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.