And taking a stroll down to McDonalds

Forgot to post this up. 11/30/2007

Scented candles are taking up my oxygen...

That's what they look like. Credit to Sei Youn, Yumiko and Ji Young for buying me 'hot chocolate' and 'white tea and jasmine'. My room smells so edible...

Got out my button-up long-sleeved shirt with my elephantine jeans that my mom had to pinch together via needle and thread to prevent it from falling down and went with my mom to Bonifacio High Street to eat pasta and tenderloin.

Strangely elated feeling. I don't know if my mom knows this, but it was the first time she ever told me that I was supposed to have been a boy. Of course, it wasn't as crude as that, but she had never told me in person that I was the child born out of necessity to please a particularly demanding grandmother. My sister did that job for me. But I never knew before that I was an unwanted child. It was shocking for a split second - shocking, but never infuriating for a moment. I felt worse for my mom because of the trouble she had to go through with me as the antichrist of all children (I was loud, pretty obnoxious, and got told off by a bunch of teachers as a kid), and made me all the more happy that she was comfortable enough with me to tell me that.

Maybe it's the effect of the candles. They're so good...

YOUTUBE WITHDRAWAL: FAIL

I watched "The Notebook" today on Youtube.

It really helps, though, that I don't have an account. At least I'm not spending 4 hours on the damned site.

Maybe 2. But it's a start.

Still, tomorrow, it should narrow down to 1 video. Preferably none, but I'm not perfect.

YOUTUBE WITHDRAWAL: Day 2

It's not so bad. Taking this step by step (i.e. a specified number of videos daily), it's ok.
So far.

On the other hand, I'm increasingly watching sappy movies (i.e. Pride and Prejudice) and wondering when "Becoming Jane" and "Atonement" will come out, and looking for respectable films for Film class that I can analyze and use for my film study. At least that's somewhat

Finished "The Kite Runner", by Khaled Hosseini. Overall, it was pretty riveting and engrossing, but a lot of it was so predictable, and the plot was a bit unrealistic. I think it went overboard towards the end, starting from where Assef turned out to be the official in the Taliban who was abusing Hassan's kid Sohrab. But otherwise, I think I liked it - I'm not quite sure, though, I have mixed feelings about it. It did make me cry, and then feel pretty crappy afterwards for living a "good life" (I was eating mocha cake from BreakTalk while I was reading it)... talking to my mom about it helped, a bit. I'm not sure if I can say this for fear of sounding really stupid and ignorant, but it is a very "fun" book (meaning fast-paced) and it does make you think outside of your little bubble for a moment. I can't believe the people of Afghanistan are still living like this. productive... right?

(on the side note)

I had a strange dream when I napped today. About thousands of man-eating turtles swarming on a platform in some remote cliff in a distant part of the country. My sisters/friends (I can't remember which) were having a trip and we stumbled upon them as we took elevator/sky-lift to go see them. And somehow, it was there again when we reached the ground, and I had to swim towards them for unknown reasons... and then it goes blank.

Then shifts to a house with a lot of cats. I remember old furniture and a mention of a quest or destiny of some sort.

Is this an indication of stress? Or craziness...?

YOUTUBE WITHDRAWAL: Day 1

10 minutes ago, I deleted my Youtube account and vowed to embark on a journey of soul-cleansing and re-self-discovery.

Let me tell you this - for 2 years, I have been a faithful Youtube user. It all started when Jobo sent me a Naruto episode via MSN (when I was addicted to chatting, of course) and I was struck by the wonders of the Internet. I looked up Kenshin and had 96 episodes of beauty open up to me. My "total number of videos watched" count climbed up to 3,500 in my first few months.

I was 14.

This is totally not to something written to be funny. Of course, a lot of people could be reading this and laughing their heads off, but it's been really difficult. Already, I'm regretting my decision. People don't realize how hard it is to be working and resist the urge to take a 5 minute break to watch a little video.... and then that 5 minutes turns into 30, and then an hour, and then 2 and then 6.

Only today, I was chatting with a friend, who wrote, "Since when have you become a fan girl?" And then I had an epiphany - I was a fan girl. What were my hobbies? When was the last time I hung out with anyone? I've realized how much of my academic life was wasted away, and I've decided to do something about it. I could very well be sleeping at 10, or using those hours wasted and still sleep at 3/4 but be productive enough to use my good brain.

So begins day 1 of my withdrawal, and the beginning of my "Overcoming an Addiction" series of this blog. Believe me, I am not being melodramatic. My friends will know how serious I am about this.

HAPPIEST DAY OF JUNIOR YEAR SO FAR ZOMG!

Weird Dreams are Bothering Me

And there was a part where the package started leaking and a bit of the cat tail dripped off of the corners...

Strange, it's been a few days since the dream and I can still remember that bit very vividly. I was panicking because the cat was starting to melt and I hadn't made my decision of whether or whether or not to buy it. As soon as the tail dripped (more like squeezed) out, the owner took the squelchy package and told me I could get a new one if I wanted.

"And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad... The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had..." - Gary Jules

Speaking of surreal terrors:

Frank the Bunny is starting to fascinate me.

Donnie Darko in film class!

Huzzah!

I LOVE PHOTOSHOP

1024 x 768, Rurouni Kenshin wallpapers

If a random stranger stumbles upon this and wants to take them for his/her own, that's totally fine by me, as long as they are credited back to me, Tsarinelle. I will be very angry if my rights are violated.

Falling Off the Earth

"Falling Off The Earth"

It's funny how adamant I was about the BT not publishing my sister's essay because I felt that, once it was out, the entire High School (not just the ones who have already known me and my tragic background) would know that I was the younger sister of an insanely good writer soon to be graduating Yale in the spring of next year. I still feel the same way, and I know that once the name gets out, everything I do will be in the shadow of her undeniable reputation. Just like applying to the damned school... I get in, it's goes unnoticed, like something long predicted. I get rejected, and it's almost atrocious (on my part). Either way, comparisons are going to be made...

This piece had to coincide with my sister's application essay, "WHY I WRITE: A fear of falling off the Earth", which talks about how she writes to preserve things past and try, feebly, to hold her footing in an Earth that spins uncontrollably fast.

I wish I could write like that. We're all very much lost in space and trying to bring ourselves back to reality holding on is ultimately life's greatest challenge... All the escapists of the world should be given a little bubble to access and live in for a given amount of time. Of course, this is now called video gaming and virtual reality. :)

The Truth About IB

Here's the story: the International Baccalaureate (or IB, to us insiders) is, as the name hints, an international educational program that, or so they tell us, was set up to give diplomats kids a consistent education when they would move from country to country with there parents. Or that's what IB tells people.

The truth is, the IB program is just a clever front for a group of sadistic gnomes living in IB land that love to torture kids. They've fooled educational system in countries all over the world to believe that this program was for the advancing of knowledge of the kids, when really, it's all part of the gnomes plan for world domination. Shocking, huh?

At this point, you're probably saying, "No, this can't be true. Any body would recognize a scheming plot put on by lawn ornaments to take over the world by the destruction of today's youth." You must remember how smart this little guys are. There's a lot of brains hidden under those big, floppy hats. These are not your average lawn gnomes.

Let me tell you a little bit about the methods the gnomes take to ruin kids minds. Through the laborious task of writing the almighty internal and external assessment, the typical IB student racks their brain trying to write a paper that will score a good mark so she could get into a seemingly "good" college. The candidate will spend many hours in the depths of some library trying to locate information for the assessment from some book that no one has checked out since it was published in the 1700's just because it's a primary source and someone else had checked out every other book on their topic out already and many more sleepless nights trying to fit all the useless information found from this equally useless book into their paper. And then, when they finally turn their paper in, if it's an internal assessment, the teachers is forced by the gnomes to grade the assessment by the impossibly high standards that no human could score well on. But an external assessment, is worse. These papers are graded by the gnomes themselves!! Sure, the IB coordinator of a school thinks their sending them to a foreign country for people to read and grade, but these seemingly real people are actually gnomes in disguise who deliver the external assessments to the gnomes themselves living in the far off Land of IB located on another dimensional plane.

And then, there is the biggest punishment of all: the IB test. These are cumulative exams that force the IB candidate to recall every bit of information the gnomes have feed into their heads from the two years in their IB classes and write it down on a 11 page book of green and white paper. The candidate will spend hours and days and weeks trying to absorb knowledge to try and gain the elusive SEVEN, which no actual human being can obtain (unless you are an alien... or a gnome...). And if that's not grueling enough, this booklet is coated with a layer of mercury undetectable to modern science that, after the multiple tests the candidates take, deposits enough mercury inside the body of the candidate to eventually drive them insane. Some symptoms of this insanity are the spelling of the word "behavior" with a "u" or "control" with a "u" and the candidate constantly finding comparisons between real life and the useless information the gnomes feed the candidate.

So here is the story behind the mistreatment of thousands of children all over the world. This may seem to hard for you to believe, but trust me, it's true. For I am currently trapped in this web and still have one more year before I can again be free, also I don't know how much of my sanity I'll have left at the end of my captivity. So I warn you, STAY AWAY FROM IB!!! Save Yourself!! It's too late for me, but you might still have time!!

(stolen from Ana who stole it from http://www.geocities.com/ibgnomes/ )

MY PRODUCTIVE DAY AT ADB LIBRARY (part 2)

"Big Brother"
Bo-Won Keum. Blue in on Math Notebook, September 2007.

MY PRODUCTIVE DAY AT ADB LIBRARY (part 1)

"I Will Be Your Umbrella"
Bo-Won Keum. Ink on Math Notebook, September 2007.

The things I do for my clubs...

(front)

(back)

Best Anime Scene in the Entire World, while we're at it

I truly believe that RK (Rurouni Kenshin) is the greatest anime out there, even if it is practically a decade year old. Anyone bigoted enough to tell me otherwise should... should... (cough). I'm really enjoying the use of the embedding-Youtube clip option here, so here is... (drum roll) my FAVORITE KENSHIN SCENE in the entire ANIME! Yay!

Best Fight Scene in the Entire World

This is what I think every fight sequence in the world should have more of. Just an awesome, awesome scene.
Interesting fact: the majority of the fan videos throw in a some kind of Linkin Park soundtrack. That might... give you a sense of what it's like.

>Edit: NO!!! I just realized that the subtitles were in French or something!!!

Plastic Grass!

SY 2007; a momentous year. ISM decides to strip its High School field of its natural green grass and replace it with super-turf that will never need cutting, watering or management whatsoever! Yes, the new astro-turf is here, where athlete's game-spit will shine forever and ever on the plastic blades of grass - unwashed and totally unnatural! No ants, no bugs, no fresh smell, and a bonus burning sensation when skidding across the field!


Heehee, I bet it's more flammable now that's it made of plastic.

Ana, Chiara and I went to the "Friday Night Lights" game on Friday the 7th (September). We spent the entire game trying to figure out which side was which, and then made fun of ourselves because we were so stupid.

Good times. Bad field, though, for those who haven't understood a word I've just said - it smells like sweat when you go near. ... Thank god I'm not athletic...

September 23, 2007

So. 500,000,000 years later, I come back.

I am stressed. I am in junior year. I am a full IB (International Baccalaureate) candidate. I can spell "baccalaureate" without any help. I know twice the things I did in 9th grade, but I feel fat, stupid and stressed. This is what I feel doing right now.


When you've regressed to the state where you're sitting in front of the computer wasting away precious time on pointless blogs eating home-baked cookies (yum) with milk (good too) while the functions of ellipses and double-curves await me at my desk (haha, it switched to first person without me knowing... that's how numb my brain has gotten) you know you need help.

Serious help.

I've just completed my psych notes on Freud, who was a very dirty, indecent old man. But a brilliant guy. I'm officially calling the devil on my shoulder the id, and from now on, whenever that little guy takes over, it's not my fault. If I go to sleep now, I'LL BLAME THE ID. If I eat all the cookies on the kitchen table, I'LL BLAME THE ID. If I watch Youtube (oh god... just writing it here makes me want to cry or... rock myself) I'LL BLAME THE F---ING ID.

So ends the 23rd day of September, year 2007.

The Beginning of the End.

This could be the start of an insane rampage to take over the world with my infectious stupidity. Or it could be something productive. I dont' know. Too lazy to keep a physically tangible diary, this is my pathetic attempt to keep some of my memories preserved in the quirky, strange, perhaps even funny ways I see them.

So as of the moment, I'm putting off my Japanese script, my English oral and numerous reviewings that could prove vital to the survival of my poor exam grades, and therefore stabilize my grades. But I love doing nothing too much. You, my means of procrastination, will be my new best friend for the next couple of days. Congratulations.

5.22.2007

National Honors Society Induction Ceremony.

Summed up in a photo and approximately 16 words.