Recently I've been seeing a lot more dead animals than usual - about 6 of them in this past week alone. Most of them were probably killed by vehicles, though it's hard to say, seeing as some of them have ended up on sidewalks and between poles and other objects. But I'm pretty certain that, at the very least, it was not a mailman who ran over the animals.

Why? Well, just the other day I received a letter from Thefalse-tto in the mail. That in itself was a pleasant surprise, since I have not been exchanging mail with anyone for a long time (though I was supposed to have a email pen pal from France but she has not replied to my last email, so I assume that she has lost interest...Or maybe it ended up in spam for some reason and I didn't see it. Hopefully nothing bad has happened to her). But I noticed the date at the bottom of her letter said June 26, and I had received the letter on July 6. In the past I usually received letters within 3 or 4 days, so I thought that did not bode well for the post office...Maybe all the mailmen were taking time off because of the Independence Day holiday...Still, I live pretty much next to the post office, so it wouldn't be that hard to deliver my mail, would it?

Oh, and speaking of Independence Day, I had a rather odd one. On the weekend right before it (July 2 and 3), I could hear fireworks from my bedroom. According to my mother, the amusement park Great America was having their fireworks over the weekend, since if they had the fireworks on Monday, July 4, all the adults would have to go to work the day after, and be all tired and grumpy from staying up late for fireworks. Or something like that. (This is based on her allegations, so I don't know if it's true...) So I kind of assumed that my town's fireworks would follow the same schedule.

Evidently not. The evening of July 4 rolled around, and while I was attempting to sing Black Rock Shooter at home (which did not work out, since I cannot hit the higher notes of the song), I realized that there were some sounds from outside. The sound of fireworks, to be precise. It was very frustrating for me; I've been planning since last year to go to the location of the fireworks so I can take better pictures of them. Wonder if I'll even get to see the local fireworks before I move out of this town. (But then again, maybe I'll live in a big city, perhaps even Sydney, Australia, and see better fireworks.)

Though I guess in China people might not even know about the 4th of July, so if I ever went there on Independence Day, nothing would happen. My grandfather talked to me on Sunday, and I tried to tell him that Monday was a holiday and my parents weren't going to work. He didn't understand. He said that since it was the first day of the week, of course they were going to work. At that point I attempted to send him the Chinese Wikipedia link for Independence Day, but he didn't notice it.

I know that the flow of this post is rather random, but I guess I'll end by talking about the odd dream I had last night. I was at some sort of concert or musical (probably a musical, since there was a vague storyline, I think), and some of the performers were members of a nonexistent Korean band. Thefalse-tto was in the audience too, and she was explaining to me something about how the audience wanted the female member of the Korean band to sing a song about little unicorns that had inappropriate lyrics. Then I remember seeing a guy from that band going on stage and singing a song. Part of the lyrics to that was "Eugene! Eugene!" I'm not sure whether it was the guy's name or if it was supposed to mean something. Maybe, though, it was because I watched Tangled twice recently and Flynn Rider's real name is Eugene...

Labels: animals, china, concert, dream, eugene, family, fireworks, friends, grandpa, great america, independence day, july 4, letter, mail, pen pal, roadkill, songs

I came up with the title of this post based on the lyrics of one of the songs in the anime ROD the TV (ROD stands for Read or Die). Although the song is in Japanese, I believe part of the lyrics mean "nostalgic wind".

On one particular day, I was on the second floor of one of the various buildings we have on my high school campus. If there's one good thing about this campus, it's probably having a second floor. Sure, it's a hassle to get to a classroom on the second floor (and even worse if you happen to have a locker up there - unless you have classes near to the locker), but it does provide a nice view. It's a good place to people-watch. No one suspects that they are actually being observed from the top. (And I noticed for the first time that there are just a few flowers in the square area around a tree. I never really saw it before because I've usually been thinking about something else, or someone has been sitting there, blocking my view of the flowers.)

It was a pleasant day. The sky was blue, even if there weren't any impressive clouds around (I remember last year I was always staring up at the clouds when I ran during PE. A part of me got angry because I didn't have my camera around and would miss good photo opportunities, but another part of me was just glad to see something beautiful). There had been a breeze blowing. I stood by the railing and looked out at the elementary school that is next to my high school. Even if that wasn't the elementary school I attended, it still brought back a wave of longing for the old days. It's hard to remember what it was like to play on the playground every day and still feel like it wasn't enough time; and I try to remember what it was like to actually have SSR, Silent Sustained Reading, every day.

And pen pals, that was something we only had in elementary school... Just the other day, I read the story "Correspondence", about a girl named Henrietta "Henky" Evans who writes letters to a boy in South America. (He never responds, though.) I was thinking that it would be nice to have a pen pal. My mom doesn't understand what's so great about writing snail mail. She thinks it's a waste of time and money (for stamps) to write to people who live nearby. But even that's kind of nice. It's exciting getting a letter in the mail from a friend.

I wonder why we never spent a really long time in school sending letters to our pen pals. We would maybe send a letter, get a reply, and maybe send one more, maybe not. It seems like we never really kept up the correspondence for long. (And since I was young and ignorant at the time, as well as not knowing where my pen pals lived, I had to rely on the school to get my letter to my pen pal.) I really think there ought to be a program of sending letters to a pen pal for older students, like what there was in "Correspondence", not just the occasional time where you have to do it in elementary school. It would give me a little something to look forward to. And I might meet a wonderful friend.

Labels: correspondence, elementary school, high school, letter, lost art, lyrics, mail, memories, nostalgia, pen pal, rod the tv, second floor, song, view

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 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

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

There is a book that goes by that title, and the author is Margaret Peterson Haddix, but I'm not talking about that. I mean that there is always someone similar to yourself. Sometimes people say they know someone who looks like me. And in an anime (Sister Princess if you wanted to know), one of the people often sayings things like, "You know there is such-and-such-number of people in the world who look exactly like you." I was reminded of it when my mom talked about how she was in line at a store once and the person in front of her looked like me, but taller and older. The person was wearing a UCSF Medical School Class of 2010 sweater or shirt or something like that. I was a bit disturbed since I don't want to be a doctor. (No offense if you do. I think it is a fine career. Just not one I have particular interest in.) So I hope it's just a coincidence if someone looks like me. After all, a lot of times I might be walking somewhere and see someone who looked familiar from the back but when they turn around I realize it's not the same person.

Nowadays I've been writing something for history class. Our assignment is to write a letter and pretend we are in Florence touring the places. You can write to your mother or your pet goldfish or whatever. (But don't put your real address! I don't know about you, but the town where I live was only founded in the 1900's, so it couldn't have existed centuries ago) We have to explain what the Renaissance is, what humanism/individualism/realism is, how the Greeks and Romans influenced it, and so on. Then you have to describe the five senses (olfactory, visual, audio, tactile, and taste). Just make up a bunch of stuff, for example, you bit into a watermelon and thought it was juicy and sweet. (Note that I don't like watermelons. Especially the seeds. And I remember when I was young my class went to the nearby park, and we had a watermelon, and one of the teachers pretended it was a dinosaur egg)

As I keep on rambling I am reminded of the book I was reading just the other day. It's called Pillage and the author is Obert Skye. (According to the book cover, he is the author of Leven Thumps, some fantasy series or something of that sort. I saw a poster of it at the school library.) It's not really one of my favorites, but it's okay as books go. Kind of an adventure/fantasy/sarcastic book. Later on in the book you'll hear something about dragon eggs. So, not that far off from dinosaur eggs.

My dad is continuously watching the Masters Cup in golf. (The Cup stands for the weird glass goblet you get for winning golf tournaments.) A lot of males wearing polo shirts and either visors or caps are walking around, swinging golf clubs. I think golf is too slow-paced and boring because sometimes the game is so lacking that the cameramen film ducks flying overhead instead of the golfers. I saw Tiger Woods so apparently he's back to playing golf. He had an unhappy expression. My dad says it's because he's not playing well.

I think my science teacher is getting married sometime around now. He is going to marry one of the school counselors, apparently. My mom doesn't know how old his wife-to-be is, so she thinks my teacher is way older (I doubt that, he just has prematurely grey hair and a rather "weathered" look, like a sea captain, I think his fiancée isn't a spring chicken herself. No offense intended). One of my classmates was offended that we weren't invited to the wedding (after all, sometimes you do get to go to your teachers' weddings, one of my friends did just a year or two ago). The classmate insisted that we were more important than his nieces and deserved to go. (That's too hard, I think. There is at least a hundred kids in our "village", and besides that it would be unfair to the teacher's previous classes since they wouldn't get to go just because they were born in the wrong year.)

Labels: age, books, egg, florence, golf, identity, invitation, italy, letter, marriage, masters cup, people, pillage, renaissance, teacher

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