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 :)

chatting is valuable

OKAY okay, today was good. Not bad for a first day back to school at least. 

For Physics we went over the test, and apparently, no one got a perfect. This isn't all bad because it means that he might give a curve. Oh, and it just so happens that I have the highest score there was LOL. Right after that was a little presentation on the light in the air. The molecules in the air scatter, giving different light frequencies, etc. And after was an EASY lab. You got partners too, I had Rama with me and we did the whole thing in no time. I think we'll get a perfect score on it. So basically, it was just like I had predicted yesterday. 

I really enjoy my Music class now because sometimes the teacher and I simply chat and talk about music. You don't really get a lot of chances to do that with other classes because there are always tons of classmates around and it's hard to get a 1 on 1 conversation started. Yeah, so I do appreciate the time I can spend just talking with my Music teacher. We also did some work of course. We discussed the evaluation he gave me on my pieces last time. I got As on both pieces which I guess is fine but could be better. 

PE was pretty fun today. You know how we needed to do presentations on reaction time? Well, Fox's group went first and they took up like most of the class LOL. So my group didn't get to go :( THE GOOD THING IS, his presentation was actually super interactive and we all have fun participating in it. Good job Fox! We'll be presenting next class probably. 

Lastly in Math, we worked in breakout rooms to solve some problems. They were simple though so it took like 10 minutes and the rest of the time was the teacher explaining. OKAY IF I DONT GO TO SLEEP RIGHT NOW MY MOM IS GOING TO SNATCH MY PHONE AWAY SO GOOD NIGHT!!

 tbd

Welcome to the end of the weekend. We're stepping back into the grind tomorrow morning, starting with Physics. I don't think we'll be taking a quiz tomorrow though, considering that we just took one last class. What I'm thinking is that we'll probably have another lecture on something, go over the quiz, and then some classwork. That's what he usually does from what I've seen. 

Okay, as for today, early in the morning I took my Chinese class with grandma. Today's class was nice and quick because apparently, she didn't expect me to get through all of her material so fast LOL. I have to memorize this poem for next time though, it was written by a guy from the Song Dynasty. Talks about what he sees at night when he was traveling and staying at another place. We also talked about a few other things but I busted through those too fast that I don't think I can mention all of them LOL. 

The class ended at somewhere around 10:40 and at 11 I had this PLC that BOP was hosting. You know, the tutoring program. So there was a 30 min presentation on motivation and then some audience participation. Right after, we were divided into breakout rooms with about 10 people each and needed to discuss one thing that we could improve our motivation on and how to do it. 

I'll finish the rest tomorrow. 

purposeful misdirection

Oof. My Saturday is over. LOL. Today was a relaxing, laid-back type day. 

From 9-12 in the morning, there was a sabatina hosted by OMPR. Essentially, once you pass the second round, they give these classes 3-4 times before the 3rd round. I'm not sure if they designed the classes to actually help on the test or is it just to learn more but, I just went in for fun. LOL. Oh, the 7-9th grade class was wayyy too simple so I had to ask my friend who's one grade above me for the high school class link. OH, and they were using Microsoft Teams which I had never used before so that was new. 

SO THEN, the rest of the day was just, pure relaxation. Watching videos, playing games, talking with friends, etc. Mhm, and tomorrow it's time for work. I've rested up so I'll be using up that energy that I saved today. 

As for tomorrow, I have one presentation to finish, some research needs to be done for Model UN... OH WAIT, I DON'T THINK I EVER MENTIONED THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE ANOTHER COMPETITION. 

So, the competition is going to be from March 19-20. The briefings haven't come out yet but we should start doing basic research to at least understand more about the situation beforehand. Btw, our delegation is Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast in English. It's an African country on the west side of the continent.

The committee is about Apartheid in South Africa and the committee will take place in the year 1961, or the year of Apartheid. We had originally chosen China thinking that it was PRC, or in other words, the China we know today, but then they told us that it was actually ROC or present-day Taiwan because back then China in the UN was represented by ROC and not PRC. Simply put, we got scammed. They should've put ROC China instead of just, "China". Purposeful misdirection is what I would call it. Anyway, since ROC at the time was actually pro-segregation, we changed delegations to Côte d'Ivoire.

Yup, so I've got that to look forward to tomorrow. Good night now!

a change?

Well. My fingers are already exhausted from typing that huge journal into my blog by hand. I'll keep it short? Yeah, whenever I say that, it has a tendency to be even longer LOL. What's more, I actually have quite a bit I want to write today. So let's get to it. 

The first thing I had to bust through was English. Supposedly, the mid-unit was supposed to be due today so I needed to finish it all in class, right then and there. Which, thankfully, I was indeed able to complete. The teacher did mention that it was a little too "wordy" and I should try to keep what I need and delete the unnecessary words that sometimes can confuse the reader. And now that I've reread it several times, I do agree that some parts do seem a bit excessive. I'm not sure what to do with them though. Oh, and at the end of the class, the teacher extended the deadline to Monday. 

Now, the scariest class of the day. I had the wig on and ready since the very beginning of the class but the presentations didn't start until like 25 minutes in. so I took the risk of having my camera off all the way until my presentation. Why? Because otherwise, the surprise factor of me having long hair wouldn't be as impactful. I'm fortunate that the teacher either didn't see it or didn't say anything about it though. 

Anyway, as I turned on my camera, I saw smiles and laughter lighting up the faces of many kids in my class so I had a great start even before I started fake-voicing. Oh and I accidentally misspoke once but I coughed to try and cover it up. Don't know if it worked or not but thankfully didn't affect our overall presentation which was a huge success. We got 100%!! YAYYY! 

You know, I do think that I've been through some sort of metamorphosis this past year. I don't think I used to be so outgoing and I was more of a shy type of person. I'm still reserved at times though but I think I did open up more. And here I was, dressed up as a woman, fake-voicing a Spanish drama in front of my whole class. Some I know well, some I don't, and yet, I didn't think much about that. I just focused on not breaking my voice LOL. 

So, History was really fun too. We went over a chart of questions that we did before and the teacher also gave us some extra info that wasn't in the book. And that was it for this super fun day.

See ya tomorrow!

 The Journal of an Escaped Refugee

Author: Jerry Chen

Social Studies 6-3

The Year of 2018

Sup. My title is Mahdi Matzliah the First. I've come a long way, an audacious journey. But, let's save that for later, besides, you don't even know much about me yet. My name is Mahdi, and I am an immigrant from Syria which implies that I am Syrian. Fortunately, you already knew that, right? OK, we're moving on. 

My family has been stuck in Latakia since the war started because we didn't have enough savings to travel to a new country and go in pursuit of a new lifestyle. If you know my parents' professions, you could probably figure out why we're short on money. So, I'll tell you. My dad is an artist, and my mom, an architect. They have worked together on a project regarding the new sculptures that were going to be exhibited at the center of town, and that's how they first met. Later on, they grew up to become married and have 3 children (that's including me). 

My siblings consist of Akay, my brother, and Azar, my sister. They were pushed into this world together, making them twins of a lifetime. They often cause trouble, AH! Off! I'm trying to DO something here! ... Sorry, those little troublemakers get in difficulties all the time, and then I'll have to be superman and bail them out. So, after you read all this and knew a little bit more about my background, I can start telling you about my adventures. I bet you can't wait. 

So, first, you need to know why we decided to leave. Although, leaving my country was never my idea. Even though the education quality in my school was worsening, I still had friends, and besides, I had feelings for my little town in Latakia. The main impulsion that enticed us to leave was the fact that people no longer needed my parents anymore in this deteriorating society of hatred that's found here in Syria. They're designers! Who needs beautiful and appealing sculptures and paintings in a time of warfare? 

What this society needs is food, water, medicine, shelters, clothes, and weapons. If only people could stop for a moment and contemplate what the outcome would be... if only people could use their minds that EVERYONE has by the way, and realize that a war like this has no end. It will only lead to more death and more sorrow, but I guess no one's had their fill huh? Because no one's courageous enough to stand up to stop their war, and I know, the rebels started with NON-violent protests, but why has no one from the government of Syria ever stood up for this cause? 

Is it because they don't want to lose their seat in the regime? You know, even if I was vice president of Syria, I wouldn't want to be part of the malicious organization that slaughters civilians of their own country every single day. This leads me to believe that the government officials of Syria have gone insane. I mean, if a child like me can notice and calculate the results of their war, what's different with a supposedly more wise and noble government official? You know what else I suspect? I think that Assad just randomly selected a few people from a psychiatric hospital to be his officials, that way it'll be easy to influence them to agree to kill civilians on a daily basis. If you think about it this way, Assad actually isn't studied at all. In reality, he's pretty smart. Thinking of this whole scheme to work against his enemies in his favor. So, let's get back on track. I told my reasoning to my parents, and they decided to leave this dreadful dwelling behind. 

After we were absolutely sure we wanted to leave Syria, we started to surf the internet for all the possible destinations that were available to us and we ended up with 2. Either Germany or the United Kingdom (UK). They offered the most money to get us started and to get all the basic necessities for survival. Mom, Azar, and I chose the UK mainly because they offered more money and also because we already knew a little English (or I wouldn't be writing this) and not have to learn a whole new language without anyone's assistance. Dad and Akay chose Germany because the trip was shorter and we could save some money instead of using it all just to travel there. I was thinking that maybe we could save more by doing that, but, what's the point in doing that when we could just earn more when we get there? 

I've always liked something Mark Twain said: "In 20 years, you will be more disappointed by what you didn't do than what you did." This quote keeps me going, because I remember I'll be better off doing it than not doing it. This is my source of confidence, my foundation of courage. That's also the reason why I was willing to risk getting caught or even risk my life to get the life I want. Being kind was a thing that I've always done, and needed no reminders on how to do it. "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." Also said by Mark Twain. 

Mark Twain had experienced a lot during his life which includes smoking although he's written a whole bunch of famous books, he was still an entrepreneur, humorist, and lecturer. Redirecting... So, we settled on heading to the UK after our debate and discussion of our reasons. And we won the debate mainly because I used another one of Mark Twain's quotes: "The lack of money is the root to all evil."

We first had to seek out a smuggler who called himself Samir, he had a wide network of friends and he had already made a trip several times before. His experience wasn't for show though so he charged $1000 per adult and $500 per child or senior. We told him our route to get to the UK, but he expressed very clearly that he could only get us to Germany, and from there, we're on our own. So, 2 days of preparing for the journey passed and Samir parked his black Jeep in front of our house at sunrise. We've already waited for him for 10 minutes, but at least he came. From there on, it was a monotonous ride. There were almost no changes in the view, just more abandoned cities and deserted facilities. We stopped at sunset at a nice little coffee shop on the edge of Ankara, Turkey. 

We spent the night in the car and started on the road again at 4:30 AM because we feared we were going to get caught and sent back to Syria if we didn't leave before the sun came up. My siblings still haven't woken up yet, they slept really late last night because they were really frightened by the new surroundings. They've never left Latakia's borders before, so this is a first for them, even though it was a first for my parents as well. 

We just made the ride to Sarajevo, at least that's what the sign says:

I don't even understand the language, but I'm taking my best guess. We took shifts watching out for strangers that might happen to be police, but thankfully, none came close to us. We embarked on our journey, once again, this time getting even closer to our destination in the UK. We made a quick stop at Vienna, Austria to admire the beauty during our trip to Berlin. Dad even debated over just staying in Vienna, but we convinced him that there were simply fewer opportunities in Vienna than there were in the UK. Finally, we made it to Berlin. 

We booked a room at a motel and stayed there for the night, luckily Samir's German was understandable enough for the manager to let us in. Early next morning, we left without paying because we ran out of money a while back, and plus, we don't have any euros on us and that's the German currency. We boarded a boat of Samir's friend and we sailed to Dover. We've arrived at our final destination, well, maybe not yet. We still had to move into a house and find jobs to make a living. 

I, Mahdi Matzliah, deeply wish for a new life. One that involves love and peace, without having to worry about dying in the next 10 seconds. Thankfully, the great United Kingdom granted us asylum and we are so grateful for this act, but we feel sorry for all those that were turned down, rejected. We do understand that the country worries that some of us are terrorists blending in with the crowd of refugees. In fact, experts have indeed proven that at least 5% of the refugees escaping from Syria are part of a terrorist group. Whether or not they are a member of ISIS, they have no way of finding out. 

There are hundreds of small groups fighting for territory and power over the land. I bet even God won't be able to tell when this large-scale war is going to end. With all these small groups, there is a great deal of hatred within the groups and with each other. Some are allies, some are enemies, some are neutral but still somehow found their way into this full-out war, with no end in sight. Ultimately, we have escaped the dark grasp of the Syrian War, with no intention of going back. 

This is the beauty of the United Kingdom: 

primary colors

Woah. That was fast. Friday is tomorrow? As good as the thought of Friday night is, I still can't help but worry about those two projects that I have to do tomorrow. The mid-unit and that dramatization. Am I ready? 

I have a plan for the Mid-unit so I'm less worried about that. The acting in Spanish, however, is a bit more... unpredictable. A lot of things can go wrong when you're performing live. I've practiced though, and, it's not TOO long. It's only one page. I got this. Oh, I AM putting on a wig. You know, be more in character. No makeup though, and for clothes, I think a simple white shirt will do. That's how people used to dress in the countryside here in PR so I'm sure she'll accept it. 

Ah. Moving on to today. 

Physics wasn't too fun. We had a quiz as soon as we joined in and apparently I got one of them wrong sigh so that's a 94%. Hmm, right, then was a presentation where the teacher talked about how colors mix. The additive primary colors are red, green, and blue. The subtractive primary colors are yellow, cyan, and magenta which are the mixes of the three additive primary colors. As soon as the presentation ended, there was classwork we had to complete which was pretty simple. And that's it for Physics. 

In Music, I played Castle in the Sky for my teacher and he liked it. I'm still working on that legato though. The fingering is more complicated compared to the way I had it before and if I were to play it quicker then it would get even harder LOL. The thing is, the school music teacher isn't a classical pianist like my piano teacher so he suggests that I play it in other ways other than just strictly to the beat. But then on the other side, my piano teacher tells me I have to be on-time and play it exactly how the composer wrote it. So I'm worried that if I lean too far towards one side then I won't be able to do the other well. 

PE was cool. We barely did any exercise and spent pretty much most of the class working on a PowerPoint about Reaction Time. It's the next component. This is a group presentation and I have Pen with me along with another girl. I'm friends with the girl though so this should work out well. We'll be presenting next class which means I'm going to have to organize a meeting between us this weekend. 

Finally, Math. We actually did something this class. It was a 50 point project on writing functions using Desmos. Basically, you find a picture of a parabola in the real world online and then you try to make that same parabola using a function. Oh and in the picture, there have to be a couple other lines too because you need 6 functions in total, parabola included. 

Yup yup that's the story of today. Cya!

classes on a no class day

Hey good evening guys! My break day is over LOL and tomorrow is the long day. Long as in, 4 classes compared to 3. HOWEVER, I'm more worried about the classes on Friday than I am about tomorrow. I'll talk about that more tomorrow. 

Now, today, even though there were no SCHOOL classes, it does not mean that I don't take any classes. In fact, if it were a normal Wednesday I would be taking three. Nevertheless, for today only, I took 2 because one of the teachers moved the class to next week because something popped up apparently. 

Okay so, first thing in the morning, I have my grandma's reading aloud class. Is it aloud or out loud? I'll search it up later BECAUSE IM VERY TIGHT ON TIME RIGHT NOW. So the class went great, and I think after the sessions my pronunciation and reading out loud skills DO in fact improve. Which is fantastic of course. 

The class finished and then I practiced piano a little before eating lunch and then depart tooooo my piano teacher's house to take my lesson. Once every two weeks, I have my lesson. Anyway, thIs class mostly focused on refining my Castle in the Sky piece since it's new and it's the one I practiced the most LOL. The two main parts I need to hone in on are making sure each note sounds out clearly and making my right hand as legato as possible. OH, we also went into Waltz in A Minor which I'm pretty sure will be the next piece I'll be taking on. I basically know half the piece already so, one more half to go! 

AND THEN WE WENT HOME. We ordered take-out pizza because my mom didn't feel like cooking tonight and then I did two exams of past OMPR competitions. That's about it. OKAY YESSS i have enough time. GOOD NIGHT!!

hoorah for vaccine shots

Shalom once again. There was quite a lack of teachers today LOL. Why do I say this? Haha, well, it's actually a good thing. Two of the teachers of the classes that I take today have their second vaccine shot scheduled EXACTLY at the time of my class. I mean, it's crazy lucky that it just so happened to be during MY class. And for TWO of them in one day! Yet it happened. And I'm pretty happy about it too LOL. 

Why? WELL, I was quite tense today in the morning just thinking about that Spanish dramatization I was going to have to act out with Otter. BUT THEN, the message came. The teacher won't be present for the class SO the acting is moved to Fridayyy. MORE TIME TO PRACTICE. To refine. Let's see how it goes. OH, and btw, I'm acting out a woman's voice. It's going to be a tough one. 

You see, I was initially pretty confident about my voice changes but I overlooked ONE key factor. This is Spanish. It isn't English, nor is it Chinese. It's Spanish. And I made a terrible mistake of choosing a woman voice part when it's my least fluent language. The voice changes are just THAT much harder in Spanish. However, we'll make it work. It hAs to work. 

My grade right now is a little shy of a 91% and that's dangerously close to dropping down below the A range. I canNOT take a bad grade right now. My average grade can't take the blow LOL. 

Okay so English was the only class where the teacher was present throughout the whole thing. And, it was all time for working on that mid-unit. The final thing is due this Friday too though, so, I WILL WRITE AND HOPEFULLY FINISH writing it all tomorrow. There is just one teeny-tiny problem. Tomorrow I have grandma's class and then I also have my once in every two weeks piano lesson as well. I'm not sure how much time that'll leave me for work. I just wish it's enough. 

Yeah and History wasn't very fun. I'll leave you there then gtg to sleep LOL. cya!

We have no way of knowing

And that's it for the long weekend. Heh. I had originally thought it was going to be longer than what it felt like. So I was thinking. What is life. Yes, it's a question with no answer. I don't have one either. 

What makes it so that we are sentient? What makes us feel emotions? Fear, anger, joy, love, what is it? Why was I so lucky as to be born in such an advanced era of technology and innovation? Why don't I remember anything from before I was pushed into this world? Where was I then? 

I once saw on a youtube video that we, humanity, are just a tiny speck of time in the desert of time that is the universe's timeline. What does it feel to die? Nothing. Not even pitch blackness. It feels exactly like what it felt when we weren't born. What does that feel like? No one knows. Will everything before my eyes right now, disappear? Is any of this even real? Does it matter that much what we do in life if in the end we just return to the void and we bring nothing along? 

Now, THAT question, I do think I have an answer for. Yes, I really do think it matters. Even though we don't bring anything along with OURSELVES when we return to the great void of nothingness, we've left something behind for our descendants and future generations. May that something be good. Or may it be bad. That depends on who it is. What is a person? A sentient creature of unknown origin who came from the great void of nothingness? 

We have no way of knowing and that's because, when you go back to that void, you lose all contact with this world. All the people you've known, the ones you've liked, the ones you've hated, the ones who've helped you, the ones who've caused you mishap, the ones you've loved, the ones you vowed to protect... they'll remember you for who you were. And not the particle of the void you've turned into. 

They'll remember you, and yet, you won't remember them. That's because - all your memories will dissipate. Or will they? Once again, there is no way of knowing. Will there ever be a way of knowing? We have no way of knowing that either. And that's why the world is so scary. There are too many unknowns. Too many uncertainties. Too many mysteries. And simply not enough time to uncover them all. 

OKAY. This has turned into a very philosophical passage on my blog. I'll leave it that way then. After all, not every post has to be describing my day. AND my phone was just taken away sigh. Or is it a dream? Nope, I'm fairly sure about this one HAHA yeah. It's gone. BYEBYE my fellow friends. Dwellers of this mystical world whose secret will never be fully revealed, sleep tight. Sayonara until tomorrow. 

Happy Valentine's

 Hello! I'm guessing you all know what day today is. Yup. Valentine's day. February the fourteenth. I mean, it doesn't have a large significance to me yet at least. After all, I've never dated anyone before or had any kind of a romantic relationship in any way, shape, or form. I have had girls I've liked before though, and perhaps, at least one of them is going to read this within the next 24 hours LOL. 

However, as for today, I just stayed home and learned a ton of math. Mostly on logarithms. School hasn't taught us that yet. Oh, and yes, I found that I could actually write in different fonts. But then, this font, I've been using for sooo long that I've begun to develop feelings for it LOL. 

OKAY, so anyway, my day was basically split up into 3 main segments. 

First segment: Grandma's "class"

"Why is class in quotation marks, Jerry?" 

Because it was more of a reunion than a class. 

"A reunion?"

Yes. Apparently, I have 3 cousins that I've never heard of before. They're not close cousins though, probably second removed or something close to that. Nevertheless, we tried meeting today using Zoom but, since they live in China, they're not too familiar with the platform and so just attempting to help them connect to one meeting took nearly an hour. Plus, there's a 12 hour time difference between me and them so it was their bedtime already. That's when we decided just to pause here for the day and try again some other time. 

Oh, but besides these 3 cousins, my cousin came today too. You know, the one in Germany. Yeah, so she uses Zoom to take her classes so she had no trouble connecting. After the other three had left, her mom decided to come in and take this opportunity to ask me some questions about my experience with... learning? Or my strategies? I don't think she asked me on one specific topic but rather just a bombardment of questions related to my cousin's difficulties in learning and how to solve/overcome them. 

Oh, yea, one of which was writing. How can I write my blog in a mere 15 minutes? I don't know. My blog isn't usually very structured if you couldn't tell. I just write whatever comes to mind. Furthermore, it is NOT formal whatsoever. I guess you technically could alter that if you were doing formal academic writing though. 

Okay I've spent too much time on just the first segment.

Luckily, there's not too much to talk about on the other two segments. 

Second segment: MATH MATH MATH

Literally like 4 hours of math. That's it for this segment. NEXT. 

FINAL SEGMENT: relaxation/playing. 

Yayyy, I played with Psi for over an hour after dinner and I had played a little with Rama too during the day. Mhm. 

Ah, it's time for me to go. Good night my beloved friends, and wish you all had a marvelous Valentine's day. Cya!

Interesting book

HELLO!! Aha, another day, another tale. 

Most of today was spent at mom's store. Helping out here and there, but the main thing I accomplished today was finishing one of the three books I had ordered off of Amazon two weeks ago. It was Speak With No Fear by Mike Acker about public speaking strategies. There were quite a few interesting ones. I basically finished this whole book just today LOL but I'll most likely have to reread it at some point to learn more. They say the average CEO reads one book a week. Let's get started shall we? 

Personally, the one strategy I think will help me the most that I learned from this book is to "Speak to people and not to crowds." The point is, when you're talking in front of an audience who you know nothing about, it feels like you're speaking to avoid. However, when you know some individuals from that audience and you've gotten to really KNOW them, not to just know their names, but them as a person... 

THEN, when you step up onto the stage to speak, envision yourself talking to those people. The people that you got to know. You'll feel a lot more comfortable knowing that there are people who you know down there and it's not a hungry ruthless crowd. And that's why it's really important to have the chance to get to know your audience before you give your speech or presentation. 

There were more specifics in there but I think I summarized it pretty well. OKAY THEN, tomorrow is Sunday. The first thing would be my grandma's class. SO, I need to sleep just a little bit earlier today so I can get to her class feeling energized and ready to go. 

OH and the sales today were decent. Not the worst at least. Middle-ground ish. Ah. I know today's post was a bit short so I wish I can make it up to you guys tomorrow. 

Boa noite a todos. 

welcome Mr. Otter

HEYYY! Today was a good day. It did pass by a little too fast though. Why do good times have to be so fleeting? Sigh. 

I'm low on time so I might write a bit less than the usual. 

I had my English class first period. She took another 20 minutes or so explaining or rather, reiterating what we had to do and how to do it. Personally, I think I might be behind so I'm going grind it this weekend. It's a long weekend after all, thanks to President's day on Monday YAYYY. 

OKAY next class was Spanish. Our teacher spent a long while explicating to the class what our new little project was going to be, a dialogue between two characters. A dramatization of a passage within the book we're reading in which we can alter some lines and such without changing the core meaning. Yes, two characters. That means we got to choose our partners. 

Now, I did something I usually don't do, I went for someone I've never worked with before. He's new to the school just this year and I've been noticing that for the past few group projects, he's usually never picked until the teacher assigns him to whoever's left and yet, his work is stable and up to standards every time. PLUS, he's a Spanish speaker anddd THIS IS SPANISH CLASS. Rama, Fox, they're all my great friends however, none of us are true native speakers LOL. So, I contacted him and he agreed happily to work with me. Yay! We'll see how it goes. We agreed on meeting up during the long weekend, preferably on Monday for him but I think I'll go a little ahead to see if I can do something extra. 

OH. Let's give him a name shall we? I don't know how often we'll see him in the blog though. Okay, I got the name. Otter. I think I have a thing for coming up with Animal names LOL. Fox, Toro, Otter... Oh well. That's something for another day. 

LAST CLASS IS HISTORY. it was just a full-out discussion on the questions we answered and handed in for the movie we watched. Yeah, our discussion can last for an hour. Is that long compared to other classes? I don't know. Tell me if it is guys!

AH, good night mis amigos! BUENAS NOCHES!

Chinese New Year!

Good evening!! Today is Chinese New Year's Eve. Tomorrow will be the first day of the new lunar year. It's the year of the ox. 

If you didn't know, the animals cycle every dozen years, 12 animals, 12 years. I'll list out all the animals for you. 

Rat

Ox

Tiger

Rabbit

Dragon

Snake

Horse

Sheep

Monkey

Rooster

Dog

Pig

Yup. I was born on a dog year. My mom, on the other hand, was born on an ox year! So, this is her year! They say that good things happen to you when it's your year, although, while it's not scientifically proven to be true, it's nice to hear. 

School still went on like usual though. In Physics we talked about transparent, opaque, and translucent materials. Transparent means that light passes through it completely, opaque means that it blocks or absorbs all the light, and then finally translucent means that it passes through but not completely. Half transparent and half opaque as the teacher put it. 

Music was just sending the teacher my recordings of the pieces. It took many, MANY takes btw. In the end, we got it done though. I just hope the evaluation goes well. 

PE was answering a worksheet of questions from the video we watched last time and then a Kahoot on Power and Coordination. I failed this Kahoot. So many of the questions that she gave were SUPER debatable though, and yet, she gave me a 6/10 because I missed 4 questions. Sigh. There goes my beyond perfect score LOL. Oh and then we also did a few exercises and that ended the class. 

Lastly Math, more problems with parabolas. Finding the directrix, vertex, and focus when given the equation. That was basically the whole thing. He said that we were going to have an assessment on that next class so I'm looking forward to that. 

Okay then, good night everyone and have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

busy busy

OH MY GOD. I have literally 7 minutes to write my blog today. 

Okay, start from the top. WE WAKE UP. No breakfast. Straight to class with grandma. Why do I have a class today? That's because my mom wanted me to take an EXTRA class every week that focuses specifically on my enunciation and articulation. The pauses when you're reading a sentence out loud, where do you add emphasis during a sentence, etc. Oh and emotion too LOL. 

The class lasted one hour. RIGHT AFTER THAT, I jump straight into a Discord call with Rama where we finish the movie we started in History class last time. My mom had rented it so I just streamed it together with Rama so we could discuss the questions together right after we watch it. When we're about to finish the movie, Psi and Fox joined in and so we did all the questions together. This altogether took maybe 2.5 hours, 1.5 hours to finish the remaining part of the movie, and then another one hour to finish the questions. I'm probably like 20 minutes shy or something. It's a rough estimate LOL. 

NEXT, NEXT, I talked like half an hour with Fox on the podcast thing, just discussing what we were going to do with the networking thing. Ah yes, I also introduced Fox to Fid but Fid had to go after a little while, however, it's one step closer I guess. What we want to do is to help Fid create her own podcast/website sort of thing and we could help her manage it. THEN, as Fox suggested, maybe cast some voice actors to turn Fid's scripts into audio format if we were to do a podcast. Monetizing the whole thing COULD BE AN IDEA TOO, but that's still quite far away from where we are now heh. 

So, I had my 42points class too at 7, right after dinner. That went on till 8:30. Finally, I did some more math, I watched some videos on graphing logarithms LOL. AND that's about it. 

OH, I RECORDED ONE OF MY PIECES. BUT, I wasn't able to do the other one cuz I kept messing up a note LOLLL. I'll have to do it in the 20-minute break I have tomorrow before music class sigh. GOOD NIGHT FOR NOW. 

lots to do

Why hello everyone! Let's get started with today's post right away because currently, I am very behind on time LOL. OKAY THEN. 

We have English, the mid-unit, first class. We didn't exactly start right away though and she spent almost half of the period just explaining it all to us so I didn't really get all that far. Luckily, the duration of this mid-unit is two FULL class periods so I think she'll at least give us all of the next class to work on it. AND even better, tomorrow is Wednesday so I can try to write a little or structure my ideas using tomorrow's time. 

The prompt is quite clear though, nothing too opaque about it so I believe I shouldn't be stuck on what to write for too long. Thus, the main part I need to focus on is how I'm going to phrase my sentences and what the impact each one should give to the reader. The worst part about these mid-units is that there's a sentence limit. 8 is the max. 8 sentences. That's it. No more. I need to skillfully convey all the necessary information and correlating evidence to my audience in those 8 sentences. And that's where I have to think. 

NEXT CLASS. Spanish. Today's class was quite fun actually. We had a short discussion on whether we would prefer to live in the countryside or in a city, and you had the option to choose both. So I just did that LOL. Oh, and then we read the book as a class. Since it's a drama, there are lines each character says so the teacher has a specific student read one character's lines for each passage. I volunteered once too. It wasn't too bad and I got to train my public speaking a bit I guess. 

After we finished the reading that we were supposed to get through, there were questions on the story that we needed to answer. Then we shared our answers and the teacher grades you on them. I got one point taken off because of grammatical errors sigh, that's 15/16 if you were wondering. However, it DID bring up my grade a little LOL. 

Then the last class of the day was History. This whole class was just watching this historical movie called Amistad. We didn't finish it obviously so I need to finish watching that tomorrow too. The teacher also assigned us a chart of questions to answer after we watch the movie. 

So as you see, there are lots I have to accomplish tomorrow. 

English Mid-unit

Finish movie & questions

and also record my two pieces, Autumn Leaves and the Elegy for the teacher. 

OH not to mention my daily schedule. LOL. 

Okie, now it's time for me to go. Cya!

lightyears aren't a unit of time

Today was quite tiring.

And we're going to start the mid-unit in English tomorrow too sigh. So much to do. 

Anyway, I'll get on with my classes now. We have Physics first. Review of the quiz we took last time and then a long lecture on Light. The history, what it is, how fast it is, and the electromagnetic spectrum. 

Light is something that can be both a particle or a wave. It can collide with electrons which means it can be a particle and yet it goes around certain things which makes it a wave. It has a dual nature. The speed of light is roughly 300,000 km/s. And a light-year is the distance traveled by the speed of light in one year. That was something interesting that I learned today because I had always read, lightyears lightyears lightyears but I never really stopped to think where it actually came from LOL. 

Next was Music, it went great. Smooth. I think Music is one of the hardest classes to describe because so much of it is just me playing and him listening for mistakes that there isn't too much to write about. Oh, he did say that if I wanted to I could record a video of me playing Autumn Leaves and the Elegy instead of playing it live. If I'm going to do that though, I'd have to record it tomorrow. 

I would prefer it I think because I mean when you're playing live, there's just too many uncertain fluctuating factors that could affect the performance. On the other hand, when you record a video, if there's an imperfection then you can just have another take. If that one doesn't work, then ANOTHER take. And you can keep on going forever until you have that one video perfecto, just the way you want it.

AH and now it's PE time. In the beginning, we watched another video from that series, Believe in You. This time it was an Olympic swimmer who had overcome a mental illness. It was a good video, I recommend it if you want some inspiration to keep going when you're having trouble with something. 

After the video, followed a discussion. The end of the discussion marked the beginning of the workout. It was tough. I was sweating profusely by the end of it LOL. I guess having no air conditioner on a hot day and doing exercise too might've been the cause of that. Since the skill-related fitness component that we're covering this week is Power, the workout required dumbbells to add on extra weight. 

Finally in Math, just more explanations on parabolas and some problems. Yup. That's it for that class. 

Okay then, it's just about time for me to go as well so I'll see you all tomorrow. Bonne nuit!

Three strikes.

Okay, so, today was a bit of a weird day. There was one exhilarating part though so I'm going to write quite a lot focused on that. 

What is this "exhilarating" part? Well, you need some background information from my previous post to really understand all of it. 

Basically, after we had sent out that letter to the teacher, they didn't reply until this morning. AND EVEN THIS MORNING, they didn't reply back through our original email. They did something EXTREMELY rude, in my perspective. They emailed our parents directly without even giving any sort of response back to Rama, Dino, and me. 

You know what I think? I'm fairly sure that they had thought in their minds that we were just kids who didn't like the class and wanted to back out without our parent's permission and that our parents were actually on THEIR side. WELL, MUAHAHAHAHA because you are very mistaken my sir. All three of us decided to join this class on our own accord, our parents didn't force us or anything. And this is also the trump card. I'll explain why later. 

So in this very short email that they sent to our parents, they essentially just said one piece of useful information: that they wanted to have a meeting with the parents to discuss this manner at 6 PM. 

Fast forward to 6. We're in the zoom, and the teacher starts talking. From his tone, you can clearly tell that he was a little arrogant and thought that he for sure, had this in the bag. He was thinking, "Haha you kids really think you can get off the hook that easily? Nope, I'm not gonna let ya, and as soon as I tell your parents, you kids are done for." Okay, that's partly my imagination but, I think he had at least SOME SORT of similar thought prancing around his head at the time. 

Oh yea, Rama's parents were occupied and busy at the time and Dino had told his mom that he could handle it on his own so it was just my dad, us three, and the teacher. When the teacher first saw that only one of the parents showed up he said something like. "I think we should reschedule since without your parents we cannot have any sort of substantial discussion." WHAT? You can't have a sUbStAnCiAl discussion with us just because we're not adults? THE NERVE. That's the second strike mate.

Then, I launched my counterattack. I had already let him drone on for about 2-3 minutes and it was time for our side to talk. Later on, my mom said that I stated our expectations for the class super clearly, and since it was all impromptu or on-the-spot as people say, it was even more impressive LOL. Rama even said that I was "clapping" them ROFL. 

Let me say, I did throw in a Membean word or two just to faze them a little. I can very confidently say that my vocabulary and pronunciation surpasses that of this teacher's. Of course, I couldn't say this at the time because you know, I'm a gentleman, BUT this is MY blog now so I can write say whatever I feel like. So after my shell shocking response, which I am very proud of btw, they got too carried away and used one word that you shouldn't say to a teenager. "I think they are AFRAID of competitions," he said. Wow. Did you just say that? AFRAID?? We only think that what your class is providing does not even meet the basic requirements for such high-level competitions. If you don't teach us anything, what are we meant to do in the competition? Make something up on the fly? No. Unacceptable. THAT'S THE THIRD STRIKE. 

As soon as he finished his sentence with the word "afraid" I immediately snapped back with a response. I think my public speaking skills are better than his too ngl but, you know, humility is a virtue as a wise man once said. AND MY MOM IS RUSHING ME TO GO SLEEP NOW SO I'LL WRAP THIS UP AS QUICKLY AS I CAN. 

The meeting finished with each of us having to write a final official individual email saying that we don't want to take their course anymore. And after I clicked on that "send" button, I was relieved. Really. Plus that clapping session sure was exhilarating so I was still recovering from the adrenaline LOL. 

OK, I'm going to sleep now. GOOD NIGHT TOUT LE MONDE!

The letter

Hey, how's everyone doing tonight? Oh well, I'm tight on time right now so I'll just get on with my not-so-fun day.

As you know, I had started taking this supposed STEM "class" on Sundays. Turns out, it's not really a class. They don't teach you anything. They just have you go into STEM competitions without teaching us anything beforehand and then that's that. Rama and Dino were sort of tired of this so-called "class" where all they do is rush you into competitions in the absence of proper preparation. 

Preparation and research are also what we didn't do when we enrolled in this "class" as soon as Rama told us about it. I mean I heard, "STEM class, with Rama and Dino, projects" and that's about it. They had both signed up for it though and so I followed without really thinking. And that costed us. 

Today we came to a decision, we want to back out of this class. "Quitting", if you put it in an ugly way. However, we don't believe that this is a total loss for us. In fact, we ARE quite interested in STEM but we don't want to compete right away in our current state. Therefore, I think we can look for an actual class where they teach material that our school doesn't cover and that would probably suit us better than this one. 

We met up today to formulate an email to the teacher saying we want to back out. Not too much of a surprise but, I did most of the writing and then they did some revising/providing feedback. I've never written an email like this one actually. It's a bit humiliating. You know what, for humiliation purposes in the future, I'm just going to copy-paste the whole email here:

Dear Mr. Teacher, 

We are grateful for the chance to have gotten to take your class, however, it is not quite what we expected. 

STEMatters was first introduced to us by our friend Rama, and we were very excited to have the opportunity to learn more about STEM as we have not quite explored it so deeply yet. Your class was first introduced to us on January 17th, the same day as that of the very first session. 

Knowing this, we did not research your class enough and failed to comprehend that the "Compete" class was actually for competing in competitions. We had incorrectly assumed that it was a class to prepare for competitions and not literally take part in competing. 

Now, we plead to you, Mr. Teacher, to understand that this is not in any way, a criticism towards your class. We comprehend our fault in hastily enrolling in your prestigious class before getting insight into the whole situation. We would hate for kids like us, kids not cut out for such competitions, to adulterate your class atmosphere with our incompetence. 

And so, with the utmost reverence for you, and your esteemed class, we wish to back out. Trust us when we say we deliberately pondered over this decision for a long while before coming to this conclusion. Nevertheless, we still learned a lot throughout this period, and so we deeply thank you for this opportunity. 

Albeit we are greatly honored to have attended your class, we simply do not feel as if this is suitable for us. 

Thank you once again for your class and everything that you have done for our sake. Thank you, Mr. Teacher. 

We really do like your class, sadly it is still a tad bit too soon for us. We would like to ask for a refund for the remaining classes we have not taken and hope to hear from you soon about any procedures we must take for leaving the class and receiving a refund. 

Sincerely, 

Jerry, Rama, and Dino

I applied many things that I've learned from the book I've been reading. I still recommend it if you want to read through it yourself, Dale Carnegie's How to Influence People and Win Friends. Anyway, the main thing I applied here in this email today was to make yourself look very bad. Yeah. And by doing so, be lavish in your praise and hearty in approbation. That phrase is repeated many many times throughout the book. So basically you are complimenting them and making yourself seem inferior. 

This often makes a lot of people feel good. I mean, it's not a coincidence that so many people have a thirst for superiority. Like the Spanish conquistadors with African slaves. They treated the slaves as property. To the Spaniards, slaves were inhuman. And thus, they as Europeans were superior. We were talking about that in History class the past two weeks. 

Anyway, I think I'm going to go to bed now. Good night everyone.

Networking

Welcome back to Friday night. Last Friday I had said that there wasn't a more relaxing thought than a Friday night. Well, I'm probably wrong. I often am of course. Usually, I would answer this question with, "it depends" and then maybe provide a few examples of how it differs. 

Some people could say, "Oh but you're not giving a clear answer!" The thing is, quoting from various people because this expression has been used many many times, "The world is not black and white; there are lots of shades of grey." Those grey shades are what I allude to when I say "it depends". 

Next time when I think of something even more relaxing than that of a Friday night, I'll be sure to keep you posted heh. Moving on! 

Well, one thing you should know first, there was no school today. Why? The reason we were told was "Professional Development" - however, our English teacher told us what really happened. Basically, today was originally meant for a professional development session between many private schools here in PR. Then, something came up apparently, and it was canceled. Then, the headmaster, seeing how the day off for students had already been put up on the schedule decided to simply keep it that way and gives the teachers an extra day off as well. I'm not complaining. On the flip side, my parents are. LOL. 

No school, no classes, so I go to my mom's store to help out. Wasn't a very busy day. Not too many sales, but enough to get by at least. I did do something cool today though. I did some networking. 

"What do you mean by networking, Jerry?" Essentially, it's building a net on my contacts. A spider web with people on each connection. Well, I didn't form a huge network in one day of course. Let's start off with who we're talking about. 

1st connection: Fid. Yes, new person. New person = new code name obviously. I'll give you a little background information first. She's a very passionate writer and loves her violin with fervor. According to her, for the past 7 years, she's been slowly writing a story. A novel. But not exactly a novel. She wants it to be a film. However, I mean, we're kids so we can't exactly get into the right network necessary to complete that dream. I don't believe the writing is all ready to go yet either though, I think she's still working on it. She already has most of it though. 

2nd connection: Fox. This one's been mentioned quite a few times. Anyway, recently, Fox has been working on a podcast. It's still a small one, with two episodes published and one on the way. Of course, they'd love more listeners, right? Yup, and so I was thinking, wow, Fid wants to show her story to the world, and Fox is over here with a platform that needs as much content as it can get. See the connection? 

Yeah, so I haven't introduced them yet but I briefed both of them on the idea and they both seemed on board with it. Fid said she'll give me the first part of the story so that Fox can read it over and decide if he wants to show it or not. I've read it before though and I think it's good so, if Fox has similar thoughts then it might work out. 

Oh and then a slightly smaller connection, I asked my great friend Canary if she wanted to help draw some art relating to the story. She's awesome at drawing btw. Anyway, I'm not too involved with this whole thing. I'm basically the middle-man... But, sometimes - it's fun being the middle-man. 

Okay then, thanks for tuning in at Jerry's blog tonight. It sure was a long one today haha. Bonne nuit!!

 Praying for the boost

Good evening! Today was testing day. I mean, I had school too but the main thing today was the AMC. So, I'll start off with that. 

Okay, I do not feel like I did amazing. Not as good as I was thinking, and my score really just depends on my luck. I guessed on four questions. Yup, you heard right. If I get one or two, it'll boost my score. If I fail all of em, then bim bam boom and I just lost 6 points sigh. 

Now, it's just a long wait. They said one week. One week until they give the results over to our teacher and I get to see if I was lucky today or not. I think I should get a 100. Out of 150. Which ain't the best I know, but it could be worse too if I got some of the questions I think I did right, wrong. 

I'll give you a quick overview of school today too. It's early in the morning, a bright sunny day, and no power. Great start. So I miss the first 7 minutes of Physics class but luckily joined in just as they were about to start the quiz. That I aced. EASY. Actually, one question was a bit tricky and yet, Jerry still got it. LET'S GOOO. After the quiz, we did a lab on frequencies and wavelengths and that's it for this class. 

Music, I played my teacher the part I just picked up yesterday of Castle in the Sky and he liked it too so now I need to finish learning it. Oh and he also said that next week on Thursday I'm going to play Autumn Leaves and the Elegy and he'll evaluate me on them. We didn't do this last semester so I'm going to try my best. I have a feeling it's going to cost me a ton of points if I don't do it well. 

Now, PE. A discussion on the emotional coordination video we were assigned to watch last class and then some exercises on coordination. Honestly, that's about it. She spent quite a lot of time on the instructions of the exercises because you needed equipment to execute them so that's probably where all the time went. 

Finally, Math. I basically just took this class to gather my thoughts and do the final prep-up for the test. Put my brain into go-mode and get my mindset straight. Let loose and breathe. Oh and we also did a few problems using the distance formula but those were easy claps as my friend Rama likes to say. 

Yup so that's it for my day today. I'll cya again tomorrow then. Sleep tight!

castle in the sky

And tomorrow's the big day. The official AMC10 exam is happening tomorrow, at 3:30 PM right after my math class ends. Well, I might as well use my lunchtime tomorrow to study a tiny bit, and hopefully, it'll help LOL. 

Oh and I don't have much time to write my blog tonight either because I was just looking over all the old exams that I did over this period of time and reviewing the problems that I got wrong. Sooo it's speed writing time. 

Today's schedule was pretty right actually. In the morning, I practiced a bunch on the piano. AH there's this new piece, well, it's not exactly new. Allow me to explain. 

So a while back I heard this cool theme song from a movie. It was the main theme of Castle in the Sky, a 1986 film by Ghibli Studios. Anyway, I really liked the piece so I started learning it. It's only two pages long but, I never finished learning it and I only got to the beginning of the second page. However, after the Elegy, Autumn Leaves, etc... I kinda forgot about it until today when I saw it in my folder and I was like, Woah, I'm going to pick this back up. 

So I spent around an hour just grinding that piece until I relearned the first page and part of the second. I think I might just learn this piece soon and then move on to the Chopin Waltz in A Minor. ORRR I do the waltz first. I'm still deciding. 

Okay, so after breakfast and a lot of practice, it was time to go take my piano lesson. The lesson went real smooth, and we got home at almost 6. Then, we ate dinner and I had my 42points class at 7 that lasted until 8:30. 

I played around for a little bit and then started reviewing more math. And now I'm here. So, the whole day was mostly dedicated to music LOL. Okay then, I'll go take my shower now. Good night everyone!

1 book/week

Weeks really are passing by fast. Would you just look at that, it's Wednesday tomorrow! Not that it's free for me or anything but there's no school at least. Oh, and another perk of it being Wednesday tomorrow is that I get to go to sleep at 12 today! YAY I was rushing actually because I thought it was at 11 but thankfully I just happened to remember as I was writing about Wednesday right here in my blog LOL. 

SOOOO I'm going to start off with English class aka the most relaxing class of the day. For today's class, it was a full-out discussion on the problems we talked about last time in breakout rooms so that part was very entertaining. It was also super fulfilling to hear the teacher applaud and praise my teammates when they read out the response that I had written for a question. After that, it was quick-write time. Speaking of which, I still need to turn in one quick write soon. I will do that tomorrow. Remind me if I forget. 

Next up on my schedule ISSS Spanish. First was a discussion to liven up the classroom. Today it was on stuff that distances you from yourself. Yeah, a bit of a tricky concept to grasp, I know. Some examples that were brought out in the class were when you get mad, you tend to give in to your emotions and act not like yourself. Another one was peer pressure. After this discussion, we read a passage from a book that we're working on. It's called La carreta. The story is about Puerto Rican farmers that leave for New York in search of better opportunities but are met with obstacles such as language and education. We only read a little part of the introduction today though. After reading, we answered a few questions, and we're outta class. 

Finally, History. This class was a working class which means that the teacher didn't really talk or lecture about anything and we just took the whole period to work on an assignment that we were given. In the case of today, it was to take notes on a whole chapter in the textbook and then fill out a chart of questions that she provided us with. We had until 4 to submit but I was able to finish a little bit before. 

OH and, I just ordered 3 books off of Amazon to read. They say that a good CEO reads one book a week. Well, let's give it a try, shall we? 

Okay then, I'll be going to prepare for bed now then. Good night!

harmonics

Hello and good evening! We're back and it's Monday. The beginning of a whole new week. Well technically, by the time you read this, it's probably already Monday night or more likely sometime even later than that. Nevertheless, today wasn't a bad start. Allow me to tell you more about it. 

We wake up in the morning to jump straight into Physics. We didn't have a quiz today because we already had one last class on Thursday but we did talk more about sound. The thing we talked most about was harmonics. The first harmonic has a wavelength of two times the length of the string that it is being played on, for example on a guitar. The second harmonic has a wavelength of the exact length of the string. 

There's a formula for the relationship. Lambda, or the wavelength, of the nth harmonic, is equal to 2L/n where L is the length of the string. And n goes from 1, 2, and all the way up. We also talked about some other stuff but this was the main thing. Other than the lecture we were assigned to complete a few problems too for homework although I was able to finish them rather quickly. 

As for PE, the skill-related fitness component we're working on THIS week issss coordinationnn. yayyyy. We did a few exercises based off of this specific component and completed a worksheet on it too. Then, my power went out. I was unable to go into the classroom for the rest of the class after that but luckily I didn't miss out on much and I know what the homework for it is too.

Lastly, we have Math. We're actually speeding up a little bit and we watched a few videos on conics and parabolas. We didn't really do too many problems, however, I think we will be starting soon. Finally, some new material LOL. Okay then, I'll get some sleep before classes tomorrow. Good night!