Just a little while ago, I mentioned copic markers, right? Well, just yesterday, I went into a store called Memories Live On. I was trying to find a scrapbook because I need one for my French project (we are supposed to make a family tree, and write about our grandparents and direct family, and ourselves too of course). Memories Live On is a scrapbooking store, and also has some art supplies. When I went in, I wandered around, and then I saw the Copic markers! (They are not exactly cheap. Costs four or five dollars just to get one) They are some nice markers that have two different ends. If you take off the cap on one end, you get a chisel tip. If you take off the cap on the other end, you get a fine pointy tip. And the markers are cool since I tried them out and if you color a blob, and then put a different color on top, they sort of mix a little since they're kind of watery.

Anyways, I feel like I have some magnetic pull to me or something. If something is mentioned or shown to me and I remember it, then pretty soon I will see the same thing or something similar. It's kind of freaky, but it's kind of cool, too. (Nowadays I am immersing myself into superstition, heh heh... I count crows whenever I see them, and one of my friends keeps wanting to "read my palms")

Not only that, but I always gravitate towards my number in PE. We all stand on white numbers that were painted on the blacktop so our PE teachers can count how many people are absent easily. I have this tendency to always go to my number, so usually if someone wants to talk to me they'd probably have to move over to me, not the other way around. In fact, I once joked that I was attracted by unseen forces to my number since I almost always head there.

The other day, my father was watching a movie called Nothing But the Truth. It is based off of some real events. The movie is about a journalist who publishes an article, and people are pressuring her to reveal where she got the information, but she won't reveal the source. She even went to jail for it, as it was a very delicate matter (she had discovered the name of a CIA agent, which is supposed to be top-secret, and things like that). Only in the end of the movie did we find out the true source. Skip the next paragraph if you don't want spoilers.

Surprisingly, the reporter's source of information was none other than the daughter of the CIA agent. The reporter was on a bus with her son and his classmates since I think they were going on a field trip. And a girl asked the reporter what she was doing, since the reporter had her laptop. The reporter and the girl talked, and then the girl said that her father was a writer too, but her mother didn't like what her father wrote about...And so the girl kept talking and revealed that her mother worked for the government, and that she was in Venezuela. Let me explain... Someone tried to assassinate the USA president (a made-up one, not one of our presidents) and then not long afterwards the USA bombed Venezuela, since apparently it was thought that Venezuela was responsible for the assassination attempt. But the CIA agent was in Venezuela, and so she had said that it wasn't Venezuela's fault. The little girl revealed enough to pique the reporter's interest. The CIA agent was later killed. That's freaky, since that little girl had actually caused her own mother's death.

I know that it was probably very confusing, so if you are interested, you should probably watch the movie yourself. But do note that it is a pretty serious movie, so if you want a nice happy ending, maybe you shouldn't watch it.

Oh yeah, and my teacher has apparently planned for our class to read the book Nothing But the Truth during the school year. I wonder if it's the same or if it's entirely different.

Labels: coincidence, copic, counting crows, luck, magnetic, markers, memories live on, miracle, movie, nothing but the truth, number, palm reading, PE class, scrapbook, superstition, unseen forces

While I was in Australia, in one of the earliest days of the trip, we visited a place called the Twelve Apostles. I checked the dictionary for the meaning of apostle and it has a lot to do with Christianity...You wouldn't expect the Twelve Apostles to actually be huge rocks in the ocean, but they are. There were 12 of them in the beginning but now there are only seven. In fact, one of them collapsed only four years ago because the erosion had become too much. I wonder what they will do once there are only one or two of them left. I mean, it's already nowhere near being twelve of them anymore.

Here is a photo of six of them (this was taken before the one on the very left, closest to you, disintegrated. There are two more on the other side of the viewing walkway). Click here.

Anyhow, if any of you ever decide you want to take a trip Down Under, whether you visit the Twelve Apostles should depend on how far from them you're staying. The Twelve Apostles can be found in the state of Victoria. You will have to drive for quite some time to get there from Melbourne (which is where Andrew's - my dad's friend - house is). Besides the nice photos of it you can take there's not much else to do over there. So it's up to you whether you want to go see it. (But if you're nearby it, you really ought to.)

All of that aside, just the other day I had a very close encounter with one of my allergies, peanuts. One of my friends was over at my house along with her sister and mother. Her mother bought us sandwiches for lunch and I had a choice between two. I picked one, but I picked the wrong one, because that was the one that had peanuts in it! So we ended up dumping out the rest of the sandwich and I ate some of the bread instead. This time I didn't react strongly but I did feel a little funny in places, which is to be expected since my body thinks of peanuts as not food but invaders. I can never understand why people like peanut butter but I suppose they have their reasons. (And apparently there's two different kinds of peanut butter, chunky and smooth. Have you tried it? Which do you prefer?)

My mom is trying to feed me seeds these days because she believes I don't have enough zinc. She read somewhere or other - probably one of her Chinese books or the Chinese newspaper - that the reason why my skin is so easily affected is because I don't have enough zinc or something. It's not my fault I'm allergic to peanuts, which I think have zinc or at least other vitamins in them... Anyhow, since I can eat seeds, my mom wants me to eat pumpkin seeds and pistachios and things like that. I am dubious of my mother's sources of information about health but I guess there's no harm in eating seeds. (Right? Because seeds won't grow in your stomach, right? XD)

It seems like the small gift bags we have at our house have disappeared. Sometimes we use them to give, say, a birthday present or something, by wrapping an item in tissue paper (not always) and putting it in the bag, then giving someone the bag. But it seems like our bags have mostly disappeared by this point. I figure we probably used them up last year when I gave my teachers Christmas/New Year's gifts. That reminds me, it seems like unless we have a Teachers' Appreciation Week or something, the teachers don't really get that many gifts. I kind of feel bad for them since teachers have to deal with people - not an easy task - and don't get paid much besides that. (Though not all teachers are very nice about it, and I do want that summer vacation...Hehe...)

Labels: allergies, appreciation, australia, collapse, gift bags, health, number, nutrition, peanut butter, peanuts, rocks, sandwich, seeds, teacher, twelve apostles, zinc

I think it's something the old President George W. Bush said, but I may have mistakenly attributed to him. Anyhow, I heard that he said this on his 60th birthday when he was still in office. If more people thought like that, you wouldn't be hearing a lot of them complaining about their grey hairs and back pain and how their kids are growing up too quickly or how they want to retire but they need to make more money... Blah blah blah. If only we could all be a little more positive and think, sure, this means another year of my life, and that's tiresome, but there are good things and memories to be made every year along with the bad things. Sometimes you might not realize right away, but you could be having the time of your life.

The reason why I started off my post like this is because my age just changed yesterday. Yep, it was my birthday. More specifically, the 13th one. I hope that age really is just a number since I don't want this to be an unlucky year for me. Judging from my school schedule, which I was able to see from Pinnacle Internet Viewer (thanks Shirayuki no Kimi or I wouldn't have known), it seems they plan to put me in village K. I don't really know the 8th grade teachers, so I'm kind of nervous. I've been looking on a site where you can rate teachers, and it seems my French teacher and science teacher are the ones that the students like the least...I hope it won't be a rough year, then. At least you have a chance of changing PE teachers. My intended PE periods are 6th, 3rd, and 3rd. I like 3rd period PE, so that's good to hear. But it seems like I always get 6th period PE sometime in the year. (Oh, well. I'm glad I don't have 5th period PE. Then I wouldn't even have time to digest my lunch)

Today my mom actually did Wii Fit. In fact, a lot of it. I'm sure it was at least more than half an hour. It's been so long since she did Wii Fit, she seems to have forgotten how to do some of the exercises (like Advanced Step, which is in a way a different kind of DDR) but I hope she'll make a habit out of exercising so she can build some muscle. No offense intended to her, but she's not much of an athlete. She could use it. My dad has not used Wii Fit ever since we came home from vacation a few days ago. It's hard for us to get back into the groove after being away for a while.

For this week my mom has been taking time off work and staying at home, so she can pretend she's still in Australia and get some more relaxation time before she must go back to work and get bombarded by unanswered emails and projects and things like that. It's nice to have someone around so you won't feel too lonesome. (Maybe it's just me who gets lonely. I'd actually gotten used to it in sixth grade, after a good friend of mine moved away in fifth, I think, but eventually I started wanting to socialize again.) During school it isn't so much of a matter but when you're by yourself, or/and something bad happens, you feel like this.

Labels: age, birthday, classes, corner of woe, exercise, feelings, george w. bush, lonely, luck, number, president, schedule, tamaki, teacher, thirteen, time, wii fit

Actually, that's a poem. Written by some person (I think it was a guy), but I don't remember who. I simply lacked naming ideas for the blog today. D:

I almost lost my socks. Much to my disappointment, we still had to go through the motions of PE in the rain. The wind was strong so that you could see the students' PE uniforms flapping. (That sounds rather odd. I was trying to make a simile or metaphor out of it but couldn't find a good comparison.) It made the rain come down at a funny angle. It was even more diagonal than it usually was. And since it was raining, puddles formed on the ground. My PE number (a white, bland number painted on the blacktop), Blair's 15, was submerged as usual. Probably due to that area of land being on a lower elevation than the rest.

One of my classmates, who I shall just call AV for privacy, was bursting with questions in Mr. Brown's science class. He always asks questions or makes comments, particularly in the 2 B's (Blair & Brown). For instance, Mr. Brown wanted us to guess the reason for wolverines having plantigrade posture. (We have plantigrade posture, too. Meaning we walk flat on our feet, unlike dogs and cats, who only walk on the balls of their feet. You know, that sticking-out hard on the bottoms of your feet, below your toes.) AV almost but not quite had the answer - which, by the way, is...flat feet are good for walking in the snow - but he couldn't get it out. "I-i-it's f-for...walking on snow and ice, and...uh...steep elevation stuff!" I think he was unable to speak properly due to his excitement, or eagerness, or something. No offense intended to you, AV, if you ever read this.

After school, my walking-home-companion's mother came to pick me up. This was a relief since the rain had just started again at the end of school. Besides me, the mother, and my companion, there was also the brother and his friend. No one spoke besides the mother and the brother's friend. The mother was very curious about what the friend was planning to do in Monta Vista (he's an eighth grader, even though I thought he looked kind of shrimpy. But maybe it's because he got injured when his cousin tackled him) and the boy is taking band (not much of a surprise to me, I expected that) and Japanese. I was surprised by the latter since my mom had led me to believe there would be no Japanese in high school. Hmm. I may consider learning it, if it's not too difficult. (However, my peers say Spanish is the most useful language, so I'm in a tizzy. I don't want to take Mandarin since colleges may think I was cheating by taking a language that my ethnicity is supposed to already know. My mom thinks I ought to take French, so I can speak to my aunt, but I'm not too keen on it.)

Speaking of languages (now that occurs to me as a very bad pun, if you catch my drift), I eavesdropped on my mom and my aunt talking, via Skype, the free online Webcam Messenger thing-a-ma-bob (of Science! as Bill Nye wouuld say). Apparently my cousin, who I shall call Sun (that's my mom and aunt's maiden name, and also kind of my cousin's nickname - Yang Yang), is already learning English in school. It's true that English is a much more "useful" language than French, particularly for business, but still. I was outraged as he is still in elementary school, and yet he gets taught another language, and will be trilingual, therefore beating me (I don't know enough Mandarin/Shanghainese/Japanese to really count it). I hope my intelligence at least rivals his.

Labels: carpool, high school, jabberwocky, language, monta vista, number, poetry, rain, relatives, school, socks, speech

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