Don’t Keep Me Waiting

This is a short story that I have written was inspired by the song Sitting Wishing Waiting by Jack Johnson. The reason I chose this song to base a story on was because a few years back, my friends and I did a quiz titled “What’s the song for your life?” and Jack Johnson’s Sitting Wishing Waiting was apparently the song that explained my life at that time.

All her life – no matter how many of her friends were Christians – she never put her faith in God. Neither does she follow the horoscopes that her best friend puts her life on. She just believed in…hard work and perseverance. And she thought that as long as she continued to love him, he would eventually come to love her too. She showed him her perseverance by doing all she could for him. Three years into high school, she’s been acquainted with his friends who, every time they met, would tease her for reading books, laugh about her style and her seriousness to study. At moments she thought, “Why must I put up with this!? This is so infuriating!” and scream and yell at the top of her lungs in her room. After feeling calmer than a moment ago, she takes a deep breath – inhales and exhales – and says to herself, “Forget it. It’s going to be worth it in the end!” She’s written all the essays he had to do – whether for English or Law about the topic of “Should marijuana be legalized” – she did them all foolishly and she probably would do the same in her last year of high school too.

In her final year of high school, she prayed once and her prayer went something like this, “Dear God, if you’re really there and really do exist…please make him fall in love with me. I’ve never been a fan of religion but, just this once, please help me. Help me Lord.”

It’s finally graduation day. You see graduates hugging each other and wishing each other the best in university. Among them, she’s there. She’s hugging her parents and thanking them for coming when suddenly she feels someone pat her on her left shoulder. She turns and all her close friends greet her. “Let’s go!” one of them says. Another says, “Yeah! My mom’s ready to drive us to my place and we’re gonna do our own celebrating.” And gives her a wink. As she was about to say anything back, someone calls her from behind. She knows this voice – all too well – and as if my instinct, turns around. She shows the brightest smile to him and forgetting her friends, runs towards him. “She’s still in love with him?” One of her friends asks. Her best friend, before answering, gives out a sigh and says, “Yeah.” She then yells out to her foolish friend saying, “We’ll wait for you outside!” She turns and yells back with an okay.

“Congrats on graduating!” she says to him. He chuckles a bit, smiles at her and gently says, “You too.” They both give each other a friendly hug and then she asks, “So any plans with your friends after that?” He thinks for a second and says no. He then begins with, “So…listen. There’s this girl I want to tell my feelings to…and I know you’re acquainted with her so can you-” She cuts him off. Her glowing smile disappears and her brows frown a bit. Not getting the hint, he begs a bit more.

“Please! Just this once!” he told her. And as coldly as she could she replied with a no. “Fine. Last time! I’ll never ask you to do anything for me again. Whatever you want, I’ll buy it for you okay? So ju-” She cut him off again and asked, “How long must I wait for you?” She looked him in the eyes and saw his pleading eyes turn stern out of irritation. Now there’s only silence between them. He’s trying to find the right words to say while she’s deciding whether she should say anything or not. Her anxiety and the need to want to break the silence fast overrules her and she speaks. “You know I’ve always don-” She stops. And her face shows an “Oh shit. What the hell was I gonna say?” look. She’s having second thoughts now. She thinks for a moment. If she tells him what she’s felt all these years now…then that’d be the end of them. Although she’s scared, she makes a choice. She reminds herself, “If I don’t tell him now, I won’t ever get another chance. Just go for it!” and she speaks again.

“You know I’ve always done everything you wanted. Even when I was exhausted from my own studies, I’d never say no to whatever help you wanted from me. In a way, it made me feel that you need me and it gave me hope that eventually you’ll come to love me too. So I guess I was wrong.” She forces a smile at him but all he could see was the look that she was about to cry. She continues, “You know that I like you right? All these years I’ve known you?” He nods. “And you want me to help you to confess to the girl you love? Do you think I’m a fool that I’d agree to something like that!?” She notices that she was beginning to raise her voice. Calmly she asks him, “For how long?” He hesitates a bit but replies, “Uhh…since year one.” Year one…the same time she fell in love with him. Her tears begin to roll down her face and he looks at her with apologetic eyes. When she realizes this, she covers her eyes with the back of her hand and stutters, “You’re cruel…you should’ve told me from the start that you’d never love me but you kept raising my hopes.” She’s crying now but she wipes the tears away with both her hands and looks at him with her red eyes. Before she says goodbye to him and runs off, she tells him, “I’m not gonna be the fool that’s gonna keep waiting for you anymore.”

 

“Transcendent Man – Ray Kurzweil” Review

Have you ever heard of Ray Kurzweil? Well, I haven’t until I watched the documentary film called “Transcendent Man.” If you have already watched the film then you would know of what he thinks the future would be like in regards to technology. If you haven’t watched the film and don’t know who Ray Kurzweil is, then you are in the right place.

First question is: Who is Ray Kurzweil?

The restless genius, the ultimate thinking machine, the rightful heir to Thomas Edison, he was born on 1948 in Queens, New York. At the age of 12, he had created his own computing device; at age 15, he had started to design computers for recognition patterning.

The film mentions Singularity – a time where change would be so rapid that human-machine civilization would be created through the research of Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics; a time when technology can function and complete tasks on its own.

To be honest, I really would not like to be in a world where technology is everywhere and we become so dependent on them that it no longer requires effort to accomplish a task. In the movie, Kurzweil speaks about how he will – in the future – be able to bring back his father to life, in a sense, by creating a clone and projecting his memories of his father into that clone. I understand how it must feel to lose someone close but to try and mess with the cycle of life, I think, is the same as messing with God.

 

Darfur Genocide – It’s enough!

Hi (: In my first semester I had English and my topic for my assignment was the Darfur Genocide. I don’t really want to have you read long paragraphs after long paragraphs so I’ll try to make it short but at the same time, I want to cause awareness to genocides happening in the world and in this case currently, it would be in Sudan. Although I think that talking about such a serious issue in the world it might not be so easy to make it short so please bear with me. So through my research, I saw a lot of gruesome pictures on Google images. I am actually a pretty squeamish person; gory stuff does not amuse me.  I’m pretty sure that most of you reading this already have a good idea of what’s happening in Sudan. People are being killed and left without homes and the government tries to hide it all and all that. But here’s some information that I found interesting…no, more like extremely shocked. Did you know that the Coca Cola Company (yes the pop most of us have come to love) is providing the Sudanese government with money because apparently Sudan has a “plant” that the company needs to make their coke. (I’m sorry I can’t provide you with the name of the plant. I’ve tried searching it up but found nothing so if you know anything about this plant, comment and tell me please!) Now, what does the Sudanese government do with the money? They use it to buy more weapons for the Janjaweed people. And what do the Janjaweed do with the weapons? They use it to kill the people of Darfur.

And here’s my say on what I think about all of this. To be honest, I find it extremely stupid yet it is this stupidity that is causing the lives of thousands and millions to disappear in Darfur over the past years. I’m wondering who decided that killing would solve anything? As much naivety as I sound, I can’t help but wonder why we still haven’t learned from our mistakes. What happened to, “Never again?” When the world screamed NEVER AGAIN. What happened to that? Because it seems that it’s happening all over again. I don’t mean just Darfur and its genocide. I mean all the other countries that are labelled with “genocide.”

I guess that’s pretty much all I have to tell about the Darfur Genocide…for now anyways. Below is one of the ads that I made to cause awareness and I hope that after reading this, you will also want to cause awareness!

“…the little children kept asking why the Janjaweed had done this, why they wanted us all to die…” This was my first ad and I found the quote in a book about the Darfur Genocide. My point here is that the adults of the world are bringing in innocent children into their affairs. They weren’t born into the world so that they could live only 6 or 7 years and only know how to live in fear and not have even 1/4th of what we have.

PS: I’ve wanted to post this up for months now but wanted to try to make it short so if there’s any updates on Sudan since then, feel free to tell me.

 

Clothing Brands turning stale!!??

Yesterday I went shopping with a group of friends and I was really disappointed with the clothing designs I saw. What was wrong? Put simply, there were shirts, sweaters, hoodies, tanktops, etc that had just a plain color with no logo or anything whatsoever and it costed quite pricely. I’ve seen similar designs in many different stores and one store would be more costly compared to the other by 4x the price! Some of you might think, “That’s just the way it is!” Considering the fact that it’s the brand that makes the clothing cost freaking pricey! I don’t know if any of you feel the same way as I do but…I don’t buy from a store because of its brand but because I like their designs and I go back to the store hoping that their clothing would have nice and cool designs on them. And by having only your brand name on the shirt with a plain color makes me extremely disappointed. I ended up buying a plain orange-colored hoodie because it was only decent compared to the other clothings in the store. I think the companies are beginning to think we’ll buy from their brand just because it’s a popular brand (which I’m sure we do!) and therefore causing them to begin to lack the creativity they used to have!

 

Search vs Research

During the whole course of Technology Design, a lot of researching was done. Actually, for every project given to us, research was mandatory. For example, during the Aviation project, we had to search up the different ways one could fold a plain paper into an airplane and experiment to find out which way would make the airplane fly the most effectively. Another example would be the Design Brief Project, where I researched materials and chose the right one for our Birdnest sweater and then searched up different companies that provided the same materials. Once again I would choose the right company. We could research as we pleased without having a limit since our course involves the use of computers.

 

Crowd Source

Using “crowd source” such as wikipedia.ca or blogs has a risk because it could be based on actual facts or it could just be rants. Of course, such as wikipedia.ca there is a lesser percentage that the information would be false or wrong. But other sites such as Myspace or Blogger or even WordPress itself is a site where almost anything goes. People write about their thoughts, their opinions, or anything that interests them. So basically, it’s a risk of trusting a “crowd source” with its information since blogs are for personal use so their information could be solely based on assumptions.

 

Open-Source

What is Open-source? Well, what I’ve learned is that it can be a product or a site online where the people are free to change the product or source at hand. A simple open-source item would be a blank piece of paper since anyone is free to do whatever they want with it. Write on it, fold it, or rip it, whatever we want. During our technology design course, we’ve had a lot of open-source. Of course, the projects and assignments, I think, are an open-source since we could almost literally do anything we want with it.

 

Global Reach

I think that unlike other courses in high school, technology design is one of the few that actually gives us an experience on the real world. For example, all the many processes involved in making one product. Not only that, all the factors that needed to be involved such as the budget, design process, the need’s assessment, the manufacturing, etc. Designing it, manufacturing it, and how you want it are very different things since you’d have to thoroughly think how to make the whole product work out. This course has always given me experiences about the production industry and the processes before that and I’ve really learned a lot from it.

 

Student-Centred, Project-Driven, and Activity-Based

Technology Design was one of the courses, I think, were purely based on projects to learn since I’ve certainly have had more projects in this course than any other but in this course, we’ve had literally no take-home homework either since usually we’d work on computers. I think it was a very independent class compared to others since there wasn’t really a whole concept where you could just learn just like that. It was more of a you-do-you-learn kind of experience. I think it was very student-centered since the main point of high school courses is to teach the students but not many have actual outside world experience given to us unlike this course. Throughout the course, there weren’t many activities that we would do together since this course, I feel, is more on the independent study yet there are times when we would sit at desks and listen and jot down notes. At the same time with all the time we use the computer, it sometimes feel as if we haven’t really learned anything at all.

 

Passport to Safety Certificate

I got my certificate for Passport to Safety on February 3rd, 2010. This certification means that I am aware and have the knowledge of the safety regulations in a workplace. If any of you would like to test yourselves out to see if you know your safety regulations in a workplace, the site will be provided for you at the bottom of the picture.

Certificate of Completion

www.passporttosafety.com – I have created a link for you so if you would like, please click on it and do the test!

PS: It’s good for your resume!