SUMMER IS HERE

If you didn't catch on to my enthusiasm in my intense usage of caps, let me reiterate that.

SUMMER IS FINALLY HERE! NO MORE JUNIOR YEAR! WE ARE SENIORS!

Today was amazingly awesome even though it was the day I had the most finals for (two, as opposed to, uh, one, or, uh, none). I was freaked out yesterday for physics, because I remembered from the midterms that I barely knew centripetal forces and I definitely bombed the waves/optics/weird-stuff test. Luckily, I did pretty well on modern physics, so it can still save me. Somewhat. But the finals were awesome. They were almost ridiculously easy (don't know for sure, because I don't know what I got, although Möhre asked me if I wanted to go check with him), and way better than the midterms for sure. Health was so-so, but it's health, and it's the last class of—OMG LAST GYM CLASS. Ahem. Yeah. So I didn't really care, and I got an A for the final, so despite my non-participation, I'm hoping for maybe an B+/A-, which will placate my parents as well.

But then, then, school was OVER (see my interspersed caps in testament of my excitement). I walked with Zephy and Vincent and Jennifer home (or sort of home, since we dropped by Vincent's house to play Clue first), and then my mom told me to clean up my room for the guests tomorrow. So I spent two hours cleaning, which was not fun, but the good thing was that I had NO HOMEWORK, so cleaning was okay.

Then I went over to Julie's house for her birthday party, and we had lots of fun, but this requires a very long time to explain, and I am now sort of short on time because I have more cleaning to do. So I will just say that we had lots of fun and rolled around in the grass and talked and ate and lit marshmallows on fire. There will be more coming, but after my permit cramming, so I will stop here.

To sum up my post tonight:

SUMMER IS HERE!

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.)

On A Good Day

I have been, as of late, really obsessed with OceanLab. I had always liked instrumental and emotional vocal music, so I never paid much attention to specific genres. However, OceanLab—and vocal trance in general—takes my appreciation for heavily vamped music and beautiful lyrics to a whole new level. It's just like when I discovered "Mad World," by Gary Jules.

(I also think that Adam Lambert sings that particular song better, although Jules has a better music video.)

Sometimes, I wonder—do I like a song more because of its lyrics, or because of its sound? I mean, I love "Satellite" mostly because of the line, "You're half a world away, but in my mind I whisper every single word you say." On the other hand, I love Rain's "Love Story" despite not knowing what the lyrics mean. And then there are songs like Enya's "Only Time," which I absolutely love, both lyrically and musically.

(Richard Marx's "Boy Next Door," which I have linked before, is another song with amazing melody and lyrics.)

Maybe I'm just spending too much time on Youtube. I mean, without a "loop" option, I'm constantly tempted to try out new songs, thus increasing the list of songs I like at an alarming rate. Using Pandora when I'm lazy also doesn't help.

Other Odd Happenings (OOHs):

After repeated pleas (from the majority, if not all, of my gym class), our gym teacher has decided to replace the yoga videos with Tae Bo ones instead. So, instead of stretching at almost impossible angles, we have adopted a punching/kicking workout. It's fun—well, until Double Time. That's Blank's term for "do those really complicated moves that I just taught you but in half the time that I took to showed you how to do them."

Really, really fun.

I have to say, this is much better than what would otherwise have been in store for us—more fitness center equipment workouts (or more commonly known as: stick to one equipment and pretend you're doing something). And since this is my last quarter with the physical part of gym (wow, I can't believe it's finally almost over), I (hopefully) won't ever have to go back to the fitness center again.

But with my luck, you can never tell for sure.

Later on, in English, I asked Mogley, "Did lacrosse season start already?"

"Yeah," he said. "Why?"

"Oh, our gym class is in the wrestling room right now, and a lot of people are playing with the lacrosse sticks lying around the room, so I thought that lacrosse season probably started."

"Wait, they're touching the lacrosse sticks?"

"Yeah."

"I spent FOREVER making sure my stick is placed just right," Mogley said. "If anyone moves it, I will hunt them down."

"Well, how will you know who they are?"

"I will lift the fingerprints off and personally hunt them down."

And I thought the weird guys were only limited to Dino and Mario. I shrugged, and as English was the last period today, and the bell had already rung, I got up and left. Mogley stayed behind to finish a 6x6 sudoku.

(Matt, who sits next to me in stat, always brings crossword puzzles and sudoku games to class and does them instead of work. One time, he shared a sudoku with me that he had only filled in a couple of numbers, and I started filling in numbers so fast he couldn't even keep up. Ever since, he's been trying to perfect the art of fast sudoku solving. I think it's been detrimental to his grasp of stat knowledge. I also think that the fact that I use a complicated elimination method to solve sudoku puzzles and that I can scan several lines and be aware of multiple numbers at the same time means I have spent way too much time on this game. I blame Opera Widgets for this entirely.)

Been talking to myself forever, and how I wish I knew me better. Still sitting on a shelf and never never seen the sun shine brighter, and it feels like me on a good day.—"On a Good Day," OceanLab

P.s.: Oh dear, Dino's gaining ground against Argon in the label-war. ("Did I tell you about that time when Argon—yeah, uh... I don't know how he's going to win this.")

How Low Can You Go?

Depends on your perspective.

In terms of pickleball (Opera spellcheck doesn't even think it's a word. Then again, "spellcheck" isn't a word either), you can rally the ball regardless of the distance the ball is above the ground, with respect to your skill. I personally can't do that, but it's possible. Evidence decrees it.

In terms of sample size (for stat), below 30 is generally bad, unless it's known ahead of time that the population is normal. Which you can never know, really, because that's just life, so we assume. Some ignorance is always better than complete ignorance.

In terms of my concentration, low is 1:55 in the afternoon, when it's so, so close to the last bell, and yet it's still so, so far away. I just want to fall asleep in those last 20 minutes.

No matter that I go to bed relatively early (10:30). I can never fall asleep anyway until well past eleven. Whoever said that the average time it takes to fall asleep is 15 minutes is so obviously misguided. (I could also say that I'm an extreme case of an outlier, but that doesn't sound as appeasing.)

Last period is always a nightmare for me. I feel sorry for my U.S. history, stat, physics, gym, and English teachers. Having me in a daze for half the class must be immensely fun. I wouldn't know. I'm too unfocused to take note.

Of course, having Mogley say, "I slept at five in the morning and I don't feel tired," is not very good consolation.

Really.

I slept at five in the morning once, and the next day I felt ready to crash to the floor. Actually, that's how I felt today as well, but that's a minor technicality.

The only time today that I felt extremely passionate about something was during lunch, when Reese brought up that Argon should be in the Challenge.

"But I am in the challenge," Argon said, thinking about the challenge our school is hosting.

"No," Reese said. He stretched out his voice in an attempt to emphasize his words. "The Challenge. The TV one."

He was talking about a game-show like competition held amongst several local high schools, including ours.

"Oh. That. Maybe. But I think I'm going to wait until I'm older, and I know more."

"Or," I said. "You could join now and defy the stereotype of upperclassmen dominating the team. Actually, the whole gender thing is also unbalanced. There's four guys on the team, and only one girl."

"Well," Joss said. "It's open to everyone, right? So it's not an issue of discrimination."

"I know, but still. It's like my calc class. Only one in three people are girls."

"And math team," Argon said. "Wasn't last time's A team all guys?"

"True. Although I did beat Dino, which was my goal, so I'm happy with that. Besides, I wouldn't have wanted an 18 (the perfect score) anyway. I wouldn't want to be stuck with a cafeteria poster."

Which was what Argon had received yesterday, in celebration of his perfection. A poster that said, "Eat, Learn, Live," and happened to be "on the ground." What fun. But I digress.

Later on, I told Mrs. MacDonald, my stat teacher, that I was interested in another math event.

"Great," she said. "We need more girls on the team. I was so mad last year because the team was all guys."

Is it just me, or does this seem like a recurring issue?

The issue of the disproportion of girls vs guys in higher-level math and science classes have obviously been brought up many, many times. (And it's unfortunately rather true. Take my AP chem class, for example. Twelve people. Four girls.) But it was counter-defended by the argument that more girls take higher-level English and social studies classes.

But the Challenge isn't about just math and science. The clip aired during communication time today showed the team being asked a geography question. That's social studies, right? And I've seen questions before that tested poetry, which is obviously English.

So with a higher proportion of girls taking AP English and AP World History, why are guys the majority on the Challenge team?

I think there's a serious discrepancy here.

But what can I do? I'm just another sleep-deprived girl, struggling to stay awake during gym as our teacher postpone our supposed pickleball tournament yet again.

Sometimes it's frustrating to think about how powerless I am to change society. (Which also brings up the topic we were discussing in U.S.--what if the change I perceive as necessary contradicts someone else's beliefs? What if they're adamant about not having change?)

Then again, I do happen to both fit into and go against a lot of conventions. I fit perfectly into the "school-->college-->job-->retirement" mold. I--sadly, I would say--fit almost perfectly into the Asian-American stereotype (Asian-Canadian for me, but it's not that different. Half of my Asian-Canadian friends are taking the SATs this year, so they can get into an American college.) with the exception that I can't play an instrument without killing someone on the inside. But I'm a girl in a mathy and science-y world, so I defy some stereotypes. I like shiny things and cold oatmeal with hot chocolate and I'm supremely disorganized, even though none of my teachers realize.

(There seems to be some direct relationship between organization and relatively good grades in the minds of most people that I am somehow missing out on. Or it's as my fourth-grade teacher used to say, "Disorganization is a trait of genius." I think I like the latter way better.)

So let me rephrase that. I'm only a sleep-deprived, math-geeky, easily-distracted, internally-disheveled, music-playing-abhorring girl.

Seriously. What can I do?