventually die anyhow. Still, I could just say "It's for a worthy cause", even though I only half believe it.

I hope my history teacher doesn't lose his teaching credential. I heard that doing a certain activity makes it a possibility. We did the said activity today in class. It was supposed to teach us about population density. We started off with Australia. It's not a densely populated place and people usually live on the coastline. (Sydney the city is on the east side.) So Mr. Blair said you could go do nude sunbathing or whatever in Australia, and you might never get seen. (Yeah, disturbing example, but that's our class.) Then we went on to the United States. AV, who was the one Mr. Blair asked if he would nude sunbathe, settled down in the Arizona region, since he is cheering for the Cardinals. Mr. Blair said he couldn't do his sunbathing there since old ladies would come with their binoculars. (Apparently old people get arthritis and move to warm places like Arizona. So people laughed at poor AV since a lot of elderly folks live there.)

Oh yes, before I end this post...Japan was very densely populated. Mr. Blair tried to teach us this by putting one desk in the middle of the room. Then he wanted us to fit as many people as possible on the desk. (Standing on the desk or the legs. You can't have your feet touch the floor) That was dangerous since we did pretty well until a bunch of kids fell off the desk and one of them hurt her leg. We got a max of 14 people onto a desk. I heard the next class managed 16 or 17. We've been beat there.

Labels: art, cooking, flowers, friends, homework, internet, population, reputation, teacher, tree, walk, window

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