Archives for July 2012

I recently ate a cheeseburger for lunch at Gramercy Cafe…it was HORRIBLE. I’m pretty sure i was served a burnt burger. I should have complained but when your hungry anything edible taste good (well almost). Besides the workers looked like they were having a hard time since its always crowded around 11-12. I know i’m not the only one who suffered though. My friend had ordered pasta and an employee gave her the wrong sauce and had to remake it. After he made it again he had given her the right sauce but the wrong pasta noodles. With this I think I’ll stick to Hidden City Cafe, though its small and just as crowded as Gramercy Cafe at least they give good food and don’t screw up your orders.

IT’S CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY! This is a wonderful book by Roald Dahl that makes your mouth water for chocolate. Who doesn’t love chocolate? If you had a chance to go to the famous Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and receive an endless supply of chocolate, what would you do?

The catch? Only 5 children will be allowed inside and there are 5 golden tickets hidden in 5 out of millions of wonka chocolate bars out there.

By a stroke of luck one of these golden tickets ended up in the hands of Charlie Bucket, a poor boy with a poor family.

It has been so many years since I have read this delightful book from my childhood. I remember reading gleefully as the naughty kids paid for their bad behavior. And who can forget about the Oompa-Loompas.

“Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop!
The great big greedy nincompoop!
How long could we allow this beast
To gorge and guzzle, feed and feast
On everything he wanted to?
Great Scott! It simply wouldn’t do!”

I love the wacky, colorful and imaginative world Roald Dahl created and the emotional rollercoaster ride he takes you on.

I love how the characters were written and brought to life by both the novelist and the actors. To Ruo Xi, all the people she is meeting now were just names in a textbook that she had to study before. But now that her soul has transported back into the Qing dynasty and into the body of the daughter of an aristocrat general, she has the chance to meet all these powerful political figures of the time and witness one of history’s most intense succession battle for the throne between the princes in China’s history.

The first person she met after waking up in the Qing dynasty was Qiao Hui. Although she is just the servant girl working in 8^th prince’s manor and her place in the story isn’t that important, but, she is someone everyone wants to have at his or her side. She gives good advice and listens to people well. During the time that Ruo Xi is still getting used to living in the Qing dynasty, Qiao Hui has helped her a lot. When Ruo Xi’s sister Ruo Lan dies, Qiao Hui follows Ruo Xi into the the Fobbidden Palace to take care of Ruo Xi.

Ruo Lan is Ruo Xi’s older sister. At some point, Ruo Xi wanted to tell her that the real Ruo Xi isn’t alive anymore and that she is really Zhang Xiao from the future. However, she thought this over and never ended up telling her. If Ruo Xi were to tell this to Ruo Lan, she might be seen as a crazy person and sent to who knows where. Ruo Lan who is Married to 8^th prince spends a big part of her day praying to Buddha. In the beginning Ruo Xi doesn’t know why her sister does this and behaves to cold towards 8^th prince, but she later figures out what happened between them.

When Ruo Lan was 17 years old, 8^th prince saw her from far away riding happily on a horse. 8^th prince fell in love at first sight and was captivated by her. Not long later, the King gave him permission to marry the oldest daughter of the Great General Maertai, which is Ruo Lan. However, what he doesn’t know is that she was already in love with the person who taught her how to ride horses. On their wedding day, Ruo Lan was silently crying under her red veil. 8^th prince knew that something was not right and sent someone to her old home and find out what happened. It wasn’t long before the Great General was alerted and sent Ruo Lan’s lover to the frontlines of battle. When Ruo Lan found out that he died in battle, she fell sick and lost the child she had with 8^th prince. 8^th prince didn’t kill her lover but he did lead to his death. After this, Ruo Lan could never accept him again.

I finished all my interviews and my article. I am very excited to see it on my.hsj.org, I wonder who will get national story. These past couple of weeks I been thinking about who fast summer can be if your involved in something. My friends always tell me how bored they are and that they don’t know what to do over the summer and I tell them, “Do something beneficial, that’s what I’m doing.” The small or little things you do to your life can have a great impact in your future. This college course will save me some money that I can use later on in college, if necessary. Not including this Thursday, we only have two Thursday to blog about whatever we want. I’ll blog next week! J

On Tuesday I went to see the new movie The Dark Knight Rises with my family. I am happy to say that movie was not a let down. Once again Christopher Nolan puts together a great cast that brings the Batman story to life.

In this movie it explains the story of what happens to Batman after he loses his city, the love of his life, and money. But this movie also brings a bigger picture to light. The story line of the villain, Bane, comes from a few elements of the problems our world has today. Some of these are violation of human rights, oppression, and unequal distribution of wealth. The Batman movie put those in a more drastic perspective.

One thing i did not like about the movie is how little they explained about Cat woman’s purpose and back story in the movie.

The best and worst part of the movie was the ending. I am not going to give a spoiler alert but the ending could have had a bigger impact than it did. The good thing about the ending is that it lets you know there is more in stire for Gotham City even without Batman.

On Friday July 20, 2012, James Holmes, a PHD student, started shooting in a Colorado movie theater during the new Dark Knight movie. Twelve people were left dead and about 58 were wounded. It was reported that four of the twelve who died were boyfriends trying to save their girlfriends lives. It was a tragic event.
Was there a motive? What exactly was Holmes’ reason for doing this? So many unanswered questions. Innocent people were killed with the intentions of just enjoying a nice Friday night seeing a new popular movie. This was a horrible event that shows us that there are evil and need to be stopped and put in jail. 
 
    

           Well, I have nothing to write about, so I decided to talk about my overnight trip in sixth grade. Our school went on a trip to Philly, where we stayed for three days and two nights. After a tiring first day of sitting on a coach bus for four hours and touring Gettysburg, we finally arrived in the hotel room at Holiday Inn. (Love that place.) Since four people had to share on hotel room, my friends decided to dorm together. Once we got into the room, two of my friends, Flora and Cindy, stormed into the bathroom and fought over those mini lotions and bottles of soap. While, they were fighting over the things, they knocked a bottle of lotion into the toilet bowl. Flora had to scoop it out with a paper cup.

            Later on, when we had to take showers, Flora was on of the first ones to go. I was right after her, which really annoyed me. The reason? When she got out of the bathroom, the floor was flooded. You can actually see her slipper floating on top of the water. We had to throw all the hotel towels to the floor in order to soak it up. Apparently, Flora did not know that the shower curtains were supposed to go inside the tub and not outside.

            When we drifted off into dreamland, Melanie and I were woken by a weird sound. It sounded like a snore. The source of this sound? Flora. Well, Melanie has a weird sleeping habit, too. She often scratches her head and slaps the blankets in her he sleep. Since there were two beds, each of us had to share it with another. Melanie’s sleeping habits imitated the behavior of someone who was awake, so I assumed that she was awake. In the end, I made a fool out of myself for talking to her when she was in dreamland. (Melanie says that I snore too, but I swear that I don’t.)

     Since this is my blog, and nobody is going read this, I’m just going blog about this rare incident that happened to the dog I’m dogsitting. So one day, I wake up from my nap, because my dog was licking my face, (I don’t know why she likes to lick me. When I come home, she licks me. When I sit down, she licks me. When I take a nap, she licks me. What I mean is that she slobbers all over my face, mouth, nose, glasses and cheeks. And she doesn’t lick anybody else either. When I do ask her for a “kiss” she just goes to sleep.) I asked her to get her “toy-toy” and as she walked away I noticed that her tail looked weird. She is a two-year-old black lab and her tail is supposed to be up in the air smacking things off the table (she knocked my cup off the table more than once). However, her tail was limp and didn’t move. I told my mom about it about it but she said that maybe the dog was tired.

     The next morning, my parents finally realized that there was something wrong with her because she was behaving sad and didn’t want to move or eat and couldn’t wag her tail. We did some research and found that she had “Cold Tail or Limber Tail” syndrome. The tail is held horizontally for 3-4 inches from the tail base and then drops down and clamps to the body and stays in this position even when the dog moves around. It is said that this happens when dogs go swimming or bathing in too cold or too warm water. And we took my dog out in the rain two days before.

     Limber tail is also associated with muscle damage in the tail. My family thinks the dog was too happy staying with us and wagged her tail too hard and too much and strained the muscles in her tail. At the same time, when we played tug-of-war with her, she fell on her butt. A lot.

     Complete recovery is usually seen by two weeks and well it’s only been five days and her tail is starting to look better.

     At the same time, sixteen percent of the dogs that get Limber Tail get a permanently altered tail.

So my advice is to not let your dog out in the rain.

Last year I worked as a counselor at a day camp with three and four year olds. I would watch them everyday and slowly grew very attached to the kids, especially the youngest girl in the group, Simone. She was two and a half at that time. I was her favorite counselor and she would always be attached to me. When she went swimming, she would cry if I would not go in the pool with her. I really loved her as if she was my sister and I would tell everyone about her. I would always take care of her and even had her mom’s number to text her during trips to let her know that Simone was okay. I cried last year on the last day of camp because I didn’t want to leave her. Her mom told me she would call me to come babysit but she never did. I was really excited to come back to camp and see her again this year. I was looking forward to it all year and was hoping she didn’t get big or forget me. I came to camp two Fridays ago and she wasn’t in camp, but two of my other older kids were in camp and they remembered me. They gave me a lot of hugs and kisses. Then I came back again last Friday and Simone was there. I saw her and she changed a little. She got bigger looking. I came up to her and she started playing with my hand and bracelet. She looked very upset. I asked her if she remembered me, and she said no. I was heartbroken. That day was the worst day ever.

The Colorado shooting that happened recently really hit me hard. When I first heard about it, I thought it was just a normal shooting that happens often but when I read about it more it became so haunting. The shooter was a smart college student. He wasn’t some crazy convict who escaped jail or something. His intentions of the shooting seem so unreal and schizophrenic. He thought he was the joker and wanted to play part of the movie. It’s scary because he took the lives of so many innocent people who went in to watch a movie. You would never think that going to a movie would turn in to such a nightmare. He massacred such young people who could have gone so many places in their lives and done so much more things. It makes you think that no one has forever to live. Not everyone have a million chances to make something out of our lives. It’s really bothersome and depressing. Three men died saving their girlfriends. These are the true heroes, forget Batman. I wish to meet heroes like that in my life. The whole situation makes you feel like you are so lucky to be alive and that you have another chance when others didn’t. It just messes with me because I feel so guilty. I live everyday saying “tomorrow this, tomorrow that.” I never really think that there might not be a tomorrow. Situations like these make you scared because it is an eye opener of the world we live in. A lot of times we feel safe, we really are not safe at all. A movie theater seems like a very safe and fun place to be and I always had this just fun, artistic image of it in my head, but that image has been gripped from my mind and replaced by a haunting, scary place where nightmares become reality. It will  be a long while till I even watch another movie again, and I will probably never set foot in a movie theater again. The scary part is you don’t know where else these things could happen. They happen where you never see it coming and I may never feel safe again.