There's lots of things on this planet that are unique to it. The most obvious one is, of course, life, for as far as we know, Earth is the only place with living things. But having all this life also has its downside.

Like all the waste.

I'm sure you've seen some of it. Dog poop left next to sidewalks because dog owners don't bother to pick it up. And most certainly your own waste in the toilet. (I know it's disgusting to talk about that, so I won't dwell on it.)

And not just the sort of waste that animals naturally have to get rid of. Us humans have really changed. We used to live as hunter-gatherers. Then we figured out that we could use plants to our advantage by planting them on purpose and raising them until we could harvest them. Eventually we didn't have to think about survival all the time, so we were able to explore other things that interested us. We drew and painted, we sang songs and made instruments, we came up with religions and we tried to treat diseases and we came up with all sorts of inventions to speed things up. We wanted more time to ourselves. We came up with the printing press so people wouldn't have to painstakingly copy text. We hitched carriages to horses, and then we came up with cars, trains, and planes. We turned from writing letters to calling each other on the phone to emailing, and nowadays many people send text messages.

Faster, faster, faster. It's all getting too fast now, I think. I feel like there's never enough time. Everything is rushing on by. I used to be such a big fan of Pokemon. I used to await every new game eagerly, counting down the months and weeks and days. Now I don't even know about the most recent starter Pokemon. I got caught up in other things and didn't have the time to keep up with Pokemon anymore. I guess I gave up. Sometimes if I have the free time I'll pick up an older Pokemon game like Pokemon LeafGreen (which is for the Gameboy Advance. Do you remember when that was the main handheld for Nintendo, back before the DS came out?). But other than that, my old devotion for Pokemon seems to have died. It's only ever stirred up again when I see something on the Internet that makes me remember those good old days.

And since we always keep replacing our older things with newer stuff, the old things get forgotten. We leave them to collect dust in our houses (I am very guilty of that) or we throw them out. All of it really does pile up. We've got so much of it in some places that you'll see nothing but trash. The Earth is big. But don't forget that there are many, many people, too. And all those things we threw away and gave up on have to go somewhere. They stay right here on this planet. They don't magically wink out of existence, and it's not like we send all our trash into Outer Space where we can forget about it.

You don't have to become a vegetarian or never buy anything ever again. Just be a little mindful about what you do. If you see some trash on the ground or if you have some of your own, throw it away so it won't somehow get into a river and get eaten by a whale who will later end up washed up on the beach with a bunch of plastic bags inside it. If you see something and suddenly feel an urge to buy it, think for a moment whether it's something you'll treasure forever or if it's something you'll buy and never touch again. (I used to be pretty spendthrift, but nowadays I hardly buy anything. But that's mostly because I want to save money now so I can retire earlier) If you're taking a shower, even if it's cold and you don't want to get out, be a little braver and step out. (This is definitely something I need to work on.) And if drink bottled water, switch to a reusable one. I'm doing that myself in the near future.

If you have some time to spare on a weekend, don't just sit in front of your computer screen and go on the Internet, which is what I'm doing at the moment. When next September rolls around, you might want to consider taking part in cleaning up a creek or beach or some other waterway (I did that just the other day, for a school project, and thought it wasn't bad. At least it's fun to get to hold one of those trash grabber things). You'll get some fresh air and find some rather interesting garbage lying around. Just do a little something...To save the world, or to feel good about yourself, or because seeing waste is such an eyesore, or, as I would say, because you're alive and you ought to do more than just take up space. I've been doing that for all these years. But at least I can still salvage the future.

Labels: change, coastal cleanup day, earth, future, help, humans, invention, memories, planet, pokemon, speed, stuff, time, trash, waste, water bottle

Saturday was not such a relaxing day as I had expected. My mom wanted me to come with her to attend a seminar, which would have been okay, except that it was in another city, so it took about fifteen to twenty minutes to get to the seminar location.

Before he started talking, the man speaking in the seminar asked who would be fine with hearing it in Mandarin, and many of the people in the room raised their hands. Then he asked who can only hear it in English, and I was the only person to raise my hand. (Sadly, my grasp of Mandarin is still rather lacking, what with us mainly speaking the Shanghai dialect at home. English, being my main language, is much easier for me to comprehend) I hope that I didn't inconvenience the others there by totally changing the tide. If I hadn't raised my hand then, the seminar would've been conducted in Mandarin, which might be easier for the other people to understand.

After the seminar, since we were in the area, we had ramen for lunch, and then we went to a library. I haven't been to this library for a long time. I used to go when I was younger, when I went with my mom to her workplace. I feel that the town is a peaceful place. It has these buildings (which I believe are probably a school) with murals on them, and I would like to live in one of the townhouses facing the library. The only setback is the odd smell. My parents told me that there is a landfill nearby and that you can smell the trash from the library. Although I don't like such smells, I suppose I could get used to it, if I were to move to that town.

While we were driving, I noticed that there was a large cloud of grey smoke in the sky. Something had probably exploded or a fire had been started. It seems that I see these sorts of things a lot. There was one time years back when I saw orangish smoke coming from the mountains near my home. And when I was in Australia last summer, I saw smoke coming from someplace as well.

Fire is a fearsome thing. I have been burned several times in the past, although it was not from a fire exactly...The first time was when I was in fifth grade, I believe. We were having one of those themed days - probably Colonial Day that time. We were doing some woodburning. But I was holding the little pen-like device the wrong way, so I burned myself immediately. Not a pleasant experience, but I can't remember whether it hurt a lot anymore.

Then, when I took cooking back in seventh grade, I was burned when I accidentally touched a cookie sheet that was still hot. I always seem to get injured doing something ridiculous. Like how I pulled my leg muscles while rolling around in bed. And how I banged my knee when escaping from the door (the doorbell had just been rung, and I usually flee when someone is there, unless I've been expecting a person). I wonder if someday I'll really get in serious trouble through my careless actions.

Labels: burn, careless, chinese, cloud, danger, door, english, foul smell, injury, library, living, mandarin, memories, seminar, smoke, town, trash

I'm not actually going around hollering outside, nor have I read the book by the same title. But I thought it was pretty fitting.

The weather is just crazy these days. It rains on and off and huge gusts of wind blow. I keep worrying that it'll knock over something. Quite a few years ago, there was a windy day and a vase we left outside hit the ground and broke. I am also concerned that it might get my wind chimes tangled up. This is always happening because one of my wind chimes (I have two different ones) has a lot of thin strings which tend to get caught together.

It seemed like the weather was clearing up, because the blue sky was showing again and the rain had pretty much stopped, but then I was driven home by my dad and it started to rain again. In fact, when I stepped out of the car, I heard a rumbling noise, and looked around for the source. I realized that it was thunder when I saw that grey clouds had returned again.

The weather was so bad that my street was out of electricity. The post office lost power too (I saw that it was dark and there was a vehicle outside, probably someone who was trying to fix the power or whatever). And I heard from a friend of mine who lives in the street "across" from mine that she suffered from the blackout as well. But not that far from our streets, the traffic lights were working just fine. It is really annoying, and ironic as well. My dad says the houses in my area cost more because they are closer to the mountains (and houses on the mountain are considered to be very expensive and nice) but the houses closer to the mountains tend to lose power first...And it's hard to get it fixed. It's not like everyone has power generators or backup power at their homes (though businesses, like my parents' offices, do) and no one is going to trek up the mountain just to fix a few mansions' power. (Well, we don't live on the mountain, so at least we get it fixed within a reasonable time. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to shower or do homework tonight, but it turned out that it got fixed while I was at school.)

This morning, I went to school early, because I heard the school had power and I figured it'd be better to at least have lights. Also, I hope that my teacher would have gotten there early and perhaps opened the classroom, but alas, that was not to be. My teacher was sick and couldn't come, so we had a substitute. I was disappointed since I was ready to take the Chemical Symbol Quiz (we were memorized the letters for thirty common elements, like O for Oxygen) and now that it's been moved back I have to take both a history and a science test on Thursday. I was hoping I could just concentrate on the history test.

Anyways, I saw a bunch of seagulls this morning. It was really scary. There must've been all of the seagulls in the neighboring towns and our town put together in the grass field. There were more gulls than I've ever seen together in one place in my lifetime.

It's not a good sign that all these seagulls are here. It means that there must be food and so the seagulls are getting lazy. Why live by the ocean and have to actually fish when you can stay here and eat leftover trash? But it's really unhealthy for them. It's kind of like how raccoons eat people's trash instead of eating forest food.

My household used to be visited by raccoons. A couple of times, in the nighttime, the lights would go on. (We have lights outside which will suddenly shine on if they sense movement. But if we "turn off" the lights they'll stay off.) I looked outside and there seemed to be some moving shapes. They were awfully big, and animal-like by the looks of it. It turned out to be raccoons. They were so huge! I always expected them to be small and kind of cuddly. But I guess you can't really assume things about animals you've never seen. (Really, I haven't seen raccoons much. Only pictures, and it's hard to tell from that.)

Labels: blackout, electricity, elements, food, hear my cry, power outage, raccoon, roll of thunder, school, seagull, size, storm, test, thunder, trash, vase, weather, wild animals, wind chimes, windy

My mother seems to think all the gifts that I pick out are pretty much useless. I missed some of my friends' birthdays, so I figured I should just go get Christmas gifts for them. I went shopping today and picked out a few things. I think the items were somewhat useful but my mom thinks they are impractical, especially because of the cost (though we had coupons, so it wasn't so bad). When we got home, my mother started digging through our old stuff...The main reason for that was my dad's work - they were having a "White Elephant" event. That's where the workers bring in a gift and the gifts are mixed up and handed out to people. Last year my dad brought in a singing bird (not a real bird!). It was a nice thing that we got from my dad's friend's daughters, but we never really used it, so it was better off in someone else's hands.

Anyhow, while my mom was looking through our old stuff she discovered various things we never even touched again, like goodie bags from parties. She deemed it all useless things that money is spent on. I think it's necessary, though, because for one thing, it's good for the economy (especially in these not-so-stable times), and for another thing, it would be really sad if no one got gifts, right? Even if the gifts weren't particularly helpful, or cost too much to be "worth" it, it's still good that people can give gifts to each other. I mean, a gift isn't only something material, it can also make you feel like people do care about you (unless it's a gift that was insulting or showed no thought).

I really am a packrat, though. Sometimes my family tries to clean things - especially the dining table, which gets heaped with newspapers, random scratch paper with math diagrams, food dishes, and the objects that are always there, like the napkin holder. My dad complained about how he wants to throw things out, but I always insist on keeping them, so he ends up having to stash it all elsewhere. Then when we're actually trying to find something we have trouble finding it. But throwing it away seems like a waste to me. It's better we keep our trash out of the Pacific Gyre. (That's a trash heap in the Pacific Ocean, I believe. I heard it was the size of Texas...Talk about scary.) And did you know what I heard once? The two things on Earth that are visible from Outer Space are the Great Wall of China and a garbage dump in New Jersey. Wow.

On to some other news. Today, since I was at a local mall, I stopped by at Coldstone Creamery. It is still, and will remain, my favorite ice cream store. I heard some noise, so I found the source of it...A band from an elementary school was playing Christmas music on a lower level of the mall. I realized that it could even be my elementary school because my band teacher in elementary school was there. I could recognize the music because I had played it myself, several years back. It's so weird not to be playing band anymore. I know I wouldn't be good at a wind instrument because I can't breathe that well (though I don't have asthma), but still. Sure does bring back memories of the old times.

Lately, the weather has been funny. It's quite cold - in fact, my mother said it was ten degrees colder than it usually is (well, at this time of year, in this area, I would assume). It even snowed on the nearby mountains, which was really pretty. It's been either foggy or cloudy these days and so it rains often. The fog makes me confused about the time of day since it covers up the sun. I end up getting up late some mornings because of it (not schooldays, I have to get up as normal then). I also get shocked at how dark it is early in the evening. I suppose I have to get used to it. The winter hasn't even "officially" started yet, I think. So there are still a few more months to go. I figure the summer will also be extreme to balance out the unusually cold winter. Probably it'll be roasting and no one except for those cyclists in matching suits will even try to go outside.

Maybe I should go travel somewhere in the summer, to get away from the extreme weather. What kind of place would have mild weather? I would like to go to Europe - like Barcelona, Spain, or Venice, Italy - and a cruise ship would be preferred, but we still haven't made up our minds. You always need to book these kinds of things way ahead of time so I suppose I have to make a decision so we can go somewhere in the summer. I decided to stay home this winter break, which is rare for me. But I don't want to spend money on traveling anymore because I end up getting airsick, carsick, or seasick from it. XD

Labels: band, christmas, coldstone creamery, elementary school, europe, gift, junk, mall, music, outer space, snow, summer, time, trash, travel, vacation, weather, white elephant, winter

Today, a very strange thing happened. My mother put out the trash, recycling, and yard waste containers so the trash could be taken away. When she came back, the trash and recycling containers were still there, but the yard waste one was gone! I think that probably when the truck coming around to get the trash, maybe it lifted up the yard waste can to dump it out (since it's done using the truck, people don't get out of the truck to dump the trash in) and it accidentally dropped the whole container in! My mom suggested that someone could have stolen the yard waste bin, but that is pretty unlikely seeing as it's not really a valuable object. I mean, unless you want tree branches, or you collect trash cans, there's no point.

Well, anyways, this is an entirely different subject, but my history teacher told my class a story about gambling. It started out with him explaining how there is gambling in his bloodline. One time I think his parents and grandmother went somewhere, and after gambling his parents went to sleep in their hotel room. Then they woke up and realized that the grandmother wasn't in her bed. So my teacher's father went searching for the grandma. They found her in the casino, still playing blackjack.

Afterwards, my teacher proceeded to the actual story. During his college years, when he was still back in San Diego (I don't know where in California he is actually from. It could be the town I live in because I saw some 1993, 1994 panoramic pictures from his 7th and 8th grade year, picturing his whole grade, and it said my school's name underneath), one time he took a trip to Las Vegas with his father, brother, and two friends of his. I think they didn't all travel together, so my teacher needed to get to the hotel.

His father said, "California Hotel. Old Vegas," and hung up. (Old Vegas refers to the area not on the Strip - the Strip is the current main street of Las Vegas where all the nice hotels/casinos are, like Bellagio and The Venetian and the Mirage and Monte Carlo and Mandalay Bay... and so on) My teacher tried to tell that to a taxi driver, but the taxi driver didn't know where that was. In fact, several taxi drivers didn't know where that was. He called his father again but was told "California Hotel. Old Vegas," which didn't help. So at last he found a taxi driver who knew what he was talking about.

Later on, his father wanted to make a deal with him. My teacher had brought $250 or so with him for gambling. He took my teacher's money and gave him $400, and later on all of them would split the profits they made.

They all went gambling. I mean, what else do you do in Las Vegas? Besides watching the shows and checking out the free tourist attractions... (Once you've seen them all, then you'll be bored, like I was because I've been to Las Vegas quite a few times) I recommend Bellagio's fountains. You should also see the garden inside Bellagio...Oh, and the shop that sells sweets, too. They have a chocolate waterfall if I remember correctly.

After a while, my teacher and his father were getting into the groove and had won lots of money. I think my teacher gained $900 or something. He found out that two other friends were in Las Vegas, at Mandalay Bay, so he went to meet them. My teacher talked about how he was on a roll, so one of his friends said, "Take my $20 and get me a $100." But my teacher wanted to do $25 rounds so he said he couldn't with just $20. But his friend insisted, so eventually he took $5 of his own so he would have enough. He earned $100 using the $25, and his friend said, "Do it again." My teacher reminded her that his luck/karma/skill/whatever you want to call it might run out, but she said it was okay. So he won $100 again, and again, and eventually she had $400. I wish it was always that easy to gamble; then I could retire like I want to.

My teacher's friend said she would definitely buy him McDonald's next time. My teacher had said earlier that in college he had a job in YMCA, which didn't pay so well, so he was "surviving off the McDonald's Dollar Menu". Imagine this scenario. (J means my teacher, since his first name starts with a J, and C means cashier)

J: I'd like 3 fries, please.
C: That'll be $11. (Dunno if it's really that price, but oh well)
J: No, no, I mean 3 fries. Oh, I think I'll have those over there on the ground.
C: Then that'll be $.25.

I hope he really didn't live like that. I'm sure he's kidding. I mean, it's not sanitary to eat off the floor anyways.

Labels: bellagio, blackjack, california hotel, french fries, gambling, garbage can, genetics, las vegas, mcdonald's, middle school, money, teacher, trash, yard waste

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