Gah, English

So I'm currently taking summer classes at a college I don't go to during the rest of the school year (and is on the opposite side of the country as where I normally live), and we're not supposed to speak English...

And even though it's only been a week and a half, I am going crazy from the lack of communication. Maybe doing an immersion-course like this for LEVEL 1 FREAKING MANDARIN was a bad idea. Hehe. Whoops. (Sometimes I think my life is just one bad idea after another.)

Although, I HAVE wanted to take Mandarin, since, like, forever.

Actually - wait. Scratch that. I rarely ever want to take a language class. I want to speak languages. The taking the classes is just the unfortunate method in which one learns secondary language. I actually really don't like class...homework...ugh and the early start times. I honestly thought I'd never have to go back to 7:50 am class once I graduated from high school, since most colleges don't have classes before 9 - 8, if they really must.

But 7:50? Really? Why do they even care about the extra ten minutes - from my own personal psychological point of view, having a time that begins with an "8" feels way, way, way later (and more humane) than one that begins with a "7"...even if the difference is only 10 minutes.

Sigh. I wish I could have a summer vacation like everyone else! But like I said before, my life = a string of bad decisions. Though I suppose if I can speak Mandarin at some level at the end of this, it'll seem a lot better in hindsight. I just have, like, 7 1/2 more weeks to go.

I should really be studying - I still have to memorize two dialogues and a shit ton of vocab words for tomorrow, and since I bombed today's vocab test, I should probably get on that. Ugh, I can't wait until we can stop writing stupid pinyin on the quizzes - like, I know that you should know both the pinyin and the characters, but it's so much easier for me to remember how to write characters than pinyin, thanks to the dumb tones.

I miss Japanese and its monotone phonetic system :( Hell, I miss ITALIAN and its monotone phonetic system. Mi piace italiano perchè italiano ha un sistema fonetico senza toni. Adesso voglio studiare italiano! (Though I would prefer Japanese, I think. So far, Japanese has been the easiest language for me to study, though that might have just been because of the other people in my Japanese and Italian classes skewing my perception of how well/badly I actually was doing. I think I actually learned more Italian in one academic year than I learned of Japanese in twice or three times that amount of time.)

I really want to write, but this is SUCH a bad place to do something like that - even this (pointless?) blog post is kind of "against the rules". Especially since even when I don't write, I still space out all the time and think up characters and situations and epic battles and what not.

Anyway, I should go shower and study and SLEEP, since I have to get up at 6:45, eat breakfast, and sit through 4 hours of class before lunch. (FMySummer.)

What I Like to Write

Well hey there, writing blog. Since I wrote a post on Wednesday, I felt like I should write another one this week to account for the fact that my last post prior to Wednesday's was back in August.

I mean, really, a whole YEAR of school (minus two weeks of class, reading week, and a finals week that I won't be here for) has gone by since that post. Geesh.

Anyway, since even though I'm not really going to have any "writing time" this summer, on account of the fact that I'm going to be in an immersion environment for a Chinese language class I'll be taking (for 9 weeks...), I really want to start writing again. I've been trying to at least keep a journal during the year, but I really miss fiction, and now that it's clear that I'll never be able to take a creative writing class at my university...

Well, I guess I just need to get myself to do it on my own!

(I'm still hoping that I'll be able to take a non-degree creative writing class at a community college or something some time in my life. Because obviously, semi-prestigious research universities only want future prize-winning poets for their creative writing program. And I despise poetry if I have to study it for more than a week. Grumblegrumble.)

So, because I'm not sure what else to blog about, I'm going to post a list of five things I like to read/write!

• Happy and/or hopeful endings - I hate sad endings. Bittersweet endings are fine, especially hopeful ones. If someone is optimistic or at least willing to work to a better future, I'm fine. But sad endings? NO. I KILL DEM.
• Fun characters with good voices - I think this is why I like Meg Cabot...but yeah, I get bored with cardboard characters, so I try to avoid them (and improve when I accidentally write them!)
  
• Creative fantasy settings - I like creative settings, especially ones that aren't the standard Medieval Western Europe high fantasy
• Contemporary characters - I think I connect better when things are more contemporary
• Adventures - I like adventure! I don't know why :P

Things I'm okay with:

• Fantasy violence - I'm cool with fantasy violence. Realistic violence is a little too real. (Duh?)
• Romance - I was going to put romance in the previous list, but then I realized that I actually get put off by main-plot romances, since I sometimes find it hard to relate. And on that note...
• Gay guy pairs - I like reading about gay guys, but I hate writing them because I have issues with writing guys. Gay guy pairs intimidate me because there are TWO OF THEM, and I don't want to be stereotypical and make them feminine, because I know a ton of gay guys who are about as feminine as I want to study engineering. Plus, I suck at writing romances...
  
• Medieval Europe high fantasy settings - mehhhhhhh whatever. I'm kind of tired of Tolkien wannabes, and I've read enough Tolkien wannabes to be wary of anything that has a Medieval Europe-based high fantasy setting
• All female/all male casts - either too much estrogen or testosterone, depending on which gender you pick, but if they're well written, I guess I'm okay with it...sometimes

And things I hate:

• Suicide - I think suicide is really disturbing, and I really don't like thinking about it when I don't have to (ie in fiction). This is especially true when it's the main character who commits suicide
• Violence against animals - I really don't like violence against animals because I feel like it is twice as unfair as violence against other humans is, since the animal has no choice in the matter and is at a major disadvantage due to the whole brain thing. Humorous violence against animals will probably ruin an entire book/movie for me
• Never ending plots - seriously, if you're not going to start something with an end in mind, don't start it yet. It doesn't work, and just really makes me lose respect for the author and their inability to structure a story well
• Depressing endings - I don't like depressing things...since I like being happy! Yay, happiness?
• "Didn't I already read this?" - super derivative stories. Um...why should I read you if I've already read the exact same book/watched the exact same movie by someone else?
  

I'm not actually dead

Well hey there, old blog I never update anymore.

This is probably because I'm in college, but whatever.

I don't really write much anymore, which is kind of a shame...but I still, of course, have an extremely overactive imagination that probably keeps me from paying attention in classes in which I should be focusing on. ;)

Anyway, I did NaNo this year and won, and I did Script Frenzy and lost (though I think I got a little over halfway, so it wasn't like I TOTALLY failed. I also completed a script version of the second book in The Eleventh with what I had for Screnzy, so again - not a total loss). I probably won't be able to win NaNo in the fall, but I'm damn well going to try to get as far as possible. I'll only consider myself a failure if I can't hit more than 10,000 words - otherwise, I'll just be a loser. (And I'd always rather be a loser than a loser AND a failure.)

I'm not really sure what the point of this blog post was...

Oh, but as per usual, I've had some crazy dreams this year. Unlike some, I have crazy dreams kind of regardless of what I may or may not be ingesting - I do not need strange substances to be uselessly creative. I say "uselessly" because unlike creative people who use their creativity to solve problems and cure disease and whatnot, I just have weird dreams about:

• Adorable parasitic worms that latch onto your pinky finger and can guide you through underground tunnel networks
• Arranged marching band-based and sorority-based marriages that really don't make sense (and when I say they really don't make sense, I mean they REALLY don't make sense)
  
• Giant trolls drop-kicking me off cliffs during a fairy tale simulation
  
• Magic hamsters that grow into cat-like creatures and are targeted by an organization that probably is evil in some way
  
• Huns murdering and impersonating my friends, and then nobody but me noticing
• Trying to escape people in Chinese restaurants that are also trains
• Participating in a play in which I have to act drunk so that the audience won't notice my friends stealing all the pastries in the back (but really - if they were watching a play anyway, wouldn't they not be looking in the back of the auditorium already?)

There really is nothing like a strange, adventurous dream. I wish I remembered more of the dreams I had. Some of them were ridiculously entertaining after the fact.

Taken from my Facebook notes: Response to Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

So I finished Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman for summer reading (since everyone in my seminar HAS to read it).

And...I kind of want to know how true everything he says is. I mean, he sounds convincing, but I don't want to just blindly believe everything he says because it just sounds TOO easy.

Even though it's not.

(Floods will be more common and more severe if we don't start working to alleviate climate change.)

Does anybody get what I mean? That you can pretty much say that saving the climate, preserving our planet's biodiversity, helping our national security, promoting growth in third world countries, taking down petrodictators, and other good things is economically viable in the long run? (Or maybe not THAT long...I didn't get this as much because I don't know much about economics.) That, and it's all interconnected and related to improving our energy system/pushing clean energy? AND it would give us a chance to NOT surrender "the next big industry" to China/India/another emerging giant?

Because (according to Thomas Friedman, who - by the way - I don't think I agree with on all of his points), if we do things like promote a tax on imported oil (or all oil...)/carbon emissions in general, create harsher emission standards (like for transportation), as well as make it easier for people to invest in solar/wind/nuclear/wave/etc R+D/production, it will:
- Promote a cleaner environment
- Spark competition between companies to become more "green", which will end up saving them money in fuel and become a selling point for when they want to hire people ("come work for us! Look at how green we are!")
- Spark capitalistic competition: for example, between automakers. Contrary to their whining, harsher emission standards does NOT cause automakers to go out of business.
- Encourage American alternative energy companies to stay American and not focus on foreign markets
- Keep American taxes going into projects that help the USA (coughcough not the Middle East)
- Help our national security (ie we don't have to bow down to oil-producers)
- Help our TROOPS
- Show a good example to the rest of the world, ESPECIALLY developing countries who want to "live an American lifestyle"
- Give us a foothold against cheap Chinese/Indian companies by preventing them from selling products that would not meet our higher carbon emission standards. Which would, in turn, force China/India to create their OWN higher standards to compete with American companies, (and so on) which would be better for the world...
- Help develop technology that could provide power to developing countries and villages, making it easier for people to stay in villages and not cram into unhealthy, overcrowded city slums. This would make it easier for people to get into the middle class AND would allow these people to focus on education rather than pure survival, which would increase the numbers of innovators

And other things...

(We can prevent urban decay and environmental decay at the same time.)

I mean, there are a ton of things standing in the way, such as the fact that a lot of the governmental bodies controlling various aspects of our energy policies aren't under the same roof - in order to get a central energy policy, you need to go to the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the US Army Corp of Engineers, etc. In that sense, China has a much easier way of implementing a clean energy system than we do...except that China isn't really doing that, either.

There's a lot to say about this, but I don't want to rant. I just want to say a couple things I found interesting (assuming everything Thomas Friedman says in his book is 100% true):

One thing...our troops. (Esp the ones in Iraq/Afghanistan.) Let's look at Iraq. Now, I don't support the Iraq war...but I do support our troops (as people). I admire that they are putting their lives on the line to protect us back home. I would like it if as few of them died in Iraq as possible, and I'm glad President Obama is withdrawing a lot of the troops.

What's really sad, I always think, is when a soldier dies in Iraq because of something like a car bomb. They weren't doing anything at the moment, and they just get killed. Or when they're doing something mundane...like transporting diesel. Why diesel? Because it's really hot in Iraq (like 121 degrees Fahrenheit), and the encampments can't use the Iraqi grid for energy to run their many air conditioners. For a long time, soldiers had to truck in so many gallons of diesel to run the ACs, and these soldiers in their diesel-transporting trucks would be easy, flammable targets for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The US Army had to spend time, energy, and lives to make sweep roads of IEDs and send soldiers to truck in the diesel to run the ACs.

So the Army wanted to cut down on the amount of energy they used. Makes sense, right? They were able to save 40-75 percent on their energy usage just by insulating the tents with foam. They built on that design (using the foam insulation) to build large, domed temporary structures with that insulation, the capacity to sleep 40 soldiers (4x the average army tent), more ballistic protection thanks to the concrete in the design, and 2 mobile wind turbines and 2 sun-tracking solar panels in addition to a backup generator. Thanks to the wind turbines and solar panels (and the insulation), the tents can produce enough energy to provide power, air conditioning, and have a bit left over to give to a nearby village.

As of when the book was written, I don't think those structures have been implemented in Iraq or Afghanistan (since it needed to be perfected), but it's a good start. As Friedman said, you "buy one, get four free". You spend the money on the efficient structures, and you:
- Save lives by getting the diesel convoys off the road
- Save money by lowering fuel costs
- Might be able to give some extra energy to a nearby village, which might make the people in the village less angry at the occupying soldiers
- Might make the soldiers demand the same kind of energy-saving practices in factories/buildings in America once they come home. The same thing happened when the army was desegregated - why can't it happen now with energy policies?

(The above was summarized from the beginning of the chapter entitled "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")

So yeah...

There are a lot of interesting things to think about, like how if you don't focus so much on the "we need to save the polar bears"-type attitude and focus more on the "we need to save money and promote a healthy national economy"-type attitude, you end up saving the polar bears because more people will be on board.

Another chapter I thought was interesting was about how to get poor communities on board with "the green revolution". If somebody can't afford their house, they won't care about saving the polar bears. But if you put money into education and create entry-level "green-collar jobs" (such as working in a manufacturing plant for solar panels - which could lead to being a manager, which could lead to being an innovator, and which would be the stepping-stone factory job of the present), then you would stabilize more people. If people don't have to worry about feeding their families and getting evicted, then they can worry about the polar bears. And if you can kill the poverty bird and the disappearing-biodiversity bird with one stone? Um, why not?

(The passages about "green-collar jobs" are in the same chapter as above: "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")

So yeah.

(I don't know about everyone else, but I think this is worth protecting.)

It kind of seems too easy, this "saving the world" thing. Like if we have a good energy policy, too many things will just fit into place, and like how if we tell people that preserving the forests in Sumatra is more economically viable than cutting it down, we can both help developing economies and alleviate the strain on our planet. But it also seems so impossible, because this sort of thing CAN'T happen in the US government right now, and it HAS to.

I mean, I hate to be patriotic, but we NEED to be one of the countries moving forward into a clean energy system. Japan and Europe are already getting there and leaving us behind, which isn't THAT much of a problem right now - but what if China and India get there first? Then we would get left behind as China (or India) would become the new world power, and while that might be great for the Chinese - I'm American. I'm a plain, boring, whitebread American girl. While yeah, I wouldn't mind China becoming a clean energy giant, I want my own country to do well, too.

Because if we can jump ahead in our energy policy and create an economy that China can't compete in, China will find a way to compete. If we become green, China will want to become greener - India, too. And Japan. And Europe. And Indonesia, and everybody else. "Anything you can green, I can green better."

It's a competition that we can't lose - but, even though it's a competition, everyone has the potential to win.

...

But it's not happening, which sucks.

...Wow, that was long. Did that make any sense to anyone, or is it just late-night ramblings from a girl that doesn't really understand economics as much as the Palo Alto School District would have wanted her to? :)

(Sunsets are beautiful. Let's have the sun continue to set on a planet that's just as beautiful.)

Hey there, summer goals.

Okay, so...due to the fact that yesterday I finished my 11th chick lit book (which would be Queen of Babble in the Big City by the glorious Meg Cabot) and on Friday I got my DRIVER'S LICENSE, I'm going to do a little bit of a self-check on those summer goals I made back in June...

1. Write a novel - workin' on it...both...both of them. I started both of them before summer, but I figure that if I finish one by the end of summer (one of them looks like it will finish up by the end of August) and if I write a combined total of, like, 50,000+ words, I'll be good.
2. Go to the city on the train with my friends - ...man, I really need to do this...
3. Get my driver's license - OH HEY WHAT GUESS WHAT I HAVE. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, I HAVE a piece of paper, since my actual license card still has to get mailed to me...but I WILL get it, and I'm sure the cops will be fine with my piece-of-paper interim license, so YEAH WHAT WHAT.
4. Watch a sunrise - ...maybe now that I have my DRIVER'S LICENSE, this will actually happen.
5. Take a picture under Hoover Tower - I seriously cannot believe Janice and I never did this. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US.
6. Read at least 11 brainless chick lit books - uh-huhhhhhh did this. :)
7. See Janice - OH HAY DID THIS TOO.
8. Clean my room - um, this is kind of vague...every time I clean it, it just gets dirty again.
9. Practice flute at least sometimes - I swear I'll do this.
10. Make sure to coordinate me-Cally-Brandy-Anna stuff so it actually HAPPENS - well, Cally-Anna-me stuff has happened, as well as Cally-me, Anna-me, and Brandy-me (ONCE), but all four? Hehe. Oops.
11. To get some sort of thing made to represent/remember "home" with - ummmmm...

So that's a grand total of...

In progress: 2

Done: 3

Not even started: 6

Now, I know the "not even started"s outnumber the "in progress"es and the "done"s (combined), but hey...it's summer?

Oh, and I actually have homework due the first day of class. Or, actually, the second day of class, since my seminar meets on Tuesdays, not Mondays. BUT STILL. Homework. Ew. (I should probably get started on that, too. I mean, I've read one chapter of one book, but...yeah. I need to do my homework.)

I hate wisdom teeth removal. End of story.

My mouth huuuuuuurts.

And it totally makes me not want to write anything, even though I should be working on those stories I wanted to finish this summer (which will probably happen for one of them, but not so much the other...ALTHOUGH I HAVE IT OUTLINED hahahahaaaaaaa yeah).

Instead, what have I been doing?

I've been watching illegally-uploaded-to-YouTube Kim Possible episodes. And ANIME. (In my defense for the anime, it was only four episodes (so far...since it's new) and it's from the only series I'd bother watching nowadays...and that's just because it was the inspiration for The Eleventh.)

...I have no defense for Kim Possible, though...haha, it was kind of cool since I didn't know they made a fourth season, so there are TONS of episodes I've never watched. Like...Kim and Ron? TOGETHER? SERIOUSLY? Didn't think they were gonna make a whole season with that! But they did.

Although I gotta say, I did like Ron/Yori... :( But they weren't "meant to be", like I guess Kim and Ron are (no duh, right?) Drakken/Shego kind of freaks me out now, though, even though I think I used to think they would be cute together. But that was when I was ten. Now that I think about it, it's kind of...disturbing. And they only have one real "moment" together - personally, I think Shego would be better of with someone else. And Drakken, but I can't think of anybody in the show who'd be good for him. I can with Shego, though.

But enough about that.

(Though I gotta add: FELIX/ZITA! Aaaaah adorable, adorable, ADORABLE! Also, Junior/Bonnie...hahaha, wow, they are perfect together.)

So yep.

I'm not even reading chick lit...I'm watching Kim Possible. DID YOU KNOW THAT SKY HIGH AND KIM POSSIBLE WERE WRITTEN/CREATED BY THE SAME PEOPLE? I did not know that, but now that I do, it kind of explains a lot. And Mister Barkin was voiced by Patrick Warburton! Hahaaaaaaa wow!

...So, um, why did I write this, again?

The Ramifications of Chick Lit

Okay, so I'm currently ~15 pages from finishing one of the two chick lit books I checked out when I went to the library again today (but forgot to bring one of the books back that I'd checked out before - oops!), and even though I was going to go to bed before midnight in an effort to shift myself back to a normal sleep schedule...I got sucked in and I couldn't stop reading! I have to finish it tonight.

So why am I writing this?

It's because I'm reading The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer, which is partly about three woman vowing to lose weight and keep it off (therefore becoming sexier and happier and healthier and yadda yadda) in six months. And it's got me all enthusiastic to try the same thing, even though I'm not obese.

Or, like, I'm not obese but sometimes I FEEL obese. And not just the "ohmigod I just looked in the mirror and I'm SO UGLY why would anybody associate with me" kind of "I feel obese" because I'm pretty sure everybody feels like that. Or, at least, everybody who is female. You know. Mirror phobia and all that. (Or camera phobia for those of us who aren't ridiculously photogenic without trying...or at all...)

It's more like...I just feel heavy. And flabby. Like it's restricting my movement, weighing me down, giving me an unflattering figure, and making me breath harder just to do something normal. It's not like I don't work out - I started going to the gym again, so hopefully that'll help - but it's like...I dunno. I don't like it, though, cuz I don't FEEL good. Screw looks - this is something else.

So I'll cut to the chase: I have a "curvy tummy" as they say in Seventeen magazine, and it's getting in my way. I don't want this tummy! I want - er, well, I would LIKE abs of steel, but I don't think "abs of steel" and "Anne Ciccarelli" will ever go together - but I want something that doesn't feel like its weighing me down and splashing out everywhere. Especially now with all the fashions - they're so flowy around the middle and cinched at the waist. A curvy tummy does not work with these! So it's like I can never go to a store and buy something. I'm a bad shopper, but like, I got a gift card for Anthropologie and I really wanted to get something...

But nothing looked good! And while it wasn't ALL because of my curvy tummy - some of them just didn't work with my wide shoulders or were just kind of weirdly shaped to begin with - it doesn't help!

Then I went to Gap and saw a dress I LOVED. It's like my number one sin - dress lust. Seriously. I LOVE LOVE LOVE dresses, but I can never wear them without feeling like everyone's judging me or that they only show off the worst parts of me.

BUT I LOVED THIS DRESS. They had it in two colors, and I think I liked the two-tone brown one better, but the navy-and-black one was cute, too. I mean, if I could just find some cute brown flats, I could totally wear that brown dress! (Or I could just use black flats I own from band and wear the blue-black one...)

Except it was the absolute WORST kind of dress for my curvy tummy. I couldn't even try the stupid thing ON, even in the seclusion of the dressing room. I could just stare at it and luuuuuuust. It's like prom season all over again. I stare at dresses, but I never get to wear them. The last time I bought a dress that I actually WORE was for homecoming in FRIGGIN NINTH GRADE.

So I've decided!

Enough of not wearing dresses! Or, at least, not having a good tummy for dresses!

I want that brown dress! (Or the blue-black one, since I already have shoes for it.)

So...I don't know how...but I'm going to kill the curvy tummy. Or at least get it under control. I'm going to start each day by doing crunches until it kills me (er...maybe I'll just start off with 20 and work my way up...) And I'll do push-ups, too, although that won't help the tummy. But it can't hurt, right? And I'll keep going to the gym. Maybe I'll run in the morning OUTSIDE (I've never had enough confidence to do this since I can't run for more than fifteen minutes on a treadmill).

I dunno.

But I want that dress. Even if it has a 99.9999% of being horribly out-of-fashion in like, two weeks...I don't care. I at least want to be able to walk into freaking GAP and try on a dress I think looks cute.

Because I want to be able to wear a dress. :) Screw prom and Cinderella fantasies, a casual one will work just fine.

(Okay, now I'm going to go finish that book and GO TO SLEEP because it is waaaay past my bedtime. And crap, I should have written this in my journal...I wonder how long it'll be before I cave and just print out blogs and things? Haha. I'm just a fast typer! Can't deny that. :) Anyway...even though nobody reads this but me...bye bye! Sleep tight. I'll dream of myself in a beautiful dress I'll never wear tonight.)