I often feel that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some may dispute it, and remind me that I live in the Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the electronic world, not to mention that my neighborhood is one renowned for its school district (and according to my father, who has been to Taiwan, even the people there know that our town is home to excellent schools) and my town is the headquarters of a very famous company. But for me, those are not the things that make a place the place to be.

Only a half-hour's drive away is the city by the bay, the place that Tony Bennett, according to his song's lyrics, left his heart: San Francisco.
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Labels: beach, california, city, confusion, de young, islands, lost, memories, museum, ocean, pier 39, places, san francisco, seashells, silicon valley, surprise, travel, treasure island, tulips

I was set to thinking lately about the news on television and such because I've been reading a book called Scoop by Gene Gutteridge. It's the first book in the series called the Occupational Hazards. The second book is called Skid, which I accidentally read first, because I didn't even know it was a series. (It says The Occupational Hazards on the book, but it's partially covered by the labels the library put on the book) Scoop is a novel about a news station, Channel 7 News. (I don't think it's about the real Channel 7, but who knows) Skid, on the other hand, is about an air plane flight. I expect there will be more books in the series. Each book seems to feature one Hazard. (There is a family called the Hazards who is in each book) I think there are still several Hazards that haven't been covered yet.

It seemed to me that news was rougher business than I thought. To some reporters, it was just work, and it just mattered whether you got the news that was the most interesting to the viewers, rather than showing news that was meaningful, that could really make a difference. It seems like people want to see how many people die in a crash, not how many people survive. And news stations have to compete with each other to have the best information. It's pretty vicious business. I wonder if newspapers are like this too or if it's only the news stations.

Speaking of news, I probably haven't watched the weather much, because I was surprised to see that they seem to be using tablets now. I could tell because when they were showing the direction of wind or something, I saw a red arrow being drawn. I noticed there was a small cursor which looked like a pencil moving around. It was just like what my teachers had previously used. In 6th grade, my language arts/history teacher tried out the tablet for doing our daily grammar/spelling/etc. exercises, but it didn't work that well since most folks, including the teacher, couldn't draw that well using the tablet. Then the next year, in math class, my math teacher (who was, incidentally, the wife of my 6th grade language arts/history teacher) used the tablet to show us the lesson in math. Eventually, though, she switched to a document camera.

I remember I first was aware of them when my language arts teacher in 7th grade showed off her spiffy new document camera. Some of the teachers have them now too. My current science teacher uses it a lot...My French teacher has been using it, but it's not working out too well. I wish she'd go back to the projector. I wonder if they're wasting the donations of families on buying things that aren't even that easy to use. I wish they would spend the money on something else like replacing the chairs that are cracked and things like that.

Today, my father and I were planting tulips bulbs. We bought 50 of them once, and planted 25 last year. Most of them bloomed, but not all...We were digging up the dirt today and found some parts of tulip bulbs. I've always been wondering where the bulbs come from. Do tulips make bulbs after they die, or do two of them create bulbs and then you find them later? Or are bulbs plants which grow larger over time? It's confusing.

My dad thinks that the bulbs are dead since they look kind of dried up. I heard that seeds always have some stored food and other resources in them so they'll live long enough to find a place to settle down. I wonder if it really could last a whole year, though...Maybe not. But I hope so, because if they're still alive, there will be beautiful flowers in the springtime.

I dug up some other things. I found an acorn, which is odd, because we don't have those in my backyard. Perhaps a squirrel buried it there. I also dug up an earthworm by accident. I was really surprised by it. I put it on the sidewalk and watched it wiggle. It slowly moved its front, then seemed to start moving different parts, gradually. It sure takes a long time, though. Worms are really slow. It's like this joke... "A snail was mugged by two turtles. When asked about it, he said, "I don't know! It all happened so fast." " (I think it was a snail and turtles...I'm not exactly sure)

Labels: acorn, bulb, dehydration, document camera, earthworm, gene gutteridge, joke, money, news, scoop, tablet, teacher, television, the occupational hazards, tulips

This question plagued me because I went to Trader Joe's one weekend (we were entertaining guests at my house and needed some dessert to feed them). By the entrance to the store were some plants for sale. The little white sign next to it said oriental lilies, but they looked plenty like tulips to me...Maybe it was the wrong label, or the tulips label had fallen off or was stolen. Here are pictures comparing the two kinds of flowers.

Oriental Lily


Tulip


See, not really like each other, hm? At least different enough to be able to tell them apart. I had been planning to ask about it (since some of you may have gardener friends or relatives) but I guess a simple image search did the trick here.

We are still going on with Human Growth and Development education in my class...It is getting a little old now, having to watch videos of developing fetuses and little cells which look like either tadpoles or some part of an onion. We have moved on to hearing about HIV/AIDS. This part of the year always freaks me out. I have a strange tendency to be frightened by the mention of any dangerous disease. See, HIV is especially bad because 1) It has no known cure, only medicine that can "slow down" the spread of the disease. 2) It can be passed on without knowing about it, if someone didn't realize they had HIV. 3) It can be passed on from parent to child! How horrible, if you're a child with HIV, having to eat many pills a day, and you'll probably die anyways after some years. 4) It hijacks your immune system. 5) It is a virus, not a bacteria. (I mean, viruses aren't even living organisms... I wonder how they came into existence in the first place)

My teacher showed us an amusing book that is teaching people about the importance of commas. I'm sure you have some idea of how to use them: When listing things in a sentence, or separating parts of a sentence (like taking a breath if you're saying it out loud, sort of?), or right after saying Dear so-and-so in a letter...You get the point. Except people tend to misuse the comma a lot. So an author wrote a book called Eats, Shoots, & Leaves. The author is Lynne Truss, the illustrator is Bonnie Timmons. Look at these two sentences. (May not be exactly the same as in the book)

Panda - A bear-like animal originating in China. Eats shoots and leaves.

Panda - A bear-like animal originating in China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

The meaning is drastically changed depending on whether you put a comma at all and where you place it. The first sentence is correct, since pandas do eat shoots and leaves (bamboo, to be more specific). But the second sentence means the panda should eat something, shoot with a gun or bow and arrows, and leave wherever he/she is. (I hope you got the joke. If not, the author has failed)

Labels: AIDS, comma, comparison, disease, flowers, grammar, hgad, HIV, humans, immune, language arts, oriental lily, panda, sickness, trader joe's, tulips, virus

When I was young, back in elementary school, the teachers taught me that March could arrive with two kinds of weather...A lion (bad weather) or a lamb (nice weather). I suddenly thought of how some Twilight fans keep spouting the phrase "And the lion fell in love with the lamb" what with Edward being the lion, Bella being the lamb, or whatever. I was told that Stephenie Meyer got the inspiration for her Twilight books from a dream she had. I thought maybe she had a dream about springtime, and then thought of the lion/lamb idea.

My grandmother is sick too despite practically being across the world. I guess it's because the weather is suddenly so much warmer and it is springtime. I can hardly remember how cold it was just a month ago. The tulips in my backyard are blooming now, so it is very nice to look out on them while sitting at the dining table. Most of them are red, but one of them is pink. I wanted to take a picture of them but in the afternoon they started closing their petals. I panicked and thought they would be dead tomorrow, but my mom assured me that they just close up for the night and open once more in the morning. I hope she's right, since I want to take a picture before they're gone. (People in California don't seem to grow tulips much, maybe the climate or soil here isn't right for it. In Washington D.C., you'll see tons of tulips, in front of hotels, business buildings, and even planted around statues of Civil War generals. That's all well and good, but seeing tulips everywhere makes you get bored of them. It's better over here since not everyone grows tulips.)

Today I went to the library. I had to return a lot of books, so I couldn't resist checking out some new ones. I tried to go to the second floor of the library to tell my parents I was done, but I had trouble getting up the stairs and even dropped my books twice. Luckily they did not fall all the way down, so I could pick them up and keep going. Either my sickness is putting a damper on my health or I really need to see a doctor.

Then my family went to a mall near their offices. My mom bought a shirt from a place called Charlotte Russe (some of the stuff looks alright but some of the stuff is scary. The music is a bit loud. They have shoes you can try on, though). Maybe I won't go shopping for a long time since nowadays I don't even buy anything. Besides, I'm trying to save money. It's not going so well since I can't get hired by Jamba Juice or Target yet, and I only have $12 allowance each month, and most of my teeth have fallen out by now. Oh well, it's better than nothing. I let my money sit and collect dust in real life AND in computer games/web sites.

I would've posted my blog a lot earlier but then something really, really stupid happened. So I started typing this post a pretty long time ago, but I took a break from the computer and went off to do something else. Then I came back and typed the rest of the post. I tried to publish it, but it turned out during the time I was gone Blogger had logged me out. So I had to log back in. And then all my text was gone. I had to spend a long time typing it again. I'm still seething, since this isn't the first time a similar thing happened to me.

Labels: blah, blog, books, income, library, mall, march, money, season, sick, spring, stairway, tulips, twilight, washington D.C., weather

...Actually, now that I think of it, that isn't true. But oh well. Some of the tulip bulbs we planted back in late 2008 have started shooting up through the dirt. It's like magic. I think we planted 25 of them, though I don't know if all 25 of them will live to have those beautiful flowers. (One of the places we planted a bulb is just a hole now. Maybe a squirrel or bird dug it up, somehow. I didn't think they ate tulip bulbs, but who knows.)

I was attempting to learn the numbers and a few characters in Chinese. Mostly it all looks like random dashes and lines to me, but I guess that's just the way the language is. I always got confused between the characters for 5 and 9. I'll figure it out eventually, I suppose. I use my whiteboard to practice. (It's hard if you use a bad quality marker, though...Make sure to use new whiteboard markers if possible. Not too dry and not too watery.)

Today, I want to spend some money, for some reason. It's probably bad, especially considering these economic times, but I haven't bought anything for myself (besides food) for a few months. Since I have free time this weekend, maybe I should ask my parents if I can go to Nordstrom or some other place I like.

I tried some strawberry milk this morning. It tastes okay, though the flavor is not familiar to me. I prefer smoothies or yogurt to strawberry milk, personally.

My dad seems to have a lot of free time. He's always watching movies or lurking on a Chinese forum. He doesn't even have an account on that site, yet he's still able to view the forums. I thought that was weird, that he always just reads posts and looks at celebrity pictures but never posts...He's a talkative guy, so I thought he would be like that on the Internet, too.

Anyhow, right now, the TV is on (even though no one is watching it) and the channel is the Golf Channel. We have an inside joke at my house where I say "The Golf Channel would be the best channel if it didn't have golf on it." Golf is such a slow-paced sport, sometimes they film ducks flying overhead instead of filming the players.

My parents sometimes worry about being laid off. I guess my mom's company would rather lay off workers than cut activities. My mom's "group" at work played lawn bowling to celebrate when they finished a "project"...Guess they still have enough money for that, and for eating at restaurants that are at least much better than the school's reheatable food. My mom says she's busy at work, too, since she has to type a weird code, and is constantly visited by people, but it's actually not true. One of her group members visited my mom's cubicle just to tell her that there was free pizza. Then the two of them were gone in a flash. (I always knew my mom likes the crusts on pizza, but...)

Labels: career, golf, leisure, lurk, mandarin, milk, money, nordstrom, pizza, reading, thief, time, tulips, whiteboard

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