New Years fireworks (actually on December 31/jan 1). They're waaay better than ours. The countdown was every couple levels on Taipei 101 tower lighting up and then they shot a ton of fireworks from all the sky scrapers. I'm jealous.

So...little kids in Taiwan are really weird. They get attached really easily. lol. A younger cousin who I only met three years ago (and she doesn't even remember me...I think she was 4 at the time or something) really really likes me. I spent three days at my grandparents so she was with me a total of....6 hours? After I left she started bawling so much that no one could stand it and my aunt ended up slapping her to get her to stop (she couldn't take it. and that kid is obnoxious. if she's in the house you know she's there). but she kept crying! so they were like "it's okay! she'll come back in the summer!" "really?" *stops crying immediately* haha.
and then apparently she felt bad because she didn't give me a gift (?) so she was like "big sister! you're going to get so many presents in the summer when you visit! you can't even imagine what you're going to get!" and then I found out that she started selling her toys on the street! She's selling her own toys to make money to buy me something! This from a grade schooler that I probably only talked to for an hour or two.
It's cool but I'm still freaked out.
I also met the rest of my step mom's extended family in Taipei. I really like them cuz they're a lot closer to my age than my cousins from my mom's side or dad's side. We stayed with them for two days. The day after I leave my step cousin (?) starts complaining to my step mom (cuz she for three more days after we left) that she already is starting to miss me. haha. her grandma overhears her and gives a whack on the backside of her head. she was like "I've raised you for 10 years and you only miss this big sister that you've only known for 2 days!? what?!"

Definitely going back to Taiwan over the summer. I'm making about 700 a month right now from three jobs $_$.

We went to my dad's house and there were 9 nephews/nieces that I had never met/no idea about. NINE! That means in the last three years, there's been nine more babies....from my cousins. Of all the cousins older than me, there's only ONE that isn't married and that's cuz she doesn't want to be married. There are still a few...maybe 5-6 cousins that are younger than me. ahhhh.

...more taiwan and work stories later ...probably? (the people on my dad's side of the family are like rabbits!)

------------------
So my car ran completely out of gas last last saturday. It started doing spurts of acceleration and I was like hmmm something wrong. It started going up the hill at 5th avenue and columbia. Got alll the way down chicago almost to the street light with Charles st. before it was just like...'um not going up that hill'. but it wouldn't let me brake and I was slightly up the hill...
yay for parking brakes!
and then I called the restaurant and asked them to get me gas. =D
and then that same night I went to their house after the restaurant closed up (and I filled up) and we played mahjong until 1am. My boss is really good at mahjong. I'm not even sure whether or not my dad is better than him. I'd really want to see a game between the two. mahjong face off haha.

-------------------
bwahahaha
Lindsay finally played it right today! yay!
so I got to go to two new years parties and a mardi gras party over the weekend. My mom came up with the best plan ever. lol. she was hosting a new years party on saturday but I wanted to leave it for my mardi gras party later at night. So she was like...hmm okay you can leave at 9 and announce it to them so that they'll leave too.
she figured that by 9 she'd be tired and the party would be pretty much over. so we purposefully left my car in the garage and then around 9 I was like...'ummm I actually have to go now...is anyone parked on the right side of the driveway?" etc. It totally worked. it was amazing. They were all like 'oh! yeah yeah, I should go too it's getting late and I have a long drive home blah blah"
yep.
fun stuff.

on the espn channel in taiwan half the time I saw it they were showcasing pool and ping pong. it was pretty funny.
The metro in Taiwan is so cool! the subway whatever it's called. You can get multiple use cards like our cta...except that these cards are have sensors in them so you don't even have to put them in or anything, you just pass it above the sensor thingy and it beeps and you can go.
and then if you're just passing through and only want one ticket or something, you get a plastic token that's sensored too! except that on the way out of the other station you have to insert it to get out of the station so that you can't keep it. (otherwise I definitely would have).
=D
I'm going back to Taiwan in the summer for a month. yay!

...anyhow I was really really really bored in french today. we were just in the computer lab doing nothing so I google searched how to kill a chicken (I was feeling a little frustration at my stupid french teacher =p)
the first result was some kind of forum and the topic starter was like "so I have three hens that haven't been laying really well for the last three years, I figure it's about time for them to go. How do you kill a chicken? I don't believe those people who say you can just twist and pull and their heads come off. that's just stupid. I heard that if you turn it upside down and twist their necks three times and then pull down really hard, their heads come right off. Is this true?"
lol. and then one guy was like 'just grab them by the necks and pretend its a bullwhip'
all the other ppl just start recounting horror stories of headless chickens chasing after them and some weirdo is like "the axe is the best! use an axe!"
finally someone posts something along the lines of 'oh poor chickens! don't kill them! they've served you so well etc. etc."
and the original guy is just like 'well I bought them to make a profit and if they aren't laying they're really no use anymore. if you want them to keep living, you can send a donation to me to pay for their food and caring for them. In return I'll send you photographs and two nice big bags of the manure they produce every week."

lol. anyways, it was just something weird that I found. caught one of the people i tutor playing gunbound when I went over last week. he's only in 5th grade. good times.

....read questionable content webcomic! it's amazing. =D or just read it today. it's so funny.
The funniest webcomic in the world

I threatened my stand partner (cuz she's first chair!). I've had enough of mess ups during a solo that you could play with one year of experience, not to mention 9. okay a few mess ups during sight reading whatever. messing up an entire week even though you practice almost every day...fine.
Messing it up an entire month is just downright....crappy. First she made a tied quarter note (which is two beats) three. that's kind of whatever. but at the end of the month she made a half note (two beats again) five beats! and she would've kept playing that note except that I waved my bow in front of the sheet music like 'stop! please just stop!'.
aaaaaaaaaargh
so I threatened her. that made me feel really good. She's playing terribly cuz she's nervous and she's a follower. I figure a threat to make her more nervous will either make her overcome her nervousness and play it right or it'll do nothing. If she keeps messing up, I've thought of a few schemes...maybe a few bruises...a broken arm...=D
I have so much repressed anger in orchestra.


...I've missed live journal. It's good to be back.

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2006/12/06/ohgizmo-holiday-giveaway-1200-worth-of-stuff-and-counting/
Very very cool stuff.
=D

BOO.

things to do tonight:
APUSH paper
APlang research (choke*)
POW
All Chem hmwk
RB (fat chance)

another late night up...cries*

YAY!
I love snow.

...still have to work though.

whoo. definitely need to catch up on reading...darn.
anyhoo. there's so many links! It's so confusing...

so I had an exciting morning today...

mom shakes me. I ignore her. Respond yes when she asks whether today is a late arrival day (have no recollection whatsoever of any of this). Wake up at 10. freak out.

yep.

have a B in gym. mildly depressing. anyone wanna burn 'acceptable' cds for me for gym? I'll pay you. I'm missing 20 pts or something. garr.

amusing trivia about hakkanese: "Really?" translates literally into 'Does it have a shadow?' =P They're so incredulous and suspicious. I dunno. I found that funny. and they don't say hello or how are you or anything like that. their greeting is "oh, you have time to visit?/do you need something?" haha sounds so unwelcoming.

anyway...back to studying for apush, chem, and math...

chocolate cake tomorrow morning! just find my table (w/ peter, yifei, brian, justin, rebecca, tegan, erin, allison, eric etc.)
I'll try to save a couple slices for you poor, deprived fellow tutors this time =P

so...tutoring someone going into fourth grade and the ONE book that they have admitted (And this is a guy...) they like is The Tale of Desperaux

any recommendations for books that someone who likes that book might like?

haha I'm so bored. Tutoring the fourth grader is fun though. see xanga for amusing stories. =D
tutored Annika in Mandarin. haha we must've spent half an hour just on the pronunciation of 'I don't know'

anyway...just updating cuz I'm really bored.

I should practice viola...but meh. don't think it'll really do anything.

lol. Seriously don't know what to say in the letters anymore. as amusing as they are...we now just have a bunch of hints and problems that could be really useful with one main problem but so far we haven't made up a problem yet. so...
write! write! write!

I got in! whew.

I think I might start posting up the letters somewhere. Would that be okay with you guys? I'm fine with not posting them too. =D

hehe I love that kitty.

I haven't gotten a reply from YSP yet! gah. Two other people already got in and they got their letters the same day. So now I'm REALLY worried that I got rejected. Especially since the person who used to do the admissions isn't there anymore.
eek!
If I don't get in, my world is going to crash. I love this camp. I don't actually like learning math, though sometimes it's cool cuz it's just so crazy what they figure out, but I LOVE the experience.
There's just something about sticking with a tiny group from Naperville and going to this camp.
We get up 7 or earlier, take a train to chicago union station, then a bus to the University of Chicago, then stick around at starbucks/barnes and noble for an hour before class. Get an hour break for lunch where they give us 4 dollars to buy lunch, then hang around after class for a couple hours before the bus comes, and then the train ride home.

When I put it that way, it sounds really boring, but there's so much that can go on.
Like last year...trying to put a lightning bolt on someone's forehead while they were sleeping because they totally looked like an azn Harry Potter.
Or turning my head really fast between (green tinted!) windows to catch 'maximum' sight of the outdoors when I was really bored and everyone in the group joining in.
And having crowd weaving races when we had to get off the train.
And that was just two days out of 20-some in the train.

I won't lie. We played A LOT of card games. But having to hang around together in our little group of 4 ish people, and being the only ones in the camp from Naperville, for at least 4 hours a weekday for a month gave us crazy inside jokes.
And it was just plain awesome.

So if I don't get in this summer, I'm going to die. Horribly. And it doesn't really matter all that much what else is going on because, as exciting and interesting anything else is, I look forward to this camp from the day it ends through the whole year, and I save the whole month of July for this thing.
And I've already gotten in for the past 3 years in a row.
So if I don't get in, I'll probably go crazy. In a very bad way. And from math camp withdrawal, no less.

gah. Double procrastination. Never thought that was possible but it is. messing with xanga and lj at the same time. Sad I know.
OMG (yes it starts now hahaha) I love this drama.


That part was the most pictoresque, cool kung fu part. It was so synchronized! and cool. I've said that before but I have to say it again. (and no the pictoresque and cool part is not just where they stand around him in a circle. duh. =P)
hehe. Spent a long time finding pics and music from this drama.
And my mom heard the music and was like...we should watch that again. So she called someone to ask if we could borrow it. And we're going to watch it again. ALL 40 disks of it! YAY! I love their costumes. I can almost guaruntee that anyone else watching, whether they can understand it or not, will love their costumes too.
wonderful wonderful pictures here: http://xajhpics.tripod.com/index.htm
unfortunately it's mainly of the cast people. but still. Vunderful.

Between that, tutoring ppl, the letter game, renaissance, YSP, instrument camp, and possibly a job, I will be very busy indeed.
well. I signed off on AIM about an hour ago. But then I was busy with xanga and posting in lj. So I'm one short paragraph into my hmwk. Only 29 more to go! whopeee. If I were to actually concentrate I could probably get a paragraph done every couple minutes. apparently I type over 100 wpm or something.


anyway, this actress is so pretty (too bad she has a white person's nose...) and she gets all the coolest costumes and such. Plus she fights and she's actually good at it (in the movie) AND she looks cool fighting, due to the awesome costumes no doubt.
I'm about done. And I'm getting the strange opening song (it starts with a yodel or something) stuck in my head too.
back to hmwk!

hehe. I've been restraining myself from typing OMG because that just seems like such a weird thing for me to type. But I just realized that I've already typed it! Just three entries before! Hah! Guess what that means!
I'm free! to type OMG as much as I want. That's right. I will grow progressively ditzier from now on! And I or You cannot stop me. BWAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

booooooo YAH.

Long live the reign of strangeness.

Welp. I'm back. For the meanwhile. I've been sooo addicted to xanga though. If you check it you'll notice that I posted like..more than once per day. Almost like how I was when I was addicted to livejournal...hmmm...

Anyways. I read about a letter game and I think it's pretty cool. Apparently it originated as an acting activity or something...?
Each person writes letters to the others in persona so to speak. In other words, pretending they're a character of the story. The one rule is that the authors of the letters cannot reveal their idea of the plot to any of the other authors.
I suppose they all would have to work out the setting though.
Heres a wiki link that explains it a lot better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games/Letter
Anyone interested?

I've made a new livejournal where I'll be posting chapters of the story I'm writing. You're welcome to read it and give input. username is musicalcirum (or just click on musical circumstances link)

OMG. I kept seeing these WriYe goals in the april fools thingy so I looked it up. It's a writing goal for the entire YEAR. National Novel Writing Year. Daaaaaaaaaaaarn. That's insane. Some of these people are going for millions of words. Starts Jan 1st ends Dec 31st.
Whooooeee.
anyways, their base this year is on livejournal. so just search for the username wriyeadmin if you want to know more.
http://wriyeadmin.livejournal.com/

gotta say...still like nanowrimo better.

I haven't posted or even been here for so long. I'm sorry! I promise I'll start reading your posts to get caught up soon...badminton is such a leech. As soon as April is over, I'll definitely be back.

Wow...so much procrastination...kind of funny actually. Didn't start homework until 8-9 ish and ended at 1. Day before didn't start until 7? and then procrastinated on speech until 12, deciding not to do it after all. That was pretty interesting.

Johari Window

Did I mention that my mom got tipsy the other weekend? She was kind of stressed, and drank a teacup full of wine stuff like water. We were just about to drive to her performance (another Hakkanese one, thank goodness all of it is over) and she goes " Emily? I think I'm drunk"
yeah, you can imagine my response. "WHAT???!??!?!"

So I ended up driving, it was pretty funny.

Anyways, one of my friends got tricked into removing her moles. yeah. Asian. 8th grade. Her mom told her they were going to the chinese market about 30 min. away and she took her to the doctor instead to get them removed. by laser.
Ouch ouch ouch ouch.

err...update later? Anyone going to spring?

I love college mail. It's like 'Yes! I'm worth postage!'
Anyways, my weekends suddenly seem kind of busy. I didn't think I had anything this weekend, but of course I was wrong. Again.
Whatever, not like I'm planning on doing homework at night anyhow.
And thank you Steph and Cathy for visiting Baskin Robbins! My arm was definitely dying, but it was fun.

Got assigned a freshman for tutoring. Yay! And it got me to thinking: What if I hadn't been put into PI or advanced math?
I don't know...it would just be kind of strange. What would my writing be like? What is it like to be unable to construct a thesis statement, to not even know what that is, and to look at my writing and not know what's wrong with it? And advanced math...what would it be like not to know how to use a variable, to not be able to understand what it stands for?
It freaks me out. And I am so very very very glad that I did well enough on a standard test that they put me in those two classes. Cuz they're the only sorts of classes in school that I'm guaranteed to love. Yep. That's right. Language art and math are my two favorite subjects.

I wonder what it's like to not have homework almost every day. It'd just be too good to be true, but I think I'd start lacking some sort of purpose. I'd be reading a book a day, finishing korean dramas within the week, watching all the movies in theatres on weekdays (which boggles my mind), actually sleeping...so strange. I'm so glad that I have homework, and that I can ditch homework to do what I want.

Talked to a friend on the bus. She's a junior. I feel so sorry for her. All she does is go home and do homework, except dinner, until bedtime. Even on weekends, that's all she does. Her mom doesn't let her out so she can't really do anything else. She's gotten straight A's every year and she's 8th in the class, but I don't think I could live with that sort of life.
So so so very glad that my mom is so liberal, heh, Americanized I guess you could say. But it's true, she let's me do almost anything I want, she's probably freer than a lot of real American families. She doesn't care if I get a B, just as long as I tried my best (which isn't even the case sometimes now =/) It's great.

Anyways, glad all those Hakka performances are done now. People don't have to come to our house anymore.
I don't really like it when we have guests. It isn't the cleaning and preparation that makes me uneasy, it's the prospect of all those adults watching me and comparing me with their own children. Of course, it's easier with close family friends (and by close, I mean really close because technically they're all close family friends) but even then they're always judging.
sure, I've got a pretty good reputation, but then they start expecting stuff of me and that's even worse. Especially grades wise. I've never gotten straight A's in high school. So last semester they were all asking my mom about my grade and then they were...I dunno, aghast I guess, at my two B's. cuz they expected 'such an obediant child like me' to get straight A's. sigh*

Today was pretty strange, I think we had a black out or something during the night cuz the clocks were messed up this morning, and I woke up ALL BY MYSELF at 7:30 which was pretty strange. I thought it was twelve or something, but nooooo it had to be incredibly early like 7:30. My mom was like 'whoa...is something wrong?' cuz I was up so early. hehe. And then I read a book and went back to semi-sleep until twelve so now I feel normal again.
Valentine's day was cool cuz I actually got candy and cards. And Peter Chang's speeches are amazing. They're funny AND accurate. Mrs. Phillips was pounding on her desk to try to stop laughing, lol.

Now I'll go finish my math wksht, chem lab + book work, read chp. 6 for gov. and make up a speech about erasers. I'll probably leave the speech until tomorrow, but I might actually get around to the rest of it while I rewatch another Korean drama...
That's my update. Enjoy.

okie. News update:
working thursday, saturday and tuesday 6-10 Baskin Robbins.
Youth Symphony of Dupage concert on Sunday the 12th at NAPERVILLE CENTRAL high school (grr...) at 3:30. the symphonic orchestra sounds alright...definitely not as good as it should be, but it's free so maybe it's worth it. Might want listen to the prepatory orchestra though, they have some amazing pieces...well they'll sound incredible if they do it right anyways. Symphonic (which I'm in) is playing:

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by J. S. Bach
March of the Three Kings from L'Arlesienne Suite by Bizet
Egmont Overture by Beethoven (this arrangement is very blah, should still sound the same though)
Les Preludes by Liszt

preparatory is playing:
concerto Grosso in D major by Vivaldi
Slavonic Dance by Dvorak (I think this is good, don't remember)
Russian Sailor's Dance by Gliere (this is amazing...if they play it right. so much fun to play though =D )

I have to be there starting 12. Gah. Preparatory doesn't even have to come untill (put till then remember Emily G.'s comment and changed it. =P happy?) 2. sigh* feels like a waste of time.

anyways, feel free to show up, free admission but I don't think they have a reception =/. And if you come to the concert...might as well go to Baskin Robbins, eh? Then again, the fewer people that get ice cream from Baskin Robbins, the more ice cream I get to bring home =D so it's awesome if you don't go too.

What was the standardized test we took this year? I don't remember it...and suddenly I'm getting these strange college emails and summer camp pamphlets...
Anyone know?