Harry Potter and My Plans

I believe that I can safely say that people who are around my age have basically been raised alongside Harry Potter. (An explanation of the above picture. Hermione is my favorite character of all time, like seriously. Besides, Emma Watson looks real good in this picture.) Certainly, the stars of the movies are only a little older than I am, but still. People like me grew up with the story of Hogwarts and fighting an epic battle against Voldemort.

One item that has been on my bucket list for the longest time has been to visit the Harry Potter attraction in Universal Studios at Orlando, Florida. Everyone who knows me on a personal level is basically aware that I am a hardcore Harry Potter fan who can read the whole series within 2-3 days. Before I turned 11, I remember fervently wishing for my Hogwarts acceptance letter . I could literally see myself walking down the corridors towards Gryffindor and talking to The Fat Lady in the middle of the night. Words cannot describe my disappointment at the fact that Hogwarts is not a real place that children are sent to study magic.

I have faced a question presented to me time and again by friends: How is it that you can hope for this fictional place when you know its not real? The truth is that I always find it comforting to believe in something that is not tainted by the “real world” as we call it. Whenever I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I remember a time when life wasn’t about how we looked or dressed. It was more of finding the magic not only in Hogwarts but also in everything that we did.

Reading through the Harry Potter series did more than transport me to an alternate world for a couple of hours. These books (and to some extent the movies) have both started my interest in writing and also a passion for pretty much all things British.

Because of what J.K. Rowling has done with Harry Potter, I have fought and survived along Harry and his friends. In my imagination, I have flown on my broomstick in countless Quidditch matches, scored countless goals, and have captured countless Snitches. I believe that there are other teenagers who are almost exactly like me in terms of experience with this series. Because of this kind of exposure to the true power of what an author can do to a reader, I decided that I would try my own hand at writing. Although I don’t expect to reach the fame or fortune of J.K. Rowling anytime soon, I am hopeful that I will be successful in the future.

Now on the “I love British stuff” part. Its really hard to explain what I mean to say by that, but I’ll try my best. To put it simply in a few words: I like British people, accents, books, and basically everything else. It is actually my dream to live in the British countryside and marry a British person. Fact is, I’ll probably do a transfer student program when I’m in college to get a head start in my “British dream”, as I call it. This might sound crazy, but if I was offered a chance to have a life in the U.K. right this instant, I wouldn’t hesitate to say yes and start packing. I’m not even kidding.

Note: I’m toying with the idea of starting a Youtube channel, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do on my channel if I do indeed start a channel. It’s only an idea. But if I have a British accent in a couple of years, don’t laugh at me. And I've been trying to write more, but I've been too busy lately with life and stuff.

Book Company Update

Hey guys! I got news from a book rental company by the name of www.CampusBookRentals.com. In my opinion their a pretty reputable company.

To any of you who are planning to attend college or are already in college, here are some perks to renting books:

• save 40-90% off of bookstore prices
• free shipping both ways can highlight in the textbooks
•  flexible renting periods
•  they donate to Operation Smile with each textbook rented

They also have a new program named Rentback.  RentBack is new initiative that allows students to rent the textbooks they own - to other students, which is awesome because it makes them 2-4 times more money compared to what they'd make through buyback options (like selling their books back at the end of the semester).

Here are two videos if you want to check them out:

Campus Book Rentals

What is Rentback?

I hope this helps those who want to save some money.

Searching for Something

In middle school, I had this group of friends which I hung out with a lot. This group was so eclectic that it was funny I called them all friends. I guess all they had in common with each other was that I called all of them friends. They were people from all different places: the nerds, the hippies, the ghetto people, the general a-holes, and the "normal" people. We had different goals in life, and we wanted different things out of life. At that time, I had no idea what it was that I wanted out of life, no idea what my parents out of life. I was without purpose because I had no idea what I wanted. You could say that I was floating through life, because I was.

As the years went by, I grew up. I know how obvious that sentence sounds, but I grew up both physically and mentally. I found that I wanted to be a neurosurgeon because I wanted to help people come back from accidents. I guess I needed the shock of something traumatic to help me find my purpose. Not that everyone does, mind you. Some people are happy with where they are without any prompting.

My friends found their purpose at their different times, with different experiences to prompt them unto the path they have chosen. Although most Asians leaned towards either being a doctor or a lawyer, some found differing paths. My friend Jamie found her passion in music. Her mom wanted her to go into her music, her dad wanted her to be a teacher. She wanted to go into music, and she did. She started to write music, and played guitar. I admire her for that. I am not brave enough to go against my parents' wishes, but she was. And she is happy with the direction her life is taking, and I have to say that I am happy with she has decided to do with her life.

I started this blog initially to talk about whatever was on my mind. I didn't really have a concrete purpose in mind, and I was a bit iffy of having a distinct direction. But as the year went on, I started drifting towards a more personal style with what I was writing. Still, I did non-personal social issues. The last few months, I have drifted towards a really personal type of a blog. And I have to say that I am happy to share my experiences. Although I am only in high school, I feel as if I have a lot of experiences to share. Everyone has a story in their lives, and my blog is a place where I can share mine.  

P.S. Follow me on Twitter. It'll be fun, I promise. And please nominate me for the 2013 Tatt Awards. I would really appreciate it if you all helped me out. Thank you all!(And also: my posts have mysteriously not been coming up on the Blogger feed for my followers, so if y'all want to read my latest posts, just keep checking regularly.)

A Conversation Between Friends

So the other day, I was watching this video of a long distance couple meeting with each other at an airport. One lived in England, and another lived in Michigan. Whenever they're together, one can literally see the love they have for one another. They looked so happy with each other that their happiness lit up my world for a moment.

But that only lasted a moment.

During class one day, I was supposedly taking notes for my exam next week. When I looked down on my paper, I found that I wrote, "I don't want to stay single." It voiced a fear that has always been there, but never showed itself until that moment. There has been a creeping hole in my heart that I'll be single for the rest of my life. It's a kind of creeping fear that sometimes paralyzes you because you have no control over it. As everyone is aware, you can't force someone to love you.

My steadfast friend, Erin, promised me that I'll find my somebody....eventually. But that does not stop the fear that makes me unable to think about anything else. A fear that drowns out every other thought. A reason for my fear would probably be that I've never had anything that closely resembled a relationship before. I've never had a first anything: not a first date, a first kiss, or a first love. In the eyes of my friends, I'm like a sacrificial lamb that hasn't had anything yet.

But we talked through my thoughts and feelings, and I felt a sort of relief. In the end I realized that if I want to find my significant other, I'll have to be a better person. Not to say that I'm a bad person, but there must be some reason why I'm still single. I had a pseudo-relationship with a guy from my drama class once, but it felt like anything but a relationship. It was like, an awkward step away from friendship.

There's this great friend of mine who's a junior that really has raised my hopes in society. She said that there was nothing to fear, and that I was too young to freak out about that right now. Which is somewhat reassuring, since I have a number of years before I am truly allowed to start being scared for myself.

Of course, I'm siding with Erin. She somewhat alleviated the panic that was truly starting to set in. Because I am a person who tends to act upon her fears, I fully intend to start dating soon. Although its somewhat amusing to hear about the relationship problems that my friends have, there's always this part of me that wanted to take part in that. It was just a feeling that never went away.

And I DO believe that I'll be able to find my perfect person later in life.

Willpower

I do not believe in the power of will, but don't take offense. I rarely believe in anything that is intangible. You have to actually PROVE physically to me that your claim is true before you can convince me that your point is valid. Otherwise, out you go (at least with your claims).

There had been many instances where I had arguments with friends about God. I've always found these arguments pointless because you are arguing with someone who BELIEVES. Only later did I know that the most I can do is to respect our differences in the view of religion and move on. There is no use arguing to people who close their eyes and say everything is true in the Bible. Also, for most people who believe in some sort of higher deity, they do good works because they are forced to do so. When I say "forced", I mean that they are afraid of what would happen to them in the afterlife. They are afraid of the punishments supposedly waiting for them. I wouldn't want to be wasting my time on hopeless cases.

My friend Alyss was the exact opposite of who I was. She was a person of total faith. At first, I didn't want to be friends with her. We were almost the exact opposite of beliefs. We were both nice people, but the reasons why we were nice were different. She was nice because she didn't want to go to hell, and I was nice because I wanted to. As I said, our belief system were different. What I did not understand was how God can be merciful yet His believers had to always be scared of His wrath. But in the end, we became friends, although neither of us wanted to at first.

Alyss' faith in her God encompassed every part of her life. She did all of this work to please her God and be in His favor. I don't know how she did it, but she was so in power of her actions that she was like a force of nature. She was what she wanted to be: only that she didn't seem to put any effort to delude others in seeing what was not there. The way one looks at things will help others see what that person sees. Sometimes, you have no choice but to believe in a fact so hard that it will have others believe too. I believe that this is what missionaries are always trying to do when they are going out spreading God's word. They already believe, so they want to convince others to believe also.

Growing up as an impoverished child in East LA, Alyss started selling these cheap wares on the streets where she grew up. Later, she developed a passion for business and a need to help those grew up in poor neighborhoods. This view of her contrasted directly with what I knew of her from the start. I always thought of her as someone who was so stuck up that they wouldn't even acknowledge that they were stuck up. My view of her changed so fast that my vision was a blur for a moment.

And that was one of the most valuable lessons that friends have taught me that teachers have never bothered to teach: never assume, because then you will make mistakes.

But anyway, needless to say, Alyss has been a success story. She went off to college, and is now studying in graduate school. If Alyss didn't have her religion and her dream, I honestly doubt that she would have made where she was today.

The world seemed to make fun of how I did not believe in a religion. I wanted to scream at the world, Why are you doing this to me? Why, when I believed, you did not do anything to make me stay? Now you make fun of me?! Although I felt cheated and lied to, I still didn't believe. I'm still atheist. I do not change my religion according to what others believe. I believe because I want to believe.

And I think that that is the most important thing of all.

Death and Life

I believe that everyone eventually meets one person who can really affect your life, and change who you are as a person. I don't think that I've met my “one and only” person yet, but I've definitely met someone who would change my perspective on life. So far, I can't say the same for anyone except for this one person.

My parents could not be counted as religious in any way, but I'd be lying if I said that they didn't like to go to events held by prominent people in the community. Since I couldn't exactly protest against going, I was pretty much forced to go to these events and be thrown with the other kids who were also forced to go along.

I couldn't exactly remember how I first met Alice. I just remember that she was bigger than all of the other kids there. It wasn't surprising that I found her a little intimidating at first, she was six, and I was two. What I believe really attracted our mutual attention to each other was that neither of us wanted to be there. We both felt that we had better things to do.

Somehow or other, the guardian of Alice met my parents and decided to hang out. It turned out that her parents had died from a drive-by shooting. She never got to meet her parents, and had lived in the church orphanage since their deaths.

As we grew up, Alice and I got closer together. Pretty soon, we became inseparable. I couldn't imagine anyone else who could share my trust as she did. Sometimes she'd sneak through the window to my room, and we'd hang out through the night. Being with her was fun to say the least.

As soon as Alice hit high school, she got in with what I call the party crowd. She started drinking and spending her nights out. Sometimes she would come to my place so drunk she couldn't even stand properly. My parents, who were planning to adopt her, began to get extremely worried about her behavior and what she was doing every night.

One night, Alice was preparing to go to another party. I asked her to take me along, but Alice scowled at me and said I wasn't old enough and I had a test the next day. No matter how much I whined and tried to reason with her, she was adamant about me not going. She left, saying that she'd be back at about 1 in the morning. I sighed in exasperation as I watched her sneak through the window to her friends' car.

The night passed fairly slowly as I watched TV show after TV show. When 1 AM passed and Alice didn't come back, I became fairly worried. It was 4:30 AM when the house phone rang.

My mom went over to pick up the phone. From the start, I didn't like the look on her face. She covered her mouth and sat hard on the couch. When she hung up, she covered her face. We then rushed to the hospital.

I don't remember much about that night. What I can remember is holding her hand about 2 days afterward. At first, I thought she was too cold and I started to take off my jacket to warm her up. I then realized two seconds later that I was holding a dead hand. Alice was dead.

They couldn't save her. Her spine was too damaged, they said. If she wasn't hit so hard, they might have had a fighting chance. Their excuses echoed in my head without meaning.

Life pretty much passed me in a blur after that. High school started, but I couldn't feel excited. My life went on an all-time low in sophomore year, and I started drinking. Let's just say that life was bad until I decided to pick myself up in the middle of junior year. Somehow, my mind snapped back and said, “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

I guess the answer to that question was that I never forgave myself for letting Alice die. I felt that I could have prevented her from going from that party, and I didn't. I was a wretched person, and I felt so thoroughly disgusted with myself I still can't find words for it. What I thought was that she didn't deserve to die the way she did. She left too early for her time. I still struggle with self-disgust, but I have quit drinking for some time now. It is a pretty good feeling to get off of alcohol, and I'm working on the self-disgust part.

But just FYI: things are looking up. Meaning that I'm really starting to feel better about myself and stuff. So yeah, just wanted to end this on a positive note.

Before I finish my post today, make sure to check out Jane Goltz's online t-shirt store here.

Getting Recognized

I realized as I was sitting in class that to be recognized in this society is very hard. Being recognized as in having a group of friends, or even a general group as far as I'm concerned. I'm not saying that everybody has to be recognized to some great degree, I'm just saying that everyone ought to have their fair share of attention.

Through my experience with blogging, I have worked hard to gain the followers that I have today. Although my numbers are modest compared to some other blogs that I have come across, I believe that for the past year and a half that I have truly come to blogging, the writing world is not as gentle as meets the eye.

There was this one incident that I found out that my work was being copied. This discovery pissed me off more than you can imagine. This other writer, who I will not name, said that this English assignment was all his. I was infuriated at this gross injustice. What angered me even more was how petty this fight was.

I was doing a research paper on the differences in philosophies between Locke and Hobbes. These two philosophers have always captured my imagination. Their works, their ideas, my political science future in college would be all about them. Back in freshman year in my World History class, we had this research project where we chose a philosopher and wrote a paper about them. I was so excited about this project that I very nearly went nuts. I mean, the very idea of having this for a research project was.. I have no word for it.

But to make things simple, I was writing pretty much from light to dark. It was a project that I was extremely passionate about. But this college student ruined it all for me. I received an e-mail from his professor saying that he was caught pretty much in the act. When I read "his" paper, it was pretty much word for word what I wrote.

From what I saw, he was a law student, in college, and in his late 20's. He was supposed to be mature and all that, but what he did was too base to even contemplate. Why is there a college student copying work from someone in high school?

But something that I learned from this: I was at least recognized enough for someone to get my work. Although this is totally not the way that I wanted my work to be admired, it was at least a start. It had at least shown up in a web search. I guess that really got me going to a writing career, because that was a start. Now I have my work copyrighted, which really is a reassurance to me.