Day 24: Attempting to Teach Piano

Quite surprisingly, my brother shares my motivation to pick up piano again. Since I played piano three years longer than he did, I still remember how to play (although I did have a bit trouble reading bass clef in the beginning). However, my brother remembers nothing. He doesn't know the location of notes on the keys, how to do scales, or how to read bass clef at all. He can't read notes and play, and his weak fingers have trouble playing a C-major chord. It makes me want to face-palm.

So today I tried to teach a bit to my brother. Thank goodness he plays violin, or else he would be hopeless. I taught him the location of notes, but he still can't figure them out without counting from the middle C. I dug deep into my old piano books and found a junior Hanon book, which is a book of finger exercises for the piano. I flipped to the first one, and tried to get him to play it without his fingers tensing up or losing that ball shape that piano teachers remind you about many times. This kid has a long way to go.

Day 23: Filming for TSA

As TSA is due the Monday we get back, my group and I went to Red Bank for the final day of shooting. Our event is called "Digital Video Production," and our video, with the required theme "follow the rules," is about a guy who finds an hourglass that can stop time. My group is made up of four juniors, one sophomore, and one freshman (me!). So since most of the other members have had lots of experience on shooting and editing film, I'm mostly observing, but I also act as one of the characters in the video.

We finished our final scenes today outside and inside an antique shop, one of the major settings for our story. Now as the juniors edit the scenes together, I'm contributing to the documentation of the making of our film. This project was really fun, and I'm really excited to see what our final product will look like!!

Day 22: Learning F2L (Rubik's Cube technique)

So yesterday night I finally decided to learn F2L (First Two Layers), a more advanced method of cubing that basically allows the cuber to solve two of the three layers at once, saving lots of time. My brother immediately jumped to the opportunity of showing me a Youtube channel with a bunch of F2L tutorials, but after watching the first video, I gave up. Then I remembered that Matt Ramina recently tweeted to me a video on F2L. So I found the video and started learning.

The video was great. The guy made lots of analogies that made the techniques unforgettable. Although there were some parts that he did not clarify well, it was a great start on my quest to learn F2L. Right now I have the basic gist of it, but I'm not fluent enough to speedcube with it. I plan to learn advanced F2L after I get good at beginner's.

Because of my sudden addiction to timing my speedcubing, I was timing myself until 1:00 last night. Bad decision, but I seriously didn't pay attention to the time. When my dad finally went over to me to tell me to sleep, I was thinking, "Woah, it's 1:00 already? Last time I looked at the clock it was 11:30!"

And what kinda stunk was that I had to wake up at 9:00 to go TA at Chinese school. It doesn't sound too bad, but with the fact that I slept really late and my mentality of sleeping in because of spring break, I had a hard time getting up this morning. My dad had to literally pull me out of my bed.

BTW THANKS MATT FOR THE VIDEO :D

Day 21: Hanging out in Humanities

As I said for yesterday's slice, today half the freshman class is on the field trip to MJSS. Because of that, the other half is at humanities class. When we got in, we took the World History test, which I found pretty easy. After that, Mr. Olsen introduced us to a short humanities project, which was basically creating a 6-word memoir of a philosophe during the Enlightenment, using HTML and CSS coding. I enjoyed the challenge of incorporating the coding knowledge I learned from Software Applications class into a World History/English project. You can see mine here.

So now that I finished the project, I have 45 minutes to do nothing. Huzzah! I think I'm going to be try-hardy and do some homework due after spring break.

Day 20: Field Trip (And Doughnuts xD)!

Yeah, I know there are going to be many other slices on the field trip, but I thought I wanted to share my thoughts on it.

So today half the freshman class went to the Monmouth Junior Science Symposium, an event held annually at the Monmouth University. Lasting for two days, a total of ten students showcase their research projects through a PowerPoint presentation. Today five students presented; tomorrow the other half of the freshman class will view the last five.

Out of five, two of the students who presented are High Tech students. I was really impressed with all of the projects overall, but I found the High Tech ones especially intriguing. I'm not being biased towards the schools that the presenters go to. It's just that the other three people's projects had relatively the same concept, which was finding ways to prevent/treat diseases (two of them were on lung cancer and one was on Alzheimer's). But the two students from my school had projects on butterfly wing colors and internet censorship! How cool is that?

A great highlight of the trip was the doughnuts. Our software apps teacher, Mr. B, gave us specific instructions on our schedule:

"So when you go in, make sure you sit to the far right of the auditorium. That way, when break time starts, we are the first in line for the doughnuts. We need to make sure we have maximum doughnut selection."

A kid on the bus shouted out, "It's all about quality, not quantity!"

"Exactly." Mr. B nodded.

And Mrs. Gross, our English teacher, remarked, "And that's why we have Mr. B chaperone our trips; so we can get the best doughnuts."

Day 19: No Homework Today :D <3

Sorry, title's glitching again.

I was feeling really stressed in the beginning of the week, but today magically there is literally NO homework at all! Well, that's only because of 1) the field trip tomorrow for DGHR groups one and two and 2) the last minute test cramming of the teachers. I don't really consider tests/quizzes/assessments as homework. Just something that robs of my free time for studying.

I love how every time I think to myself "Wow maybe I can actually do something I want to do today and get sleep", I end up wasting time and sleeping really late.

Be right back. Taekwondo :3

Back! Anyways, the fact that I was able to go to a class today just shows the amount of time I have today.  I usually don't go to classes on Wednesday.

With all honesty, I hope I don't waste a lot of time like I end up doing most of the times I have lots of extra time. I guess I could start on the homework due after break.

Day 18: Playing Outside with my Brother

Today after dinner my brother randomly asked my mom, "Can I play outside?" My mom answered "Yes", so I was dragged outside to play with him. At first I was reluctant (BIO OBJECTIVES!!), but I eventually put on my sneakers and stepped to my garage. It was one of the best thirty minutes I've had for a while.

"So... what do you want to do?" I asked Michael, who is in 6th grade, as I opened the garage door.

"I don't know." He went to the shelves of the garage that had our sports equipment and took out a slightly-deflated basketball.

"It's flat," I pointed out.

He shrugged. "It's good enough. Let's play horse." I followed him outside, and our game ensued. After about twenty minutes, I beat him, HOR to HORSE (If you don't know the scoring, every time you lose a round, you get a letter in your score, and whoever gets HORSE first loses). Being the kinda-sore-loser he was, Michael insisted that the scoring would go up to HORSE_, with a space, just to add an extra letter and give him a better chance to win. I allowed him to do it, because I'm nice like that. Of course, he won from this, but we both knew that I was still considered the victorious one.

Afterwards Michael got out of the other even more deflated basketball and offered to play capture the flag, which basically meant that we both hid our own ball and raced to see who would find the others' first. If we both got stuck, we would give each other riddle-like clues. Usually my brother gets annoyed with my terrible clues. I'm just not as good at improvising things like this on the spot as Michael is. Oh well.

Anyways, believe it or not, this thirty minutes was awesome. Not only did I get fresh air and exercise, but it was a great stress reliever from all the homework and tests and stuff. I also no longer feel tired and have more energy to finish my work quicker and maybe even get more sleep!

Day 17: Experimenting with a Chinese Ocarina

If you play a woodwind or brass instrument, your assistance would be greatly appreciated :D

On Saturday, before kungfu class started, my master gave me a Chinese Ocarina as a gift. In Chinese they're called "Tao Xun" (陶笛). He showed me how to hold it and blow into it and everything, but we both knew that he didn't really know how to play actual songs. I took it gratefully, and today I decided to figure out what combination of holes (is that what they're called, band people?) would create which notes. Luckily my perfect pitch helped with this a lot.

As I was experimenting and recording notes, I found that this was the kind of instrument that played different notes depending on how you blew into it. For example, blowing into it with all the fingers covered could either produce a "B" or "A". Does that make sense? Am I doing it right? *COUGH BAND PEOPLE COUGH*

Also, I would like to know some tips on playing wind instruments well. I played clarinet for one year in third grade, so the only three things I got out of it was 1) cover hole-thingies completely 2) don't puff out your cheeks and 3) clean out the spit after you play, but I don't think that applies to this instrument.

I kinda actually want to be able to play this xD So I would love it if you guys could help me :P Thanks!!

Day 16: Orchestra Concert + All States Results

Today was my local orchestra's concert. The concert consisted of thirteen chamber music groups, and one group performance at the end. My group was a quartet, with two violins, one viola, and one cello. We played Nocturne by Borodin, a quite well-known piece. I had just found out today by the conductor that this song was played in a Disney film. When I went home, I researched a bit and found out that it played in a short film by Disney and Pixar called "The Little Match Girl". You can watch it here.

The group performance at the end of the concert was a song composed by one of the orchestra members. He's 17 and has been composing music since 14. Yup, genius right there.

Anyways, today the high school all-states results came out too. I made it in, but only second violin. This year was really weird though. Another violin player who goes to my school was first violin second chair in regionals didn't even make it in. And the concert-master (first violin, first chair) of regionals only got second violin. Many people I know did much worse than expected. My family, teacher, and orchestra director speculate that there must have been some mistake in the scoring  So I guess considering the circumstances, I should call myself lucky.

Day 15: All-States Auditions... and my bro's bday!

This was the day that I had prepared for. Reluctantly waking up at 9:15, my family made the one and a half hour drive to a high school in southern New Jersey for the all-states auditions. After my brother and I made it in to the central Jersey regionals orchestras (my brother was in the middle school one while I was playing for the high school one), we continued to practice for the all-states, which includes participants from all three New Jersey regions.

The all-states system was weird. Ok, not weird, but different from regionals. In regionals, the warm up room is usually a huge room such as the cafeteria or auditorium. After you feel that you're ready, you enter a hallway. You have three rooms to go to, solo, sight-reading  and scales, which you can go in any order that you like. In all-states, they assign you to one of two warm up rooms, in which you stay inside as moderators call five audition numbers consecutively at a time; only when you hear your number can you go outside at wait in line. They did this so to prevent players from "cooling down" while waiting for hours in a long line and not being able to play.

Since I had to wait for about three hours and was bored out of my mind, I ended up practicing for about two hours in there. By the time they called my name, I felt pumped. My solo playing, as usual, wasn't my best, because of nerves. At the end, during a tremolo, my bow kind of went on my bridge, causing a loud scratchy sound. Oh well. That could have been worse. The scales and sight-reading was pretty good, because for some reason I never get nervous for those. I guess it's because I usually do really well in scales, and even though I suck at sight-reading, everyone complains about how they stink at it too, which makes me feel a tad bit better. Plus, I have a kind of "yolo" attitude when I do sight-reading.

Ah yes, and it was my brother's birthday. He's 12 now. I can't believe he'll be a teenager next year. Today my kungfu master lectured my brother on how it's the Chinese Year of the Snake, my brother's year, and so this year he must be calm and mature. According to my dad, it's a custom to do so, or an accident could occur later on in life.

Day 14: Busy Weekend Ahead...

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. I was way too busy. And this weekend I will be busy as well. Tomorrow will be the high school all-states orchestra audition. My audition time is 11:45, and as many violinists will compete against me, the auditions could take a few hours as I wait in line just to play for thirty seconds. If the auditions don't take too long, I plan to possibly go over to Allison's house and work on a Latin project with her (if not, then we will split the work and do them separately). Then I will leave for dinner and kungfu class at 5:00 and come back at around 9:30.

Usually I have a violin lesson on Sunday morning, but because the audition , there will be no lesson this weekend. However, that morning I will have to go to Red Bank to work on TSA with my group. I'm part of digital video production, and we'll be filming that day. Afterwards, my local orchestra, will begin rehearsal at 4:45 for a concert that starts later that evening.

All of this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the homework I received for Bio, English, World History, Math, and Latin. Hopefully I can squeeze in time to finish all of this without sacrificing too much of my sleep time. I'm actually being quite productive today; usually on Friday evenings I try to do the least work possible.

Day 13: Suffering through Pain

Yesterday I was super tired. I also had a raging headache and my arms and legs were super sore (not muscle sore. JOINT SORE. And it hurts much more.) At 9:00 I couldn't do any more homework, so I took a shower and all that jazz and fell asleep by 10. That was the first time in months that I slept before my little brother did.

Today wasn't any better. As soon as I woke up, my shoulders and arms were killing me. I had to cope through it the whole day; luckily, it began to die down by fourth period. During lunch I usually eat a whole sandwich without a problem, but today I struggled to take bites before I threw half of my sandwich away (I know, I feel guilty about wasting food. Don't judge me.)

When I got home, I wasn't hungry at all, even though I ate half of what I usually ate for lunch. I figured I should eat something, so I forced down an apple. This resulted in a stomachache for about thirty minutes. My mom called me to remind my brother and me that we were going to have a violin lesson and therefore would have to eat dinner super late (I ate dinner today at about 9), so I pretty much shoved a little more food down my throat. A few minutes later I got another stomachache.

The ride to my teacher's house was horrible. Since we were driving during the rush hour, there was heavy traffic in the highway. My stomachache was still there, so I felt sick every time my mom abruptly pressed the breaks.

Not only that, but my teacher was not happy with the way I practiced for the last couple of days. Yesterday I couldn't really practice much because of my fatigue, but that's not really an excuse. I only have THREE DAYS until the All-States auditions. Hopefully I will feel better and my playing will be much less sloppy by then. I really need to practice.

Wow, this is a long post.

Day 12: I HATE NLES (not really).

Ok, maybe not hate. But this year's Latin II NLE exam was so weird. Usually they have about 15 grammar questions, 15 culture questions, and 10 read-a-story-and-answer-questions questions. Today I looked at my question sheet and saw the word "Story" on top. I flipped the paper over, thinking maybe I was accidentally looking at the wrong side. But no, they completely changed the test format by having you answer about ten grammar questions of each sentence to a story.

They also added a map question to the culture asking where Gallia was located. THERE WERE NEVER ANY MAP QUESTIONS IN PREVIOUS TESTS WHY D; So yeah I got that one wrong. The only part that was similar to past exams was the reading and comprehension questions. But still.

Day 11: Skypeing with my old friends <3

Sorry there's no title here. Blogger is being a butt.

It's been such a long time since I've seen some of my middle/elementary school friends. A few I've seen a couple of times this school year, but many I haven't seen at all. So occasionally I go on Skype and chat them all in one huge group. I rarely use video/voice chat, because my computer is kinda downstairs and it would be awkward screaming into the computer when the rest of my family can hear me.

Today I spent a total of about 20-25 minutes just chatting miscellaneous things: school, listening to others fangirl, etc. The more I see their typed text on my screen, the more I yearn to see them all in real life and plunge into a gargantuan group hug. I've actually been much more quiet and reserved since I've gone to my magnet high school. This sounds really cliche, but you should see me with my friends. I'm pretty much bouncing off the walls when I'm with them.

Day 10: Middle School Regionals

It's only been a year since 8th grade, and all of a sudden the middle school musicians look so small and adorable. Today I listened to the middle school regionals orchestra, because my brother was one of the violin players. He was the first violin 15th chair and only in 6th grade; don't tell him I said this, but that's quite impressive considering how he practices at home. *Cough* I'm listening to you as I'm typing this, Michael *Cough* I also found it hysterical that he was a head shorter than everyone else in the orchestra when they all stood up for pictures.

Anyways, the music itself was phenomenal. Since recording is not allowed (you have to buy them from "professional recording") I never actually heard what the middle school orchestra usually sounds like. Trust me, sitting on stage gives a totally different experience than sitting in the audience. I saw many familiar faces, whether they be from my local orchestra, have the same violin teacher as me, or are just family friends. This has definitely been an amazing experience for me, and I look forward to hearing what the middle school all-states orchestra will sound like!

Day 9: Finally Defeated Darkrai!

Some of you may not understand this post at all, especially if you never played the DS Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. But the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is pretty much has my most favorite games. Not only are the artwork and music masterpieces, but the story line is touching and creative. I got my first Mystery Dungeon game when I was twelve; it was called "Explorers of Darkness". My first game file, I admit, was really bad. I had almost no strategy and didn't have the skills to progress far in the game.

Last May, I erased my file and started it again. I plowed through the story line really quickly; who knew that after a few years of gaming experience, this game would suddenly get so easy? Within a few weeks I defeated what is considered the final boss, Dialga. But after that Pokemon there are many additional stories to follow; the boss I would consider as "final" would be Darkrai. And he is the real challenge.

Because of the much less free time I have gotten during the weekends since the school year started, I rarely touched my DS. Once in a while I would attempt and defeat Darkrai a couple of times, then put it down for another month or so. But today, before my family went to kungfu class, I grabbed my DS. I figured I would gain a few levels to ascend towards my ultimate gaming goal. As we were driving, I did really badly, getting KO'ed within the first couple of floors of the mystery dungeon, Dark Cave. However, after a few defeats, I steadily made my way to the bottom of Darkrai's lair. Using the strategies that I have developed after years of experience, I finally destroyed the formidable legendary Pokemon. I finally completed the game that I have loved for so many years.

Day 8: Walking home from the bus

I know my last two posts have been on the weather, but the snow today was so gorgeous I couldn't resist writing about it. When I got off my bus and I walked through my driveway, I had a feeling of pure satisfaction as my boots made a single line of footprints leading to my garage. When I finally reached my garage, I looked up and began catching flakes of snow on my tongue- immature elementary school behavior, I know, but I love living in my childhood. Plus, there was almost no snow last year and I needed this enjoyment to compensate for that.

After two minutes of wasting time outside, I looked down. Random prints of my boots scattered throughout the driveway. So much for the perfect line. Smiling, I opened the garage door and entered my house, feeling one of the best moods that I experienced in a while.

Day 7: Mixed feelings About Today's Snow

Yesterday I blogged about how it was supposed to snow last night. When I woke up this morning, there was absolutely no snow on the ground, although there were light flurries floating through the air. Despite my immediate disappointment of snowy and possibly delayed-opening fun, I marveled at the beauty of the snow. It was really cool because every five minutes when I look outside, the weather was slightly different from the last. From scattered snowflakes to thick chunks, the weather had it all today.

Today as I was walking between BASH classes, I was very disappointed and a bit shocked that the snow wasn't sticking at all, despite the nonstop downpour of the white precipitation. Maybe it was because the air temperature was too warm, or the snow simply wasn't thick enough. Although I enjoyed catching the pure white snowflakes on my tongue, I was not able to experience the fun of creating delicate footprints on a blanket of snow.

Day 6: The Howling Wind

Today during Latin class the wind was blowing so hard, our class could hear it hitting against the building. Sometimes it was so severe, it almost sounded like rumbling thunder. At one point Mrs. Gross entered the classroom for a reason I'm not exactly sure of (probably for National Latin Exams) and commented on the weather with Magistra.

Five minutes before period 4 ended, my class and I were freaking out with the fact that we would have to walk to gym in the cold, bitter wind. But actually, treading through the Brookdale Campus wasn't so bad; the wind was blowing with us, not against us, and the precipitation was really light.

The wind continues to howl as I'm writing (er, typing) this post. It's supposed to snow a few inches tonight. Despite the amount of sleep I would catch up on, I really hope school isn't closed tomorrow. I like spring break.

Day 5: Practice practice practice...

March 16th is a very special day to me. Not only is it my brother's birthday, but this year it is also the day of my state's All State Orchestra auditions. I was kind of mentally freaking out about it yesterday because I couldn't get a clean sound and a lot of my notes were out of tune. This audition song is so difficult D:

Today my sound was better. Before I began practicing I applied some rosin (kind of like a bow-polisher) onto my bow, which didn't affect the sound significantly, but it did help somewhat. Also, yesterday I went over the whole song really slowly, which probably contributed to the less sloppy sound I produced today. Since I was much more motivated to practice today, I actually finished practicing early than usual because I didn't waste so much time. 

I plan to further practice today after I finish my homework, because I have much less homework than usual :D I really need the practice; not only for the solo piece, but also for scales and sight-reading. Not to mention that I have a competition next month and I need to practice the two songs for that...

Day 4: Taekwondo Class!

Today I spent about two hours in my taekwondo class. It was extra special because it was my first class as an orange belt (I got it last week!) and I learned lots of new material that I will have to learn for my next test to become a green belt. We spent the first thirty minutes doing stretches and exercises, and then I learned a new sequence called "Eight Count Number Three" (numbers one and two were learned during white and yellow belt, respectively). We also did some roundhouse kick practice.

After the teenager class, my family, consisting of my dad, brother, and I, did a thirty minute sparring class. In this class we practice sparring basically, for competitions and in real life. As my brother and I were the only kids today, of course I got paired up with him, and trust me, you don't want him as a partner. We're both really aggressive, but when I successful punch or kick him, he will go into some kind of frenzied rage and start tackling and doing illegal moves to me until I collapse onto the ground. Even if I don't hit him he will keep forgetting to do the moves that our master told us to do, and instead just do a free-for-all wrestling thing with me. Oh, well. Boys will be boys.

Day Three: Tuning My Piano!

So today my piano got tuned for the first time in five years. Of course, it was severely out of tune. To save money, my family decided that instead of pitching everything up to the standard 440 calibration, we would instead tune everything in relationship to the middle A. That meant that the notes individually were not in tune, but they were the correct pitch intervals between each other.

It was kind of embarrassing when the tuner finished and I had to test out the piano. I haven't had a lesson for four years and the only thing I practice these days are Lady Gaga covers. So I went up to the piano and played the main melody of Fur Elise by Beethoven and struggled with the second part of it. Then I played the first slow part of Sonata Pathetique by Beethoven (I self-taught myself the first half of the first movement) and decided not to even attempt the extremely fast part to avoid utter humiliation. The tuner said "Good job" to me and told me to practice every day, and I nodded thinking "hahalolok".

But now my piano is beautiful again, I think I'm going to practice more seriously than just experimenting with chords for my covers. I'm going to get out the music for Pathetique and practice more thoroughly, especially my right hand for the fast part. I'm also going to get fluent in Fur Elise again. It's not really that hard of a piece, but I need to be able to solidly know at least one song before I can consider myself a piano player.

Day 2: TA'ing at Chinese School!

Every week, on Saturday mornings, I go to my local Chinese school and TA not only for volunteer hours, but also for learning to interact with little kids. I teach in two classes, a kindergarten class and a martial arts class. I went to Chinese school for nine years and graduated last year, so now I'm just here to help out.

The kindergarten class I TA is adorable. The majority of the kindergarten students are Chinese-American, and the teacher is just wonderful. She's really creative in her teaching and knows how to not bore the children (I wish my kindergarten Chinese school teacher was like that!). Today they were reviewing how to count to Chinese, and the students' quick learning really astounds me.

After helping the teacher for two hours, I go over to the martial arts class and teach there for an hour. The kids in that class are slightly older, but still aren't old enough to learn without the help of a few TA's. Since I've been training in martial arts for many years, most of their forms come naturally to me, but the teacher also teaches the kids how to use nunchuks (Styrofoam ones, mkay?), which is a totally new experience to me. I really enjoy assisting the kindergarten and martial arts class because not only do I get to teach the children, but it's a learning experience for me as well.

Day 1: Classical Music Night!

What a great way to start out my Slice of Life blog! Today happened to be Classical Music Night, an event held every year at my school. I'm a freshman, so this is my first year doing this; it was so much fun! I loved the performances and the food. I really hope I can play again for the future years of my high school career.

I play the violin, and today I performed Meditation from Thais by Massenet, a very beautiful and popular piece. Actually I just finished uploading it on Youtube; you can view it here. Everyone played very well. I can't believe I go to such a talented school! :D Really really excited to play next year.