That's a phrase that I saw in the book The Heights, the Depths, and Everything in Between by Sally Nemeth. And I thought it was really very true.

Life can give a person a lot of happiness, but also a lot of pain. If we didn't have the good times to keep us up, the sorrow in our lives would take over. There are still things that I've done in the past that continue to haunt me. If I didn't have good memories that I could recall, I don't know how I could keep from being swallowed.

My mom says that she likes to watch funny dramas so she can have something to laugh about. I find her interest in watching dramas rather amusing. She checked out this book from the library about a guy named Jerry in Australia. (There was a picture of him visiting the Twelve Apostles, which are these rocks in the ocean - unfortunately there are no longer twelve of them - which I had visited myself last summer)

My parents also seem to know about Super Junior. And then my mom said she knew about one of the guys from SS501 and how he was in Boys over Flowers or something like that. My dad, on the other hand, for a short time, kept mentioning someone called Angela Baby.

There really aren't that many differences between teenagers and middle-aged people. Both of them like...
- Asian dramas
- Social networking sites (Facebook, Kaixin, etc.)
- Being selfish

In fact, I wonder if that means that adults are immature or if that teenagers are actually middle-aged in their mindset.

Well, my mom had said that the older you get, the more you recede and become more childlike...Like slot machines, for instance. They have bright, cute pictures (cherries, bananas, diamonds, etc.) and make amusing noises. In a way they are like toys. No, I take that back - they ARE toys. Toys that take your money. XD

I've been watching an anime called Special A the past few days, and it's been pretty good. But it has a lot of similarities to Skip Beat, which I have also watched (and am currently reading the manga of).
Both...
- are in the Hana to Yume magazine
- have clueless heroines
- have heroines who are out to beat someone (Kyoko wants to top Sho, while Hikari wants to defeat Kei)
- have scenes where a character has a very evil aura
And so on. It's always possible to pick out similarities between stories. I guess it's because of the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" idea. After Harry Potter came the Lightning Thief. I haven't read the Olympians but I've heard that both involve half-bloods and such things. So it seems to very common for people to borrow one another's ideas.

Labels: age, cry, drama, happiness, ideas, k-pop, laugh, life, memories, pain, similar, skip beat, special a, teenagers, the heights the depths and everything in between, twelve apostles

On Wednesday morning, a problem presented itself when I was about to leave for school. Every weekday, I go to school by carpooling with one or both of my parents. I was ready to leave, but my mother told me that she couldn't find the car keys! She said that perhaps my father had taken them with him. I tried to help her look for the keys, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Eventually, my mom said, "You'll have to walk." I balked at the idea. "What?! It takes at least twenty minutes to get there! I'll never make it in time!" "Oh, yes you will." I suggested using the bike, but that was an impractical idea considering that I would probably need to register my bike at the school office or something along those lines, and anyways, the roller backpack is rather heavy.

So eventually I set off for school, in a panicked state of mind, breaking into a run out of paranoia. I tried to run as much of the way as I could, but I tired after awhile, and I saw some other students walking. I wasn't sure whether they were Kennedy students until I walked a bit faster and caught up (and quickly overpassed - I walk faster than the average person, or maybe I was just in a rush) and saw two people that I recognized. At this point I decided I didn't have to run anymore. And when I got closer to the school I realized Zero Period PE was still going on, so I wasn't late at all. I had arrived in good time.

I heard from my mother that my dad had driven home so he could take my mom to work. (Without the keys, you can't unlock the car or even get it moving. There is another car in the garage, but my mom doesn't know how to drive it - my dad was the only one who drove that car, and we haven't used it recently - and anyways there was no way we could get it out of the driveway without crashing into the car that we were supposed to use.) It turned out my dad really had taken the car keys with him. My mom said she wants to have a copy of the keys made (and I bet I'll be the one keeping the spares. I am quite scatterbrained, but it would still be safer with me in the future).

It mildly annoyed me that when I went to school, no one seemed to notice the minor trauma that I had just experienced that morning. My mom insists it wasn't that big of a deal, or at least I wasn't showing that much outward instability. I mean, I could have easily been late for school because of my need to improvise on transportation. (There wasn't really someone else who could take me to school...I know a few people on my street go to my middle school, but I believe they probably bike or walk) But I suppose it's just as well, because it didn't happen, and so I should let the past (even if it is only the very recent past) be the past.

In my history class, we had been working on a group project, where we were to present people and parts of the lifestyle (like farming, food, architecture, laws, entertainment, and so on). My group wanted to get more practice in, so we were going to meet up at the library. I was very worried about this because I really don't have any way to get there. My parents are both working, so I don't have a ride, and I'm not allowed to walk or bike all the way there by myself. One of the other people in my group offered to stop by and pick me up, so I ended up riding in her car.

At the library, I was surprised to see so many people there. There were quite a few young children. Many of them were captivated by the big fish tank near the children's section. They would peer into the tank and say, "Oh! Nemo!" and things like that. And their mothers would eventually try to pull them away. I think perhaps I did that, too, when I was younger and the library was very new. It's kind of nice to see that the fish tank is still there. I'm not too fond of change; I like familiarity, and having things in my life that I can always depend on.

I saw a lot of teenagers at the library. Some of them, like my group, were there to work on homework (I saw a few girls with a big poster), but others seemed not to be doing anything in particular. I saw some people outside climbing on the statues. Do people really have nothing to do? I guess they're still young, after all. It must be nice to be so blithe and carefree.

Labels: car keys, carefree, children, driving, finding nemo, forgetful, library, lost and found, normal, nothing to do, panic, people, project, running, tank, teenagers, transportation, walking to school

Seems to me like the fire department doesn't have enough to do, at least in San Jose. I saw a fire station there because I was visiting my mom's office. There were Christmas decorations up - some snowmen (fake, of course, because we don't have snow here), wreaths, and such assortment of things. I guess being a fireman is sort of like being a soldier. You're either bored or scared all the time. (You'll be waiting to be deployed, and then once you're going to have to fight it's very dangerous) I heard that firemen end up spending time playing cards and things like that, until a fire happens and they have to slide down the fireman pole. I wonder if it's true?

I think that people at my dad's work also have too much time on their hands. We went into a building that I haven't been to before, which has a cafeteria, because my dad was going to show us the new Cisco Systems jackets that just came in. I was pretty stunned by the cafeteria since it was bigger, or at least seemed bigger than my mom's workplace's cafeteria. Anyhow, apparently Cisco has a small company store in the building which sells all sorts of weird things, like pens, gifts for a baby shower, birthday cards, and even stationery (it wasn't exciting, though, so I decided not to buy any). I was not impressed by the Cisco jackets (the sleeves were kind of long for me, which is typical, and I wasn't interested in being free advertising for Cisco. Sorry, Cisco Systems. XD) and so eventually we didn't buy anything else at the store either.

Apparently at Cisco, at least in the relative area where my dad works, there is a cat club. The Cisco Cat Club takes care of stray cats by feeding them and also giving them to prospective cat owners (my dad's friend's cat was obtained in this manner, actually). Around Christmas to New Year's, Cisco will be having a forced shutdown - in other words, they make the employees use up their vacation time, and so nobody goes to work. The Cat Club was concerned about what would happen to the cats, since no one will be there to make sure they have enough to eat, so they actually set up a schedule where people actually drive to the company to feed the cats. I thought that was really extreme - here you have the chance to take a break since Cisco is making you use your vacation days and you're still going to work anyways, because the cats need to be fed.

I think my mom's group has been demoted. At her company, people are put into groups, and these groups work on different products for the company. Well, my mother and her group were on the second level of the company's building, but now they've been moved downstairs. I told my mom that she was demoted, and she sort of denied it but sort of didn't, so I'm kind of confused. Now she is in a spot near a door. It's convenient for getting in and out of the building, but it's annoying because you can hear it every time someone opens the door.

I noticed that someone had put a sign on the door saying "No Smoking within 20 Feet of the Door". It has been windy today, and people were concerned that the smokers' cigarette smoke would be blown inside when the door was opened. After eating lunch, my mom and I returned to my mom's building and saw a smoker, quite close to the door. Ugh...Maybe they need a much, MUCH bigger sign. Or a punishment. Sometimes people think rules are meant to be broken. (I heard this saying that some teenager said, "When teenagers see fences, they climb them," regarding a fence that had been erected around something to keep people out)

I just saw something really awful on television. There was a well-known song about Santa Claus playing, except in an unusual-sounding fashion. Then there was a deformed, monster-like Santa Claus on top of a roof. He smashed the chimney and climbed down the chimney. Upon seeing the cookies put out for him, he gobbled them up, even smashing the plate... Then some green dudes (elves?) with black sunglasses starting shooting at him. He fell over and a strange doctor sort of guy came over and gave Santa a shot with a syringe. Santa shrank a bit and turned into the normal Santa. It made me very angry seeing people ruining my image like this. Santa is by no means evil and violent and thus you should not shoot at Santa.

Labels: army, boredom, cat, Christmas decorations, cisco systems, club, company, demotion, door, fence, firemen, free time, holidays, jacket, santa claus, smoking, soldiers, store, teenagers

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