Saturday, June 27, 2009

Regrets

I should have taken photography and drop french. I should have taken ceramics/choir/ drawing and drop biology. After all, this is a year of experience!

To be honest, I have a defunct right brain. Arts and musics are subjects that I have been longing to explore but I never really wanted to fully immerse myself in them because I didn't have much confidence. I tried to draw, but it turned into a complete mess. I tried to play a musical instrument, I sucked big time. I tried to capture memorable moments, but other people's photographs are more attractive.
I can still remember when I was little and it was my first time to be exposed to watercolor pencils. My friend asked, "Why do they call them watercolor pencils?"
"Because you use them with water," I answered confidently.
"How?"
I thought for a moment, "Like this!" I dipped the pencil into a glass of water and drew with it, "See? The colors are more beautiful. Very deep."
A few seconds later, the new watercolor pencils that my parents had just bought me turned into blunt, mushy, pencils and we had to throw them away.
Yes. That's how artistic I was.

This year, just when I ignored my right brain's inactivity and grew my confidence towards my left brain, it betrayed me. I was attending a Model UN conference in Syracuse when I realize this. Maybe it was lack of preparations, maybe it was boredom, that I began to feel uneasy with the whole conference. They were talking about world problems, I asked a couple of questions at the beginning of the conference and then I got bored and started writing on my notepad, thinking that I would suck to be a minister or any other government officials.

Writing is my passion. I write whenever, wherever, I like details and impressions. I like numerous works of literature, admire the authors, love their perspectives. Reading is not only the window of the world, but also the door to the human minds.
You think if I like writing so much then I would take journalism or creative writing for college? Well, I don't want to take them. You see, being a journalist is probably the last thing I want to do. (No offense to journalists out there, I adore a lot of your writings). It's just that I don't like to have to write all the time, being chased around by deadlines, I want to want to write, whenever and however I like. Then become a novelist? Maybe I'm an idealist, but if my novel is to be published, I'd want a pure creative story that goes around a complete circle and finishes like a drop of water in a glass of oil. Immersed, but in shape.
But to write creatively, my right brain has to be activated.
And yes, I am in the process of activating it. Meanwhile, I will still be writing random stuff.
Just like this.

One of my teachers wrote a college recommendation letter for me and I happen to read it. In one of the paragraphs, she wrote that I could achieve whatever goal I set for myself in whatever field of study. That might sound cliche, but it motivated me to explore myself.
I won't deny that this year has been a great self-exploration for me (if not discovery), I had the chance to do things I never would have done. And yes, I realized that I don't know a lot of things. All these years, I suppose I should say that school is taking over my life. Not that I hate it, well that's the problem, I love it so much that I didn't open my eyes to new things. Call me a nerd (these days, I bet there's only a handful of people who could say that they love school), but that's just the way I am. I love solving ridiculous figures on my scrap paper. It's great to know that a quark is smaller than a quantum, or the other way around I don't even remember anymore. And the idea of knowing that every particles have energy was just intriguing. And yet, after years and years of scientific reasoning, I got nothing but confusions.
Russell Crowe in The Beautiful Mind says "I've made the most important discovery of my career... the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found. I'm only here tonight because of you. You're the only reason I am... You are all my reasons." In here, he was referring to his wife.

Love is one thing that all human beings have. Yet, there seems to be a lot of problems going on with love. Then I began to draw a conclusion, that a lot of people view love as their lives, when actually it is supposed to be the watercolor pencils of your life. To color, to decorate.
Once, I had a boyfriend that pointed out to me angrily, "You love everybody too much, you don't have time for me!" Well, thanks to him that I realize how much I loved intimate relationships with others and I often fell deep into it and maybe thought of it as my life. And that's also one of the reasons I dumped him. I guess there are quite a few people out there who write their blogs under the title "My Life" and talks about his/her relationship with his/her partner. Not that it's wrong, it really is fully up to you to write anything in your own blog. But it's just sad if your life is just about breaking up and making up with one person or worse a couple. There must be more to love than that. It's not necessarily a girlfriend-boyfriend thing, it's something we give other people around us even though we don't know who they are, let alone have an intimate relationship. We could help someone without knowing where the person is from, right? Just lend a hand.

It's as simple as that.

Don't talk about the philosophy of love, it's too complicated.

(Maybe by writing this, my right brain is improving)

Friday, June 26, 2009

These Last Couple of Days (Part 2)

So yesterday, I went to the beach in Taylor Park, not very far away from home but it was my first time there. Kara and I went crazy right away.





Just in case you can't read what it says. "Kara N.A = bff " that's what it says. :)

So we played around the beach for like two hours and had to say goodbye. I don't know whether I'm gonna see her again or not. :(

After I took a shower, it's time for strawberry shortcake!!

(I know I gotta learn how to decorate food.) With the freshly picked strawberries, this shortcake is delectable, complete with whipped cream at the top.

The temperature has reached the nineties and all the fans in the house are working hard to keep us satisfied. I wanna make cheese salmon and shrimp complete with strawberry smoothie.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

These Last Couple of Days (Part 1)

My regents exams are over. Suddenly, the weather gets nice. Suddenly, everybody is out. Suddenly, no one wants to go home. Hahah! But yeah, we don't have a choice. So these last couple of days, we hang out a lot, making the most out of our numbered days.


A pool party at Nicole's last week. She went to Tenesse last Saturday and won't be back until the 29th, which means I won't see her again. :(


Rowing the inflatable boat with Nicole, going round and round while Liz is splashing water.


A get together at the Asian Buffet yesterday. Yeah we ate a lot and bugged the Chinese guy a lot. Without him, this picture couldn't have been taken. :)


This morning, I went strawberry picking nearby! And we're gonna make strawberry shortcake. I'm excited.


Mohsina, my hostdad and I gathered our 29 quarts of strawberries!!

I have sent home 4 boxes of "stuff" and I'm almost all packed up and ready to go..
:(
Right now, I'm waiting for Kara to pick me up 'coz we're going to the beach.. I'm so excited. So, I'll write again later!

cheers!

Monday, June 22, 2009

School is O-v-e-r




I don't know whether I'm supposed to be happy or sad, but I will certainly miss this school. Hugh C Williams Senior High School, located in the Canton School District. A three floor brick building in the middle of a population of trees...


I guess I should give you a lil' sneak peek. When you enter the main door, you will see this hallway. Those frames hanging on the wall are the pictures of the school productions, numerous plays. They once did The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, Meet Me at St Louis, and the most recent one that I fortunately got involved in, Grease!




All the plays are performed in this auditorium. It could probably fit up to 600 audiences, approximately



One of the classrooms. This is my English and creative writing class. A TV with a DVD player, book covers in the form of posters, motivating quotes, shelves of books.



The gymnasium is the place where all the winter sports practices are held. Of course you don't expect people practicing in the deep snow outside, do you? In home games, the spectators sit on those bleachers and cheer. The school's mascot is a Golden Bear (that bear that you can see hugging the letter C) and of course the school's colors are brown and gold, as you can see.




The row of lockers. Those posters hanging on the wall are posters to get the team mates pumped up for the play-offs.


This poster is made by my team mate, Emily before our basketball play-offs.


The team locker room!! I could never forget this room. It's where, before every home game we got changed and usually play some loud musics too.


oops, this picture needs to be rotated. O'well...
Yes, everybody in the whole world, I believe, are busy reminding each other to RECYCLE. This rubbish bin was painted by the Environmental Club.

Of course if there are recycling bins, there must be stuff to recycle. Well, these vending machines help fill those bins up! Let me tell ya, that drink at the very left, Gatorade, is my favorite drink. I drank that a lot after tests or during basketball season. Mrs Clark used to tease me, "Your Gatorade days are numbered!" LOL


The library, interestingly enough, is called LRC (Learning Resource Center). It is connected to the computer lab. This is where I usually sit and do homework after school because I never wanted to bring home thick, heavy textbooks! This particular room is always bright because the roof top is made out of glass so the sun is always welcome to enter this quiet zone room.

Friday, June 12, 2009

I'm Almost There

Dear Nadhila,
As your host year winds to a close, all of us at AFS and Sponsored Programs would like to congratulate you on completing your adventurous year in America. While we're certain that you're experiencing some mixed feeling about returning home, we would also like to request that you keep a few things in mind as you prepare to depart Canton for Washington DC and eventually Indonesia.

That is the opening paragraph of a letter that AFS just sent me along with my last stipend check. LOL, I know for sure that I'm not the only one who is experiencing some mixed feeling about returning home. I also know for sure that some people are not experiencing mixed feeling at all.

I want to tell you a little bit about the block party that took place last week. It may be one of the reasons I hate to leave this small town...

With half a year of frozen winter, spring and summer is certainly the most awaited seasons here in Northern New York. In Canton, every year, they hold a block party and a parade of The Dairy Princess. It is when the town just stops and gather together in the park and dance, the main street was closed and served as a dance floor! The program's sponsor was John Deere, a big farming company. There was a two day bazaar (friday and saturday) where people sell all kinds of stuff from hotdog to t-shirts, and the parade day, which was a saturday that's when the dairy princess meet the town people. And country musics were played. It is one of those rare and biggest moments that happen in this small town.
I went to the park on friday after school and as soon as I arrived, I saw Elizabeth, Nicole, Kelly and Lizz along with other people selling refreshments to fund raise for a cancer society. We talked and I ended up helping them carry around the money box. I met other friends who ran up to me, hug me and talked and laughed with me. It's that sense of sincere togetherness that I longed the most. It's that feeling of being a world citizen, the feeling of being able to be part of them, to understand that they too are human being, it's priceless. At school, classes supports individuality. Togetherness in almost nonexistent, especially in winter. The block party was where I suddenly feel I was alive and full of life, meeting people, talking and laughing like crazy, having fun under the burning sun, being free.
I looked around the park and said, "Damn, I'm gonna miss this!"


(These are some of the pictures I managed to take during the block party.)

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tomorrow is my french final exam and here i am doing nothing at all.

I gotta memorize these somehow...

USES OF THE IMPERFECT TENSE


The Imperfect tense is used in the following cases:
  • v Description in the past: La maison était énorme et avait trois fenêtres.
  • v Describing the weather at a time in the past: Il faisait très beau.
  • v Giving an opinion in the past, c'était + adjective: C'était magnifique.
  • v Talking about something that used to happen regularly in the past:Nous allions en France chaque année. On faisait du ski dans les Alpes.
  • v Talking about how things used to be over a period of time in the past: Mon père avait une voiture rouge et ma mère travaillait à l'hôpital.
  • v Making excuses: Ce n'était pas de ma faute. Je voulais aider!
  • v Saying what was happening, when something else happened; (one action (in the perfect tense) cuts across another on-going one (in the imperfect) Je lisais le journal quand mon père est entré dans le salon. Ma mère travaillait dans le jardin, quand le téléphone a sonné.

The Passé Composé

The passé composé (compound past tense), also referred to as the past indefinite, is made up of two parts, a helping verb and a past participle.

It is formed by using the present tense of the helping verb avoir ( j'ai, tu as, il/elle a, nous avons, vous avez, ils/elles ont) or être ( je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont) and adding a past participle.

The passé composé with avoir

The past participle of regular verbs is formed by dropping the infinitive ending and adding for -er verbs, i for -ir verbs, and u for -re verbs. The past participles of irregular verbs must be memorized.

Past participles of verbs that use avoir as their helping verb agree in number and gender with a preceding direct-object noun or pronoun. This is done by adding an -e to indicate a feminine noun or pronoun and an -s to indicate a plural noun or pronoun. No -s is added to a participle that already ends in -s:

The passé composé with être

Only 17 verbs use être as their helping verb. These verbs generally, but not always, express motion or a change of place, state, or condition, such as going up, going down, going in, going out, or remaining. The verbs are:

When être is the helping verb, the past participle must agree in number and gender with the subject; this is done by adding -e for a feminine subject and -s for a plural subject:

Verbs that use être or avoir

The verbs descendre (to go down), monter (to go up), passer (to pass by), rentrer (to return home), retourner (to return), and sortir (to go out) generally use être as their helping verb. They may use avoir when the sentence contains a direct object. In these cases, their meaning changes: descendre (to take down), monter (to take up), passer (to spend time), rentrer (to bring in), retourner (to turn over), and sortir (to take out):

The passé composé with reflexive verbs

Reflexive verbs use être as their helping verb. When the reflexive pronoun is also the direct object, the past participle agrees with the reflexive pronoun. When the reflexive pronoun is the indirect object (and, thus, the direct object comes after the verb), there is no agreement of the past participle with the reflexive pronoun.

Negating in the passé composé

To negate a sentence in the passé composé, put the negative expression around the conjugated helping verb and any pronouns that precede it:

Questions in the passé composé

To form a question in the passé composé, invert the conjugated helping verb (with any pronouns related to it preceding it) with the subject pronoun, and add a hyphen. In general, avoid inverting with je; instead, use est-ce que to form the question. With avoir, a -t- must be added when the subject is il or elle. Negatives surround the hyphenated inverted forms:


Resources: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/The-Pass-Compos.topicArticleId-25660,articleId-25631.html
italk.com/knowledge/contribution-limparfait.htm