dude, these essays are killing me. no, scratch that. college apps are killing me. i really don't know how some ppl *cough no names of course* can withstand doing more than a dozen w/o going mad. but for once, i am .. genuinely sleepy, so i think i'll go to bed now.

and some advice: never poke your eye with a soapy finger. i don't even know how i did it, but i definitely yelped when i felt the sting. and what sucked even more was that i couldn't really wash my eye out for fear of washing out my left contact as well.

Man, you know what? I am really going to miss all my eccentricities once i grow up.
And honestly, I thank all my dear friends for bearing with my crazy antics like (deep breath) ... writing backwards, backwards in Spanish, backwards in code, (i think i may have done backwards coded Spanish as well), &tc.; using Tolkien words to name the characters in the Notebook Story; playing with name generators to get Maukû the Squeaker; inventing LotR-ed Maukû's; inventing Maukû's friends Pokey & Mushie (i thank my brother for the mushroom, too); saying the silliest things [chicken instead of kitchen?; sub-tell instead of subtle..; ><]; memorizing pi [3.1415926535...!], the web addy of Cincy's forecast [http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USOH0188.html] (blue ash's is 1101 instead of 0188), snatches of Poe's "The Bells" [Hear the sledges with the bells! Silver Bells! what a world of merriment their melody foretells!] & other most random things [like the fact that the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes (or w/e) is 1729] , etc.; being a total science / biology / astronomy freak [photophosphorylation is one wicked word; and the pillars of creation are still credited as the first spark to my astronomy-ness; and cornstarch! is awesome!; as is the formula of cocaine - though i thankfully have forgotten it by now =P]; freaking out over the littlest things like unzipped bookbags, creased papers, creased pages in books, marked books, fingerprinted cds, smeared words, misspelled words, bad grammar, etc. etc.

So if i've never said it, i say it now: thank you for being my friend through all these insane years XD.

*unhappily runs back to her college apps for which she is very doomed* [obviously the envious sliver from 12/15/05 didn't work. hamlet fails me. XP ... X( .]

Somewhereeeeee over the rooftop, reindeer flyyyyyyy! (blah blah, i never knew the words to 'over the rainbow' anyway)

but Merry Christmas, m'friends!

This is really a bit too cheery for me. And i still retain quite a strong attachment to the gloomy birdie, heh. But i suppose it was nice revisiting my english seminar calendar (while realising that i'd never scanned it with maukû colored in. oy / X( ....!) and wishing that i could do it all over again =\ hm.. that doesn't seem very ... cheering. ah well. winter break = more time, which means i had better finish my college stuff... very soon. very very soon.

d-day#1 for stacy = today today today.! X( x infinity. *goes to sit on tree branches in hopes of encountering an envious sliver*

& btw, we watched'd tara's Hamlet the Musical during english today. ah, so amusing. XP! & omg, david morton w/all his backflips, toe touches, and whatnot = o.O !. and after finally hearing him sing (though still not in real life), i must agree that he does have an amazing voice.

this is slightly worrying. after doing hamlet for 2 or so weeks, my writing style is starting to change into weird inverted sentences and who knows what else. but i need to retain my old 'i hate the world' tone! i want my writing style back! (not that i really had one to begin with. but it certainly was NOT shakespearean!)

because this is too amusing to pass up. this is the difference when i organise my math hw in two different way: this looks like a disaster, & this looks a bit more pleasing to the eye. =P

and today, my brain just decided to flip itself backwards during FCC so i kept saying things like 'chicken' instead of 'kitchen' to pin-ya, heh. XP

someone in el sycamore high school must be a pink-clicky-eraser stealer b/c i cannot find mikey's poor already-half-broken pink-clicky-eraser. even though i've gone back and retraced my steps and been late to two classes. =( =( =( !! that is (almost) all. problem solved.

ok, so i'm listening to some random clip in Chinese about HP & GoF, and they say 'leung pei shih' ... ... wait! wait! that's MY chinese name! the person who plays cho chang has stolen the (詩珮) part of of my name & inverted it (to become 佩詩)! so anyway that was my random discovery of the day. alright byebye =P

alright. so right now, life sucks very much. or at least, there's just a lot of low pressure, i mean.. i'll leave that to.. w/e

i have seriously done something to my poor right knee. the short story would be that i was very happy to find a kumon stool that i could sit on (and those stools are actually nice b/c they're my height!). and so i happily plopped myself down onto the stool... but completely forgot that the table leg was there.. crash. OW! pain pain!
well, no. actually, it didn't hurt that much at the beginning besides the first reaction of "holy shfreakers. AHH! X(" but now it's like an "eh... owwww..?" whenever i bend it. man, what a brilliant child. X( ...!

and sky wong, btw, totally cracks me up. he started drawing pictures around his math answers. where most people would just circle their answer, he drew a... (for example) jupiter, a bowl of grapes, uranus, ufo, , 'you', 'me', clock, some - type - of - crazy - flower - beginning - with - 'chry' - that - i - can't - spell (jen says chrysanthemum?), etc. and then he started randomly humming and dancing around while saying something about eggs. i'm thinking he was a bit too hyper today.

and omg, physics test. i got a B..! and it would be an A- with a box of tissues! =D! ?

yeah, sorry about all the randomness of the last few entries.

jojoba! right on my herbal essence conditioner bottle! *giggles*

no giggles for attempting to do those essays and accomplishing pretty much nothing. =\ oh, and finding out that i've got about 289347508 more essays to write. =( =( =( !!!!

i do believe charlotte was rather shocked to hear that i do hw in bed at 3 am. oops? i thought it was .. fairly normal among most of my friends. i suppose not.

but anyway, today, i got to witness the (delightful.. i mean, horrible) crunching (sound) of one car bumping into another into another, which just happened to be a school transportation minibus that had stopped at some railroad tracks. it was fairly interesting. unfortunately, right as i saw/heard the car in front of me run into the one before it, i went "Oh shfreakers. that means i'm going to be late! it's already 7:07!" & "hey! physics!" at the same time.

except, i suppose the story's ending there b/c i am just too sleepy / tired / dead to think properly anymore. many thousand apologies to alice j. who has been enduring my nonsensical "so you do this?" for physics. kumon & the engilsh paper has killed maybe 40% of me. physics test shall claim the last 80% of the 60%, ... and i think i'll stop w/the percentages there. g'bye.

how awesome is this.. on friday, november 11, 2005... stacy actually was in bed by 11:30 pm... O.O (it would've actually been 11, had stacy not misplaced her fellycone)

but then yesterday, stacy was in bed by 12:15 pm (quite a record enough), but she didn't start her english paper until 1:30 am... (yeah, i'm kind of wondering what happened between 12:15-1:30... most likely 'brainstorming') and went until 2:39 am whereupon she took a mini-nap until 3:10 am. and then she tried desperately to work on it until 4:33 am. and then she pretty much just gave up. and condemned herself to a very stressed-out physics and orchestra bell. only to find out that mrs. wolfe wasn't at school today. X(

but now, i've got to go actually do it... the second part at least. wow, so rambling. byebye.

i have reached the conclusion that life doesn't like me, especially in the area of physics. and i dislike it in return in the areas of gov and spanish. *nods*

although, it was nice to have a random escape-for-2.25 bells while watching macbeth kill lotsa ppl and then get killed himself. mmm, the porter + his 'knock, knock, knock's = funny, hehe. and the whole thing abt the macbeth actor 'kicking' ppl in the ribs w/'the flat part of the shoe... etc. etc. (long spiel about how to kick) so it wouldn't be as painful,' & then getting the response, 'actually. today, it kind of did [hurt].' =P

... =\ where's the snow? me wants some snow... (days).

alrighty, sometimes, i just wish newton & all those brilliant mathematicians/physicists/w.e would've been a bit less brilliant and not invented thigns such as calculus and who knows what else. OY. some people obviously didn't have a life.

oh oh, and the harry plotter & the caliz de fuego soundtrack seriously sounds rather LotR-ish. m/b the new composer wanted to be a mix of john williams + howard shore. =P actually, some parts also remind me of... ohhh other composers. w/e..

hahaha, and my dad has a practice theory test (or is it theory practice test? my brain's quite fried from calc) cd for driving. i think he's wanting to get a license in England but the test is £45 (drat! the computer doesn't have a pound key. but then again, neither did the laptop.. but it did have a euro one!), which is a heck of a lot of money. eeesh. and supposedly the driving test is like 45 minutes.. talk about o.O-ing. but in spite of all that, you know... i'm actually staring to think that i do like england =X. heheh, i'ma feeling a bit nostalgic for those sheep-in-the-middle-of-nat'l-parks & such oddities. =P

wow, and i've just noticed that the last x number of entries had the time ending in 8.. weird.

the beginning & the end of the papaya tree. i suppose if you want a more gradual transition you could go honour it by looking at its progress here.

and while we're at it, have some senior dress up / halloween thingy pics. but i didn't take many b/c 1. i forgot about the camera & 2. the batteries started dying. (and i just recharged them too.. what the heeeck)

oopsies. *pokes website* i'ma back. annnnnnd i just happened to stumble upon

VeggieTale's ... 'The Lord of the Beans'
... =P ! ... XD!! *cracks up*

oh, and my daddy's coming back today. in fact, i think my mum's supposed to be picking him up right now.

oh oh, and speaking of british-y things (kind of), prendergast & the british girls visited our school on monday+tuesday. (they even sat in on an orch rehearsal, oh dear). but, anyway, ruch & i spent the last 5 minutes of calc and half of lunch running around the school before we finally found him. so now i've got a random "to stacey [ehhh... well, i don't blame him; it has been two years...] from trendy prendy" note in my planbook, and he's got a random picture of us. =) ... =P

interesting. so apparently freewebs decided to tag along every other blogging thingy & make its own stuff.. so now i can stealborrow their smilies... like so:
... hm, too many smilies. o.O

& too cheery. ok, out the door with you smilies. X(

oh, for some really random reason, there's a sample of beethoven's symphony no. 9, except that it sounds like 100% better than what we played last year; but then again, how much can you expect from a somewhat apathetic high school orchestra? =P which reminds me, we're playing this one piece called December by someone, and it literally is melody-ness and sounds like a bunch of random notes somehow strung together so that it's pretty much impossible for the orchestra to play together; but, it does sound pretty interesting on recording (sounds nothing like our version..). Oh! and there's a part that really reminds me of Spirited Away.

there was something else i was going to say...

oh, got it. physics is fun! (but physics tests, on the other hand, are the devil's um... second cousin, once removed. [i already assigned the cousin to something else. unfortunately, i've forgotten to what]). nevertheless, mr. g is awesome & provides just as many (if not more) humoring stories as mr. murray. and unlike mr. murray's, mr. g's don't hafta prove a point (e.g. "you're screwed" college stories..X( ). and i like his answer keys--for instance "12. There is no question 12. The number 12 was busy sponsoring Sesame Street, along with the letter z." that certainly is one of the most random things i've heard from a teacher.

and OMG! my calc grade is dying (and so will my fizziks, but that's beside the point) b/c i simply haven't been paying attention in class. sigh X(. perhaps i should eat my daily half muffin during.. lunch instead?

and and! today, the seniors got free icecream! except i gave mine to esther (1. b/c she exclaimed, 'i want ice cream!' upon meeting me in the commons 2 minutes before the bell rang, 2. to hopefully appease her for a certain issue, & 3. i'm just weird). but then! i got the leftovers of saba's chipotle, yummy it was. and btw, it took me 2 bells to just finish it b/c.... we played euchre in hispanic studies today! =D. ahh, that was scrumptuliciously delicious & mucho fun-y!

and now, i am off to bed. wow, what random ramblings.

i got an email from occidental college XD [yes, that face b/c i just cannot think of another substitute unless it's something like a mixture between "=P =P =P", "X(", and then "=D!"]. except that i always saw it as accidental college, but the email oh-so-nicely informs me that 'occidental' means 'to the west'. ppfft. they even nicknamed their lovely college as oxy. heh, nice try, mr college.

oh, and luke & michelle's wedding! 'tis the first one i've been to since... maybe 6-7th-ish grade? ah but it was very lovely & fun. to put off procrastination, though, i think i'll skip the recap (i suppose you can go see other church ppl's accounts instead) & just say hay fotos aquí.

oh man, that is GROSS. my cornstarch is approximately a week & ~2 hours old. and after not stirring it since tuesday (where mike kim seemed to greatly enjoy poking it for an entire bell in calc), the solution/suspension has settled, and there's a clear film of water on top of the cornstarch.. except that everything's like.. solid & growing... suspicious black. perhaps mold. eewww x 100? as much as i like bio, i do NOT like mold... so how do i get rid of this? um.. especially since one of my hairbands is being used as a ... rubber band X(. oh well.

school is ok now i suppose. i still miss all those 98234752 math + science courses, but i suppose i'll live. oh, and the horrible physics final exam grade from last year turned out to be some mistake (nevermind the fact that the real grade was not much better at all), so i actually got an A overall instead, which happy-A junior year. =D [*inserts dorky note of gpa being now 4.429 instead of 4.286* eh, mega grade inflation going on here =X]. what else was i going to say? oh yeah, and it seems like i've been going around and visiting teachers more often than usual. actually, i've never gone and personally seeked out a teacher just to talk w/them or bring them random things (i.e. the 'seven types of ambiguity / vicious vikings' paper for smith & a science article about 'clever whales teaching others' for smanik— wow, i'm such a dope?) before this year.hm, i'm not sure why i do it anyway... perhaps it's part of being a senior / having early dismissal? and not to mention all those not-prescheduled counselor meetings— i really do feel quite sorry for my counselor, actually =X. oops, i've been saying 'actually' quite a bit in this paragraph.

oh and another school parking misfortune. the first one was the whole thing about someone else parking in my spot for the first two days of school until i (read: the front office) threatened to tow the car. the second one actually (oh dear, there's the word again) might have been occurring since i seized my rightful spot back, but i just noticed it today: the owner(s) of the car parked next to me has been excessively careless in opening their car doors b/c both of my driver side doors are riddled with scratches & dents. X( X( X( !!! talk about irritation. obviously this kid doesn't care much about respecting other people's properties... asdfkja;skfjas! so anyway, i reported it to the front office, except i'd only reported the scratches (my mother actually admonished me later for not noticing the dents..), buuuut i really hope that 1) i won't hafta pay for the damage, 2) the freaking kid who parks next to me will learn how to open car doors more gently (or suffer my wrath), and 3) i won't hafta deal with this kind of stuff again b/c i just hate all these insurance / cost stuff. blech.

oh, and kat attack-hugs really hard. it pretty much felt like i was being punched on both arms, and then being strangled before i finally heard a "hi stacy!! =D!" =P

wow, that was my first 'real' post in a while. AND WHO CALLS AT TWELVE MIDNIGHT...! oh, 'tis only my dear brother. ah dear, what a random post, too. (hey look, and i use 'oh' a lot too...) and pardon any spelling or gramma[tical] errors; i am quite sleepy. *scampers off to bed*

i really like playing w/ a cornstarch-water mixture. you stir it like a liquid, & then jab it, and it becomes solid-like! so yeah, i wasted like maybe 4 tsp of my mother's cornstarch b/c first i put too much water, and then again, and then finally got the right proportions. except that now the water keeps evaporating so i keep needing (hey, horrible grammar) to dump more in. perhaps i can keep this batch until sunday for my sunday school kids... ah so fun! *goes and pokes it some more*

and that is how i spent my friday night. in addition to reminiscing (whoa, i spelled it right on the first try) w/ruch over our really weird notebook story & euro pics. what about you?

kay, i retract my statement about mr. vonnegut being on my despised authors list. in fact, i actually like his writing style when he makes sense & doesn't drop curse words every other paragraph. o.O

ok, senior year? let's just say i really, really, really miss my junior year. the lack of science & math classes makes me quite sad, and the fact that i've already had my fair share of misfortunes is not improving the mood. end of story. heh

oh that horrible, horrible torture is upon us again. and i still haven't been able to recap my lovely English experience. but at least zhe pictures are up. here and here. [edit:] and here! (dad's). and fyi, there are more ppl pictures in this one *ahem* [/edit] and i am sorry that there are not many people pictures. not many at all. maybe like 5/500 pictures..

but i must say, i think this summer has been the most event-filled yet.
now for school. as a seniodopadilic. X(

[edit - 11/01/05]: so i'm guessing that this recap will never come. but i did recap things in my letters to ruchi, alice j, jen p, & serena. so maybe one day i'll go bug them to find the letters, and then i'll recap from there =P. but i do remember that i did try driving on the left - that was quite cool except i promptly almost ran into the left curb b/c i'm terrible at estimation (like beyond terrible - even in math..). also ... *racks brains* i love my dad's apartment.. just b/c it's so new and.. sterile... clean! and hardwood-y! and everything's so cleverly disguised. like the washing/drying machine right next to the microwave. how often do you see that in america? and my dad's also got really high beds.. like maybe 3 ft high? my goodness, i had to clamber up onto the bed. and the pillows were SO stuffed - to the point where if you punched it, nothing would really happen... what else? oh, i also got the uk version of harry potter 6, although i do kinda miss the chapter pictures. etc. etc. ok i really should go back to my calc [/edit]

mmk, so i'm back from the UK and needless to say, it was quite fun frolicking among various English/Scottish accents, sheep in the middle of nat'l parks, (very) expensive parking fees, and cars driving on the wrong (left) side of the road. but anyway i think a recap may come later as well as pictures, but first the pics must definitely be sorted b/c there are currently ~600 & quite a bit are either duplicates or totally random.

off to UK for a week. good day.

a very happy bday to my brother who is now veinte años.

and on a sidenote, i suppose a happy bday to eric chang, j.k. rowling, harry potter and anyone else.

oh man. due to my excellent skills, i accidentally killed my current update so... hrm, no WYSE camp recap or anecdote about the squished bug on my monitor. ah well.

let's just say the WYSE [Worldwide Youth in Science & Engineering] camp had boy-to-girl ratio of 31-9. the dorm rooms were nice (but a bit too cold until we learned to turn off the AC), the food was yummy (lasagna, pasta, etc. - sucks that i only remember the italian part), & the 3-4 hour classes were torturous. erm, what else? the girls were cool & rather amusing, esp. my suitemates: arielle (roomate), mo, & stacy kim. diana yen also came along later since she was roomate-less & she + mo watched me daily as i threw a sticky-man up against the wall everytime arielle + stacy k had their daily girl talk. oh dear i've never ever met such girly girls. but anyway, i forget what else i recap-ed besides the details of each [class below (edit 2009/07/20)]. and of course, we can't forget about those pictures & the group photo.

kay, remind me next time to not mess w/my website at 12 am while doing other things. oy. (& thanks to norman for asking me abt the gibberish, heh).

Exploring Your Options stuff:

• Battle of the boats: the boats were supposed to be made using only cardboard, duct tape, + brains. they would be tested for their.. i suppose successfulness by cross a swimming pool. since my team was composed of 3 boys & me... well the boys decided they wanted to do + mostly just (tried to) fill me in. their plan was brilliant in their minds (a raft-like thing) but i kinda foresaw the failure that later came during the competition. after all, it wasn't reinforced too well & the thing just literally sank the moment it touched the water. [we later got the 'most spectacular failure' award.. as well as the 'most unusal' since the other ppl just did normal boats.]
• Physics was ok - just a bunch of demonstrations. talked about stuff i'd learn including the falling monkey (a stuffed monkey) & a bullet (a dart) stuff, the van der graf (or however you spell it) generator + hair stuff, liquid nitrogen... basically lots of projectile motion, electrostatic, & the conservation of angular momentum. then there was a quiz which was more trivia than actual learning & frustrated most campers to no end.
• Civil engr was somewhat fun although i almost fell asleep during the lecture part. had something to do w/bridges & reinforcement walls. for the hands-on we had to fill a 3-sided box w/sand & have a single sheet of poster board hold the sand back (my team won btw, by holding, i think, 550 lbs).
• MAE had something to do w/earthquakes. we had to build a house out of sugar cubes & peanut butter & test its strength using an earthquake simulator - basically something that shook the poor house until it collapsed. again, amazingly, my group won w/our pyramid house, fondly called "The Pretty Pony Palace." (hm, don't ask)
• Mechanical & Industrial engr was kinda cool. lots of nanotechnology that was quite intriguing including ferro fluid magnetic liquid (go look it up, 'tis cool stuff; and i definitely had to search for the name so don't think of me as some geeky dork) & 'blooming' chocolate.
• CS, the way they presented it made it boring as heck & probably discouraged me from it all the more, regardless of their persistent "CS majors have one of the hightest starting salaries!!!" all we did was take a tour around the building & then do logic problems like "what's the least number of *insert thing* that you need to do *insert task*"
• Gen. Engr was just as boring + sleep-inducing, and b/c of that confusing. we pretty much sat in front of a computer for an hour & moved + clicked our mouse occasionally. enough said, really.
• Theoretical & Applied Mechanics was just as dull even though we had to move around more. it involved stuff like tying the strongest knot (mine withstood 123 lbs before the string snapped at the knot), doing liquid dynamics stuff, physics stuff, & learning the difference between *deep breath* elastic, elastic-plastic, & (crap, forgot the word...) viscoelastic.
• Aerospace engr, sadly, was not presented much better than CS. my mood was probably also affected by the weather, which had been totally stormy. with me umbrella-less & a literal downpour, the tourguide carried on w/the engineering tour which required us to walk outside. by the time it was over, i literally looked & felt like i'd been thrown in a lake (ahem) since my hair, shirt, + pants were totally soaked (running through a huge puddle in pouring rain tends to do that) to the point where i left a trail of water after me for awhile. so, getting back to aerospace, it was altogether not too fun.
• Chem Engr was fun! well, kinda. at least the lady spent a long time telling us how we'd been ripped off by merchandise that only consisted of basic silly ingredients. i kinda forget what we did though b/c i was quite sleepy during the whole time (it was after all, in the morning)
• Electrical & Comp Engr. oh dear, the activity quite left me w/a very unpleasant memory of this area.. we were set to the task of learning how to use oscilloscope, freq generators, etc etc lots of electronic stuff like T connectors, banana connects, BNCs. probably worse of all was the task of making our own FM radio or something, which included soldering. eeks. the only cool part was carving our names onto poker chips using... um, a laser?
• Agri Eng... 4 hours of it. honestly you would think that there's not enough to talk about but noo, we were on our feet for almost all 4 hours so my feet were ready to die + my brain pretty much tuned out everything. there was something about corn, veggie oil for gasoline, er.. and some more
• Nuclear, Plasma, & Radiological Engr was actually quite fun. had to crush a can using electrical current. mo & i spent a lot of time coiling wires neatly around. unfortunately, we (or actually, i more) forgot about the fact that the copper ends of the wires connect electricity most excellently so they burned holes in the can instead of transmitting the current all the way through. sigh. afterwards though, i had fun tearing the aluminun can in two but gave myself at least 3 cuts in the process. the Plasma part was totally awesome, we saw how a lightsaber would work. then we got to experience the VisBox thing, which is basically a "virtual reality sys w/ head-tracking, wand-tracking, & 3D stereo display." in other words, we got to put on polarized glasses & get dizzy while a volunteer worked the controls & went through 'worlds' or played (or failed miserably at) Quake.
• and now we come to ... Lego Mindstorms. possibly the worse ever type of programming to ever exist. this activity was supposed to be throughout the week and would culminate in a Legos Competition on Saturday morning in which our little beloved robot car thing was expected to be able to detect different colors & react accordingly, & sense when it bumped into walls, bricks, or other obstacles.

so really, what happened to my summer? it seems but a minute ago that it was still june with all the lovely, frying-y weather & then just yesterday, i finally realized that it's already july with its steamy, bipolar weather.

(and something random + totally unrelated: ever notice that i'm almost always updating when it's 11pm-ish?)

anyhow, the euro trip was amaziing even though it took up 10 precious days of my summer. and btw, the euro recap is probably never going to come. at least not online. but if you really do desire [er, that sounded faintly pride&prejudice-like] to see my recap, i suggest that you not bother to ask anyway b/c it would take forever to read (it's only 38 pages so far, and still counting. and besides, it's quite random & would probably confuse anyone, even those who went =P). next to eat up my summer was the 6 days of frantic campus visiting: going from cincy to Duke to UPenn to Johns Hopkins to Cornell, i am convinced more than ever that i will not get into college. sheesh such high standards. (and did i mention, i have some unfriendly feelings towards Cornell at the moment b/c some bird just happened to poop on my hand while i was on the engineering tour X(... to say the least, it was quite disgusting but gave me an excellent bio opportunity [wondering why the txtbk said uric acid is solid when it obviously isn't.. well, at first] =P) and then, summer retreat took up 4 days but it was quite worth it. the topic was, i thought, quite excellent in focusing on the Church & the many things relating to it. probably no recap here as well b/c there are just too many details + besides, a plethora of recaps are already out there so... i'll spare ppl from reading one more.

on the other hand, while i haven't been traveling, i've been trying to do some summer hw. finished reading slaughterhouse 5 a few days after returning from europe, and then finished pride & prejudice this morning @ 4 am in the morning (read by my dear cellphone light for 3 hours b/c my mother was still up / i dunno when she went to bed. yes, what a crazy family o.O). unfortunately, after finally glancing through the summer hw assignments today, i realized that, oh dear, the books are supposed to be hilighted. but now, i'm on to the gov reading which, after just 5 pages, has already proved that it will test my endurance greatly by its lack of humor or even interesting writing style. but then again, i just realized that it's just government & not history...

oops, that was kinda long. now for another stab @ government (perhaps by cellphone light again).

hm, yesterday = summer solstice. but anyway, the first few weeks of summer have been spent bumming around, and then frolicking around in europe, namely london, paris, florence, assisi, & rome (actually, by then we were frying more like).

anyway, mi pics :here: (contains most except stuff @lourve & some other small bits) & ruchi's :here: (perhaps a bit more informative than mine & definitely more ppl pictures, i think) & while we're at it, my dad/mum's pictures from their uk trip are :here:

so erm, life is fairly boring at home now, no 2835789235 miles of walking to do, no metros to squish into, etc. but unfortunately, there is summer hw & a bunch of other stuff to worry about... like my grade report.

junior year = lotsa random quotes :here: =P

and there's also a junior year summary out there somewhere but some snooping must be done to find it.

oy, whoever heard of getting burned by potato soup? and how awesome is this: the burn mark is in the shape of a potato wedge (unfortunately, i really don't know how that would happen b/c i definitely dropped a big glob, not a chunk of potato)

other than that, ap testing week is somewhat fun. the tests themselves.. not so fun.

the evolution of el tpcastt poetry essay-

essay started: 10:30 pm (4.26)	~150 words
continued #1: chem - (4.27)	+ 190 words
cont. #2: 'arrive alive' assembly	+ 140 words
cont. #3: precalc	+ 250 words
cont. #4: bio	+ 150 words
cont. #5: stats&lunch	+240 words

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one very convoluted essay (w/total of ~1100 words + lots of mistakes)

& one very unhappy stacy.

and thus the Age of stacy's-perfect-attendance-since-4th/5th-grade-ness ends

hm, a very lovely good morning to all. oh, and i'm very happy to report that there aren't any birdies up at this insane hour. last time i was up this early, they were already singing their little (bio moment: 4-chambered) hearts out by 4:15-30 and bothering the heck outta me as i wrote my research/persuasive/w.e paper...

and is it bad that i've suddenly lost all motivation to study or do hw.. especially with all those ap tests coming up? =X

chemistry + tie-dyeing = fun stuff (and stacy got to do it 1.5 times today, heh )
stats + crayfish + project = bleh ^ ∞ (and that lady is truly quite evil for things that will remain untold)

ah, and the only semi-exciting part of doing stats review (while sitting outside/wishing to chase a rabbit from the backyard) was coming across the normal distribution equation: y=e^—z2/2.

currently, walking in a straight line from west to east in my house (family room --> kitchen --> lower study room.) allows one to experience at least 4 mini time-travels. meet clock #1: hanging serenely above the fireplace in the family room. this one is not on Daylight Savings Time — in fact, never has been for the past few years (and probably never will be). nevertheless, it happily tick-tocks away with the time, 9:46. then, we walk to the other end of the family room and meet clock #2: sitting placidly on a bookshelf (which is about to die under the weight of all those piano/violin/etc. music + cds). this one has just been set to DST and indicates the time, 10:52. we then hop into the kitchen and pivot 90º clockwise to meet clock #3: dangling above the message center table in its own lonely spot. this one was set to DST just two days ago but displays the slightly puzzling time of... 10:38. turning back east again, we face clocks #4&5: one.. the microwave oven, the other — an alarm clock — resting on top of it. both agree and display 10:51. (oh, and if you go on a slight detour you meet clock #4.5 on the oven, which declares the quite mysterious time of... 6:35??). continuing on to the studyroom, we meet clock #6: posing rather charmingly on the bare wall with its crayola crayon-rocket-shaped minute + hour hands and a starry second hand (yes, this used to be my very own clock). this one ends the trip with a final 12:34.

after sitting in the cars of two fellow juniors (norman & mike kim — kudos to them for carting me around, heh), i have come to the conclusion that some guys can be law-abiding drivers.. so much that it makes one disgusted as to how goody-two-shoes-y they are. =P after all, neither of them seemed willing to go above the speed limit nor even cross the white line when stopping... but ah well, i suppose cautious drivers are always a good thing, yeah? =)

on a separate note, spring break was rather unproductive. fri, sat, & sunday were mostly spent in front of the piano, torturing my fingers & bidding a fond farewell to the concerto (see below). monday was spent cleaning (wow, haven't done that in a while) b/c mum's little brother was coming over. then tuesday through thursday was split b/t gatsby, editing mei's essay, & futile attempts at starting my paper. (might i add that mei's paper is extremely bloodified by both ruch and me, hehehe). friday, vincent & his family show up at our door.. at ~10 in the morning o.O. movies, then yg — the first time since, hm, early february? and then sat & today were spent, ah... bio-ing =X (but! i am finally caught up w/all the bio reading since the beginning of march =D).

alrighty, back to stem cells. they're starting to haunt me in my dreams.. not even kidding.

you know, after ~28 hours of piano in a week (oh oh! and new record of 5.75 hrs in one day), preparing for two events, each with two different pieces... i found out i do very muchly love piano. o.O

and oooh. concert today.. fun stuff. the fire alarm decided to go off in the middle/end of anchin's concerto. so everyone (audience, orchestra ppl, instruments and all) had to troop outside and wait for a long time before hearing the end of her piece (which btw, i absolutely absolutely love). actually, it was quite nice waiting outside, except it was kinda windy so my mum sent me into the building with the blaring fire alarms. =( but i did get to see some of the csyo ppl (including tiff! who i haven't seen since forever..)

but yeah, overall 'twas a lovely concert and a nice way to waste a whole day & some more. now to bade farewell to my concerto. (oy, and it was one of the few pieces that i actually liked while playing... =\ perhaps i should play it for senior spotlight? =P )

another of daddy's picture for the background.. kind of gloomy, but oh well. methought that 'merry christmas & a happy new year' was a bit unfitting for march. (just a bit.. i'm only late by three months =P). [edit: whoops how could i have forgotten to explain the gloomy-ness?] the inspiration came from my analysis of william cullen bryant's "to a waterfowl," which began with... 'where are you going, mr. birdie?' (except.. i think only ruch & alice j would get it. heh.) but basically the poem's about a bird, a person, life & death, and the lesson learned about life & death by the person while watching the bird fly... [/edit]

and happy b-day to stacy duh. =)

hmm, today stacy received her very first C+ on an ap chem test due to her inability to read questions and, of all things, write net ionic equations.

and i swear, sky wong will be the next genius. the crazy 3rd(?)-grader did his 3-pg packet (~8-10 problems/pg) of simple algebra stuff (i.e. x * 2/3 = 1/2) in one freaking minute.. and missed only one problem. and btw, he was also in the top twenty for 2nd graders doing kumon math in the US. o.O

meterstick breaking, chalk chucking, test tube holder breaking, and trashcan kicking.
chemistry teachers are scary people sometimes.

oh, and might i add that my stats teacher is absolutely ridiculous and infuriating. typically there are two ways to find df for two-sample mean hypothesis tests: a long & more accurate method w/lots of calcs, and the conservative method. on the last test, however, crayfish decides that no, only the conservative method should be used, so she takes off 2 pts from ruchi (who used only the first method) and 1 pt off from mine (b/c i'd done both ways, but decided to use the first stat). knowing that we were obviously correct, ruch and i confronted her and even showed her the stuff in the book. except that she was too lazy to give us the pts back. not only that, the evil lady flat out refused to correct her mistake on my test b/c "oh my gosh, your score is high enough already. i'm not even going to look at yours!" good, so she kind of admits that she was wrong to take off points, but will she do anything about it? not in your wildest dreams.

=D =D =D guess who got a 74/75 on her stats test! and supposedly i set the curve? except i dun think that's really possible because... eh. but! my stats grade has been salvaged from its grave. and hopefully, it will stay alive a bit longer this time

unfortunately, my bio grade seems to be dying lately. eh, even mr. smanik decided todraw an unhappy face in my zero on the pop quiz.
omg, and same goes for my english grade. that huck finn quiz was quite monstrous to be a reading check. but considering that i'd only finished half the book, well... a C or D (more likely the latter) wouldn't be that bad,would it?

now :that: is (in ruchi's term..) "wickedly awesome." hehe, perhaps the only thing that has sparked my interest for physics, at least temporarily.

(and have you noticed how school-ish my latest entries have been? i'm being thoroughly school-ified and un-social-life-ified o.O)

i swear, the equation 2NOCl (g) <-> 2NO (g) + Cl₂ (g) has something against me since its equilibrium concentrations are refusing to turn out the right numbers for every equation that it's in.

teacher recommendation day. you know, i seriously dunno what to do next year since i already took so many maths & sciences this year... if i were allowed to i would totally take ap bio and ap chem again. but alas, i doubt they'll let me. (unless i flunk perhaps?) then again, there's ap physics, the class which even the most brilliant ppl in our school call beastly and rather impossible. (and did i mention? the seniors this year got into colleges like stanford, MIT, caltech, harvard, yale, etc. etc. talk about a freakishly smart grade.) but yeah, stacy does not know what to do w/her senior year schedule.

and on a somewhat humoring-for-you-but-not-for-me note, mrs. smith happened to ask me today during course rec if i hated english a lot or just a little. it surprised me quite a bit at first but then i got the vague notion that she had somehow noticed the dislike through the tone of my papers. oy, i swear i never really meant it that way. =( but anyway, she still recommended me for ap english with the added comment along the lines of "gotta let go of those A's." o.O ! what a reassuring teacher..

bloody english. mrs. smith has decided that there is nothing i can do to make up that one meager point.
and so i am stuck with a very irritating.. 512/570 --> 89.8, B+ for qtr 2.

in other words, school is being most unfriendly to me right now and i'd love to just run away from it all.

hehehe, my brother is certainly quite amusing. or rather, the comments that he wrote on his ap chem tests. for example: #6: Which of the following is true regarding the reaction represented above? (Brother writes 'fun'). Problem is followed by 5 choices, one of them being "it is a disproportionation reaction for F." (Brother writes *boggle*). And then throughout the test, there are these random comments like 'Blah, wish i knew', 'errr, maybe' or 'Bah!'
And then there's this other test response that starts with 'As far as i can tell, this is a funky application of Henry's Law. etc. etc.' Unfortunately, he crossed it out. =\

now, back to exam studying...

conclusions reached since the beginning of the new year:

• little kids (i.e. 1st graders from your sunday school class) have a tendency to knock you over while giving you a hug. (they also have a tendency to squish the living daylights out of you.. and then comment, 'you're too skinny..' )
• little kids like sky wong amuse me to no end. for instance, i gave sky permission to try and help a fellow student with fractions (despite the fact that he is obviously much shorter - and younger, i'm pretty sure). so this freakishly bright kid assumes a teacher-like pose and then, thrusting out his little hand, points at the sample problem and remarks very nonchalantly(hm sounds weird, we'll settle with..) coolly, 'well first, you look at the example...' unfortunately i happened to turn away at that point, but the next time i looked, nikith seemed a bit scared and just ran off back to his seat once the explanation was done. i wonder what sky did to the poor kid. =P
• little kids are quite adorable.

in other news, exams in a week = major uh-ohs b/c quite frankly, stacy doesn't remember anything from before break =X