Friends

Hey guys its Dec 31, 2011!!! In less than 15 minutes, it will be 2012!!! I am just home chilling and waiting for the year to come >< how about you guys? Oh wow the fireworks outside are LOUD >.<

I watched a video on Youtube yesterday about what are true friends and it really inspired me to write about it on this post today. In the video, it mentioned that true friends are some who you trust, who don’t lie to you and also someone who will share his/her bed with you (well, this is not the main point). More to add on, I believe that true friends are the ones that you can always count on when you have problems. I have been to six different schools in my life and I met a lot of people and ‘friends’ too. Umm yeah…’friends’, I realized that I actually don’t have many true friends.

I remember I had a lot of friends when I was in kindergarten. Everyone just played along really well and there wasn’t any issue making friends at that time. Well….to be honest, I actually don’t know anything about them anymore so they are also not my true friends. But there is always a question in my head that is it easier to have friends when we are younger and when our minds are more pure? When I was little, I knew that I only wanted someone to play with and I remembered that I didn’t care who the person was, and so did the rest of the class. (well….beside one person cause he bit people.) Everyone got along so well that there wasn’t any conflict at all. When I got older, I realized that it’s really hard to make friends. Everyone’s mind is not pure and innocent anymore. I remember I still had a lot of friends till grade 3. When I went into grade 4, all my friends just ditched me for no reason. They never told me why they don’t want to be friends with me anymore and they just ignored me when I went close to them (that feeling wasn’t good). I was just alone for that whole year and the rest of years in that school. It was a girl’s school that I went to. GIRLS ARE SCARY, especially the ones that are like in grade 4 to 8. No offences to those girls, but from my past experiences, girls in these ages are the scariest. I thought of many reasons when my friends ditched me at that time, was it because I want smart enough? (ok yeah I was really stupid, I got low marks in many subjects) or was it because I wasn’t rich enough? (they are all really rich >.<) but after a while, I was like ‘FORGET IT! I don’t care if I have friends anymore! I AM WHO I AM!’ I actually thought of changing myself to make them be friends with me again. (well, I still don’t know why they didn’t want to be friend with me. I think it was because I was too stupid.) The people in that class were really self-centered, they only cared about themselves and they never cared about what other people feel. I heard from other people that they ditched me because they thought that there was no use for me in the group, I don’t even know if that’s true or not, but what they meant was that there wasn’t any advantages on me that they could take if they are friends with me. They only wanted to friends with teacher’s pets or someone who is smart or rich. Why? Because there will be a chance to be a teacher’s pet for them when they are friends with someone who is already is. Or if they are with someone who is smart, they thought that they can be smart also (that’s really stupid for them to think of), and if they have a rich friend, oh yeah so many advantages! They can get expensive presents, make them LOOK LIKE they are rich also, and many other advantages. Well I was neither a teacher’s pet, smart, or rich. Of course there was no use to be friends with me because there weren’t any advantages that other people could take from me.

When I got to grade 7, I changed another school and I thought things could get better. Well it was, but things just happed the same way. I met many new friends in that school and I join a so call ‘popular’ group. Actually to be clear, I joined into the ‘popular’ group later with another friend which I really regret it. To be simple, I met a new friend on the first day of school, and later on, the ‘leader’ of the ‘popular’ group asked us to join theirs because they thought the two of us were ‘lonely’. So we agreed to join, and I was actually really happy in the beginning. I had no friends in the previous school and I got so many when I was there. At first, they were all really nice to me and everything was fine. But later on, I found out that me and they were totally in two completely different worlds (not the actually world, but just we have opposite personalities). All they talked about were BOYS, MAKEUP, and the most on HOW RICH THEY ARE!!!! They always compared their families that who is richer and stuff (they didn’t compare directly, but what they did was comparing how expensive the things they had). OMG I HATE THAT, so I never joined in their conversations because I couldn’t join in their conversations. I guess that’s the reason why they ditched me….they thought that I was always acting cool? Oh well whatever. But the saddest was the friend who joined in the group ditched me also. When I first knew her, she was just the same with me. We never had conversations like that before. But when we joined that group, she acted the same with the rest of them and I could tell that she was pretending and forcing herself to join in. When I knew that they are trying to ditch me, the friend who joined in with me actually gave them ideas on how to ditch me! I was really heartbroken because I thought we were true friend! I guess I was wrong! So what happened last was that I ditched them and joined the so call ‘leftover’ group. There were three of us and all of us got ditched by our groups. Other people might think that all of us were losers, but I didn’t care at all! WE ALL GOT ALONG SO WELL! We always have the same conversations and there weren’t any conflicts with us at all.

Now I immigrated to another country and I met my TRUE FRIENDS. I had so many friends that they all met my definition of true friend. They tell the truth, they are someone I trusted and someone who shared the same bed with me lol. I am so happy right now!!

Well off to count down and…..clean my room. Hope you all had a great New Year eve and hope that EVERYTHING WILL BE GREAT IN 2012!!

                       

                                                                                                                                                -Iciee

Perspectives

Dear friends,

Since this is my first letter to “Three Windows to the World”, I will talk about perspectives. “Three Windows to the World” is just a fancy way to say that us three are like windows in a house, and we each have a completely different view of the world from one another. Same world, different perspective. It’s funny how different the world can look when you gaze at things from a different angle. I will share some of my ideas of different views with you here. The three ideas I want to share with you guys in this entry is scale of vision, water and time.

So, scale of vision in relation to perspectives…what am I talking about?? WELL, I will tell you guys! Our eyes are adjusted to see things a certain way, we only have a particular field of vision that we can not change. However, if you guys have ever looked inside a telescope, microscope or any of that sort, you know things look A LOT different than what they are like to your naked eye. Things behave in a completely different way on a molecular level, it’s like if each time you zoom into a view, you get a whole new world!! So an example of this would be DNA. In biology club the other week, we had to extract some DNA from strawberries. Our main ingredient that got everything to work was alcohol, but the main part is that once we added the alcohol, you can see this white silky substance separating from the rest of the strawberry mush. Few moments later, there’s this cloud of white silk on the top of the liquid floating around, IT WAS DNA!!! SO COOL, I thought I would never see DNA in my life, but there I saw it just a few bits of strawberry. We saw the white cloud, but in reality, DNA looks very different than what we saw that day. It is actually a twisted double helix that encompasses the bases, making the code for any living organism. It’s so intricate, and in the white cloud we saw was just a big blob of tangled DNA.

Another addition to scale of vision would be on the bigger scale of things, outer space. Whenever I go to the mall (if I ever), I think about how absorbed into the displayed material products people can be. It just scares me, and then I just let my mind wander and look at the situation as if I am in space, or just floating right about the mall. It looks very different up there, you see the whole grand picture of things. You can see planets forming, stars rebirthing, galaxies colliding, and there is a mall on earth, the lonely planet earth. There are many people in it, and they have no idea what is going on outside of them but how much that “cute shirt” is. How miniscule is that, when there is so much craziness going on in the rest of the world. This also happens during class time…especially during a test…I think about this. That we are here, so absorbed into the current moment, that we are pretty much closing off the rest of the world….perspectives. God sees the world from the big picture as well…

The next entity I want to talk about is water. Water is a beautiful thing, it covers about 70% of our earth…the rest is land? Do you guys ever wonder what is underneath all that water? Yes, water may look flat wherever you go, but what if all that water was gone from earth? What if we drain the oceans, drain the lakes…..Ok, let’s start from something we are all familiar with Lake Ontario…have you ever wondered what lies behind the blanket of water? I was watching a documentary recently, and it was called “Drain the Great Lakes.” It was talking about the discoveries made by undersea mapping technologies. They can now drive a boat with a device attached to the end of it that literally “maps” the sea floor by elevation. It is absolutely amazing, you just take the boat around the whole lake and VOILA, you get a map of the whole lake! And they discovered something AMAZING about Lake Ontario that most people do not know. Close to the shores of Toronto, there is actually a crater at the bottom of LAKE ONTARIO!!! The size of this crater is about the same diameter as Barringer Crater in Arizona, so they can predict that an asteroid of about the same size and velocity struck Earth at some point in the past causing that massive preserved undersea crater! It’s just so shocking to know because when you look out at a body of water, you probably would not be thinking about some crater or volcano at the ocean floor. I recommend you guys to watch the documentary called “Drain the Oceans” because it talks about the same thing, but for the oceans of the world. It mentions mountain ridges, valleys and a whole other world underneath all the oceans. (Link is at the end of this letter. )

The final stem I want to talk about is time…theeee coolest one…well…at this moment!!! SO, I was watching these videos on YouTube from The Slow Mo Guys. They are REALLY COOL. They film themselves smashing things, etc. and replay it in super super slow motion. All the videos are just shocking because you never realize how much your eye misses because things just happened…well…TOO FAST. For example, whenever you perform an eye saccade (a fast movement of your eye from one destination to another), your iris actually kind of jiggles when you stop because it is like some jelly substance and even when your eye stops, it still wants to move. Or how about when glass shatters?? It’s so fast but those lines cut through the glass and really, in real life, you blink and the next second, the glass is not standing up, but on the floor in pieces, with a high speed camera, total different story. So guys, I hope you will take some time to check out their channel! (Link bottom of letter)

Just a bonus thing about saccades, is the “Stopped Clock Illusion.” I learned this like a couple of months ago, but I just did some more research on it today in English class (during presentations ;P) because I was just so bored. So have you guys ever looked at the second hand of an analog clock (or the seconds of a digital clock), and it seems like if the first second once you look at it is actually longer than all the rest? WELLLLL, that is because whenever you perform an eye saccade, your vision is actually blurred, and in those moments, whatever comes into your eye is actually not being processed by your brain. Then once your vision is clear again (when you look at the clock), the brain fills up the missing information during the shift in vision with the first new image of the time. That’s why the first second seems longer, because it also accounts for the time that it took for your eye to go from your previous vision area to the new one. Your brain does such a good job at this saccadic masking that you pretty much do not notice unless you look at something that keeps time. During the whole day, you lose approximately 40 minutes of vision due to your eye moving from one spot to another. WOW!!! (more information about this, check bottom)

So that was my crazy weekish….sort of…what was going on in my brain at least….just a little bit of a teaser if I ever talk about this topic again…. I will probably elaborate more on what I said as well as talk about other ideas dealing with perspectives, lliiike…space, angle, situation, experience, culture, knowledge, etc.

I will leave you guys with this super cool quote by Margaret Atwood. I have never read The Handmaid’s Tale but, I hope I will one day:

“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be”

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

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Drain the Oceans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPeISaBoiLY&list=WL8352617C3399CDF2&index=11&feature=plpp_video

The Slow Mo Guys: http://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys

Saccadic Masking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking

Yours dearly,

Wingless Aura

P.S. Margaret Atwood apparently taught at university one of the teachers in my school before!

Dec 18/2011

What is this, first entry? What an honour!

Iciee and Aura, this is it huh? After talking about this ‘project’ of ours, it’s finally the time that we begin this journey. I’m feeling the excitement and I’ve barely even started.

First, I’d like to share with you the topic that’s been harassing my poor mind lately: university applications. I’m scared. I really am. I’m not just saying that to fish out compliments like, “oh you’ll get into university for sure!” or “you’re smart! You’ll get in!” I am honest to God scared out of my mind. I have confidence in myself that I will get into a university, that’s for sure. It’s just;
will it be the university of my choice? Let me rephrase that, will it be the university of my parent’s choice? My mom especially has so much confidence in me that it’s hard to tell her that I’m not half as confident as she thinks I am. I’ve filled out my application online weeks ago; I just couldn't bring myself to hit that ‘submit’ button. Friends all around me are already getting offers of acceptance into prestigious schools. It makes me feel like, how should I say this nicely, like crap.

Things at home haven’t been peaches and sunshine lately. My great-grandmother of age 91 has fallen ill and is in critical condition. My mom’s been crying a lot recently and all I could do was stand there with my arms around her and tell her everything is okay. My mom and I have been holding on to this lie to get through. We’ve recently put out our Christmas tree and decorated it with lights like always. After we were done, mom looked at the tree for a while and said, “Your great-grandma is dying and here we are, putting ornaments on trees.” Now whenever I look at our tree, I think of great-grandma.

On a brighter note, it’s almost Christmas, season of the lights. I’m proud to say that our neighbourhood has outdone ourselves this year; I’ve never been blinded this much by Christmas lights before. Can I just say how much I am looking forward to that two-week vacation? Very. How are you guys going to spend the two weeks? Please don’t waste it like I will. I always make

lists of things I plan to do over the break and I fantasize about all the fun I will have and all the things I’ll get done. The reality? I manage to complete 2 or 3 things on the list and feel like I’ve wasted the whole 14 days doing nothing at all. Something l plan to achieve this year (and hopefully will) is to bake cookies with my brother, learn how to knit, make a giiiiiiiant snowman (if only it’d snow), and go shopping! Oh yes, and study for exams, that’s a must.

I apologize if this first entry started off too negative. I always share the negative things when someone asks me to pour out my heart and thoughts. That’s all from me this week, I hope you guys had a wonderful weekend and I can’t wait to hear from you!

- Taro King