I was at work on Friday and I felt so free. And happy. It's summer. I have a job at Ryerson, a volunteer position at Baycrest, an Ultimate team with my friends, and camping trips upcoming. I finally know what I want to do, at least in the near future. I'm starting flute lessons and I might actually have a shot at music--instead of what I always believed before, that it was simply too hard, if not impossible. I'm going to make music my life.

In all honesty, this year wasn't that great. I had very high expectations and couldn't live up to them. The lesson of the year--don't do too many things at once, or they all turn into half-assed attempts. I really wish I didn't mess up this badly this year. It probably killed my chances at some scholarships--but maybe this is what was meant to happen. Maybe I wouldn't have chosen music otherwise. Who knows, life is strange like that.

Right now I'm feeling slightly anxious again, mostly about the future. I don't know what's going to happen. I can only hope I like it. Or maybe I don't have to. Maybe it's the only way that I'll appreciate the good things, experiencing the bad and fighting my way out of it. No regrets. Life is beautiful.

Let's see... I had a billion things to do this weekend, but I went to a party anyway. It was Kyle's cousin Erin's 18th birthday, who lives in Barrie. Me, Brendan and Kyle took the bus all the way there... the transit takes a couple of hours. It was fun, we played a lot of video games, especially DDR! And we played music, they are more the rock type of people, but musicians nevertheless. We had 2 bottles of strawberry flavoured wine--it tasted quite good, I usually don't like wine but this was good. It was quite funny how everyone got tipsy, and there I was, the Asian girl,  having more wine than everyone else and not feeling anything. But anyway, back to being "good". Well, there isn't much of that. After I got home I just HAD to play through another chapter of Fire Emblem. I'm working on my Bio right now, which was supposed to be done for my group as soon as possible, and also my English essay needs to be started as well. Haha. I really fail at time management.

But this picture makes me happy.

The essence of Group 6

xoxo
dΦ

I GOT A COMPUTER ENGINEERING POSITION AT RYERSON FOR THE SUMMER

I want you to be happy. I want you to be stronger than you have known yourself to be, and I think you have it in you. I strongly believe you don't need to look for it, you have it.

It's in the eyes. The rest is a secret.

I was submitting this for an English "Bear Pit" assignment--I actually did it at school, and didn't save it, so now I'm typing it out from memory and changing a few things--and I thought I'd post this here.


    I wake up with a gasp, a feeling of dread in my chest. It wasn't a nightmare--no, far from it. It was a dream where all my wishes were granted and desires satisfied, and then slipping away from my fingertips as I floated back to reality. There's that terrifying ache again. Of missing someone irreplaceable. I cannot believe how disgustingly accepting I have become of life. Maybe the pain gets numb. It has to, time heals all wounds. But one day you'll wake up like I did, and you will have the terrible revelation that you've been "used to it" for far too long--the broken bits and pieces here and there. I start sobbing. Am I trapped in this forever? I want out.

xoxo
dΦ

I feel so very out of place. And caught up in a loop of wanting what I don't have. All the time. When I'm with my friends I think about all the work I have to do, and I wish I were alone instead; when I'm actually alone I'll think about how much fun it would be to hang out with my friends. And play video games and whatnot. School--I sometimes hate it, but when holidays come I feel kind of empty because there's no purpose... And when I skip class just to laze around and talk to people I don't feel any happier after, other than perhaps a brief moment of relief that I can relax for a bit. When school is all over I feel like I could've done so much more, but I just didn't have the motivation to at the time.

I am so bored with everything I guess is what I'm saying. Teenage laziness and apathy? I hope this is a phase--I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago and we know exactly what each other is talking about--and hopefully it will pass. I'll try to appreciate everything around me more, and take them for what they are... It's better to live in the moment rather than not caring about it and looking back and wishing I'd enjoyed it more. "Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have".

Right now I want to lie under a tree and listen to the breeze and enjoy the warmth of sunlight on my skin.

But I'll clean up my room instead.

Yay March Break.



I saw this in an InStyle magazine while I was working the other day, and I thought, what a horribly ignorant ad. Yep, so I decided to take a picture of it and show you.

I can bike again! Thank goodness for the nice weather. Me and Sammy went down to the beaches on Sunday and it was beautiful. The bike path was frozen though so we had to go on the road. Seeing the sun again after like 5 months was just amazing.

Aaaaaand, I have a banana guard! Found it at this adorable Japanese shoppe near Royal York station. So far 2 people have made a crude joke when I told them about it. Also I am buying a Gamecube from a friend for like 50 bucks.
TOPSody is not going so well. I don't have any good ideas...

The Three People You Meet in Heaven is a really nice, heartwarming, thought-provoking book. I think people would benefit from reading it.

I'm transferring to the Fairview library, I think. It's a lot nicer and easier to get to for me. I have to call the branch manager tomorrow, whom, I have actually met online. Yes, online. She organized this online forum for the summer reading club, and people would discuss books and stuff... I was a part of that. This is cool, my current supervisor also hired me because she knew me from summer reading club.

That's about all.

xoxo
dΦ

I'm reading this book called "The Top 10 of Everything 2006" that I found while I was working the other day, and here are some interesting ones I picked out:

OH MY GOD PHYSICS IS EVERYTHING

I just finished (15/16 questions) in my 2D Kinematics problem set. I still have some Bio to do, and then a film movie review, and I thought I could finally sleep before 3. And guess what, I FORGOT that I had an English assignment due TOMORROW. I'm... I don't know what to say to myself... I'm SUCH an idiot. Hahaha. I'm really laughing right now, but I know I'm screwed... well, I guess I'm not sleeping till 4 am...

I spent 30 minutes just now in the shower and it was heaven.

Let me tell you about my day. I was supposed to wake up at 6:30 this morning, so I could leave by 7:15 to go to Downsview station for a whole day of Ultimate Frisbee, but instead, I woke up to my radio with a glaring 7:29. Well, that's okay, I thought I'd still make it for Downsview at 8:30, so I got ready fast. When I finally got outside, the bus was JUST leaving. I looked at my watch and it was 7:46. So I waited for the bus for another 15 minutes. I get to the subway around 8:18, and just barely missed the train again at Spadina. When I got to Downsview it was around 9. Oh and then I got off at the wrong stop (the bus driver thought it was closer, I guess), so I had to walk all the way around the military base to get to the hangars. Hah. I'm not complaining, it's just funny that some days simply don't go your way at all. It's not over yet

We played five games in total, against Westview, PE Trudeau, Thornhill (B), Thornhill (A) and Parkdale. Our score: 2 wins, 2 losses, and 1 tie. I thought we did pretty good, considering that most of us haven't played since the summer. The first two games were fairly easy (although we tied with Trudeau). We were pretty pleased with ourselves for winning Thornhill by one point, because they were supposed be the best team... only to find out after that it was their less skilled team of the two they had. And well, we weren't completely murdered (one school was destroyed with a score of 43-3), and we ended up 7-15. By the end everyone was exhausted and we lost by about 7 or 8 points to Parkdale. Oh and I also saw this guy who used to go to orchestra with me from Trudeau. Go Cougars(Erika, Chris, Ivan, Evan, Tessa, Aline, Brendan, Ray, Will, and me)!

We left the hangars at around 4 pm. The weather, as you all know, was horrible. We ended up waiting at the bus stop for 30 minutes with the kids from Parkdale. There was basically no traffic on this side of the road, while the other side moved at the speed of a snail... A school bus came just when we gave up and were about to walk to the station, and the bus driver was so kind to give us a ride just short of the station. Thank you so much, Mr. bus driver. Everything was fine until we got to Broadview. There was a humongous line for the Flemingdon Park bus. We were waiting for about two hours before the bus finally came. Me and Will were hitting ourselves on the head because we could've gotten a ride with Ms. Woods... but we didn't, and got stuck outside in the cold for so long. But I'm happy (although miserable at the time) that I saw Tahbit at the station. We chatted about our lives, and he gave me some "advice" again on what to do with my life. Gotta love that kid.

I got off the bus limped my way home to "Make You Feel Better" and took a nice hot shower. And ate. Now I want to sleep. I think I will go now, I'm utterly exhausted.

xoxo
dΦ

Wow, discovered new cool thing about Photoshop: if you copy an image (from anywhere! even print screen), then create a new file in Photoshop, it will give you the exact dimensions of the image you just copied so that you don't have to manually adjust canvas/image size to paste the image. Isn't that so cool? No more fiddling around with image size! Yay smart software!

I find it stupid that we have to put labels regarding race. An article from 1917: "It is about 100 years since the first ice cream was invented by Sambo Jackson, a negro confectioner in New York". Of course, we don't use the word "negro" in a serious way nowadays, but I still don't like the fact that when we talk about someone, we have to say that "black" inventor or that "Asian" athlete...

Also, things like Black History Month, our school had a so-called "museum" of black inventors in the galleria. Here is my question: why does it make a difference if they are black? Why can't we just have an exhibit about inventors in general? That's almost like saying: here are some rare cases where some black people became inventors, but they are just lucky because of course we all know that black people can't do anything. I mean, there isn't anything specially about white inventors, is there? Why treat black people so differently? It's as if it is not normal for them to do great things for society, and that's why whenever that happens, people have to make a big deal out of it. I understand that people around me don't actually mean what they say when they make racist jokes, but this is entirely different. There's nothing funny about it, everyone just thinks it's normal. This is just another form of discrimination to me. To a degree it's just like the Nazis and the Jews. Might as well say, hey, maybe black people aren't people either. If we can't regard everything as normal and treat everyone equally, and not judge a group of people based on their skin colour, religion, or whatever else, then I say, no, that ain't right.

Wow, I sounded pretty radical. I'm sure people will disagree, and I'll try to explain what I mean/defend myself.

Edit: I just found this now and I'm getting more upset

*The above article (refer to beginning of journal entry for excerpt from article) is taken from the public record of 1917, and we apologize for the term "Negro confectioner", we leave it here for historical purposes only. Mr. Jackson was an inventor and a business man, and a clever one at that, the color of his skin was irrelevant to his accomplishments.

Okay, what the fuck, why do you even NEED to say that? That just proves my point, people (subconsciously) still make judgments based on skin colour or whatever. Ugh.

I have to think of ideas for Science Fair... probably going to do an experiment on light, sound and waves, or magnetism, or come up with a new "innovation" that would solve a problem (physics-related, of course). My partner and I have just decided to kill ourselves with work and try to make it for the school science fair (March 5th)  which is required if we want to go on to the Toronto-wide one. I can see the next month or so being VERY stressful.

Wow, we're back.

Wanakita was amazing. I took a total of 259 pictures. There was cross country skiing, tobogganing, quinzee-building (and sleeping in them!), movie-watching, and more! All my pictures are on Facebook, I had to make five new albums. Click here for them, but only if you have Facebook.

The best memory I have of it (while it's still fresh) would be cross country skiing on ... Green Belt Loop? I felt so free and the scenery was just amazing. I don't have any pictures of it because I couldn't fall behind and it was annoying getting out my camera and putting it back every time.

We saw three fantastic movies on the three nights we were there, The Italian Job, The Bourne Identity, and The Gladiator. I've only seen the ending of the Gladiator before, and I missed the middle again this time because we had to go put candles in the quinzees to make the inside icy so snow won't fall when we're sleeping. The Italian Job would have to be my favourite out of these three.

Me (Difei), Ben, and AK were Team BAD in the toboggan racing. It looked nice enough but we completely failed going down the hill, it just wouldn't go fast. The RAT (Roxy, Aline, Tessa) was the fastest. We attacked the teachers' (Mr. Fox, Ms. Wiltenburg?, Mr. Lang, and Mr. Chamberlain) team (Shark Attack!) with snowballs when they were going down.

Building quinzees was a lot of fun. I totally over-exerted myself though, I'm still sore all over. We had to pile up about 6 feet of snow, and make it into a dome shape, then pack the snow any way we can, such as jumping on top of the quinzee or packing it with shovels. It got harder as the quinzees were built up higher, because we had to get snow from a fair distance away from the quinzee as the snow ran out near the quinzees, and also we have to shovel the snow a lot higher. We built 7 quinzees which fit about... 35 people? I felt very accomplished. The next day we went and dug out the inside, which is a lot better than it sounds. I basically sat inside and clawed at the walls, it was fun and easy.

We slept in them on the night of the third day there. I had trouble with my sleeping bag so I wasn't as warm as I could've been, but I still slept relatively well compared to others. I woke up at 4 am and had to pee, so I crawled out in my pj's and a T-shirt with a sweater over it and only socks, and I didn't have my contacts on, so I was pretty much in the worst condition possible. I think I got sick from that. Well, I feel proud that I survived in -20°C weather without wearing shoes or a jacket for about five minutes.

I lost for--I LOST--a total of about 20 times on this trip, thanks to Will, Dennis, and Tanner.

Me and Nilanthy decided that Mr. Fox is probably the closest human we know to Fox McCloud.

Best toboggan team name: Thrust Master 69 (courtesy of Raymond)
Fastest toboggan: RAT/Shark Attack
Most people on one toboggan: ~10, and I was the only one left by the time we got to the bottom of the hill
The BEST toboggan, period: (no I'm not talking about my team) Ray and Parthipan with the hamster wheel. I'm serious, they ran downhill with a cardboard wheel around them and fell about three times, and kept rolling every time. I wish I'd taken a video of it but my camera ran out of battery power.
The BADDEST team!: Me, AK, and Ben. Go Team BAD!
Biggest quinzee: Chris' quinzee, which fit 8 people
Best mealtime song: Thank the earth! to the Superman theme
Most played song: Heart and Soul
Biggest target in snowball fight: me
Everyone's new favourite comeback: "That's what she said"


I lost. Dammit.

xoxo
dΦ

I saw Epic Movie today, was funny. Had dinner at Tako Sushi with Jeff, Sammy, Sai, Jay, and Navid. It was fun. I'M GOING TO WANAKITA IN ABOUT 8 HOURS!

Quote of the day:

Me: listen dudes, I don't mind if it's just one of you, but it's really bad when you all team up on me and do it together!
Sammy: well, we could take turns...

(talking about how everyone always makes fun of me)

SEE YOU ALL WEDNESDAY

xoxo
dphi

Man, I'm finally done exams, but I feel like such a failure. Calculus wasn't NEARLY as good as I thought it would be, and I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be either. I think I decided after the calculus exam that I would not study for chemistry at all. Well, that's my nth mistake. I definitely should've studied, even just a little bit, it wouldn't've taken me very long but at least I'll end up with a decent mark. And this whole semester, no make that the past one and a half years, I've practically done nothing. Nothing important or worth remembering, now that I think about it, at least. I've been neglecting school more than I should have. I mean, I just want to enjoy life and do whatever I want as much as I can. Maybe I'm going at it a little bit excessively. I don't know, this is weird. I've always put school as my top priority, I think, or maybe my parents did. Well either way I know I used to do amazing, even if I didn't try much. But now it's like... I know I'm not trying very much at all, but I'm scared that maybe I just don't have the... capability to do work or something. I think I've always despised work more than other people, and god I'm just lazy. I totally slack off whenever I can when I go to work, and I got away with doing almost no calculus homework this semester. And not much chemistry either. Grr, this is definitely something for me to work on. Ha. Work. I just feel really bad right now. I'm trying to be harder on myself. We'll see what happens next semester.

Well anyway, that's that. Today I did my chemistry exam, then didn't feel like going home so I went to see Children of Men with Weimond (haha), Parthipan, Dylan, Dennis, and Will. It was pretty amazing, although there were ~5 people in the theatre besides us, and I heard one of them say "that was a waste of a movie" or something similar. Anyway, I found it similar to V for Vendetta, it was set in the same futuristic and bleak British environment, with nice details such as government ads for fertility tests. Oh right, it's the year... 2035-ish? And the whole human race is infertile ever since a "fateful" day about 18 years ago. There hasn't been any births since that day. Interested yet? It's definitely worth your money, IMO. Afterward me and Wei spent about an hour in Dolorama. I know, we're crazy.

That's about it for now. Wanakita is officially in two days. Well, one more day of waiting because we leave on Sunday morning. Yay, I think we definitely deserve a break:

 "5 months of AP Calculus, 4 days of freedom, then 5 months of van Bemmel physics. Great fucking deal we got here!" --Parthi

And on a completely unrelated note,

"Bender, dating your coworker and primary mode of transportation is immoral, illogical, and a violation of interstellar shipping statute 437—B. " --Leela

I'm done talking.

xoxo

dΦ

Man oh man. I think I messed up on my calculus exam. Well, I knew everything I had to do, I just didn't have enough time to finish. The highest mark I think I'll get (assuming that I've done everything else perfect) is like an 87%. This is bad.

That's the first sentence a kid wrote in the English section of the TOPS exam.

"Well, at least they're honest" is what Mr. van Bemmel said.

(I have the new Firefox, spell check...)

Some kid sent in a DVD for the profile portion, and another one had a CD. The one that had everyone talking, however, was like a photo album of all their extra-curriculars and stuff. It looked quite good. A lot of people thought they were trying too hard... but well, can't really blame them.

I got bored about 15 minutes into the math exam and started wandering in the halls and visiting other invigilators. I ended up switching rooms twice. Me and Ivan were betting on who would make it, and we saw this kid who had the "look", and this girl that looked smart and had a decent profile. Lunch (pizza) was on Mac.

One of the math questions was the same as one I had when I took the test. Another one required trigonometry, and I think at least one you needed calculus to solve, but it was pretty straightforward. In the science portion there was one question where you had to calculate the kinetic energy, and we haven't even learned how to do that. Oh and there is heat capacity, which we JUST learned in chemistry. I remember it being easier, but maybe that's because everything I thought I did right was actually wrong. There was the pressure/speed question again, there was a diagram showing water flowing from a small pipe to a considerably bigger one, and you had to choose between all the possible situations involving pressure and speed and increasing and decreasing. E.g. pressure increasing & speed increasing, pressure increasing + speed decreasing, etc. I still don't know the right answer to it.

Okay, I'm getting really really sick. Sleep would be good.