Some Old Things In Drafts

"I know there's something in the wake of your smile, I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yeah."—Listen to Your Heart, Roxette


Molly Lambert has an interesting way of writing. She starts out with something ordinary, like telephone lines against a sunset, and expands it into something seemingly unrelated, like Hamlet, and then wraps it up with a post title and a link title that are completely different. And the pictures too. They make every post something special, something worth reading (it helps too that the pictures break up the dense text).

I wanted to clear out my drafts because the number of total posts was misleading (some of them will probably never, ever see the light of day) and also because I reread this the other day and remembered Molly. She is something special. She has since left "This Recording," but she was the reason I read through all of those wordy posts even though I knew I had assignments of my own due the next day.

There are days I wish I could write like her. But that takes skill. That takes discipline, tremendous amounts of it. And with my brain addled with lack of sleep and the instantaneous skimming I have acquired by reading through my collection of food blogs, I don't have that quite yet.

It is the difference between the good writers and the great writers, although I am not either yet, and perhaps at this rate never will be.

I still remember this particular post. Telephone lines breaking up the sky. Some sort of strange irony that they are not at odds but instead harmonious. I stared at two pigeons today in the middle of campus, watched them squeeze under the wrought-iron fence, their heads bobbing. I did not know pigeons bobbed their heads before "Pooch Café." Even though I must have seen a hundred pigeons before, if not more.

What else have I never known?

Yuma asked me today if I had read Tea's latest blog post, and of course I have. I am subscribed to her in my RSS feed, I cannot escape it. He said it reminded him of me. What were his exact words? Something about being angsty, and it not being the point that I refuted him with the concrete fact that I was not hurt.

But he is more often right than I am. Yesterday a boy in my English class (for engineers) walked with me to my next classroom, and told me he was going to go to the engineering library. He had taken the long way by walking with me, but he said the shortcut was closed. Yuma said he was "hitting on me," but he has been saying that about almost every boy I have talked with. Is he really right, or is he being insecure?

We are reading The Tale of Despereaux right now. Or rather, Yuma is reading it to me, chapter by chapter, on nights when we can both fulfill our promises. We are on the chapter where Despereaux's mother says, "Adieu." It is a sad chapter. There are more sad chapters following it.

I told him, "When we get to the happily ever after we will be able to live happily ever after as well."

His answer was, "We'll see." It is his answer for the future, for our future. He is living it day by day, that is his way of coping. I am living it by focusing on the end. That is my way of coping.

I told Nyx today that I might be visiting Beavertown during my Thanksgiving, and that if I do I would like to see her before I go back. She asked, "Are you going to see Yuma?"

And then said, "I heard you guys broke it off."

Have we?

Yuma introduced me last night to his going-to-forbidden-places-and-physics buddy as "my ex." He signed off one of his chats to me today as "my lovely." Maybe this is his double life, his way of separating what he feels and what he wants to feel. But I am assuming now. I am taking a literary book off the shelf and remarking on its symbolism without going inside the head of the author.

When he read my blog the other night Yuma said, "I always get nervous when you write about me. I don't know what you are going to say."

Maybe that is part of the problem. There is a part of me I do not speak of, a part I only write of. No matter how much we talk and how much he asks me, he will never know my true impression of him. Sometimes I do not know either. The words come out and they are just right, they hint at something I otherwise would never have guessed. Or they are not right, and I erase them, and try again and again.

One of my other drafts was about an airport terminal. Maybe I will post it some day when I have the chance. It is silly now, because I have fulfilled my flying dream, I have seen the vast blue sky at an altitude above the meanest rain cloud.

Here is an excerpt of it, of one of the very last paragraphs I wrote before I got distracted by something else:


I have not been imagining things for a very long time now. It is because of content—when I am happy, I tend not to want to escape through my mind. At least I thought I was happy. In many ways, I am. I love being able to lean back and knowing that someone will catch me before I fall. I love skipping down the halls and not being alone. I have had one too many solitary hopscotch games.


But there is a part of me that is the loner in the rain, the one who is perfectly happy to be cold and drenched and with no one else to reach out with a hand. The one who can watch snow drift for hours and be at peace, because there is not a soul to take this away. Not a soul to break the news of reality.

It is silly to mention this now. Yuma says there are boys here who will make me happy. Who I can cuddle with and not feel lonely. I always stop listening before he goes on.

Tea said I should only chase after him if I am absolutely, 100% dedicated. And I see why now. It is extremely frustrating to reach out every time and be rebuffed, to want to be upset but knowing it would only weaken my stance. On the bright side I will probably be much better at sales pitches by the end of this.

I am all out of milk now, although not yet out of cereal. I was going to buy milk this morning, or maybe Tuesday morning, but when you go to bed in the not-so-early morning you wake up in the almost-not-morning morning. And other things happen. Like today I went to a roundtable discussion with several other engineers from other years and with some company reps from this oil and gas company, and they have all been mentioning internships and Jessica and I are left with wondering what we should do.

"My GPA will be so good this semester," Jessica said. "I am going to get straight As because the classes are so easy."

I am going to get straight As too, or at least I have to, or else I will not have the 3.7 GPA I need to keep my scholarship. It is a scary proposition, but I have heard it is do-able. At least for this semester, which means I will at least have the money for next semester, and maybe I can live it out that way, or maybe I can just learn to the best I can and not worry about grades, because those things come naturally after learning.

And lots and lots of work. Which means lots and lots of time.

Yuma has repeatedly mentioned that I should just do the things I want to do and not worry about conforming to his schedule. But I cannot do that. Because if he is unwilling to compromise then the only way I will get to talk with him is by compromising myself. It is silly, it is hard, and it is taking its toll on my preferred bedtime.

I suppose that is inevitable.

Puntastic Days

Have I mentioned my list of favorite days of the week before? I don't think I have. Anyway, it goes like this: Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Monday, Saturday, Sunday, and Friday.

Yes, Friday is last. It's because I never get anything done on Fridays (no motivation to get anything done), and I have every class so I'm aware that I have a lot of work I have to do, but I still never get anything done. Pretty horrible all-around.

But today is (thankfully) a Wednesday, so it's 3rd on my list, which is pretty good. A fun English class, where Cammie and I came up with very formulated thesis statements, a bio lab where I stared at lactobacteria, and a physics class where my hunger-and-lack-of-sleep-addled brain failed to recognize the direction of a force arrow and subsequently tried to figure out a question for ten minutes. Not fun.

At lunch, I caught up with Argon (a good deal of time we were separated—a full, uh, 20 hours or so), then went over to play go against Yuma. Brian and Clay watched on, while making horrendous go puns. Like, after hearing that there wasn't a go club meeting today, Clay said, "So it's no-go for the go club?" to which Brian said, "Shouldn't go club be 24/7, since you're always on the go?" That kind of horrendous. Although they didn't make any 5 jokes (to be expected, since neither of them know Japanese).

Then I decided I needed to get my recs envelopes settled, so I left the I-am-almost-being-choked-to-death-while-Yuma-is-still-calm-and-winning board to Clay and walked over to guidance with Gretchen and Brunhilda. When I came back to the table (where everyone was), Kathrya, Nyx, and Cammie started making name-puns. And saxophone puns, but I think explaining those would be going overboard (but 80% of my reader-base already knows this, so it's all right). Also, I believe I saw Bryant looking over at us at the peak of the name-puns loudness, which was slightly awkward (did I tell you before that I think his eyes scream, "I CAN READ YOUR MIND"? I must have).

The rest of the day picked up from there. There was a lot of cool vector operations in multi, which I must say was not my absolute favorite, but somewhere up there. And it just all makes sense now! I guess this is why it's so much harder to teach oneself with only a textbook. We're going to find areas of sections of planes in 3D tomorrow, which is exciting, but I have a McGill college rep visit (which reminds me, I've got to pick up the forms) so I'll unfortunately be missing part of it.

After multi was my free, which I spent in the learning center with Yuma and Clay. Clay attempted to do his utexas assignment (I must have also told you before how much I hate utexas), but he couldn't get the first question right (neither could I, as it turned out). After a half-hour consultation with Mrs. Cumulonimbus (I believe, because he has her for physics now), or some other teacher who has this free, he told me that it was because he forgot to add a negative to his answer.

Ugh. I hate utexas.

I also watched Yuma work on his chem lab. Oh, I miss chem so much. We'd considered switching science classes, whereupon I'd take chem again and he'd take physics again, but then I would need to switch my English class and he'd need to switch his design and tech class. Too complicated. Then I forgot that water and ethanol are miscible, which resulted in an "Oh, duh" moment.

Also, Clay's APUSH (I love the acronym) class is in the same hall as mine, so we walked down the hall together. Upon reaching my class, however, I realized that we were supposed to be in the lab, so I walked back again, where I spotted Argon. I convinced him that he had minutes to spare, so we stood in the hall, talking about random things, I'm sure, because I'm not sure what we talked about.

A Take on Lighter Subjects

In multi, Nyx, Tea, Gretchen and I (counterclockwise circle!) discussed the viability of different types of notebooks. Nyx said that her favorite was the ones bound at the top, because there aren't any annoying spiral wires and it's easy to write with. I suggested that there should be notebooks that are spiral-bound at the top, but hole-punched along the side, so you could tear the pages out and they'd still go into a binder.

To which Gretchen (I think) said, "You mean loose leaf paper?"

Then, in physics, as Boris came up to Bryant to inquire about physics problems, I noticed that he had a notebook bound at the top (unfortunately, it wasn't spiral) and hole-punched along the side. So I pointed it out to Nyx, and we explained to Boris about our discussion in multi.

"I like these notebooks better," Boris replied. "It's better to write on since I'm left-handed."

"Or you could just flip an ordinary notebook over and write on the back side," Nyx said.

"Yes," Boris said, "but I still think the world is handist."

"You would say that," Ali said, joining in on the conversation.

"It's true," Boris said. "The world discriminates against left-handed people. You try being in the minority some time." And then he realized that Ali was a minority (at least here, anyway).

So the conversation devolved into an argument of whether Boris was racist or not.

That was basically the first half of my morning. It went downhill (slightly) from there, with more powerpoints, and extended French. (I was debating with Nyx earlier whether I'd be better off in French 4 honors, or 5A. They go over a lot of the same things, so there's not a lot of material differences.) I played go with Yuma for half an hour (on the 5x5 board—that is how pathetic I am with go), then spent a good part of econ defending Yuma from Julie. Then I spent my free doing math homework and playing Plants vs. Zombies on Yuma's iPod.

Oh, the joys of life.

(I can also mention that I saw what's-his-face multiple times throughout the day, and we talked about things—including French, as it turned out—but that will probably be superfluous and will plunge this blog further into the deep dark clutches of teenage girl frivolousness—if it wasn't already.)

Once Upon an Autumn

Everything wonderful. And everything painful, all at once.

. . .

My youngest cousin (who is three years older than I am) was a huge romance novel reader when she was fourteen (and I was eleven). On Chinese New Year’s, we snuck out of her condo and walked to the closest bookstore, and we spent my money that I had gotten from my relatives (in the red bags) on lots of Korean romance novels (she couldn’t buy them, of course, because my aunt would get mad at her, but no one would get mad at me since they weren’t my parents and technically did not have a right to punish me severely). My favorite was a tragedy, a story about a guy who falls in love with his half-sister and dies of some unknown illness.

At the end of the story (which my cousin read first), the half-sister and her boyfriend and her little sister and brother went to visit his grave, and the heavens poured, and the boyfriend said, “We’re here now, so you shouldn’t be crying.”

And miraculously, the skies cleared.

My cousin said that when she wrote a tragedy, she would end it with a funeral with rain as well, except she would keep the rain falling.

I thought rain was a fair tribute to the dead. A gracious gesture that they were not forgotten, and even the skies mourned for them.

In one of my prior stories, I wrote, “Heaven has always hated me. I am not lying. Every time something good happens, Heaven always takes it away from me. Every time I want to cry, Heaven makes sure only the brightest sunshine falls on my head. I want to make this perfect for you, because you only get one chance at it, you know? No rewind button. No undo key combo. We all have only this one chance, and I want to make it worthy of you. But Heaven hates me, and I can't call forth the rain I want.”

I am now reconsidering. Maybe it is not so bad to have sunshine when I feel like crying. That golden lining on the leaves as we waited outside the church makes me wonder if I had been wrong all along, that sunshine and melancholy are two very interrelated things.

. . .

Sometimes there are no words to describe emotions. Sometimes I find it hard to find the words. So I tell myself I will be short, and I start describing things, and somehow it ends up long and convoluted all the same. As if the words had a mind of their own, and they just spilled out of me (using me as their medium, rather than me using them as a medium).

I don’t know if I am supposed to write a lot or only a little, or none at all, nor do I know exactly what I am writing, but I do know that writing makes things more manageable for me, whether there is an audience or not. Whether what I am writing is logical or not. Whether it even matters.

Whether anything matters, anymore, does not matter.

Remotely, there are the faint hummings of things I should be doing, and places I should be going, and even words I should be writing (or at least I think I should be writing). It is happening a lot lately, although that is a slight stretch of the truth, because it has always happened frequently, only it hasn’t gone away yet. This sudden feeling that I no longer know what I am doing, or why I am doing it, and all that is left is a ghost of reason that only gradually makes its way to my consciousness.

And even when it does, I think I am missing the most important part of it.

. . .

The yellow flowers I thought were nice. They were a little blurred—perhaps because my glasses kept sliding off, perhaps because there was something in my eye, perhaps because I wanted fall to into that trance-like glaze that made things blurry by default.

The sunlight made it seem almost real. Like I was sitting there, plucking at the petals. Talking, perhaps. Joking. Laughing—and I had done my fair share of that—and maybe just smiling. Singing—I am awful at that, decidedly awful, not the least because I stare at notes and think they make less sense than commas. The sun made what was not reality real.

And then I reverted back to literature, to the books we read this summer, to the books I am reading now, and it is all about Reality vs. Real, as if they were two outlaws with guns cocked and tumbleweed twirling past them, each ready to shoot the other and claim its importance in the world of perception.

And then I remember that someone once said, “The two most trite subjects that generate the most crappy writing are love and death,” or something to that effect. It was a response to a newspaper article about a girl who wished someone in her family had died so she could write about it for her college essay.

So literature was out of the picture. There are times when I would rather write than read, when I would rather write tragedies and read comedies, because when I write the ideas are already there, and they hurt less because they are predictable, because I know where the knife is going to plunge and have tensed my muscles in preparation. When I read, I am always hoping for the best, and that does not always happen, and when I fall short it is a stab that, if exaggerated, may be similar to what Caesar felt when Marcus Brutus stabbed him and Caesar said, “Et tu, Brute?” (Or he did not actually say that, and it was another exaggeration of the truth by Shakespeare or whoever else it was, but that is another literature-related story.)

Anyway. I loved the serenade, but I thought the violin was too high-pitched at parts. Nothing is truly perfect. The viola is lower in pitch, but it uses a clef that is oft-ignored. The cello and bass are too low. Piano does not resound enough—it is too mellow. Flute is nice but too crisp. Saxophone has a buzzing sound. Along with trumpet and trombone and tuba, and all the brass instruments. Percussions are of course out of the picture. The organ has its redeeming qualities too, but it is too sombre at times, too formal, and evokes too many memories that should not be evoked.

And I think I am picking fault with these instruments because they are not perfect, because I am trying to find fault with the small things so as not to think about the big things. Or maybe I just really do not like raw instruments. I would not be surprised. I usually listen to heavily remixed and electronically vamped music anyway. Mostly trance. I am a huge trance fan.

Of course, then there were the golden leaves. Golden green. That is a color in a box of 64 Crayola crayons, or Yellow Green anyway. It is different from Green Yellow, so green golden must also be a different color from golden green. I am not sure which color the leaves were. Half golden, half green. Molten gold flanked with pools of emeralds.

And whoever Nick Frost is, he was also a part of the golden-green-green-golden. As were the zombies, of course. Even if autotext does not recognize it as a word.

. . .

Holding hands, we formed a circle. Layers of a circle, anyway. A mass of bulging, quivering black. The lady across from me was crying but trying not to cry. Her sunglasses hid her eyes, but her mouth was pulled tight into a frown. I stared at her, although it was probably impolite. I stared at her because I could not bear to stare at the tips of more flowers, or black-dyed cotton, or the tips of my mom’s shoes.

. . .

The little sandwiches and cupcakes were incredibly cute. Bite-sized. Of course, it depended on how big your bite was, but the cupcakes were definitely bite-sized. The egg sandwiches were okay—one had weird bread, one had weird filling. The turkey somethings were good, as were the turkey cucumber somethings. The cheese and olives and peppers on flatbread was also good. I didn’t like the white-icing-covered one.

All of this reminded me of The Gathering, where Veronica’s older brother died and the family was gathered at their old house, and everyone ate the “funeral meats,” which were anything ranging from fruits to crackers smeared with cheese (or hummus, for the vegetarian of the week) to the inevitable wine and vodka and gin and whatever else can make them drunk, even though they held the pretense of not drinking. But I am not talking literature.

The ledge is nice on the feet. Red feet that have seen much trails of gravel and asphalt. Feet with blisters.

I should have taken another bite-sized cupcake, I think now, as I am sitting in front of a too-white, too-bright screen. I really should have.

. . .

I received an email from one of Mr. Coffee’s students regarding AP chem tutoring, and I searched her name up on Google. Half of what came up was from her collab portfolio sophomore year. The other half was from our school’s theater group (is there a nickname for it?) site, and when I clicked the link and scrolled down I saw his pictures.

There is nowhere to run.

And I have a confession. I have a confession started in those white plastic chairs and solidified by Nyx’s status. And perhaps now is not the best time to make it, but it never will be, I think. With time it will disappear and perhaps will never be mentioned at all.

My confession involves fourteenth floors, balconies too high for sanity, and chocolate and knives. It involves the Grand Canyon, although it could just as easily involve the Golden Gate Bridge. It has been a part of me since (and perhaps before) I read those Korean novels, and it has continued and is a part of why I drift with the winds easier than I root myself to the ground.

It has no words. Words would distort its essence. But I think about it sometimes, and I think that I should have been there, because it is such an ingrained part of me, and I think I should have taken the role, and sometimes I think I would, if I could, and sometimes I think when faced with the reality of it I would panic and run.

Not to mention how much it would hurt them.

. . .

Everything I have not mentioned, of course, is everything that actually matters. But I have no words for those, or else I am not adequate enough to say those words, or else other people have already said them and I would be merely redundant.

Here, then, are the words that may have been missed that I am trying to write, insh'allah.

Quand nous étions en classe d'anglais

Mario insisted on talking about math.

There are, of course, plenty of Mario stories I can tell from today's English class. In fact, being in Mario's English class may prove to be a unique experience altogether, but I digress. These stories start, obviously, with Mario's arrival into the classroom, fashionably late, with a cup of coffee in his hand.

Then, during self-introduction/name-a-book time, he said, "I really like the Redwall books. The mice books. It's about a lot of—rodents—and, uh, then there's the part where you get to read about rodents killing each other."

Or something to that effect. I forgot his exact words. I think everyone was busy laughing at him, anyway.

After the introduction round, Mr. Littney tried to recite everyone's name. He came to Mario and couldn't remember his name. Mario replied, "It's a plain vanilla name," which obviously helped. Then, Mr. Littney confused Mario with Lyle, which I am not sure how that happened, but luckily Lyle had arrived late with a pink note, so Mr. Littney just referred to the note.

During discussion time, we were talking about the Aciman article, and Archie said he felt cheated because the author eventually revealed that not all that he write about (even supposedly non-fiction and memoirs) is real. Mario sprung into a detailed discussion that can, to the best of my ability, be broken down into the following points:

• people fit into templates
• different people think in different ways
• these different ways can be described as a 3D space, where the real is on a line, and the not-so-real is on some plane
• of course, this 3D space is only an analogy, and analogies don't really work all the time

This soliloquy took around 5-10 minutes, and English class promptly ended soon afterwards. I would have gladly reminded him of real/imaginary/complex numbers in a Cartesian plane to further his analogy, but I'm not sure Mr. Littney could have stood any more Mario-talk for at least half an hour (if not more). He even started to half-interrupt near the end of Mario's soliloquy.

At lunch, I saw Argon (and I finally returned his number theory notes), Gretchen, Yuma (well, okay, so we had a free together), Tea, Nyx, and numerous other people (I remember Kathrya, but not who else was there). Yuma and I played a game of go, in which I lost miserably, and then Yuma played Nyx, in which she also lost miserably. And there really isn't any purpose to bringing these people up, I suppose, except to promote equality among the number-count it was a great day, complex multi problem included. Lovely day.

A New Beginning

I think this was the title to one of my blog posts. Not this one, of course, but one of my WordPress blogs, or something similar, back when I was still a careless blogger and my blogs had fewer than four posts in total.

So. First day of school. Semantics, really (as compared to syntax, which requires more careful thought, but I think comparing school to linguistic terms would probably draw plenty of blank eyes). A lot of "this is what we're going to teach you," and a lot more of "this is what we expect from you." I have four syllabi (which is not a word, according to Blogger spellcheck) already, all pretty much useless because I will never, ever refer to them, ever.

And even if I did, I would do so online, not flip through several sheets of paper. But that is another story.

My French class went well (as well as it can go when I was only there for the last 15 minutes), and so did physics, which is right next door to my French classroom. I saw Dino as I went in, and he said, "Ginny," to which I responded, "Bonjour," because I was still in a French mindset (plus I was kind of shocked he was talking to me—he usually doesn't do that unless necessary). Nyx is across the hall from me (during French, that is), and so we both have very short distances to travel when going to physics, but alas that won't happen anymore because periods 1 and 7 have switched. Pity. (At least we can still walk together from multi on Thursdays.)

All of my other classes were also pretty good as well. Lots of people I know for most of my classes (I don't know about biology or middle east yet), and Yuma is in my free for the entire year! So I guess even with the not-so-good arena time, all of my classes are splendid, and I am so excited about the rest of the year. Especially because I don't have lab lunches anymore. I love regular lunches.

On the other spectrum (the one oft talked about and most dreaded), I talked with Mrs. MacDonald today, and we'll have to be talking soon about teacher recs. That means I have to hunt down Mrs. Tallchief as well, unless I want to ask someone else (I'm still not sure yet). Fun. Not really.

Well, at least I finished most of my homework (I still have to read and annotate the Aciman article for English—or at least I think it's that article, I didn't really hear Mr. Littney that clearly), and all my binders are (so far) organized, which is a good start.

I'll hope for the best.

Hey, you! Yes, you.

A while ago (back in April) I wrote a post promoting equality amongst my equivalent of Gretchie's "imaginary friends." I had twenty people, because that was the most number of labels I could include, and since it's pointless if I mention someone but doesn't include their label, I just chose twenty people.

Today's lucky people are:

• Amanda
• Camel
• Dora
• Gretchen
• Irving
• Joss
• Mario
• Matt
• Melissa
• Micro
• Mogley
• Nyx
• Owen
• Reese
• Sonny
• Stella
• Tamir
• Tybalt
• Vincent
• Yuma

(*Zephy: Sorry! I was also going to include you, but you were the 21st, and therefore did not fit. I will dedicate a new post entirely to you later.)

But before all of this, I would like to say that I have started reading the DMV booklet for my permit test, and it's so far going well. I don't know what kind of test they have though, so we'll have to see. And besides, I suck at memorization.

Also... why, why do they use clock hands for steering wheel positions, instead of diagrams? I like my digital clock just as much as the next person, and the only time I use analog clocks are when I'm trying to figure out how much time I have left in a class, and it's become second-nature to me that I don't even know the hours, just the minutes.

Anyway. Let's commence!

Amanda-Amanda's sent out a FB message to me (along with various other people) asking me if I wanted to join her on a NYC trip sometime in the summer. I do, but I have to okay it first with my parents, so I'm holding on responding just for now.

Camel-I don't think I'll ever have another class with Camel. He's being boring and taking Physics B and Calc AB, and somehow I don't think he's going to take AP Lit or any of my other classes. Doesn't sound like him. We don't really talk outside of communicating with Nyx, so I guess we won't really talk ever again.

Dora-Right! Movies, possibly. I still have to get back to her on that as well. So many things happening this summer! I'm glad that summer's finally here. There's definitely less stress right now, which is good, but I think I'm going to be looking forward for school to start, surprisingly.

Gretchen-Can you believe she's behind Irving, of all people, in my tag-list? I can't. Well, I suppose it's because of all the math team things where I mention Irving because he's usually doing something outrageous (but usually less so to some extent) with Mario. Anyway, Gretchen and I need to land in Japan soon. I'm getting a little air-sick right now.

Irving-Mentioned above, and that I probably won't ever see him again, unless I get into Hahvahd (unlikely) or get into MIT (also unlikely) and he happens to bike by because I can't bike by him since I don't know how to bike.

Joss-He still has spiky hair, even though he cut it shorter earlier. I don't know what else to say of him. Not very exciting right now.

Mario-Oh, Mario. What to say of him? I think he's going to have superiority issues next year in math team. To think that he said of Irving's behavior during Moody's, "I think he had trouble realizing who was the real boss. Next year there won't be a question as to who's in charge." No doubt. It's not him.

Matt-Super skinniness aside, he's leaving as well! I somehow cannot process that, even though I could process Irving and Owen and Melissa leaving. I guess it's because he wasn't away on the senior internships, so I haven't really felt him leave. I'm really going to miss him, even if he doesn't talk much.

Melissa-Ambivalent on her leaving. I think things are going to be a lot quieter without her, which is both good and bad. We won't have her cookies anymore as well, so that could be bad.

Micro-I'm trying to communicate to him in sign language, but neither he nor Sonny understands it, so Yuma and I are having a particularly difficult time.

Mogley-Didn't know he was taking Econ next year. Maybe we'll be in the same class again. He had English scheduling problems earlier, and I told him, "Just get AP English," to which he said, "No way, me?" Our English teacher agreed with his sentiment, and not just because of his horrible grammar (I still can't forgive him for writing lists without commas).

Nyx-Has a super early arena time but has no need for it because of her singletons. I'm slightly envious, but then I remember that no matter who I have they're either not bad or they're unavoidable, so I don't care that much either. And I'll probably have physics with Tea (unless it runs out) so it doesn't concern me very, very much.

Owen-Writing about Owen here reminds me of his alpaca. Also my "choose your own adventure" story. Otherwise he doesn't remind me of anything except that I don't know who's going to keep Dino well-oiled in the next year. We might see an increase in system crashes then.

Reese-I'm talking to Reese on Gchat a lot now. He's using Digsby, which is apparently similar to the device that Tea uses except for PCs. I shall have to try that out soon.

Sonny-He's hilarious, even if he doesn't mean it. He also can't understand sign language or exaggerated waving. Also, I found out how freaky he looked while sunbathing with Scott and the like. A row of guys lying down on the ground in the courtyard just looks weird.

Stella-I don't talk to her nearly as much now. I should. In fact, I will talk to her today as soon as I get this Digsby thing working.

Tamir-Why did I even first mention him? Why do I keep on mentioning him? I don't know. Whatever.

Tybalt-From what I've heard from Kathrya lately, he's exceedingly sweet. This disproves my best friend from back before's theory that all guys are jerks. But then again, I knew that a long time ago. Besides, it doesn't disprove the theory that some guys (ambiguity on how many) are jerks.

Vincent-I need to go over to his house more often if it means more Clue time. I'm addicted to the game. It's unhealthy, I think, both physically and emotionally.

Yuma-I never knew he was so good at go, but then again, Yuma is amazing at a lot of things. We definitely need him on our Moody's team next year. Also, Mrs. MacDonald said that she was looking forward to seeing me (and presumably everyone on our team) next year for Moody's. I think that basically guarantees that, if we don't do something stupid and smoke pot in front of the principal or something like that, we're going to be on a team (if not on a team together) next year.

Whew. Now let's see if anything on my "Noteworthy" list looks better now.

Light Up My World

Here's for cryptic puzzles:

I recently, with the help of several staunch members of the Confederate, realized that to follow in the footsteps of a blue-coat Yankee who has but all the reasonings of a chicken would not only be extremely foolish, but no longer my intent as well, and therefore I return to Fairhill under the lures of the harp.

Lest you think it is some complicated play on words that has a really fascinating answer, I'll reassure you that: a) it just uses rather obscure references, and b) the answer is related to me, and can be summarized in perhaps one sentence, but expandable at will.

Anyway, today I am beginning to think that I am attracted to morbid things. How else should I explain my tendency for spotting dead (albeit cute had they been alive) critters on the ground? This morning I found a dead, squashed baby bird as I was walking to my bus stop. Then, in the afternoon, as I was coming home from picking up the mail, I saw a dead mouse.

Today, Nyx and I also made esters (they're fats with a COOC component) out of organic acids and alcohols. Esters are supposed to (for the most part) smell good, because they're the stuff that gives fruits and flowers their nice smell, but the stuff they're made out of are supposed to (for the most part) smell awful. Like rotten cheese and smelly socks all blended into one and left on the counter-top under the sun for a week awful.

We succeeded in making esters that smelled like gasoline-laced Jolly Ranchers, nail polish removers, and wintergreen. We also made one that had a white precipitate and stuck to the bottom of the test tube, and we had to use concentrated sulfuric acid to get it out, and because we had water in the tube already, the solution bubbled and spluttered out of the tube.

All in all, not too bad. At least we made one thing that smelled nice (the wintergreen).

Also, another not-so cryptic puzzle:

I'm such a coward, because I'm running away from my problems right now. But I don't know any other way to deal with it, even if this will hurt more than it will heal. Ugh. I thought it was complicated enough already. Why does it have to be even worse than it was before?

I can't wait for summer to start. Now. Wait, no. I can't wait for master schedules to come out, now, and then for arena to be here, and for all of my classes to be perfect (or as perfect as they can be) and everyone else's classes to be perfect (kind of impossible, I know), and then summer to start.

These last few days will be dreadful. Oh, and, when will US portfolios start? I'm beginning to think it's going to be a last-minute cram, and if it is so, then I'll most likely be too busy for my liking.

Shortness Is Sometimes A Virtue

It is extremely late today. I have a lot of work. I should be doing said work, but I really, really don't feel like it (and it's really long, and really tedious), so instead I will update about my life. Because it is oh-so-interesting, and if I don't, I'll forget all about it and then think that I have nothing to blog about for quite some time.

Not likely, because tomorrow is—gasp!—the states math meet! There will be so much to talk about, and I can't wait to see what the bus trip will be like. Last year, I was with Tybalt and Bryant and Melissa and Jun most of the time, and it was fun (I played connect-five and Monkey with Jun on the way there, or was that New England's?), but I have a feeling it's going to be even better this year.

So yes, I shall blog about that tomorrow or Wednesday, whenever I get around to it. Meanwhile, today.

Second last gym class today, and I can't believe it! We had a new Tae Bo video today, and it was hard (I've noticed that even Billy Blanks doesn't do all of the movements), but it was also fun. Tomorrow, if the guy our gym teacher's been trying to invite comes, we'll probably be going out to the courtyard to do this mix of martial arts and workout. If not, we'll still be outside, and what better way to celebrate our last day of "physical" gym but to go outside in the nice weather?

I still can't believe it's going to end after tomorrow. Wow. Time really flies, even if you're not having fun.

I'm also making a flowchart adventure map, and once I finish it, I'll find a way to scan it (and my notes for my EOQR for US) and I'll put it up here. It's heavily influenced by xkcd. Just to give you a hint of several of the fates that have befallen my friends as they attempted the adventure:

• Nyx ended up in the ever-looping Rainbow-Land
• Camel chose a path that did not exist (yet), then after re-routing, got eaten by a raptor
• Zephy was hailed king (or queen?) by a group of robots

Very, very exciting. So I'll have that done (probably on the bus tomorrow, along with discussing AIME questions with Argon, who took one for practice and thus knows my pain in question #9, the hexagon one) and I'll get it up as soon as possible. I promise.

And yes, Easter Island trip is still coming up (I've been saying this for quite some while now). I will have that done by the end of my finals (calc next Monday and Tuesday, then stat Wednesday and Thursday). As for today, it's late, and I'm tired, and I have to wake up early tomorrow, so I'll go to sleep now.

(Was this one shorter than usual? I started it out thinking it will be, but it's turned out rather substantial again. Darn.)

Because We Believe In Equality

This was started yesterday. Anything that mentions "this morning" or "today" means April 1st.

First of all, this post is entirely dedicated to evening out the huge discrepancy in the assignment of labels (or "libellés," as my Blogger page now displays, because I just recently converted it into French as part of an ongoing project to have everything I use be explained in French). Therefore, this page is dedicated to talking about those people who I have mentioned more than once or twice (since those that I only mention once or so I probably won't really talk about anyway, although I might) but have definitely mentioned less than ten times (effectively weeding out those two whom I shall not mention).

So, after scanning my alphabetized label list, these are the people I will blog about today (if this is necessary again, there will be a repeat of this post to some extent) in alphabetical order:

• Camel
• Dora
• Gretchen
• Irving
• Joss
• Mario
• Melissa
• Mogley
• Mrs. James
• Mrs. MacDonald
• Nyx
• Owen
• Reese
• Stella
• Tamir
• Tea
• Tybalt
• Vincent
• Zephy

That's it, really. Any more, and Blogger won't let me label them due to the "maximum 20 labels at a time" rule. Anyway. The tidbits about these people that happened since the last time I talked about them, or whenever, really.

Camel: I think he has a jacket complex as well (first thing that popped into my mind, since nothing really interesting happened in chem today—except Mr. Coffee's friend jumping from the roof into a pool thirty feet below or crawling into a crypt and scaring people for fun). In fact, now that I think of it, a lot of the guys I know seem to have a favorite jacket that they will wear all day week long. Camel has this dark blue jacket, which is not particularly ugly (although I may not be the best judge for fashion), but after seeing it for several months in a row (maybe with the occasional AC/DC shirt in between), I may have permanently associated him with his jacket.

(He is also on my bus, and I have seen him wearing that jacket ever since before I even really knew him, so this may be another reason why.)

(Dino, whom I shall not tag because there is no space anymore, and Jack, not tagged for similar reasons, both also have a jacket they almost always wears. Argon has his sleeping-bag-like thing he carries around with him, although with the warmer weather he has now acquired a new, navy colored jacket which is a tad bit too big for him, but he'll probably grow into it. This morning, at gym, we were standing together and he commented on how he might finally be taller than me, as he always had a notion that he was shorter. We later decided it may have been because of the shoes—his heels were significantly taller, as I had been wearing really, really flat shoes.)

(And I thought this was supposed to be about Camel? Anyway. Next.)

Dora: This is also rather unrelated to Dora, but she was sitting at the table and so this story will be filed under her name. This morning, before class started, Dora and Tierra were already seated at a table in the library. I joined them, and Gretchen (who is below, I know, but there will be another story for her) and Kathrya and Tybalt (wow, this story has a lot of people in it) came as well. Kathrya commented on how her friends were more mature, because "they didn't start singing wedding songs."

Later on, Dino walked in to the library (why does everything have to always include him?), and someone said, "He walks strangely." This was met with a chorus of agreements, and Kathrya's remark, "Now where is Ginny?" before realizing that I was standing right next to her.

(I need to stop making Dino appear in this. The whole point of this was so he wouldn't be mentioned as often compared to the others.)

(I also saw Dora in English today, but we watched a movie—"Death of a Salesman"—so we didn't get to talk to each other.)

Gretchen: I don't know why Gretchen's never broken ten labels. This will probably change with the Chile trips (I'm still working on Easter Island—I really am!), but in the meantime, I will insert a link here to her blog. I'm not certain that my blog sees more traffic than hers, but in the minute event it does, we can pool them just like pooling standard deviations in a difference of means test. Except in this case, Gretch's sample size may be larger than mine, so pooled variances may not be the best bet.

Irving: I must say, I haven't seen Irving around today. Strange. Usually, I see him sauntering down the hallway (well, he doesn't really do that, but he does walk differently in a way), going to a class that's in the opposite direction of mine. Perhaps our constant existence on the third floor is a reason why I see him so much. So instead of a personal recount, I will broadcast the (probably by now commonly known) news that he got into Harvard. Wow. Well, I mean, he deserves it and everything, but that's still very, very amazing.

(Yeah. That's about it. No wonder he isn't tagged so much.)

Joss: Let's see. Joss believes that the secret to teleporting is to throw a smoke bomb and then run really, really fast. He also still needs to pay Reese (or do something else, but I'm not sure what) so Reese can teach me grammar, so I can teach him how to draw clothes. Although, if you ask me, I doubt my pictures of clothes are correct all of the time. I just add folds randomly (or in obvious places). I also don't know how well this whole exchange thing will go. Too many unknown variables, I suppose.

Mario: I don't see Mario that much lately, or maybe I still do but I no longer respond to his appearance. Well, anyway, I saw him during lunch today, along with Tea and Bryant and Boris. He seemed rather preoccupied with his SAT vocab book. Which reminds me, I should probably also study my vocab, if I wish to avoid the same fate as Bryant's. Or just cram Latin roots. Those always help.

Melissa: I didn't see Melissa today—away at a college thing or something, I believe. I still need to get a cupcake recipe from her as well. This may also be the shortest one yet, because I have not talked to Melissa in such a long time. She doesn't really go to math team anymore. Maybe that's why.

Mogley: He is weird. One of the weird guys I know (and by far not the weirdest) but definitely weird. He was attempting yet another 6x6 sudoku in English today. I asked him if he ever tried the 9x9 one (because honestly, 6x6 isn't really sudoku; it's like diluted HCl—isn't quite the same as the original), and he said that he had tried one today, but messed up. Compared to Mogley, Matt is a sudoku whiz. (The extraordinary amount of time Matt devotes to sudoku every day may be the reason though. If this keeps up, I'll begin to fail stat.)

(Also, as compensation for his horrible sudoku skills, Mogley said that he was getting better at the Jumble questions. I guess you can't have everything.)

Mrs. James: I walked into calc today just as Mrs. James said, "I really want a Snapple!" I have no idea how this whole Snapple thing started (which also reminds me of the xkcd strip on the tin apple—I'm reading too much xkcd, it's definitely not good for me).

Jay then said, "I have a Snapple in my bag."

"Really?" Mrs. James asked, all excited.

"Nope, April Fools!"

(This went on for several minutes, in which many people in the class took turns saying they had a Snapple in their bag—Scott said he had over 100 of them at home—and then saying, "April Fools!" Mrs. James retaliated by telling Jay, "Oh, I'm going to give you an A+ for the quarter—wait, April Fools!")

Mrs. MacDonald: Is conducting an experiment on the number of texts people send and receive in an average class period. It's due to begin next week, and will last an entire week. Statistically speaking (although I knew before I ever took stat), if texting in class is so prevalent, I (and Matt) will definitely be outliers. My phone doesn't allow text messages. Matt's too preoccupied by his crosswords and sudokus and Jumbles and word finds to care about texting (he also has an iPhone, which may deter texting as he can't physically touch the keys on his phone to know which letters he's typing if he placed the phone in his pocket or something).

Nyx: Said that her phone's autotexting dictionary does not have the word "zombie." This prompted Camel to say, "What if there was a zombie invasion, and only you knew about it? You have to text people, but then you'd have to type 'zombie' out, and by that time the zombie might have already attacked you!" Also, her phone doesn't have "haha" as a word either. (Tybalt should be glad he doesn't have this phone. He would be seriously crippled in his texting abilities.)

(This also reminds me, Scott is now called "Texty-Pants" in our calc class, because he tried to text under the table, and, when caught by Mrs. James, attempted to deny it.)

Owen: Will be receiving his alpaca soon. Alpacas, according to my research yesterday, likes being in groups of two or more, and around six to eight alpacas can live on one acre of land. I hope Owen's backyard is large enough, because he needs to keep at least two alpacas to ensure that his alpaca doesn't die of loneliness, and so he needs at least 1/4 of an acre of land set aside for this special, special friend (and its girlfriend, but the girlfriend would be much more expensive).

Reese: I have yet to see his shiny new laptop. Among other things, but this is the first that pops up. (Camel supposedly made Reese's old laptop crash via remote accessing, so that's why Reese needed a new one.) I've been promised that this new one is every bit as shiny as the last, except perhaps not red anymore and not the one that underwent SSSC's brutal conditions.

Stella: Is probably on another bout of "I-hate-school-ism." I haven't asked yet, but the past few times I've talked with her, she has complained about the, to quote her words, "the stupid people." She is really the opposite of many people I know. I mean, most people, regardless of what they say, at least care a little about their grades and their futures. Stella just doesn't care anymore.

We talked about our futures for some brief moment before, mostly with me asking her what she would do after high school. She didn't want to talk about it, and I agree with that sentiment. I don't know what I want to with my life after high school. I mean, I obviously want to go to a good college, but why? And which one? Whatever college I go to—that's my future path there. If I go to McGill (which is probably very likely at this point), that means I'll most likely be focusing on pre-med. If I go to UBC or, although very unlikely, Penn, I would be going down the path of economics. If I go to Waterloo (yeah right, I'll be crushed by all the crazy Canadian math geeks, since that's the school for math and science oriented people in Canada) or Cornell (again, unlikely, especially with their financial aid situation), it's probably engineering. And then there are the schools we consider mostly for their prestige—Harvard, Yale, and the rest of the Ivies along with a few other schools. Are they really that much better? We (not including me, because the probability of me getting in those places is very, very, extremely, very slim—statistically speaking), as some of the brightest among our peers, do everything we can in order to get into one of these schools, conforming to their ideals of what is a "perfect" student, just so we can bear the honor of having gone to such a school and gain the privilege of acquiring a good-paying job and the respect of others.

(God, maybe I should just go get a job to paint the Golden Gate Bridge like I've always said I should.)

(Well, there are also the good points, like learning new things with teachers who really know what they're talking about—granted I understand them.)

Tamir: I don't know why I have mentioned him so often. Really. We barely talk. Let's see. I saw Tamir in physics today, and he complained about the magnetism unit. Or maybe that was Alec. Then I saw him in English, but he didn't talk because we were watching a movie.

Yeah, boring. Next.

Tea: I also can't believe I have not talked about Tea very often in my blog. I think it's mostly because everything I know about Tea, she pretty much blog about it anyway. Well, I will insert a link here to promote her blog instead, although I'll bet she doesn't need any promotion from me because her faithful followers are much more numerous than mine. Just in case I have a lurker though.

(Also, as a note to Tea: your "about" page doesn't link to an actual about page. Mine doesn't either—all I've managed to set up was the "contact" part. I think I half started an "about me" page and then forgot about it.)

Tybalt: Just a general question out there (to those who know about it)—does Tybalt know of my, uh, hopefully-will-be-affiliation with Dino? (Once again, Dino is EVERYWHERE. I think I'm getting obsessed.) Otherwise, I have not seen him since this morning with Kathrya, and since Kathrya's story has already been told in Dora's place, I won't repeat it again.

(In his place, I will talk about Bryant, who was barely eliminated because he has exactly ten labels. Today, as I handed in my chem test corrections, I saw Bryant's "test corrections," namely his name, the title, and nothing else on it. Later on, he said that receiving a 3/3 on those test corrections actually brought his grade down. Ugh. He kind of makes me jealous sometimes.)

Vincent: I think I've pretty much covered everything about him before. I don't remember if I've seen him today. Maybe I have.

UPDATE: (from Facebook, my constant source of information) Apparently Vincent's family is moving out of state? He's currently asking if he can board at someone's house for nine months. I seriously doubt this will happen (although you never know), but I do hope he can stay. Who else will I be able to discuss plans for travelling to alternate universes via thousands of giant lasers with?

(There is always Dino—ugh, him again!—but I think he would probably even prefer owning his own alpaca over talking about lasers.)

Zephy: We went Easter egg-hunting today! Zephy's a natural at these things, as she found four or five eggs in the library alone, in under ten minutes. I have no idea why there were eggs everywhere (someone in my calc class said she knew who put them there, but wouldn't tell us). Also, this reminds me, I still need to give her back her chocolate egg, because I was carrying it in my plastic egg container since she had too much candy to fit inside hers. I was supposed to give it back, but I completely forgot about it until after we said goodbye when we got off the bus. Huh. I suppose chocolate won't go stale anytime soon.

(Hmm...)

Actually, considering how long this thing is, I probably will not ever do this again. At least not with so many people. I'll just talk about Dino and Argon less. Maybe.

It Takes Two To Love

Today, for English, we had to bring in an image of what we thought represented success. I (partly inspired by Tea), chose a scene from xkcd, and said that it represented how success meant something different for everyone, regardless of what the "norm" dictated.


Of course, I said it in a way more choppier way, probably because when I usually write things, I jump from one thing to another, so I do not have a clear, cohesive string of consciousness. I wonder what it would be like if I could put my thoughts into a pensieve? I don't know if anyone would be able to successfully navigate my memories.


Anyway, onto more choppy thoughts, I had gym during the lunch period today. Since everyone gets out early for gym (except those stuck in health or swimming or Argon, who changes really fast when he's going to gym but really slow when he's coming out), Nyx and Dora and Tierra were still in the cafeteria by the time I got there.


The three of them giggled when I arrived. When prodded why, Dora said, "Oh, we were just talking about you."
"About what?"


"Prom," Nyx said. "And who you're going to go with."


"It'll be really sweet if you go with Vincent."


I was about to say something along the lines of, no, I'm not so sure about that idea, when Vincent came by and said hi.


"Oooh," Tierra—or someone else, I couldn't quite tell—said. "Vincent, ask Ginny to go with you to prom!"


That was rather, uh, straightforward and to the point. Vincent looked really confused. I didn't blame him.


"Come on, ask her!"


After much persuasion, Vincent finally conceded. "Okay. Will you go to prom with me?"


There was a small cheer at the table, punctuated with Vincent's remark, "So, what is this prom thing?"


That could be quite an issue. The topic slowly dissolved as Vincent had to go and the discussion diverged towards who Dora should go with—with a random remark of "Ginny shouldn't go with Dino" inserted somewhere and Tierra's question of "I don't know this Dino guy. I just know that everyone doesn't like him (this statement is obviously not true)." After the three of them left, Tea came, and we went on discussing this prom "problem" while lamenting (this is one of my favorite words of the week, it seems) that no one will actually ask us out. (Vincent doesn't count. He was confuzzled into agreeing, and I still don't know if he comprehends the extent of what prom means, although I do know that he would hate it.)


So here, as a cheer-us-upper (since the laws of the Internet and Nephria decree that anything is possible), I will confidently proclaim that there will be tons of guys who will ask both of us (and everyone else who belongs to our possibly date-less group) to prom, and they will have to wait in line and hand us résumés and have us closely inspect their possible behavior before we decide who we want to go with. Or, to make life easier, the guys that we want to ask us will do so, and we'll skip the whole "application" part of the process and choose directly.


Anything's possible.


(Except "forcing Dino into the corner on the third floor where there are no tables and making him ask me to prom with various suspicious methods" is not an option, ever. Even in Nephria.)


However, since I accidentally spilled my bag at the end of lunch, I was late to calc. Mrs. James was about to ask me a question (that I most likely would not have known the answer to because I haven't reviewed any of the material yet in lieu of math packets and general procrastination), but Jay saved me by blurting out the answer per usual. As I approached my seat, Dino said, "I don't trust Ginny," and waved to me. Calc itself went by pretty fast, with relatively few "butt-jokes" compared to yesterday. This unit is going pretty well so far, I must say. I'm surprised. (Of course, all of these formulas could pose a huge problem, as I can't remember formulas. It's sad.)


After class, I asked Dino if he was going to take AIME tomorrow. He said no, and Sonny mistook it for ARML.


"Wait," he said. "So you were the only one representing our school and you didn't make it?"


"No," Dino said. "It's something else. And no, I'm not taking it. Don't worry about it."


The last remark comes from me asking if he had gotten his test rescored. I have no idea why he thinks I'm "worrying" about it, but it has been previously proven that he is strange, and therefore I am allowed to be puzzled.


By this time, we had reached my stat classroom, so we said goodbye and he strutted on in his strange hands-holding-the-backpack-straps pose towards what I predicted (correctly) was gym. After stat (because stat was kind of boring and we just got our tests back and fiddled with the calculator), I stood outside the math team classroom as I always do, because it's across the hall from my stat classroom and I usually just wait for the people in the classroom to leave and then go in.


This time, Dino was already there by the time everyone inside had left. He went in first, and took a seat and sat down and did nothing. Really. Nothing at all. After I put my bag down, went outside, waved to Gretchie, and turned back, I saw him barely out the door, looking at us (or Irving down the hall, but I'd like to say that it was us) before scooting back into the classroom.


But that's enough musing for the day. I have to do all the other stuff I have to do (like practice mock questions for AIME and generally doing homework, perhaps), so go over to Gretchie's post for our next several days in Chile! (I am still working on shipping a llama back home. It will happen. One day.)

More Adventures (in Chile) + Panic IRL

This was long overdue but necessary in the grand scheme of life this trip. Therefore, it is here, and I will be off to do my homework ("Gasp!") because I just checked the schedule and the CALC FINAL (-cue screaming sound effects-) is in two weeks. (±Math run-offs, AIME's, and an assortment of other things.) Therefore, I probably won't be getting any homework done, and so I might as well post this now so I don't get too distracted.


ALSO YOU GUYS: Ignore tenses in this thing. I don't know what land I'm in, but this land's Laws decree that normal tense situations do not apply here. That, or I'm writing about past/present/future at the same time, so I'm really, really confused.


Today is the first day of our (Gretchie has joined my trip) adventures! After an entire day of packing, we have decided that we have EVERYTHING we could possibly need that we can think of right now. So, relying upon our trusty RANDOM.ORG random coordinates generator, we have decided to travel to the most coveted—

Chile!

But first things first. We need a picture of Gretchie since she's coming along as well.

After quite some time of fiddling with paint the camera once again, here is a picture of Gretch (to the right). (A/N: This picture did not exist prior to this post; however, due to unfortunate media leakage, this picture is now old news and therefore lacks the "wow" factor it was supposed to bring.)

Great, now we can begin!

So, since we're in the middle of nowhere not anywhere near Chile, I ordered tickets from TravelWithUsJerk.com (see bottom of page). They came in the mail yesterday, while we were still packing, and boy, were we excited! I literally jumped up and down until I got tired and had to stop.


Gretchie added a water filter, cards, a Spanish-English dictionary, a Swiss army knife, eating utensils, and walkie-talkies to her bag. I've also last-minutely added a small, hand-held mirror, just in case we're plane-wrecked in the middle of the ocean and we need to flash Morse code signals at planes to make them notice us.


Anyway, at 9:30AM, we decided that we had everything. With a few final checks (making sure we locked the doors and windows and said a teary farewell to our friends for the hour day week possibly eternity), we were ready to depart!

The closest international airport is JFK, and it's a very, very far distance away (anything that can't be tackled reasonably by foot is a very far distance for me), so naturally we rode a taxi! I love yellow taxis—they make me feel happy on the inside, especially if it's raining outside and the water puddles make the road all reflection-y when the yellow taxis drive by.


The ride to the airport was pretty fun, and when we got to the airport, we still had plenty of time left (the plane was scheduled to leave at 2PM—haha, 2PM—and we arrived at 11AM). So we did what normal people do when they're about to embark on a round-the-world voyage.


We jumped up and down (figuratively for Gretchie and literally for me) and ooh'd and ahh'd over everything we saw. Well, of course, we had to get our boarding pass first, go through numerous layers of customs (tricky—I never did like customs), and find our waiting room. Once we got there, however, the realization that the trip was finally happening made both of us giddy. I pulled out my laptop and we went over the itinerary for the next few days, which I will outline below in order to pacify you because the actual trip writing may take a long time to solidify give you an idea of what is to come:

• Day 1: Arrive at Santiago (the capital of Chile and where the major International airport is located), look around, check into a hotel, scream, "WE'RE IN CHILE!!!" (Preferably in Spanish, although that is a feat only Gretchie can accomplish right now.)
• Day 2: Continue tour of Santiago (I've heard that they have amazing food there), in the afternoon take a plane to Atacama Desert and stay the night there.
• Day 3-6: Explore Atacama. Highlights: museums, geysers, beautiful views, adobe hotels! On the last day, take a plane to Easter Island.
• Day 7-11: Explore Easter Island. (More) highlights: Moai (those stone faces Easter Island is famous for), volcanic craters, scuba diving/snorkeling. On the last day/afternoon, take a plane back to Santiago.
• Day 12: Rest a bit, check any really good tourist attractions (or restaurants), then depart for our next destination (undecided as of yet).

So, there you have it! Almost two weeks of fun in Chile, or at least we hope it will be. Alas, time flies when you're rechecking over itineraries (or maybe just when you're having fun in general), and by the time we finished going over the details and planning what we will do after we get off the plane, it was about time to board our plane.


Here's a picture of the plane we're going to board:


Isn't it pretty?


This is a plane owned by Lan Chile Airlines, the major airline company in Chile. It's also the only plane that travels to Easter Island, which is where we're going to go later. (How this hasn't directly attributed to grossly unreasonable fares, I have no idea, but I assume I'll know next year with a year of econ under my figurative belt.)

I found some random picture online took a picture of the landscape as we were about to depart. Can you believe it? We're going to leave the country soon, and then our continent!


South America, here we come!


Of course, for the entire flight, Gretchie and I watched this strange documentary about glaciers in Greenland. I don't really remember much of it, because I was more focused on the beautiful background music they played while showing the films of the glaciers.


It takes around nine hours to go by plane from NYC to Chile, and so by the time we arrived, it was a staggeringly late 11PM by our watches. However, by the Chilean time zone (UTC-04), it was already midnight. Gretchie and I were both pretty tired by now, so our first priority was to find a hotel and rest for the night.


(I think we'll have to push back our schedule for a day, because rest is very, very important and visiting Santiago is also very, very important, and we have plenty of time to spare anyway.)


Gretchie took some pictures of the night-time Santiago as we rode in our taxi and headed toward our hotel. Here's one that we both really liked:

After much sight-seeing through the streets of Santiago, we arrived at our hotel which is not named because I have been too lazy to actually find one, duh. Tired as we were, we did not forget to take a picture of our room. So, here it is, and we'll update infinitely later tomorrow on how our first actual day in Santiago goes!

OOH (see earlier posts): 


We (both of Mr. Coffee's AP chem classes) got back our acid/base equilibrium test today—or, at least, the multiple choice part. The "bell curve" for test score distributions were one 95+ (Bryant, most likely, as this spot is usually reserved for him), a small cluster of 90+, a huge cluster of 80+ (including 85+), pitifully few in the 70+ (including 75+), and another huge cluster at or below 65+.


On the bright side, this unit is so dubbed, "If you can survive this, you can do anything." So, seeing as I survived the test (with lots of freebie points from Mr. Coffee because he messed up on several questions to help), I must be able to do anything!


(Well, anything except my research paper, it seems, because I almost failed that, and the only reason I didn't fail was because I had clear sentences and good language usage, so the next two weeks will be frantic as I basically rewrite my entire paper.)


I am also awaiting my free response for this unit, which I have my doubts in because I didn't (unlike Bryant and Nyx and basically everyone else who was sane) do any of the AP problems on College Board. Well. On the even brighter side, the next unit is relatively easier (although it also seems that easier units are the ones I perform worse on in tests), so everything should be fine until I start panicking about the calc finals.


Which, if the introduction paragraph haven't warned you yet, CALC FINALS! MAY 5TH IS APPROACHING! APRIL 12TH IS APPROACHING! Ahem. Right.


Our class has yet to panic, it appears, because we spent today discussing what the "ç" was called ("A cedilla." "Oh, Ginny, can you teach me French?") and whether the cardioid looked like a "butt." Dino also spent considerable time persuading Mrs. James to hit the "print" button on the Smartboard so he could go grab a copy of the calc notes he forgot to print out ("We were supposed to bring 10.6? No one told me that!") while Jay used "going to the bathroom" as an excuse to print out a copy of the notes himself but forgot to print out an extra set for Dino.


Not that I did anything in any of my other classes. We had a sub for physics, and Camel, lamenting that the $10 he spent on buying Monty Python was wasted because he couldn't open the file, used his laptop to go on Youtube to watch more Monty Python. I took this time to use an extremely long yard-stick (meter-stick, actually, and they can't be extremely long because they're supposed to be one meter long, but that's not the point) to draw scatterplots for stat. Nevertheless, it wasn't necessary, it seemed, because Mrs. MacDonald wasn't here either, and we had another sub (who suspiciously looked like the sub we had for physics, but I'm bad at recognizing people so I'm not sure). Matt and I worked on another sudoku puzzle, and then later on we (mostly me) worked on some math packets. I can say now with 70% confidence that I can tackle most of the round 1 questions, half of the round 2 questions, and maybe half of the round 3 questions.


Oh, I'm doomed.


But wait, there's more! If you call NOW AIME is coming up, Wednesday. I still have to ask Tybalt what room I'm supposed to be in, and I still have to go over at least some of the problems to see what they're like and what my probability of failing is (very high, although I shall try a Nate Silver-esque approach and conduct some research based on past problem performance).


So. Anyway. Homework.


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