A new start

It's January. And not just any day of January. The first day of January, aka the first day of the year. 

Now, I know I haven't written one of these posts in a mighty long time, 100 days at least. So, I'm going to start writing again. 

This past year has been, insightful. At the very least I feel like I've learned a lot and now understand a whole lot more about life now. Surely, I can't put it all into words on this one blog post but it's enough just for future me to know. I've realized that although you yourself might not be able to tell how much you've come along over a year, if you look back at your past actions or words you'll see that you're a different person than you were. You might make different decisions now than you did back then. Maybe go down another path. 

However, there are more important things in life than just sitting around pondering about the past. The present is right in front of you and that's the only thing you can alter. You can LEARN from the past though, if not, then people would never learn from their mistakes. And your own future can be unpredictable, you can shape it yourself, in any way you want. Your life is literally custom made for you, BY you. Another revolution around the sun. Maybe a few dozen times more. Make the most of it, will you?

A first step forward. A solid one to start. Let's do this. 

Happy New Years!!!

 memory

hah so today was a fun day and I want to leave behind a memory. 

The start of my day was pretty ordinary, just like any other day I went into my first class, AP European History or AP Euro for short and we had a lecture on medieval times, papacies, schisms, the Hundred Year's War between England and France, and a little on Russia too. We have a test coming up real soon so that's why there isn't much fun stuff for the time being LOL. 

Okay so then we move on to my second block which is Honors Chemistry. 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I have three APs this year and one honors class, and they all somehow ended up being on the same day... Oh shoot, I haven't even mentioned what my schedule this year looks like. Essentially, since school started, the schedules have been Monday 3 classes, Tuesday 4 classes, Wednesday all classes but for less time each, Thursday is Monday schedule, and Friday is Tuesday schedule. 

And you might be wondering, "But Jerry today is a Wednesday, shouldn't you have all your classes instead of just 4 of them?" Well, my very attentive reader, if this were a usual week you'd be correct. However, this Monday was Labor Day, an ironically named holiday in which we do not attend school.

Therefore, the Wednesday schedule has been wiped and the remaining 4 days we have left are in the formation of Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, in terms of schedules. For organizational purposes, I'll name the Monday schedule "Schedule A" and the Tuesday schedule "Schedule B". So then, this week because of Labor Day we missed Monday, so the remaining 4 days will take the form of ABAB. 

Oh wow, all that explaining, and I still haven't gotten around to why I wanted to leave behind a memory of today LOLZ. 

In Chemistry we had a lab where we had 6 different stations around the classroom and each one had to do with measuring and analyzing the change in mass of an object after undergoing some sort of chemical or physical change. 

For example, in one station you had some iron wool, and after burning it using a seemingly very dangerous flame, (we took extra caution by wearing some shiny red safety goggles of course), it would turn into iron oxide after bonding with some oxygen from the surrounding air. 

And I also got called out by the teacher because I didn't show the process for some extremely simple conversations on my homework that I had turned in so I was only going to get partial credit on it sadly. 

 Anyway, then a few minutes later, my Honors Physics teacher from last year came in the classroom to visit, (he's retired now), and he says out loud to the whole class something that went like this, "Jerry's going to dominate this class like he did last year in Honors Physics, when he goes home he has a chemistry professor to tutor him, but don't worry coming in second is pretty good too." Wow. Now I have additional pressure LOL. 

Seriously though, when people have high expectations for you and they expect you to come in first every time it really puts a huge amount of pressure on you because even if you do super ultra mega amazing, people aren't surprised because that's what's expected of you anyway. But if you mess up a little and don't come in first, well oof, because you just failed everyone's expectations. 

Chemistry comes to an end and typically this is when I would go directly to my AP Capstone classroom because the class starts 5 minutes after Chemistry ends. However, I only went briefly to excuse myself from her class today and she told me I had to watch a few videos to catch up on classwork afterward to which I answered, "No problem at all". 

Now, why did I excuse myself from this class? Did I have a doctor's appointment? Was I not feeling well? Did I simply want to skip class for no reason at all? The answer would be none of the above. Today was actually the club fair where all the clubs in the school get to set up a table in the library and when it's the student's lunch break they can come to visit the library and see if they want to sign up for any of the clubs. And basically I'm there as a representative of the Investment Club to explain to people what the club is all about and get them to sign up. Pretty much like sales but easier since they don't have to pay to sign up. Still feels pretty good when a ton of people start writing their names though and the page starts filling up and then you turn to the second page and that page gets filled up too, and, you get the idea. It was when I was sitting down at my little table with a constant flow of 3 or 4 different kids around me saying hi and handshaking me that I thought to myself, "Wow you actually know quite a lot of people, Jerry, I'm thoroughly impressed. Buen trabajo!" 

So I was also walking around the library myself to see if there's any clubs that I wanted to join. I believe I signed up for two, TED-Ed and Noor. TED-Ed is outlining and writing out a TED talk of your own which you get to film. And then they send those recordings to the actual TED, and if yours was super good then you'll get selected and you get the chance to talk in front of a real live audience somewhere in America LOL. Probably an amazing experience if you get picked but I get to practice my public speaking either way so it's a win-win. Noor is for learning about cultures in Asia, mainly Islam I believe, and you can learn about the way they live and the language and the history behind it, and, they offer food too which is awesome. Food... yum...

I was strolling around the library some more when a teacher came up to me and asked if I wanted to host an interview with students that were at the fair to ask them about what they thought of it and which clubs they were interested in. The teacher knew me because she was actually my social studies teacher in 5th grade but now she manages the radio station at our school. She also knew that I sometimes help out Fox with his podcast so I knew how everything works. 

I told Rama to watch over the investment club table but I think he got distracted with chess LOL. Anyway, I went into the recording studio, which is right inside the library btw, it's this little room with see-through glass windows and professional recording microphones and big screens to edit the footage which looks pretty cool. 

So I began my interviews: The first interviewee is actually my friend from 11th grade, he's in my AP Physics class so I know him pretty well. He talked about the Aeronautics club which is a club that he founded and created last year and how he also wanted to join the robotics club. My mom is now pressuring me to go to bed already because I'm past my bedtime writing this... So I'm not going to go into detail about the rest of the interviews but I interviewed 6 in total. The second was actually Rama. The third was a senior who was the president of the TED-Ed club. The fourth was a senior as well who was in various clubs including the Fashion club and JSA. Fifth was a junior who was a committee head of the Be a Bee club which focused on spreading around the importance of bees and finding them new habitats to live in. And last but not least I interviewed a teacher who was the advisor of the English Forensics club which is a fusion of acting, speaking, and writing as well. 

...the post that was almost not published

HEY! Actually, today I'll be talking about, well, today! There are still a few events that happened previously that I've yet to cover but since this is fresh from memory it'll be more detailed. 

So today was the first day (June 14) of the OMPR campamento which is basically a series of classes that go on for a week organized by OMPR for students who pass the TST. And yes, the TST is one of the events that I'll cover soon. The classes will only go on for this week, Monday through Friday, from 9 AM to 4 PM. There's an hour lunch break in between from noon to 1 though. Other than that, it's nonstop classes. The only problem with it is, firstly, the material they've gone over today was far too simple so it was learn anything new out of it. Secondly, the classes are taught in Spanish!! Yeah, not very student-friendly if you're not a native speaker LOL. 

The thing is, I actually have another summer camp that also started today (June 14). It's called Ideamath and yeah, it's also all revolving around math. The classes of this camp go from 2-4 in the afternoon and then pick up at 7-9 in the evening. 

Okay, apparently I never finished this post. So I'll finish it right now. The current date is 7/12/2021. It's nighttime. The Ideamath camp already finished LOL. Although I knew a lot of the material, there were still some points that I kinda forgot and the classes gave me a chance to review. Mhm, and besides that, I did get to meet and make a few new coolio friends. And you know, since it's a math thing, a ton of the kids there were Asian like myself which was really cool considering how I don't get much interaction with other ABCs here in Puerto Rico. There just aren't that many at all here so yup, meeting a lot of other ABCs was super sweet. 

Overall, the homework was decently difficult providing some challenges here and there so I think it was placed at a good level. The tests were also pretty good, there were 2 tests for the evening class and I don't think there was one for the afternoon one. The tests were pretty hard, especially the geometry portion of it. On one problem I had to use coordinates and euclidean geometry and it was a cool solution that took a while but, it was right in the end YAYYYY! 

Okay, so I'm going to start writing every day again. I had a moment today. An epiphany, if you will. And I think I can do it again. Cya tomorrow.

convention center

Okay, took me a bit of time to recall... But I've finally remembered what exactly happened on my birthday LOL. May 17th of 2021 was a Monday. It started out just like any other, I had classes of course and Physics was first. The cool thing is, Dex and I actually share the same birthday and he's older than me by just a few hours. It just so happens, that Dex is also in my Physics class so we got to sing a double happy birthday song that day. Ahem, I don't remember too well what the topic of that class was though...

Anyway, my birthday wasn't really mentioned in any of the other classes and I'm already satisfied enough from the first class LOL. The rest of the classes passed by, Music, PE, Math. And then after classes, I went with my dad to go pick up mom from her store. We had originally planned on making handcut noodles but by the time we got to the store it was pretty late. If we had headed back home and made the noodles as planned, it would've taken way too long. That's why we opted for dining out at a new restaurant. 

One of her store's employees had recommended one that was in the area so we called and made a reservation. There wasn't any wait either when we arrived which was quite opportune for us seeing as how we were all pretty hungry at that point. The thing about this restaurant is that they have waiters constantly going around from table to table carrying either a plate or this rack thing that skewered a huge piece of meat right through the center. And then upon arriving at a table, they would cut off how much you wanted and you could eat it. 

It's kinda like a buffet but instead of you going to pick out the food yourself, they would bring it to your table one at a time. It was a very interesting way to serve food and definitely a first for me. I think the cool part about this way of serving food is that the consumer would get to have a taste of many different dishes in one meal instead of having to stick to just one like most people normally would. I believe we got to taste at least over 10 distinct meats for that meal. 

After dinner, we decided to walk around. Take a stroll. After all, we don't come here all that often. Oh right, the restaurant was in the Puerto Rico Convention Center which is a pretty high-end place I think. Apparently, the government lost a lot of money on this project LOL, but despite that, it's still quite a sight. 

This was one of the places we visited. The inside had a lot of lights too, I'm fairly sure there's a professional name for all that too. 

This is the big main site I think. Our team played a volleyball tournament in there once too. We came second but it was super close. Anyway, we took some family pictures at a few sites and headed home. A great night to remember heh. And a good night to you too! 

Nice we got 4

Aaand we're back! I remembered that I actually forgot to include something in the last post. A few days before the semester ended there was an academic awards ceremony. 

This ceremony was in-person and held in the gymnasium of the school. However, the school only let the student who would be receiving awards attend in-person, not even the parents would be allowed in. Anyway, the awards are split into three groups, the highest grade, the second one I have no idea how they give it, and the last one is for best effort. You know, unlike the Spanish presentation I didn't exactly have that feeling of relief and gratification come over me when I was called up. Either way, it's still an amazing feat. I ended up getting the best grade award for Physics, PE, Algebra 2, and History. 

PE was a HUGE surprise LOL, I mean I got the PE award?? Honestly, I shouldn't be surprised that I did get it because my grade was always kept nearly at 100% but it wasn't AT 100% so I had a feeling there was someone out there who did have it. Anyway, the good thing is that the grades in PE this year didn't actually have that many physical exams but a lot more of it was actually writing. We actually wrote a lot this year because SEL was integrated into the curriculum. Lucky me I guess. 

As for the other classes, not too much surprise there. However, at the actual ceremony, they didn't give out the Physics awards because of a mix-up so I was shocked when they didn't announce an award for physics when I got called up. They apologized and gave it to us the next day though.

The other thing I wanted to mention in this blog was that my birthday actually passed throughout this hiatus. It was May the 17th, a Tuesday. This particular day didn't feel any special really or maybe it's just that I can't seem to remember well enough what exactly happened. I did have a hangout with friends a few days later with my friends to celebrate too. I'll give you more details on that later. 

The end of the freshman year

So I'm going in chronological order here. What's next would be the end of the school year. 

As I mentioned in the post before, it's already summer vacation. So that means, ninth grade is over and the first year of high school is over too. For this post I'll mostly be talking about what we did to end off the year in terms of each class. 

So let's start with Physics. Our final project for Physics had to do with a solar powered car. Basically, we had a whole series of mini-experiments we would perform and then there were more general questions about the same topic. One of the experiments was calculating the speed and time it takes for the car to travel a certain distance. Another one was whether or not the car would run under shadows. There were around 7 or 8 in total. It took two class periods, but we got it done YAY! 

For Music, it was the recording of 3 of my pieces. The Elegy, Autumn Leaves, and Castle in the Sky. For all three of them, I think it took me a total of 40 something times too. I believe the Elegy was the longest in terms of time duration out of the three. Around 5 minutes I think. Autumn Leaves was around 4 min, and Castle in the Sky was a little over 2 min. The final thing turned out well, so that's all good. 

PE... didn't really have a final project. It's PE after all. We sort of had a free period to play in the final class though. Other than that, not much else LOL. 

Algebra 2! Well, for this one there was a test on logarithms which was OPTIONAL, but if you decided to take it then it would count for your grade just like any other test would. In the end, less than half the class decided to take it. I took it in hopes of it raising my grade from an A to to an A+. And I got a 100% too since the test wasn't that hard after all. 

Later on, in the last class, there was a bonus kahoot. For the kahoot, essentially he was going to give a certain amount of bonus points to whoever came in first, and then decrease by 1 as the rankings go down as well. So for example, first could get 5, second would get 4, and so on until there's no more to give. And I got first which secured me even MORE points. I think that was important. 

English was an end-of-unit essay. 3 paragraphs. I got praised for mine by the teacher hehe and I also helped revise a couple other people's as well. This final project was great. 

For Spanish, there was an individual presentation for the analysis of a poem. My poem was about death personified as a woman and finding this man, telling him he only had one hour left. The man proceeds to running to the street where his lover lived and asked her to open the door. At first, the lover was skeptical of whether or not to open the door because you could infer from the poem that their love was forbidden and both of her parents were home. In the end, she agreed and started to let down a rope from her window for the man to climb up. However, before the man was able to, the rope broke and the woman/Death arrived, telling him time was up. 

As for presentations, I was the first one up. Also, on this day, we were actually in-person for school so I had to present while looking at everyone. Honestly, it was a feeling I had pretty much forgotten. Near the end of the presentation my mask was drenched in sweat and some of it got in my eyes making it blurry for me to read what I had written. It stung. Despite that, I managed to not many any mistakes while reading out loud and what was even better was that I didn't make any grammatical mistakes in my slides. That's what I was most afraid of to begin with. I even received plaudits from the whole class. Plaudit means applause from an audience. The sound of applause filled the small room on that hot day but I finally felt a sensation of relief that my most dreaded class of the year had come to an end. Gratification hit hard too. I felt pretty proud at the time. No other presentation won plaudits that day.  

Lastly, we arrive at History. The final class was also presentations. It was project on family. Your own family. You were to create a brief 5 minute presentation on the origin and history of your family, as far back as you could trace it, and the stories of how you ended up in Puerto Rico. It was an interesting project and I certainly did learn quite a lot about my family that I hadn't known before. The format, I used Prezi for the first time and I think it turned out quite well but probably could've done better if there had been more time. Either way, I think I did pretty good on this one too. 

That's all there is for this post, and for today as well. I'll be writing another one tomorrow!

the speech

Well, would you look at that? It's summer. 

As you probably know, I took quite a long break from blogging. So for the next few posts I'll mostly be recalling what's been happening from mid-April to now. For this post, I'll be writing about the student council speech and election that I had already mentioned a while back. 

The time limit was 2 minutes or less. Before recording, I had already revised and changed my script countless times. Also, I made sure to memorize the whole thing so there's a natural flow when I'm talking. It was pretty long, here it is:

As the Father of American literature, Mark Twain once said, “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed in the things you didn’t do than the ones you did.” 

We know that we won’t be in highschool forever. Then why do we still leave behind regrets? This question doesn’t have a definite answer, but the time is always right for improving. And I believe that it’s time to improve. You and me and all of us. 

We are 72 students. 72 different scenarios. All of them will play out differently. There has to be a bridge between people and thoughts and ideas, and I’m willing to be your bridge. Surely, a bridge has no purpose if no people walk upon it so I’ll be relying on all of you to not hesitate to pitch any idea that you might have. One that I’m suggesting, to give you lots of methods so you can improve in your own way. How will this work?

We give talks on how to improve in areas that will drastically change your life for the better. Couple topics I’m thinking of are the ability to jump out of your comfort zone, the willingness to try new things, and the skill to be able to lift others up. In addition, if you wish to speak about a certain topic, I’ll be the one to coordinate and provide you with a platform. And hey, if you’re interested, give me a call and as long as it’s not 3 AM, we can talk it over to see how it’ll go. And lastly, Even if you only take away one thing from this speech, simply remember:

Don’t leave behind any regrets. Vota por Jerry.

Since it was memorized, I freeze up a ton of times trying to remember the next line or sometimes I mess up the order of the words and other times everything goes perfect but I go over the time limit. At one point, I even cut out a part of the speech to try to shorten it and make it good instead of packing too much info and rushing it. In the end, I got the perfect take on the 49th try. The bloopers were really funny to watch later on though. 

Now, I don't remember if I mentioned this before but I actually did have an adversary who was also running for president. It was my good old friend, Pen! So, if you don't remember super well, Pen is my MUN partner in competitions. Basically it was going to be a close vote. Or at least that's what I thought. Ostensibly, I still don't know precisely how close the vote was because it was never publicized, only the victor was announced in the end. 

At the start, I was thinking, what's the best way to advertise this? In the end, I went for the telemarketing approach. Which usually doesn't work out that well... but it's different in this case since they know who it is. Of course, I have no clear way of knowing whether or not the people I called actually did vote or not but from another perspective, it also gives me a better idea of what exactly it is that people want. 

Oh, that's right. I WON!! The smell of victory was a lot fresher at the time though. It feels almost distant now, the scent washed away as the waves of time continuously crash against the coast, our memory. Honestly, I'm going to get back to my blogging every day habit. 

Not only can I leave behind old memories by writing them here, while I was researching for one of my talks I learned that one of the best ways to feel better about EVERYTHING is by writing out everything you're thinking. Both positive and negative emotions alike, when written out, it feels like one less burden to carry. Frankly speaking, it's pretty much the same reasoning as to why people say you should talk to someone about your problems if you're feeling down and it'll release some of that stress that's been building up. However, writing it out yourself works just as well in comparison, especially if you don't have anyone or don't want to talk to anyone about it. 

From the speech, you can see that I didn't make any promises that I wasn't sure I could accomplish. The only one I did give was that I would be giving talks on improvement. I guess you could think of it as a sort of motivation speech, slightly leaning towards the informational side though. I've already conducted a few research sessions for my first talk and I'm planning on finalizing all the research for the first three talks throughout summer and also the presentation itself for the first two at least.  

So far, about the student council, there haven't been any activities yet since it's summer and the new school year hasn't started. Planning potential activities is also on my to-do list for this summer. Oh wait, I forgot to tell you. Dino and Rama both got elected too! Rama is treasurer and Dino would be VP while Dex is secretary and a new girl who just joined this year will be representative. Pretty sweet line-up. 

That's it for this post. Cya in the next one.

super short summary

Okay. Wednesday. The middle day, HUMP DAY. Usually, I would have class. But apparently, we're still in fully online mode for this week too. 

negotiation, Dino and Rama, quite successful

geometry with dad, auxiliary lines, medians and angle bisectors

42points class

annotations for history, finished

Excelente trabajo

So I missed yesterday's blog because I fell asleep... And I don't even remember how I fell asleep. But I did. So I woke up really early and took an early morning cold shower. Anyway, back to yesterday. 

English, Spanish, and History. Did I mention that I'm suddenly a lot more confident in my Spanish? Yeah, I guess it comes with the practice LOL. I really should do it more often. Any volunteers? 

So, in English, the whole class was working on the end-of-unit essay. I pretty much have the whole structure down and now I need to connect the dots. I should work on it outside of class a little bit in order to make sure it gets finished, next class. 

For Spanish, it was the presentation that I completed with Otter. Ours was definitely the longest and had the most information than any other presentation, and at the end, the teacher said ours was excellent! So I'm expecting an excellent grade too LOL. It'll really help raise it a lot. 

Finally, in History, we had a discussion about the notes we took on the sites for homework. We had to take notes on the discussion we had on the notes too LOL. It was fine though because it was pretty short. Then, she assigned more homework. Annotating a part of a chapter in the textbook. It's not too much so I should be able to finish it in around 20 minutes. 

I don't really remember the rest of yesterday...

antidote to dissatisfaction

Well, I only have 15 minutes today to write so I'll go super fast. HOWEVER, because I'll be going fast my blog structure might not be as organized as usual LOL. I guess there's only one way to find out if it's going to affect it. 

We start off in the morning. It's around 8:15 when our electricity goes out. It's not really all that rare here and I've kinda got used to it by now. Plus, my phone has data now so I can use its hotspot to connect to classes even if everything else stops working. So, a few minutes after the power went out, my dad went upstairs to start up the generator. I could hear the BRRR from downstairs but my monitor screen wasn't lighting up. 

We realized that although it sounded like the generator was running, the electricity wasn't flowing. Additionally, after pulling the string that started the generator a bit too hard, the string snapped and so now we can't start the generator anymore. It's broken so we'll have to go repair it. 

Anyway, with no generator, I was taking my classes using a hotspot and my laptop. I got through all the classes fine though, there wasn't any class today that I had to participate in a great deal luckily. The only one that would've required that might've been PE but today PE consisted mostly of us working on a PPT presentation about soccer and also watching another TED talk about SEL concepts. 

The concept today was gratitude. Now, as you know, I've been watching these cool youtube videos recently that talk all about gratitude, how to improve, motivation, and all that other stuff so this talk wasn't really anything new to me. It was still a good talk though even if it was a monotone without that many highlights. Oh, there's a Kurzegast video on Youtube that's pretty cool. I think it was called The Antidote to Dissatisfaction. Or something similar. In that video, they also cover gratitude and all the ways that you can learn to be more grateful and be happier overall with what you have. 

In Physics we're still in electricity. Today we talked about voltage and resistance. Ohm's law, current = voltage/resistance. And then we had a worksheet on the law. I finished before class ended so I was dismissed early. That was good since I needed to conserve my laptop's battery as much as possible for the rest of the classes in case the electricity didn't come back at all. 

Music was chill. And lastly, in Math today we just got introduced to logarithms. We're still in the very very introduction of it though. 

AH and after class, we went to Costco! I haven't visited Costco in quite some time so it was nice to go again. Every time we go to Costco, we usually buy enough so that we don't have to go for about another month or so. That's why it's a pretty big haul we bring back every time too LOL. 

I think that pretty much sums it up for today. Good night GUYS!!

the pardon from the king

Sunday is over. And back to Monday. An infinite cycle. 

I had my Chinese class with grandma in the morning. It was extended a little because I hadn't eaten breakfast so she gave me some time to eat before starting the class. Right now we're reading an Andersen story. It's the little match girl. It's a good story, well I mean it's a classic and all classics have to be good, or else they wouldn't even be able to stay around long enough to be considered a classic LOL. 

Basically, the objective is to read it out loud and clearly with emotion and to also understand the story very well. That's why we had all these questions to chop up the story into little sections that we're able to comprehend quicker and with more ease. The task of piecing the little sections altogether is far less daunting than trying to do it s a whole. 

After the class, I did my Spanish project with Otter. It's a PowerPoint. The teacher split up the class into 7 groups and each group has to read a chapter of the historical book and explain to the class what happened in that chapter. 

In mine, it was a marriage proposal from two brothers of a noble family to El Cid's two daughters. Since El Cid was wrongfully expatriated from the kingdom, the king wanted to make it up to him by having his two daughters marry into a noble family and at the same time grant him "el perdon real" (there's an accent on the o). It's a pardon meaning he's no longer expatriated. 

Anyway, after that project I had to do my History notes. We have to take notes on 3 different websites for homework. She provided us which websites to use but most of them were in Spanish. Luckily, google has this feature where you can translate the whole website into English. That made it a lot easier for me, however, there were still some phrases that didn't quite make sense in English so I had to switch back in order to get it. Also, there were sites where the main points of information were in the text of pictures and the translate feature doesn't work on pictures, only text. 

In the end, I got it done though. Moving on to tomorrow. 

the third round

Ah, so today was the third round. I didn't do fantastically well, I think I got 2 wrong. Now, I sort of underestimated the difficulty. But to be fair, they DID up the difficulty a lot this year compared to past ones. It's at least two times harder if not three. So, if it was harder for me, it should be harder for the other kids too, right? 

Anyway, that means there's still a chance of getting a gold medal which is what I'm aiming for. Some kids in my google meet classroom submitted their tests with only two pages. That's not possible unless they either didn't write their process or they didn't solve all the problems. As for me, I had 11 pages. But I bet some had more. 

I could've solved the last one, but I didn't see how to do it during the test. It's a pity. However, what can we do? Moving forward seems to be the only option. Sigh, I have a ton of work to do tomorrow. I better go sleep soon. Sorry that the blogs these two days have been very short. Hope you'll excuse me for it. Good night dear readers. 

perfect only?

HEY. I'm a bit behind today so today's might not be as long as the previous two posts. 

There's a lot of work today that is due next week. One, for instance, appeared in my first class. English. In English, we're starting the end-of-unit essay. I would suppose that once we finish this, it'll basically be it for this year. We don't have many grades in English either and since this final end-of-unit is going to be worth 100 points... it's pretty much going to make up the bulk of my grade this year. I can't mess this one up. SO I have to dedicate time to this essay. 

For Spanish, we're doing a small project. We're divided into 7 small groups and assigned to read a chapter of the book. Then you make a short PPT presentation on what happened in that chapter and then tell it to the class. I'm partners with Otter on this one, and we're not done yet so I'll be working on this on Sunday with Otter although I'll do some on Saturday too. 

Finally, in History, we are taking notes on these sites with historical information on them. Mostly all of them are related to the English attack on San Juan in 1797 led by Ralph Abercromby. These are due before class next Tuesday. 

So, essentially, I have work to do from every single class today which is a bit stressful. But at the same time, I guess it helps me train my time management skills more. 

Also, big event tomorrow. It's the OMPR Third Phase. It's usually very easy and the problems are simple but you just can't get even ONE wrong. You need to get perfect here or else it'll be very tough for you. Wish me luck for tomorrow then. Good night!!

 

seductive and poignant

What's up, everyone! 

Today, the school's back in session. 4 classes. And tomorrow's Friday. 

Physics - a quick review of the quiz we took last class. I got one wrong, 22/24. The teacher did use my quiz to explain the answers though so I suppose that was the highest grade? Anyway, there's also this email that he sent out yesterday that talked a little about the final project we're going to be doing in Physics class. You work in pairs of 2 and are required to get a solar-powered car. You can either buy one that's ready or you can build it yourself. The funny thing is, the one that comes ready is only 1 dollar more expensive than the DIY one LOL. I'm going to be working with Fox, but we don't work on that project until the final week of school. 

Man, it's real close, isn't it? Just about a month and a half to go and we're done with freshmen year of high school. Honestly, I still vividly remember last summer. And yet, summer is almost upon us once again. I should start looking for online summer camps to enroll in soon. Like very soon. Maybe I can get some of my friends to enroll with me to make it more fun. OH, I'll talk more about this in another blog. 

After our quiz review, we had a PowerPoint lecture on electric fields, currents, voltage, electrical potential energy, and field forces. We then had worksheets based on the info given to us in the lecture to apply the concepts we just learned. It's mostly the calculator doing most of the work though. That's how it is with Physics class. You just need a few simple relationships and equations, plug in the values for the variables, and then have the calculator do the rest for you. 

Music - Kept working on PUC. If you listened to the song on youtube or someplace, there are basically two parts to the song. There's a light one, "seductive and poignant" is how they describe it. And then there's a triple forte part. The forte part is my favorite part LOL. It's very dramatic and it's fun to play. It's rich in sound and I just like it a lot. I pretty much have the whole song memorized, but I still need to work out a few details. And then comes the refining and polishing phase which I don't know whether to look forward to or not. 

PE - The workouts in PE are easier now. We're still in the soccer unit so it was mostly working with the ball and all sorts of drills. They aren't too high intensity though, just repetitive and it's more skill-based than force-based. Moving the ball back and forth with control is actually quite hard to do. Then, since we started SEL again in PE, we watched a TED talk on mindfulness and filled out a worksheet on that too. 

MATH - Algebra, we're finally done with trig. It took SOOO long and we're probably not going to be seeing those graphs in a while. We've now started radicals. I thought we had already covered it, but apparently, we never got this deep into it so we're doing it again. I felt like participating today, so with my help, the class moved along surprisingly fast today. I do realize that I might seem a bit obnoxious though. That one kid who always is the first to answer questions and seems to always get them right too LOL. 

But I mean, in my class, Rama and Beam and Wow (this friend I think I've probably named before but I completely forgot their codename...) The point is, these three are all into competition math and any one of us could easily do these problems without breaking a sweat. But I took the wheel today so I was just answering all of them LOL. 

That's it for school today. CYA!!

A barrage of info coming your way

Last time I had said that I was going to give you more information on Zeta. 

So, Zeta is a friend that I met from Bloom actually. In case you forgot, Bloom is the organization that I'm in as an English tutor for less fortunate kids in China. So, Zeta is another tutor at Bloom and as I mentioned, quite a while ago, (probably months ago LOL), we were instructed to choose clubs to join. Zeta and I are both in the public speaking club so BOOM, that's one similarity already. 

Moreover, Zeta's Chinese is exceptionally well, just like mine heheh, he's better than me though since he's lived in China for most of his life. He moved to the states during the pandemic and despite being in a completely foreign country, I think he's adapting fairly quickly to everything. That's awesome. OH and he plays the piano too! 5 years he said. Too bad I haven't gotten to hear him play yet but I'm sure I will soon. Ah and guess what, the guy is really interested in stocks and investing AS WELL!! What are the chances?? 

He has a real stock account and everything too but he's only been into it for less than a year. Plus, Zeta likes magic. WHATTT? IS HE MY COUNTERPART? I don't think I ever talked about this on my blog before, but there was a period of time where I was really into magic. I spent hours learning all sorts of tricks and stuff, I can't even remember the reason why I stopped... So maybe my encounter with Zeta will spark that interest once again. He showed me a couple tricks and the logic behind them. And yes, magic is more logical than you might think. Contrary to popular belief, there is more logic behind magic than the actual magical components. Yup. 

Oh, and we even read the same books. Remember that book by Dale Carnegie that I recommended all of you to read? How to Win Friends and Influence People? He's read it too. We had a great, lively discussion about it. 

I think one of the main differences between us is just that I have more competition math things, you know, the academic achievement side. And Zeta likes more practical day-to-day skills like socializing, learning how to communicate effectively, deduction, reading body language, etc... I've been trying to learn more about that side also. 

AH and he recommended me a TON of youtube channels for improvement. I'll give one to you guys that I've been personally watching myself in the past two days. It's called Improvement Pill. I also gave it to Fid earlier today when we were talking. I really think it helps you with all kinds of problems, and even if you don't have any problems... it helps you improve either way. 

Wow. I wrote all that and I just remembered that I forgot one crucial thing that happened yesterday. So after history class, I actually had Science bowl practice for an hour. It went great actually. I guessed right more than half the time LOL. But what I really wanted to focus on was what came AFTER science bowl practice. The orientation for student council!! YEAAA!

Ngl, the presentation itself, was kind of a letdown. Why do I say this? Before the actual orientation, they had already sent out an email with a pdf of everything they were going to be talking about. I thought they were just going to use it as a guide and that the orientation itself would've been more interesting. But they just read off of the pdf. I mean, cmon, I had already done that myself. So I sat through 11 pages of a pdf that I had already read through, TWICE I might add, just for the part that I was waiting for most. Q&A time. 

I had a ton of questions, and frankly, I thought others did too. But then Q&A time came along and when they asked if anyone had questions, the zoom meeting was silent. The silence was so deafening, that I puffed out my chest and decided to go first. After I started, there was kind of a snowball effect where some other students also started asking questions. It didn't last long though before the silence came back. So I said my second question. And then my third. And then my fourth. Woah, you have no idea but it felt great to talk in front of 60 people and all of them are silent, listening, and expectant. Boy oh boy, I think I'm going to have a lot of fun if I get elected. So basically, besides a friend of mine who asked 2 questions, every other kid either asked 1 or none. LOL. 

Ah, today's blog was mostly about yesterday LOL. I'll go for a quick recap of today then. In the morning, my mom suddenly saw that her employee wasn't coming and so she was going to be alone handling the store today. So she asked me to come with her and I agreed. My dad also tagged along. However, when at the store, it was mostly the two of them in the back of the store going through the merchandise that just arrived today while I was alone in the front dealing with all the customers and sales. Yeah I know, I'm such a god. 

 

Oh, and I also did a few geometry problems while I was being a god too. Yeah, I'm just too cool. We had pizza for dinner. GOOD NIGHT!!

Ah novelty

Hello! Today was a cool day. 

Woke up in the morning feeling great. In English, we were working on reading and question discussions of the book we're reading. We're not reading the entire book though, only a few chapters. This way we go deeper into each section, each passage, and even down to every sentence. What tone is it trying to convey? What's the central idea of this passage? What is the author trying to tell the readers through this interaction? These are questions that I usually don't ask myself when I'm just reading for pleasure so it's nice to have a change like that. 

After all, humans are addicted and constantly seeking novelty. It's part of human nature, and it's deeply embedded inside us. It's what allowed us to survive back in historical eras. Finding new food, new medicine, new ways of life, etc. Never before have we ever lived in a world so suited to our needs. And this is a result of our constant craving for novelty. If you didn't know the meaning of novelty, (ngl I searched it up just today too), it's the quality of being new, original, or unusual. Basically, newness but it sounds cooler and more professional LOL. 

OKAY, so I kinda got off topic there. I was just watching a youtube video on it LOL. So English was fun, I participated quite a few times and it was coolio. At the start of the class, my microphone wasn't functioning properly so I couldn't salute the teacher like I usually do when I join the class. And my teacher is used to my morning greetings because I'm always the first one there and we occasionally have some small talk before starting class. This morning, when my mic apparently wasn't receiving any input despite the fact that I was talking very loudly... the teacher kept on having me try different ways to get it to work because she said, and I quote, "A class where I can't hear Jerry isn't a class." Oh my, I felt very appreciated and it was a glorious feeling might I add. 

For Spanish, it was a more intense version of how English class went. We practically did the same thing though. We're also reading a passage from a book and answering questions along the way. Of course, the books are different in both classes and to me, they are remotely distinct and not alike at all. 

The one we're reading in English is about a 13-year-old boy who likes writing poems and is troubled in many ways. He has a speech impediment, isn't very confident, and is worried about everyone else's opinions about him. I suppose the teacher thinks we can relate to this story as we're also kids and some of us are similar to the protagonist in some form or way. 

And as for Spanish, it's more historical and non-fiction. It's about war and conflict in Spain, the protagonist is a war hero who is expatriated by the king because of false rumors that were brought to the king's ears. However, the war hero didn't give up and kept on winning battles for the king to hopefully win back his trust with actions and victories. 

Lastly, in History, we took a quiz. WHICH I ACED. 10 multiple choice questions followed by one paragraph response question. Each multiple-choice was worth 1 point while the paragraph was worth 10. So that makes 20 in total. Basically, the only part that I could've messed up on is the multiple-choice because, well, paragraph and long writing responses are my forte. Plus, the teacher doesn't have sky-high expectations for our paragraphs to start with. 

I suppose she just wanted a 5 sentence paragraph with a few supporting details and a conclusion sentence. I, on the other hand, wrote 15 sentences LOL (courtesy to Psi for counting them for me). It's pretty crazy now that I think about it because we had a pretty short time restriction to complete the quiz. I think I spent 15 minutes writing the essay, I mean paragraph, so that would average up to 1 sentence a minute? Is that a lot? It depends on how rich the sentence is I guess. 

LOL to be perfectly honest, there might've been some fluff and bluff and boloney in there... but hey, 15 sentences should've covered more than enough despite it. I didn't really try to use many Membean words when writing, but I bet I could've enhanced the word quality to some extent. Anyway, after talking with a cool new friend of mine, and yes, I MADE A NEW FRIEND! I think I should tweak my rough draft of the speech a little. Btw, I think I'll name my new friend. Zeta. Zeta sounds fitting. Zeta actually is super similar to me, it's kinda scary LOL. You know what, I'll talk about him more in my next blog. 

ouch...

Okay. We're on our way to Tuesday. 

Let's go right to the place where it hurts. Assessments aren't going great. Well, it's just that there haven't been many of those recently and so if do not-so-well on one of them, then it affects your overall grade more than it would if there were more assessments. Why? Because if there were more grades, it would average out and one not-so-good grade wouldn't drag down the grade as there would be many better grades bringing the average up. I have two perfect examples. 

In Physics, I got a 91% on a quiz today, one missed question, and my grade only dropped by less than 0.5% since I have a whole truckload of grades in Physics with most of them being 100%. However, in Math class, two quizzes, I missed one question on one and 2 on the other, and I end up with my average dropping to 94% from a 97&. We only have around 5 grades in Math and like 30 grades in Physics. So that's where the difference is from. 

In Music, I kept working on Por Una Cabeza, you know what, I'm going to refer to it as PUC from now on. Although it doesn't quite have the same ring to it, it saves me some time typing it LOL. Anyway, the part that I hadn't memorized yet is getting better the more I practice it so I think I might have it down by the end of the week. Oh and since the recordings we did last time had bad audio quality because of the background noise........ oh... I forgot that I didn't write about that yet. 

BASICALLY, I went to school one day, in person, and we recorded me playing at school. We recorded Elegy, Autumn Leaves, and Castle in the Sky. I even changed into a suit and everything. But since we weren't experienced and used a computer to record instead of a phone (so the camera wouldn't move), the audio quality was terrible. Therefore, I'll have to redo the whole thing and he wants it done preferably by the end of this week. It's going to have to be in my own room. Hmm, let's see how that goes. 

PE was pretty good. We did some computer work, watching videos on self-care because we're doing SEL again. And then we did a worksheet on it. We also entered the soccer unit. I used a volleyball but she was fine with any ball that could bounce. But it had to be decently large, not like a tennis ball, COUGH RAMA COUGH. OH and I found a cool word today. Neophyte means novice. They're synonyms. 

That's all for tonight. CYA!

musical loophole?

Hey there. Tomorrow is Monday again.

So, you may not know that because Covid cases are on the rise over here, our school is going full virtual once again. At least for this next week. That means no more in-person Tuesdays and Thursdays AND since we're going back to our full online schedule... Wednesdays are free again. That'll probably change after this week but for now, this is going to be how it's gonna be. 

Anyway, the student council thing, there's an orientation on it this Tuesday. Oh, and I have to go because they take attendance and if you're running it's mandatory that you attended that orientation. Sigh. Still can't believe they made the restriction of 120 seconds. I think 5 minutes should've been set as the max and 2 minutes as the minimum. But I guess, from their perspective, they want it to be short and sweet so it doesn't take so long. Fair enough. 

However, they also made more restrictions. THEY SAID NO PROPS. No props? Seriously? and then they say, no background music, no blah blah blah, ... basically they're saying no fun. And at the end of the requirements of the speech, they add in: Original in content and presentation. BRO. That means, playing piano while talking is off the table, making cool card throwing trick shots is no longer an option... I'll have to resort to my writing talent then. Oh yea, then about the presentation, I was thinking of wearing something special but I don't know whether to go formal suit, school uniform, or something else. Any suggestions? 

Besides that, everything's going fine. I have practically half of my new piano piece memorized too. WAIT. They said no BACKGROUND music. But what if I just start playing? That's not really background music because it's not in the background. It's the whole thing. Do you get me? AHH I'll ask them during the orientation on Tues. 

As for school recently, it's been fine. In Physics we've been learning about electricity... OH SHOOT I THINK I HAVE A QUIZ TOMORROW. Oh noes. I don't think I studied. I hope I know everything. Well, I guess I'm going to sleep now then. BYEEE

We're back in business

So as you know, I stopped writing my blog. And I think it's been about 3-4 weeks now. I want to pick it back up now. 

During this time, some interesting things have happened. I'll just mention a few of them. 

A tuner came over and tuned my piano. We finally returned back to normal school, although only for 2 days a week. It was my mom's birthday! We finished spring break. My group did a pretty good presentation in History (before spring break) and I absolutely nailed the recap of the whole thing after the break too. The grade has still yet to come out though. So, anyway, that's about all I can think up on the spot for this past period of time. OH WAIT, I'm learning a cool new piece on piano! It's called Por Un Cabeza and it's a tango. It's great, you should search it up sometime. 

OH SHOOT, a HUGE thing is actually happening too. This school year is ending soon right? May 28th for me I think, and at the end of every year, we have elections for the student council of the following year. You know, I've never tried running for student council before so you may ask, "Why would you start now?" And my honest reply to that would be: "I'm not entirely sure." However, what I AM sure about is, I want to stand out, and I want to make my whole grade stand out in the process. What better way of starting that dream than to be in a position that leads the whole grade? And yes, you've probably deduced by now that I'm planning on running for President. Bingo! Right on. 

So I've been planning things or events we might be able to achieve if I win. And you know, I think I might put that off for just a bit until I actually win this thing. I don't want to get too ahead of myself and miss out on what's right in front of me. After all, elections this year won't be in person. They'll be conducted online and the speech that's supposed to convince people to vote for me will be a video. But, I'm not sure whether it'll be a disadvantage or an advantage. Maybe I'll figure that out later. 

Now, about the speech. I already have a rough draft. There's just a slight problem. I went over the time limit with this speech. They set a 120-second restriction which is extremely short for a GOOD speech. I mean, sure, I could just cut right to the point and tell them to vote for me, state out a few reasons, list out a few things I'm planning to do, but no one wants to hear that. Because that's what everyone else does. And I'm not everyone else. If I'm everyone else then why would they vote me over everyone else? Exactly. 

Well I mean, yes, they might know that I'm outstanding in academics, have lots of other stuff going for me, but do they want me to lead them? That's what I'm going to try to put in their minds. Not only am I great at doing my job, but I can also make ALL of us look great in the process. Boom. 

SO, I hope you enjoyed this first blog back. And I assure you that you can tune in for tomorrow and find another one too. 

Paintball... or Painball?

Saturday:

HEYYY it's Beam's birthday! SO unlike Psi or Dino, Beam actually had over 10 people go to his party. Also, it wasn't at his house or some restaurant, but instead, we went to a paintball park! We played 4 games in total which might seem quite little at first glance but it actually took around 3 hours. The games last usually less than 10 minutes though LOL. It's mostly because after each game you need to fill up on ammunition, rest a little, and also wait until there's an open place. There were only like 4 or 5 different places in total so you need to wait for an open one to play. 

You know, before coming to the party Dino was scared of dying here. Getting shot by paintballs. Turns out, it's not THAT bad. Only left bruises on me for 3 days or so. It's a bit painful though. 

After that, we got in the car and went back to Beam's house. It's right next to the school btw. Literally a 3-minute walk away. However, just as we were going to park we saw a dog with a collar wandering alone on the street so I got off the car to catch it. AND I caught it YAY. OH, and the owner was nearby so after we called them and told them our location they came right away to pick up their dog. 

Oh yea, Rama couldn't come because a kid in his baby sister's grade caught COVID so he needed to get tested before he could go anywhere. Sad timing though. 

Btw, I'm in my math class right now but... I know all the stuff so we're all good. 

classroom aura

Friday:

Hey. Let's see, the first period for Friday was supposed to be English but instead, there was a colloquium where a guy came to talk to us about the history and the influence Chinese people had on Puerto Rico. That took up the entire period sigh, I was actually kinda looking forward to English class. Our teacher is always super energetic and it kind of attaches to you too which is nice. The first class of the day is generally the one where you shake off the sleepy feeling so her lively aura definitely helps in that aspect. 

In Spanish, it went just as I had predicted last time. The rest of the poem presentations took up the entire class and since my group already presented last class, we got to just relax and listen to them. Oh, you still had to pay attention because the teacher had us make these "conceptual maps" as she calls them, and you need to fill in a few key points on every presentation. Plus, it's worth points and my Spanish grade is in need of a boost right now. 

Lastly, in History... Yeah, I completely forgot what we did in History heheh... I asked Dino and he forgot too LOL. SOOO I'll leave this one super-duper short? Sounds like a plan. 

the orientation to a "new" school

Thursday:

Well, isn't this a great sight. 

Right now, at this very moment, I am sitting in the middle of my school's gym. There are about 50 other students here with me, and I just happened to choose the center middle seat LOL. So, all my teachers are around, there's music playing in the background, they're walking around greeting students. I was greeted already by 3 of them haha, English, Spanish, and then French. In that order. And I know, I'm not taking French class anymore but I had her for a whole year in 8th. She was a bit sad that I changed electives and that I didn't continue with French but she understood when I explained that I didn't want to lose piano. However, she did express that I was welcome to join her French class for next year... Yeah, I didn't break the news to ber I had already chosen AP Physics... Anyway, almost all of my classmates are here right now, gathered in this gym. It's air-conditioned btw since it's an indoor gym. The feeling is, quite indescribable.

And that was the last sentence I wrote before having to close my laptop and listen to the presentation given to us by the principal. Btw, we counted at the end and I figured out that there were 57 students exactly that came that day. That means around 15 or so will be remaining online from my grade. I actually thought there might be more, but I guess everyone is all super ready to go back. 

At the end of the presentation, the principal asked if there were any questions and, at first, people were hesitant but then I raised my hand. I gotta say, it was pretty cool to see everyone turn their heads towards the guy who raised his hand first, especially when I'm sitting right in the center of the whole gym LOL. Oh and I asked a second question too because I wanted that thrill again and secondly, I actually did come up with a meaningful question. 

Ah so basically in this presentation he gave us the schedules that we'll be using. Classes will still remain to be 80 minutes long. However, Wednesday will no longer be a free day. It'll be virtual, 40 minutes of all seven classes. 

After the orientation, Beam, Psi, Rama, Dino and I went out to grab some lunch. There's this burger place near our school so we just went there and then after eating we went to Beam's apartment which is very close to the school too. Literally 3 minutes walking distance. Probably less. Anyway, it was a great day and I also got to see a lot of people that I know. 

3-day diary

Next up, a fusion of what happened on Monday and Tuesday, AND WEDNESDAY. 

Monday: 

So on Monday, I had a quiz in Physics class. It was a nice quiz though, and I had studied for this one. Basically, I had all the information down so I got through the quiz pretty quickly and got a full score too. 

Later on in PE, we had our "final online presentation" and it was about speed. That went great too, my group went first and got a 70/70. Plus, we actually sent it to her right after we finished so there was no way that she was going to mark it as late as she did last time. Anyway, my grade in PE isn't a 100% anymore but at the very least it's still an A+. 

Lastly, in Math, there was a quiz on the circle equation. Yeah, 15 questions, easy 15/15. Nothing much to say about it except for the fact that almost everyone finished in less than 15 minutes which is quite rare for this class. Usually, the kids in our class take like triple the time it actually takes to solve the problem and I don't know how, but they did it. 

At night, I did some problems from 42points. And we're going on to the next day. 

Tuesday:

Soooo, some big news for today. My parents got their first vaccine shot! Heyyy, ain't that exciting news! And I'm pretty sure you can't get the vaccine if you're younger than 16 so I'm probably not getting it anytime soon LOL. 

OH YEA, and in Spanish today, we had our presentation. You remember the one about the poem analysis? Yea we got a 92% on it which honestly, is not that bad. We only had ONE grammatical mistake thanks to Otter being part of our group and the rest of the points lost were because of a dumb mistake we made when making the slides. We incorrectly wrote an example of the application of a poetic term and we wrote the WRONG name of the term. Damn, we totally could've gotten an A. And yet we didn't. Sigh. Oh btw, we were the ONLY group that got to present that day so at least we get to sit back and relax on Friday since we already went. 

Wednesday:

All in consideration, not a good day. Well, it started out ok. 

I took my grandma's class in the morning, and that went swell. Right after, I got a haircut, courtesy of my mom. Then, we went straight to the hospital. Doctor's appointment. And we have a line. And a 3 hour one at that. 

Basically, we spent most of the afternoon and evening pent up in that hospital. Just for them to tell me that there's nothing wrong with me and that everything's fine. My actual time spent with the doctor was less than 7 minutes. Which cost 43 dollars btw. Boy, that's more than 6 dollars a minute. 

So we get home and I'm late for my 42points class. Oh wait, the AdobeConnect application wasn't working. How convenient. So essentially, I missed the first 30 minutes of my class. It finally started working after that. 

The rest of the class was just finishing the problems from the worksheet that we had started last time and also introducing a new topic. The topic of invariants. You know how variables are stuff that CAN change? Well, invariants are simply stuff that can't. Such things could be conditions in a problem like the parity of something, the sum of all the numbers, the product of all the numbers, the residue of a certain mod, etc. 

And we're done. 

 don't forget the round-trip

Saturday and Sunday. 

I'm just going to sort of, combine these two posts into one. So let's start. 

Saturday, this Saturday was the actual test. You know that mock test I took last Saturday? Today was the real thing. And I made some dumb mistakes. Which is exactly what you don't want happening on the real thing. Sigh. In the end, we got 9/12 questions when we could've gotten 11/12. So we got a silver medal, but I just can't help thinking about how we might've gotten gold had I not messed up those two easy questions. On one of them, I applied the formula wrong. And the other one was a distance problem. I had found the distance from A to B but the problem asked for a round-trip. And that's where I tripped and fell.

I should definitely read the questions again carefully after I finish the problems. Anyway, this was the main part of Saturday. 

As for Sunday. in the morning I had my grandma's class of course. However, Sunday classes are not completely devoted to enunciation, contrary to Wednesday classes, which are. And on Sundays, the main focus is reading more and understanding more information. Yeah. DAMN IT. I totally didn't forget what happened the rest of Sunday. 

Oh wait, I did a bunch of problems for 42 points at night after dinner. Yeaaaaa, and now I just want to hurry up and get all these past posts done so ill be leaving now, ONTO THE NEXT. 

"give credit where it's due"

And we're on Friday. 

This Friday was exhilarating. It felt like everything was under my control. Well kind of. 

The first class was English, but we really didn't do too much. The reason was that most of the teachers have already returned to school in preparation for the students coming back to school in a week. My English teacher, of course, was no exception. So, when the whole school's internet system shut down, the teacher could only connect to google meet on her phone since the computer she uses is with ethernet cable directly connected to the school's system. And on her phone, we couldn't do the things we usually did. That led to us just finishing the whole class discussion of the R&D questions, and we were let go early. 

In Spanish, the Wi-Fi situation was still not yet resolved until around half an hour after class started. This class was mostly dedicated to a group project on the analysis of a specific poem. Each group got a different poem, mine is called "El mar" or The sea. And sure enough, the poem is a description of the sea. It says, the more we uncover about the ocean, we realize the more we have YET to uncover. The mysteries of the sea seem endless, just like the sea itself. 

It's a beautiful thing, knowing that there's always more to learn. When everything is clear and certain, it feels like there's no fun because there's no surprises. And yet, when things are opaque and uncertain, people panick and are afraid to find out what's on the other side. That leap of faith. Could be only a small hop, and it's still what most people fail to comply. 

Fact is, I'm not done with the project. And I need to wake up earlier. For now, moving on to the last and final class. 

I was excited for this class. History. Ah, presentation day. I had talked with my team beforehand and we agreed on volunteering to present first. The teacher agreed. And the video started to play. Ngl, it has a bit of a slow start. There are a few surprises along the way, but the highlight of the whole video rests in the last 90 seconds. 

Haha, basically what happened is that I had Fox speed up my voice to 1.15 speed and that made my pitch sooo much higher. It was very clear though and completely coherent which is the important part. The cool thing is, it was super funny. You could tell that everybody in the class was caught off guard by this enthusiastic high-pitched voice. I even saw Dino laughing in the corner of my eye. Anyway, I'm glad they liked it. 

Now, we just wait for the teacher's final grade. The BEST thing about presenting first is that you don't need to stress about anything right after you're done. You can just sit back and relax as the rest of the presentations unfold before you. 

Also, one thing I did was that after our video ended I opened up my mic and gave credit to Pen for spending a lot of effort on making a nearly 6 page bibliography and to Fox for editing the whole thing together. It's important to give people credit for their work, and if you have the chance to do it publicly, it's even better. As Rama said, "You gotta give credit where it's due." It not only shows people that you are grateful for their work but it makes them want to collaborate with you more in the future as well. On a side note, it's a great way to strengthen bonds you want to keep. 

Okay then, that's it for this blog. Good night everyone

memory failure

 Thursday. 

Say, my memory is really holding up so far. I've been writing blogs from 3 days in the past. Now, of course it's more difficult than doing it the same day haha so, I'm going to need to brush up on my history. The history of the past three days that is. 

So I DO remember that I had my classes today obviously. 

In Physics we had more practice time on mirrors, reflections, and the formulas. The magnification formula and the mirror equation. Oh and there's a homework I still have to finish. 

Ahhh I'm on a strict time schedule right now. I'd estimate that I have another 3 minutes to write to I'm going to get straight to the point. 

Music, didn't do that much. 

PE, worked more on Powerpoint presentation, misread an instruction, had time to fix it luckily. 

Math, a non-graded assessment on circles. The equation of a circle. You know, x^2 + y^2 = r^2. The teacher took the whole class explaining it though so I really don't understand how people still didn't ace the assessment.

After school I worked on 42points worksheets and had a nice dinner. I don't really remember much of what happened after LOL. Good night

classes have been chosen

Going on Wednesday. 

Took grandma's class in the morning. It was a good class. You know in Mandarin, there was always this one sound I couldn't get exactly right, it was words involving ü. For some reason, I just couldn't pronounce it clearly. So in today's class we trained mostly on these words. And I think it's starting to become a little better. Little by little, yea? 

After a little while I had a meeting. This was a meeting I had scheduled last week because of a conference all the students had to attend. Each student in the 9th grade needs to meet with the advisor and discuss about the classes you'll be taking for the following year. I made an appointment for today from 12 to 12:30. 

It went great! I think it was way smoother than I expected it to be. Mostly because the advisor was really nice and humorous so I wasn't tense during the meeting. You can tell that she's definitely developed quite some social skills, well at least, from the books I've read on social interactions, I think she's a veteran. Sure, she's got way more experience on the field so that's possible too. Anyway, I still think that it's an amazing thing to learn. Not only do you facilitate yourself when you're socially skilled, you also make the other person feel more welcomed, more warm, and just better overall. I still need to learn more on that aspect. Oh also, I picked out all the classes I'll be taking next year. 

AP Physics

Pre-AP/Honors Chemistry

AP Capstone (required)

English (no other alternative)

Spanish (regular, not honors)

AP European History

Precalculus B (the highest option I can take)

And I also looked over the History project one last time. 

half decade

A memorandum of Tuesday. 

In English, we were divided into new breakout groups. I was super lucky this time to be divided into the same group as both Psi and Beam. Basically the most loaded group out of the few. In groups, we went over and did all the reading & discussion problems and finished ahead of time LOL. We ended class with a quickwrite. 

Spanish went well. I can't quite remember if I told you but in Spanish class we're doing a poetry unit and the last piece of work we had to do was to create our own original figurative speech, for example, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, and personification are some of them. Anyway, she had us show her our work in this fashion: 

In Alphabetical order, each student was to read out their example. And you know what? She said mine was the perfect example after many others had mistaken theirs. Boom. Jerry isn't that bad at Spanish after all huh? Oh yeah, the teacher also introduced a new project we would be working on. Poem analysis, groups of 3. I'm with Rama and Otter, let's see how it goes. 

Finally in History class, we spent it on just finalizing the project. Writing the outline, organizing, y'know. The usual things you do before handing things in. 

Right after class, I had a doctor's appointment so went to the hospital, which is right next to my school btw. I even saw some of my teachers as they were walking out LOL. Anyway, as I was waiting for my appointment, my dad went to Walmart to change my data plan to one where I can call without paying by the minute LOL. The hospital isn't that far away from Walmart so we just walked for like 25 minutes to get there. 

When I got there, my dad said that it was about time to change my phone. It's around 5 or 6 years old now I think and there really isn't any problem with it except for the fact that my storage is full... So, I got a new phone. Regular iPhone 11 with 128 GBs of storage. That's double what I had before so I think it'll last for at least another half decade LOLZ. Unless it breaks or I lose it, which in that case,  I might end up having to pay for it myself. 

So as you can see, fun day!

images

Recalling Monday. 

In Physics we talked about mirrors and reflections. The image that appears when you look at a mirror. Now usually, when it comes to plane mirrors or flat mirrors, the image you see is a virtual image. This means that your brain tricks you into thinking that the object is actually through the mirror. 

Now of course, in this day and age of technological advancements, we obviously already know that the object isn't actually on the other side of the mirror. However, this type of image is called a virtual image. When it comes to concave or convex mirrors, the image could be inverted (upside down), enlarged, and sometimes the images seem to be on the SAME side of the mirror. This type of image is called a real image. We also did some classwork. 

As for Music class, the teacher timed me for each of my 3 pieces to see how long it would take to play each one. Castle in the Sky was shortest, around 

PE, we worked on our PPT for speed, the next and final component. 

Math, some work on SOHCAHTOA

The date is set

Woah. Today (Sunday, Feb 28) was a really tiring day. 

Early in the morning, I had this Zoom call with a few relatives of mine for about an hour and it was fun. Basically, my grandma wants me to talk more with those kids and there are 3 of them in total. There's the oldest sister who is in 10th grade, and a younger sister in 3rd grade, and the smallest brother in 2nd. Sadly, I had something else planned too so I couldn't talk with them for longer. But then again, they live in China and the 12-hour difference makes it super hard to meet. 

After the meeting, we went straight to San Juan. That's the capital of Puerto Rico btw, and in San Juan, there's a special little part called Viejo San Juan. In that part of the capital, there's a ton of historical fortifications that the Spanish built here back when we were a Spanish colony. Anyway, I came here for my history project and I was meeting up with Fox to film a video of us talking about the forts. We walked all over Viejo San Juan and that took like 3-4 hours.

Later, I spent the rest of the day at my mom's store, since it's in that area too LOL and it was lucky that I got back when I did because as soon as I came through the door, there was a spate of customers. So much so that, at one point, there was even a line of like 5-6 people. That usually never happens. 

So yup, I got cramps after walking so much when I got home too. I guess I should crank up the exercise now that we're going back to school soon... OH WAIT, I forgot to tell you didn't I? Well, guess what? Our school is officially starting hybrid classes on March 15th. That's so insane. We're finally going back! Even though it's only for 2 days a week, that's still a lot better than none at all LOL. OKAY, that's it for this post. 

 catching up

So this is for Saturday's blog I think. Man, I'm kinda getting behind on these blogs so I'm catching up today. On Saturday the main thing was that there was this math event hosted by OMPR. It's basically just a test with 12 problems but you take the test in teams of 3. 

It's not the first time I've taken it, actually, I've taken it two times before and both times I ended up getting silver. However, both times before we got to make the teams ourselves so I was able to get with my friends who were all really good and by working together it made the test a whole lot easier. This time though, they made the teams randomly so your partners will be based on luck. 

Oh, and they made it so that each team consists of one 7th grader, one 8th grader, and one 9th grader. I'm not sure how it all perfectly worked out for them but apparently, it did. Today was just the simulation for the real test though, the actual thing is next week. Anyway, the 7th grader on my team was on a road trip to her grandparents' house so she wasn't really able to do much. The 8th grader seemed to be decent though. 

Too bad I didn't really get to see their skills in action though because I um, I might've rushed through and finished every problem before they did... And then I explained all of my reasoning to them after each problem so they didn't have much of a chance to talk... Wow, in retrospect, that wasn't very nice of me, was it? If it was just a simulation I should've used it to get a grasp of their strengths and focus on teamwork. Damn it. Sigh. 

Yeah, that's the main thing on Saturday and I don't really remember what else I did... SO I'll just leave it here :)

a limit

Hi. This is me writing for yesterday, Friday's blog. I cannot break the chain. Even if I only write 1 sentence for that day, I cannot break the chain. 

So, let's get going. Friday was interesting. After my defeats from Thursday, I went back into classes with a grim expression. Only hoping that it'll turn out better than the day before. So in English, I didn't participate much. At the end of the class, I stayed a while alone with the teacher to ask her about this assignment which I got a 4/8 on. She said I passed the sentence limit by 3 sentences and therefore wasn't considerate of my reader. When I was in the moment, I didn't know what to say. Then she shared with me a story of when she was still a college student. 

She recalled that in one class, the professor had all the students put together a portfolio to hand in at the end of the year which accounted for the majority of the grade in that class. However, the limit was 15 pages. On the day of the hand-in, there was this one girl who brought in a super decorated portfolio with even colored paper but it was thick. Way too thick to be only 15 pages. 

The professor then took one look at it and said, "You just failed the class. I'm not going to read that." The silence swirls through the classroom as people look on with faces of shock and disbelief. A fellow classmate was just failed in front of them. All because of passing the limit of 15 pages. So that's why she gave me that grade, to teach me to not pass the limit that's set and to be considerate of the reader that's reading your writing. 

However, my teacher is nice and she said that although I did indeed pass the limit, it was a good response. So she's willing to give me a second chance to submit another one. I already did btw and I'm thankful for that because otherwise, my grade would've taken a huge hit. 

With that in mind, MY fellow readers, do you have any suggestions? Anything you want me to write more on? Anything you want me to write less on? Any and all suggestions are welcome. 

Okay, the rest of the classes aren't too important because there wasn't anything that stands out a ton. OH WAIT. There's one funny thing that happened. 

So basically we were out on the top floor, open roof, with a lantern in hand. Now, this isn't your typical handheld lantern. This was a special type of lantern that had the ability to fly up into the air. It works exactly like a hot air balloon except it's a lot tinier so people obviously can't fit in it LOL. We let go of the lantern and let it fly. And, there was a problem. There were winds that day. The balloon was blown left and right and then suddenly descended INTO ANOTHER BALCONY. OH MY GOD. 

We were super afraid that something on the balcony would catch on fire so we rushed over to that apartment to tell them the situation. Super lucky for us because nothing caught on fire and there wasn't any damage. We apologized to the people living there and went back. Now we know not to do it on a windy day. Let's wait for a day without wind. LOL

a wall

Hello. I thought a lot today. But it's 12:36 AM. I don't want to say I'll write it tomorrow because I said that yesterday and I didn't write yesterday's today. I don't want to give a promise that I might not fulfill. I have debts that I still haven't paid. That's my focus right now. Thank you for staying by me. I do know that I will finish this blog. When? Hopefully, before Sunday comes around. That's as best as I can give you. Good night. 

Okay so here we are. Saturday night and I think back to Thursday night. This day was a sad one. 

First, in Physics, we have a quiz on colors and I get an 80%. A great start isn't it? Simply divine. Then we move on to Music which was probably the first break that I caught. However, this class gave me a deadline for filming and recording myself playing my two pieces for some sort of a "virtual concert" as they put it. But since it's going to be pre-recorded I don't think it exactly counts as a real concert. 

Then the second thing comes around. In PE we needed to present our routine for Reaction Time that I told you about before. So I was pretty hyped up as I went up to present. Everything was going well, all according to plan. And then, the teacher says, "You already sent this to my email, right?" And I reply without thinking that it was such a big deal, "OH I'll send it right now super quickly." "Then it's late. You were supposed to have sent this to me on Monday. You're going to have a deduction for that." 

Like a wave crashing down upon me, my enthusiasm levels just dropped. Not only did I lose points, but my whole team also lost points because of that mistake. At least we still managed to push through and finished the rest of our presentation without having any other trouble. 

Oh yea, as for my "love" life... There was something that happened too. There was this girl who sent me a text asking me to be her boyfriend and you know, I can't really accept that right now. Especially with all these problems crashing on top of me one after the other. I don't think I should drag another person in because first, I don't have the time to maintain a good relationship, and secondly, I'm exactly sure I'm ready for one either. Yeah, so I kindly rejected it stating my reasons in a truthful manner. 

Lastly, I had a private meeting with my 42points teacher where although I was able to solve all the problems he gave me, he told me that I was behind on work in his class. I need to catch up. 

So there you have it. Sure, I didn't write TOO specifically about each obstacle but I am a bit overwhelmed at this wall I'm facing. What's my priority? That's the million-dollar question now. Or is it, the trillion-dollar question? 

 

the best choice?

Hey. It's been a long day huh? Certainly has been. 

I took grandma's reading aloud class today. She said near the end that I've improved a ton since we first started lessons. She then admitted that at first, I wasn't speaking very clearly and she even had trouble sometimes hearing me through the microphone. Well, it COULD be the microphone's fault, but it's more likely that my enunciation simply wasn't good enough. However, now, I think that problem has mostly been resolved. I'll keep working at it though since that's going to be super useful for the rest of my life. 

Ah, at the end of the lesson, we read this piece of literature. It says that the best kind of relationship is that where even though two people may be far, their hearts remain close to each other and they often think of one another. It's implausible for two people to always stick together day and night so as long as they miss each other, they're inseparable at heart. 

So, is this the best choice a relationship can have? 

I can't really remember what happened the rest of the day so I'll leave it here. 

Immortality: Blessing or Curse

Yahoo! We made it through. This is the 300th post on my blog. Quite an accomplishment. Plus, the second day of the week is over. Tomorrow we have a recharge day but I still need to wake up relatively early for my grandma's Chinese class. It's going to be at 9:30 if I'm not mistaken which means I have to wake up at 9.  

Today wasn't a super flashy day. Classes went by without a hitch and nothing too exciting either. Nothing exhilarating. Nothing to get my blood pumping. I guess this is what it's like when you've just about seen everything. However, I don't think there will ever be a day where I've seen everything. That's pretty much impossible unless humans actually do invent some kind of immortality serum although I honestly just don't believe we will. 

Even if we do manage to make something of the sort, think about what would happen if we start using it. People will never die. Bad guys will never die and keep on doing malicious deeds. Eventually, our planet will become overpopulated without enough food to keep it running. What can we do about this? 

And after, say, ten thousand years, what if people start getting tired of life? What if they now want to die more than wanting to live? Life will no longer have the value it once did. It will never be as treasured as it once was. Now then, what's the meaning to live? Do you live to simply see another day? Do you live just to eat another meal? Do you live to only see another day pass you by? Does life have any meaning to it at all when it gets to this stage? You've seen it all. You know it all. Nothing is new. You cannot grow.

So then is immortality worth it? Sure, I admit that it's frightening to know that everything we know could vanish in an instant. Ha, frightening, who am I kidding. Dying scares the living daylights out of most people. I'm no exception. That's why it's especially scary when you start losing track of that. When you start to behave like a well-oiled machine with no spontaneity. Everything is planned out, nothing is uncertain. Everything goes according to plan and that's that. Do you want your life to be simply a well-executed plan? 

I'll leave that up to your own interpretation. As I said, today's classes weren't all that interesting. I guess a few things worth mentioning are that my school has sent out an email saying that we might be going hybrid starting in a few weeks. Might, because the government hasn't officially issued the order yet. One other thing is that we're starting a group project in History the next class. My group will be Fox and Pen. And I know that I said life should be more than just a well-executed plan but I hope that this project does indeed go according to our expectations. 

Good night and sweet dreams to all my beloved readers. Sorry for potentially scaring you with that bit of life or death debate. Thanks for staying :)