Post started: Saturday, April 22, 2006 1:30 PM - I definitely need to spend less time xangaing. Clearly, I was too caught up with the excitement and enthusiasm that accompanies any new interest. However, that has started to die down, and with it, my time spent on xanga needs to be reduced as well, lest I should have less time to do other things, such as completing my homework. Anyways, this morning, my mother made me swear to God while looking straight in her eyes that I have not been doing drugs. She said she was suspicious due to my recent facial expressions/colors and my underweight appearance. Let me ask you all, "Do you think I'm doing drugs or appear suspicious of doing anything inappropriate?" The Rutgers Spring competition 2006 will take place one week from today. Thus, I plan on increasing my cubing practice this week. I also plan to lubricate my cube(s) again. My primary areas of practice will probably be 3x3x3 speedsolving and 3x3x3 blindfolded. I have always placed highest in 3x3x3 blindfolded (except for the one tournament in which I did not know how to solve a 3x3x3 blindfolded in), so I believe I stand the greatest chance there. I will also probably need to replace many of my stickers in order to conform with WCA regulations. But this has been an issue of debate lately in the speedcubing community. I'll go to the competition with replacement stickers just in case :-). I plan on practicing cubing until 3 PM today, at which time I plan on watching the first DEVILS-RANGERS playoff game on NBC (channel 4). I am so psyched about it and the way the Devils ended their regular season! Then I'll be going to Alice Kim's sweet 16. Toot-a-la-toot! End post: Saturday, April 22, 2006 2:10 PM. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Post started: Friday, April 14, 2006 6:49 PM - <EDIT>I removed the music from this page because it was lagging up the loading process.</EDIT> Upon request by Joy from Parsippany High School, I have made the following list of people outside of Whippany Park who can solve Rubik's Cubes:
The past few days have been really gorgeous. I played tennis on Monday and Tuesday, which was a lot of fun. Yesterday, I had jazz ensemble 1 rehearsal in the morning (which included free bagels and matzah (which I'd never heard about or seen before yesterday; for those who might not know, they're a kosher, Jewish food and they look and taste similar to giant saltine crackers, I'd estimate 7 inches²)) and clarinet lessons in the afternoon, and I couldn't help noticing what a beautiful day it was outside. I really wish I had a front porch because I surely would have brought out some lawn chairs; a cool, refreshing drink; and an entertaining book onto the front porch and just chilled away the afternoon. There was a gentle breeze, the temperature was perfect, and the flowers were blossoming. I took some pictures early this afternoon of the blossoming flowers in my front yard:
Post started: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:16 AM - I changed the song on this page to my most favorite band piece I have ever performed in my entire life :-). It is Alfred Reed's The Hounds of Spring. I just love the lush textures and singing lines of the melodic middle section, in contrast with the lively, energetic opening theme. Make sure you turn up your volume, so you can hear all the countermelodies and background accompaniment! On Friday, April 7, 2006, in school, Greg Andre saw me eating a peep from my spring basket (By the way, thank you Daniel Parry for buying me one <3 =D), and he told me that the peeps get huge if you microwave them. So I decided to try that today. Here is a picture of a microwaved peep and a regular peep:  LOL, it looks I just stepped on the microwaved peep, but I really didn't. It's just that after I took it out of the microwave, it deflated. End post: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:25 AM. Post started: Saturday, April 8, 2006 12:58 PM - (Continuation of previous post) Okay so actually when we paid our entrance fee and they stamped us, I asked for a second stamp on the back of my left hand in addition to the one I had already received on the back of my right hand. Haha, the girl doing the stamping was a good salesperson and said she'd need to charge me an additional $7 for the second stamp lol. So like the sushi was short, the tea was plenty, and the dance equipment was lousy. However, we had a lot of fun watching Eric Wei and a <EDIT>Montville (Thanks, Sally!)</EDIT> student breakdance. Later on, they were doing breakdancing outside the cafeteria in the hallway, and then Dan Parry joined in and they started doing stunts of physical strength. For example, they were trying to lift themselves up into a handstand from a kneeling position. Dan Parry also demonstrated one-handed push-ups with both hands. Then Dan Parry demonstrated his strength by taking a necklace of beads and wrapping it three times around his bicep like this -  - and then flexing his bicep to break the necklace. He did this with both biceps as well. Somehow, Alan Jiang managed to hide both the cubes he brought and his Rubik's Magic from me during the first hour or so of the dance. He did not have bulging pockets nor did it appear that he was hiding anything. I'm curious as to know where he put them so as to hide them from my notice. We spent some time in the hallway cubing, showing some people how to cube, watching some Par High students' cube, and letting people play with the Rubik's Magic. Back inside the cafeteria, Alan and Caspar started playing this chopsticks game which many people soon joined in on. They had lots of takeout chopsticks, so what we did was had each person separate a pair of chopsticks and hold like a regular pair of chopsticks that he or she was going to use. Then, each person also held an unbroken pair (like you know how the takeout chopsticks come connected together; that's what I mean by unbroken) of chopsticks. We then tossed the unbroken pairs at each other and tried to catch them with our separated pair of chopsticks. It was more difficult than I thought, but sometimes we had catching streaks of two or three in a row! We also amused ourselves by hitting the balloons around and trying to keep them in the air. I roundhouse kicked the balloons several times in midair, and in the process, I ripped my pants down the middle: (from the rear view)
 Fortunately, with the loud music, nobody heard the rip, and with the semi-dim lights, nobody could see. Towards the very end, Alan Jiang and I did some juggling demonstrations, including partner juggling, where I was the left hand and he was the right hand, and juggling across a gap to one another (which was mostly unsuccessful). We used Rubik's Cubes to juggle, and in the process of our latter demonstration, I accidentally did not catch Alan's cube and when it struck the ground and an edge cubie was completely disemboweled, with the internal part breaking off. One minute later, I did not catch Alan's other cube, and his center cap popped off. At that point, we stopped juggling. I called my father to come pick me up at around 10 PM, and almost immediately after I hung up, a police officer (who we nicknamed Rent-a-Cop) came in and told us it was time to wrap up the event. So like by the time I got here, I was literally the 2nd to last person to leave, besides the police officer himself, who I chatted with for about 15 minutes. They had already finished cleaning up and the "DJ" had left already. While I was waiting, I did purchase my first-ever Shamrock Farms milkshake from a vending machine. It was vanilla flavored and very tasty. Also, the nutrition facts showed that it did not have as much sugar as soda, but yet, tasted so much better! What I was most impressed with at this dance was the incredibly efficient and functional ventilation system inside the cafeteria. At most dances, the main dance hall becomes unbearably hot with the heat released by human bodies. However, even though it seemed like no windows or doors were opened (besides the doors leading out into the hallway), the temperature was cooler inside the cafeteria than in the hallways! I don't think they had an air-conditioning system, but I'm guessing they had turned on fans which circulated outside air into the building. The temperature inside the cafeteria was perfect for dancing or DDRing! Unfortunately, they did (EDIT: NOT) have DDR equipment at the dance :-(. All in all, this was a fantabulous event! This morning, I woke up to my cell phone ringing. I picked up to somebody with an Indian accent. His speech was very slurred, and he kept repeating, "How did you get this cell phone?" and I kept repeating, "Who is this?" I think he responded "Curtis," and I asked, "Curtis?" and he said, "Yeah." Then he hung up. During the next hour or so, he called back about 5 times, oftentimes hanging up immediately after I answered. Once, he asked again, "How did you get this cell phone?" and when I repeated, "Who is this?" he started cursing at me, with phrases like "Why the fudge do you keep repeating that?" and "How the fudge did you get this fudging cell phone?" Anyways, the final time I received a call from the same number, a person with a black accent spoke. He said, "Hi, is this Meg's house?" I said, "No, I believe you have the wrong number." He replied, "Okay, thank you," and hung up. That was the end of these calls. Except like 2 hours later, the same number called again, and by the time I had picked up my cell phone, the person had hung up and it was listed as a missed call. End post: Saturday, April 8, 2006 1:45 PM. Post started: Saturday, April 8, 2006 11:42 AM - STD Night was so much fun! I got tons of STDs... not really. The Asian-American Cultural Club of Parsippany High School did not expect so many people to show up because the year before, they had scheduled their dance on the same night as the Watchung Dance, and since most of everybody decided to go to the Watchung Dance, only 7 people showed up at their dance LOL. I think they just played poker or something. Anyways, I didn't get tons of STDs, particularly the S part because the organizer of the event didn't expect so many people to show up and thus did not buy sufficient quantities of sushi. I believe the person probably expected about 30 people to show up and thus bought 200 pieces of sushi, which would mean about 6 or 7 pieces of sushi per person, which is reasonable. However, about 60 people showed up, which meant each person could only take about 3 or 4. Not to mention they didn't distribute the sushi in a organized, fair fashion, such as by having people line up and wait their turn. They just put the two 100-piece sushi platters on a round table, and everybody just crowded around trying to grab a lot. I ended up only eating 3 pieces :-(, even though I saw people take like 6 or 7 pieces. The bubble tea was like zhen1 zhu1 nai3 chá. At least there were tons of the bubble stuff (the zhen1 zhu1), so that supply never depleted. They also had various flavors of Ruffles and pretzels as well, so I was able to satiate my empty stomach on some of that. There were lots of balloons scattered around the floor, and when I arrived at around 7:03 PM, it seemed as if they had not finished setting up yet. They were still putting up the Christmas lights (you know, the ones you wrap around trees and are used to outline deer and Santa and whatnot). Anyways, the balloons weren't blown up with helium, nor were they blown up with hydrogen or any element less dense than air, so they all sunk to the floor. The people who came from Whippany Park High School were Daniel Parry, Caspar Wang, Alan Jiang, Eric Wei, and me. We had fun trying to pop balloons by first stopping their motion on the ground and then slamming our feet down on them. However, much of the time, this technique was pretty unsuccessful as the balloons would slip out underneath our feet. Sometimes we did pop the balloons, however (GAH, I HATE THE WORD HOWEVER after I got a 73 on Guzo's however and direct address quiz). Once, when I popped one, a person from Parsippany High School told me not to do that, and then Caspar Wang did it about a minute later, and the person got mad at Caspar. So they didn't really have a "real" DJ, they just had somebody bring in some sound equipment and a stereo. Upon entrance to the school and payment of the $7, they stamped our hands and gave us a necklace of beads, that either came in green, purple, or yellow colors. Oh darn, I never looked at what the stamps were of, and the stamp has already mostly faded from the back of my hands. From the faint outline that is still there, the stamp looks sort of like a tiger's head or something. If this were WP, it would be a wildcat haha. Oh, my breakfast/brunch/lunch is ready now. I shall continue the story later. Post started: Thursday, April 6, 2006 1:11 AM - NO!!! XANGA RUINED MY LIFE!!! or just like one day of my life, at least. I was so unhappy about how I lived Tuesday, April 4, 2006. To start off, I was late to the AACC meeting in the morning. Then, I had to finish my talking points for the APUS debate during Spanish and lunch. For tennis, the team had an away match, so I was not obligated to go, and thus, I chose to stay in the commons to do homework. Except I ended up not doing any work because I was like, wow, I have like no homework, all I have to do tonight is study for two tests tomorrow. And then I realized I also had two paragraphs to write for language arts. But I didn't feel like composing without having a computer, since writing is much slower than typing. So I like cubed away with William Chen and took the 4:15 bus home. OMGosh. I usually take a nap, so I have the energy to stay up late, but instead, I chose to spend the next 5 hours updating my xanga, subscribing to other people's xangas, reading other people's xangas, and commenting on people's xangas. Then I think I went to dance DDR and do some cubing. It was like past midnight when I finally was able to force myself to get started on that LA assignment. My memory kind of fades around here, but I remember being very tired because I had not napped and deciding to go to sleep and wake up early the following morning to do my assignments. Thus, I woke up at 5:15 AM or so Wednesday morning to do my work. My ruinous Tuesday had serious repercussions on Wednesday. Since I failed to study for the chemistry test, I completely screwed up on the calculation problems, as I found out after the test that I had used the wrong procedures and equations. My contribution to today's APUS debate was very lame, and I had nothing new to add, since everybody had already mentioned the few points I had. Since I failed to practice clarinet on Tuesday, I had to practice clarinet extra long Wednesday, since I have clarinet lessons today (Thursday) at 3 PM. This was not to mention that I got home from school at around 9:30 PM on Wednesday, since I played tennis from 3 PM-6 PM, ate dinner at school from 6:15-6:45, and had jazz ensemble 1 from 7-9 PM. So like by the time I finished practicing clarinet, it was past midnight, and I still have do all my homework. So WTFudge am I wasting my time making a new post on my blog? I'm stopping now. Bye. End post: Thursday, April 6, 2006 1:25 AM. Post started: Sunday, April 2, 2006 6:28 PM - Ohs noes! Daylight Savings! I'm so not used to it waah! Also, I've like lost or broken all my cubes! Long time passing. Where have all my cubies gone? Long time ago. Where have all my cubies gone? Gone to graveyards every one. When will I ever learn? When will I ever learn? These are all the functional cubes I have left: 1 Eastsheen 2x2x2, 1 Rubik's 3x3x3, 1 dollar-store 3x3x3, 1 4x4x4, 1 5x5x5, 1 Square-1, 1 Pyramorphix  I'm sad :-( about losing and breaking my cubes and cubies. On the bright side, I set a new personal best fastest lucky 3x3x3 solve of 12.78 seconds on April Fool's Day! ¡Feliz día de los tontos! Haha, I doubt that's the actual translation, but I like it :-). April Fool's Day is also my Aunt Ginny's birthday and Jasmine Cordi-Miller's birthday. The scramble was: L' F' R2 F D2 L2 B L U' B2 D2 F' R B2 F L2 F U L U2 R' U2 D' F' B. My solution was 32 turns and my entire LL (last layer) was solved with one move U': x2 z F' U' L' y x R2 U L2 z' R' U x' u' R' u R r U r' y R U' R' U L F L' y' U' R2 R U2 R' U R U' R' U'. Today's my cousin Don Don Yau's birthday yay ¡Huepa! ¡Feliz cumpleaños todos! Y también es el cumpleaños de Alice Chiang, la hermana de Alex Chiang. ¡Cacahuate! ¡Urra! Okay, now I'm going to list all the people who can solve the Rubik's Cube at Whippany Park.
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