Did I ever talk about the time I picked golf as my sport for PE? No? Well, I guess I'll tell you about it now.

Golf had never been particularly interesting to me as a sport - if it had been, I certainly would've pestered my parents to let me have golf lessons at one of the local courses. (There is, in fact, a golf course within easy walking distance of my house.) My dad, on the other hand, was itching to play golf after watching it for so many years and would occasionally ask me to please consider taking golf classes so that he could accompany me and learn to play. (I always thought it was ridiculous; go learn yourself! Are you embarrassed that you're so old and are a total newbie? Why can't you leave me out of it?)

It just seemed like the most boring thing ever. Some guy wearing a cap and polo shirt (though sometimes there are some pretty scary looking outfits, like a bright orange shirt and pants... *shudder* ) stands there shuffling his feet and pretending to swing. It probably takes longer for them to get ready for the shot than to actually do it. I always thought it was pretty simple and didn't understand why they needed to take so long. Maybe they wanted to make extra sure that they swung perfectly and ended up in this position. The sport is so slow, in fact, that oftentimes the cameramen will film ducks, blimps, or frogs instead of golf players. Of course, I like to see the animals, but this is not Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel...

Still, I figured it was more appealing than the other options for sports that time. There was street hockey, but I intended to save that for last, and I certainly wasn't going to swim (too much hassle) or join any sport that involved throwing things (believe me, I am terrible at football, and frisbee is the stuff of nightmares). So off to golf I went.

I ended up with my usual PE teacher for golf, and he began the first class by naming some golfers and asking how many of us had heard of them. Of course everyone knew Tigers, and a handful of people were familiar with Michelle Wie, but I was pretty much the only one who recognized the name of a rather old golfer. (Hey! Not my fault I've been looking at my dad's Fantasy PGA Tour picks for nearly half my childhood.) I realize later I probably shouldn't have raised my hand because I bet the teacher expected me to be some golf pro. He would soon find out the opposite.

I must say now that I greatly underestimated what it takes to hit a golf ball, not only in the right direction but also with the right amount of power...I'd say, though, the hardest part was actually figuring out how to hit the ball. Us students were taught to hold the club a certain way and do some wimpy half-swings to get used to hitting the balls. I missed the ball a lot or ended up taking out chunks of grass in the process. Eventually I kind of got the hang of it, but even then it was rather up-and-down at times. Some days I was practically a pro and had been asked if I'd played golf before; other times I was messing up even on easy holes. And of course, when we were playing golf in teams, there was much shock and dismay when I missed the putt that they were all counting on me to do. So it is indeed a tricky game - even your choice of golf club can make a big difference in your golf skills, as I learned the hard way. In some ways it's a mind game too; when my concentration was off, my golf suffered as well. At the end of the golf unit I was still not much good at golf, but at least now I understood why people came out in hordes to watch funnily-dressed men swing sticks. It is indeed a sport to be admired.

Labels: ability, animals, boring, clothes, clothing, fantasy golf, game, golf, lessons, PE class, revelation, school, skills, sports

I once wrote about seeing snails at the library courtyard - click here to read the post. But that's certainly not the only place in my town where you can see some snails.

When I was in elementary school, there were some snails among the bushes. I can't remember too clearly what I had done to them in the past, but I am sure it was not something particularly nice. (Even now I still don't treat bugs and such critters very well...Someday they're all going to take revenge on me.)

One day, when I was walking home, not that long ago, I heard this cracking noise. I looked back and saw something crushed on the sidewalk. I fear it may have been some unlucky snail slowly making its way across the block, only to be squashed under my mighty foot.

To avoid another occurrence, I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. I was late to realize that the light had changed and that it was time to cross the street since I was being looking around for snails.

On the weekend, my mom told me that there was a snail in front of our house, so I went over to investigate. I took a few pictures of the snail. Then I attempted to prod it with a stick so it would shrink back into its shell and I would be able to move it somewhere else. (I had hoped to be able to keep the snail as a pet, but I didn't know how I would take care of it...I don't even know what snails eat.) But the snail kept trying to stick its head back out not long after each time that I poked it. I guess it realized that I wasn't planning to kill it after a while. I managed to get the snail to crawl onto a fallen leaf (well, it was really more a clump of needles, like what you would find on a pine, fir, or something of that sort) and moved it to a pot that was not currently being used to grow a plant. But when I went back outside later on, the snail had left. Besides some trails on the ground (from when it was wandering on its own, undisturbed by me), there was no trace of it.

It really goes to show that "slow and steady wins the race". Despite their slow, slimy, oozing way of moving, they can still sneak off if given the chance. They're pretty stealthy after all. But in the end, it isn't enough to save them. Snails are cooked and eaten by people. It is a sad fate (and also one that I cannot comprehend).

Labels: accident, death, destiny, distraction, elementary school, fine dining, food, house, library, moral, moving, pet, post, revenge, skills, snail, sneaky

Lately I have been seeing just how bad people are at the ABCs and at counting. I was doing my piano theory homework. I try to do a little every week (but sometimes I forget or my teacher doesn't assign any. She's a bit on the lax side when it comes to teaching the theory. I think that's why we do "auditions" with a national association instead of a California one, since the California one requires you to take tests on piano theory). I took a close look at one of the pages and realized it was incorrectly labeled.

a.
b.
c.
e.

Where did D go? I know it's a small mistake that anyone would make, since we are all human, and probably no one would notice because it doesn't really stand out. But I still think it's rather silly to not know your alphabet.

And the situation with counting is even worse nowadays. One student said, "Is this really all the homework? It's just seven problems." Another student told him, "There are eight problems. "Well...I just didn't add one," said the first student.

In fact, students are so careless about their counting that the teacher must cover up the number line so students won't use it to help themselves on the STAR testing (California's standard tests that we have every year from 2nd-8th grade, if you're in another state). I was really amazed. I mean, is it really so bad that students can't even count to 50? Really. I can understand covering up maps and stuff like that since it can be pretty helpful sometimes. But a number line...

I always hear it's important to have a good foundation. Being able to count and knowing the 26 letters of the alphabet is something very basic and fundamental. If we pay so little attention to our simplest skills, I fear that we are on the road to disaster...

So I encourage you to spend your free time reciting your ABC's. And when you need to get to sleep, count sheep.

Labels: 123, ABCs, alphabet, attention, basic, count, cover, foundation, fundamental, map, number line, numbers, practice, problem, skills, sleep, STAR testing

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

Today's post was inspired by a movie I saw my father watching on the weekend. Naturally, as I am distracted by the things around me, I end up watching some of the movies he watches as well. The movie he was watching was a Japanese movie called Premonition. It's a freaky sort of story about a man and his family. The man was outside of his car and saw a newspaper that said his daughter would die in a car accident because of a jammed seat belt. His wife got out of the car to ask him for help freeing the seat belt. Then a truck came and hit the car, killing their daughter. Some time passed after the event, and the man had more premonitions. Eventually he has the opportunity to change the fate of his daughter. Someone MUST die in the accident. He could let his daughter die, or his wife die, or everyone could die, or he himself could die.

I'm not a fan of horror and things like that, but this movie was quite interesting. It really does show you that there are things in life you do have control over. There are many crossroads that you will reach over the course of your life and you must make the decision which path to take. Sometimes no path is perfect, but you can always try to do what's right, even if you don't necessarily succeed. And sometimes the path is a sad one. For instance, you might fall into a swamp of alligators and be killed, but then other people could step on your body and use it as a human bridge to get safely away from the alligators. (I know that's a gruesome example, but I had to think of something) Sometimes the right choice could be something that harms you, sometimes the right choice harms other people, and sometimes there is really no right choice.

Sometimes, other people and beings are in control instead of you. After watching the movie, I heard a story being read on the radio. It was about Adam and Eve, and the time when they were still in the Garden of Eden. Adam was shown to be a very stupid individual. One time he showed Eve some giraffe feces he found, and he was quite excited over it. Eve was pretty disgusted by it. On the radio, the reader said, "Adam had the IQ of a coconut husk." Eve complained to God, but he stayed silent, so she had to put up with him.

There was a snake who lived in the Garden, and he was watching Eve. He thought if they met, there would instantly be sparks flying between them and they would get along quite well. Actually, Eve saw the Snake and thought he was one of the most repulsive animals she had ever seen. But, as she didn't run away, then the Snake started to talk to her. Eve was very interested in the Tree of Knowledge, which was the only tree that she and Adam were not allowed to eat from. So the Snake gradually persuaded her to eat some, saying things like, "It's not a paradise at all if there's a way you can get kicked out" and "Just a little nibble wouldn't hurt" and "God wants you to have knowledge because then he won't be lonely anymore". Finally, Eve did eat some fruit, and then all the problems started...She realized that she was naked, which she had never really minded before (that was when my dad and I stopped listening, because we thought it would be pretty inappropriate to hear about).

Well, what I meant to show with talking about that was that someone else could be directing what you do, even if you don't realize it.

Speaking of not knowing what is happening to you, we were talking about that in French class. The conversation started because one of the students had his birthday presents stolen from his party. That is really rotten, because it must've been a so-called "friend" who stole his gifts. The teacher says that he ought to lock up his presents right away from now on. You can never be too careful.

Anyhow, the teacher was almost robbed once. She was on an escalator or something, and there were two people standing on either side of her, talking over her head. She was pretty annoyed but couldn't move. Then one of them started trying to steal her bag or the stuff in it. She didn't feel a thing...Luckily, her husband was behind and noticed, and shouted at the pickpocket, who then made his getaway. And there was also a tourist who had his credit cards stolen from his pockets and didn't feel anything either. (It was the front pockets, so that's something) Looks like thieves have some crazy skills nowadays.

Labels: adam, birthday, control, death, decision, escalator, eve, garden of eden, god, life, movie, premonition, presents, radio, robbery, skills, snake, tree of knowledge

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