Found something interesting…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

Timestamp – 7:58 PM

Belated First Day of School Post!

I was planning on doing a post on the first day of school about the first day of school, but I just didn’t feel like it on the 26th, haha. I’m not yet going to talk specifically about the teachers/classes I have since I don’t really have a definite opinion on any of them yet. I do however have some grievences:

• In my PE class there is no one I know. I have some friends who have the same period as me, but different teachers. PE is going to suck.
• Multimedia 4 is combined with Multimedia 3, and for some odd reason we will be working on the same projects as Multimedia 3 from time to time. Also, it was said that we will be working with Multimedia 3 in groups. Not cool. Multimedia 4 was supposed to be the class for independant projects and greater freedom. Also, half of the Multimedia 4 kids are the loud/obnoxious kids from last year.
• There is no longer a Magnet bus to take me to and from school.
• Dr. Lemco’s lectures are like Wikipedia pages -he goes from one topic to the next occasionally forgetting to return to the first topic.

I have yet to the whole intense exercise before sleeping trick to help me fall asleep, but I’ll get around to it sooner or later.

Timestamp – 11:53 PM (Aug 27)

Lol, my Internet gave out in the middle of writing it, so the above timestamp is the time of completion.

Timestamp – 2:35 AM

Into Thin Air… go my eyes

Let’s rewind the clock a couple of weeks, before Junior year ended. As a student in English 3ap and headed into English 4ap, we were given certain books to read over the summer. Or more specifically a list of books that needed to be read before the summer was over. 4 books would be the grand total, not a large number by any means. However, I procrastinated (haha, big surprise, right?) and am now 2 days away from the start of school with 2 books left to read. The “upshot”, as Jon Krakauer says quite a few times, is that I finished the two longer books first, each one a few pages over 300.

The first to go down was William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Which I found to be half enjoyable and half tedious. In the first half of the book, Zinsser discusses the difficulties of writing, the need to cut out excess words, and some points of style. Before I continue let me say that the advice is amazing and teaches extremely valuable lessons. However, the book is geared towards nonfiction writing, and Zinsser includes a large section of the book dedicated to example of how to write in your respective field of nonfiction: sports, science, magazine articles, and the like. This is where things got tedious, at least for me. He throws at you an excerpt almost every three paragraphs. I know that somewhere someone has enjoyed/benefited from the examples, but personally I found it to be quite boring. So many times while reading this section I thought, “Thanks for the theory/advice, but I don’t need three examples after every single idea.” I finished this book, on the 21st or 22nd.

In other words, I had just 4 days left for 3 books. I understood that if I didn’t set a strict schedule for myself, I would never finish in time. On the 22 at night, I found myself too exhausted to read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, so I didn’t. I planned on getting the jump on it in the daytime hours of the 23rd though. However, instead I responded, “yes” on impulse to Martin’s request to hangout and play video games. I went over to his house and we played Soul Calibur 3 and a Robotech game. I went home around 7 that night. I was pretty disappointed with myself because I had not read as planned, so I swore to myself that I would finish Into Thin Air before I went to bed that night. Oh god how I loved that decision while my eyes hated me for it.

Into Thin Air is the story of a disastrous attempt of climb Everest, recounted by Jon Krakauer, who was hired to write an article about the experience for a magazine called Outside. Krakauer is guided by Rob Hall, who is also leading other clients to the top. Without giving away too much, the s–t hits the fan and lives are lost. The story goes into detail about just about every person involved with the incident in the spring of 1996. At first I was pissed off that Krakauer spent so much time delving into each person’s back story and introductions, but then as the pages turned I realized that it was necessary to make these characters 3d, to give the reader some perspective on them, in order to truly make the reader empathize with the people involved: which I certainly did. I found myself forgetting from time to time that the book is nonfiction.

But what pisses me off about the book, pisses me off about people in general. Another survivor who was portrayed in a non-heroic way had his own book written about the events, The Climb. However, the writer of the The Climb made it a point to continuously defame and discredit Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Krakauer mentions in the postscript of the book the feud that he had with the writer of The Climb, and his own attempts to defend himself and etc. From what Krakauer has in his postscript, I believe that Krakauer is the “winner” and that the other person is just garbage, trying to win an audience for himself by attacking others. I hate it when people do this. It’s like in the movie Clerks, directed by Kevin Smith, when the a man rallies an unruley mob to protest the selling of cigarettes. As it turns out, the man was a representative of a gum corporation and figured that deningrating Dante, the main character, into a “cancer-merchant” would get more people to buy gum. That is a pile of bs, but its sad that people actually do this.

Into Thin Air is a great book, and I am sorry that I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved. I stuck to the schedule and read constantly from around 11:30 to the finish of the book. The only thing is, at 11:30 I was only on page 88 of a 300+ book. I finished just five minutes before 3 AM. And the insomnia I spoke of earlier has yet to subside, so I fell asleep around 4 and had to get up at 10AM to accompany the family in picking up a sister from the airport.

Anywho, two days left for two books: The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Glass Menagerie, which thanks to some help from Jessica, I now have the ebooks for. Reading these books off of a computer screen is going to desecrate my already dead eyes, but if I can I want to finish both before I sleep today. Casterbridge checks in at around 200+ pages and Menagerie is half that, so its basically another 300 pager to finish off before I clock out. I mean, I’ve done it before, I should be able to do it again, right? /dies

Timestamp – 4:29PM

Schedule

So whereas most Santa Teresa Seniors got their schedules on the 16th, I had to wait until today since they only gave me 5 classes when I wanted 6. I had to leave my schedule with them and pick it up today. Or I could have picked it up on the first day of school, but seriously, is there a Senior in their right mind would even think about doing that? Willingly? Any who, here’s my schedule:

01 – French 4 – Wilson Caine
02 – English 4 ap – Lemco
03 – Speech/Creative Writing – Thomas
04 – Adv Art Study – Huynh
05 – PE – Becking
06 – Econ/Gov – Caldie/Donahue

Gonna be an interesting year I think.

Timestamp – 1:08AM

It’s like my Starbucks card situation, only with sleep

For those of you that don’t know/remember, my sister got me a $40 Starbucks gift card for Christmas. Since Christmas, I’ve used it twice, using up about $19 dollars worth. There’s a funny situation that happens every time I am hanging out with friends, no matter which school group: whenever people decide to go the Starbucks, I don’t have it on me, and whenever I bring the card, no one really wants to go. The two times I’ve managed to use the card were during times where I’ve specifically challenged this situation.

The first time, was for the welcoming home hangout we did for Victoria, who returned home from staying with family in a city called Roseville. After some initial video gaming, we decided to go to Starbucks. However, upon realizing that my card was at home, I told the story of the Starbucks card curse, but was shocked to find this did not deter Mai and Nahida’s urge for coffee. We eventually decided to stop by my house, which is in the opposite direction of Starbucks, so that I could get the card and we could be on our merry way. Along the way, we picked up Martin and Tony Lam and tried to get Jessica to go, but she wasn’t at home or something, I can’t remember. We ended up going to Target since some of us were hungry and that there was a Starbucks inside the Target, but only two drinks were bought really. At Target there was much fooling around and Tony Pham showed up, and we had some more laughs.

The second incident was on the 12th, when Seniors pick up schedules for Santa Teresa. After getting our schedules and stuff, we improved a hangout plan. Some stuff happened and some plans conflicted so it ended up being myself, Alex Antoku, Alan, and Ann who went to Starbucks and Subway for lunch. (I just now noticed that we were the A-Team, but putting that aside–) I kinda demanded that we go to Starbucks in order to use the card which I had brought, so that was that. There I discovered that I like raspberry mocha and that you can order a cup of X number of ice. Ann ordered for Alex Antoku a cup with 42 ice cubes in it, and got it. Too bad she forgot to specify that water was also to be put into the cup, so we had to go back to Subway to get Alex water, haha.

Anyways, so yeah, the two times I’ve countered this Starbucks curse was when the curse was personally challenged. I still await the day that the curse is broken. Either that or when I use up the rest of the card, lol.

Now onto slightly more serious matters and the explanation of the title of the post.

For the past few days, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I go to lay down to sleep around, 1 AM ish, but I don’t end up falling asleep until like, 4 to 6 AM is serious conditions. Now some of you may have the same reaction that my mom had when I told her this, “But Alex, you always stay up late so why are you complaining now? Aren’t you use to it?” Well the fact of the matter is, whenever I stay up I usual do things. Anime, manga, school work, forums, games, whatever it is, I am doing something that is specifically keeping me up. But recently, I been wanting to sleep earlier, but I can’t. I am completely honest when I say that last night, I decided to sleep at 1:20AM-osh, but did not fall asleep until 4AM. I just laid there in bed, doing nothing, wondering why the hell I couldn’t fall asleep. I liken this tot he Starbucks card curse because on the nights where I should be sleeping early, I find some odd reason to stay up, and now that I am trying to sleep early on purpose, I can’t. Frustrating situation, no?

Timestaamp – 9:21 PM