China + Cacti + AP + School

From the China Blog on the Time magazine website:

“But in all the discussion of the car ban there are some positive signs. People care about Beijing’s air quality and are looking for ways to improve it. While continuing the car ban isn’t a long-term fix, it might not be so hard to get people behind further improving mass transit, which unlike a car ban could actually make getting around easier.”

Um. Okay, if you say so. But I’d like to point out one little detail: THE MASS TRANSITS ARE ALREADY CROWDED ENOUGH AS IT IS.

And I think that I personally have a voice in this, because my combined vacation time in China over the years probably adds up to about half a year, and I know that the buses are about as crowded as a New York subway station in morning rush hour. The Chinese subways aren’t any better, although I did come across a couple of stations that didn’t have a whole lot of people in them.

Okay, so they aren’t as bad as the Japanese city stations, where policemen lurk around to actually push people in subways that already have passengers pretty much sitting on top of one another (See Youtube for more info). But did you see what Beijing mass transportation was like during the Olympics, when most cars had to be reluctantly parked in front of the high-rise apartments? The buses looked like they were about to explode from all of the people inside. It was like the only possible way for riders to exit was through the windows or something, because the doorways were completely blocked with people. And if that’s what the buses are like, I don’t even want to know how crowded the subways were. It’s not like the government can build more subways to accomodate, either, because there’s already a sub around every corner, and if there were anymore, entire blocks would probably start sinking into the ground. Or they would meet their fate with a giant wrecking ball, as most run-down homes and street stores did during the games.

So I don’t know if Beijingers care that much to sacrifice more of their thin veil of personal space to keep the air clean. And I thought that the bloggers would feel the same, too, because most of them live in Beijing, after all. They should know what the state of mass transit is in the heart of the capital.

Cactus Thieves Running Amok

Friday, Aug. 29, 2008 By HILARY HYLTON

They look sturdy, even hostile, but cactus plants in the southwestern United States and Mexico are under attack. According to wildlife conservationists, cactuses are being dug up and smuggled away at an alarming rate by over-zealous collectors looking for rare species and “narco-tourists” mining the desert for the small, psychotropic peyote plant.

I think I about died from laughter. It’s not a funny story, but when I get a mental image of old Western cowboys running across the desert, uprooting cactuses, and then fleeing back to their little shacks holding the plants like precious babies, I can’t help but giggle. It’s too silly.

Sophomore year is supposedly the easiest out of all four years of IB high school. If that’s the case, then my motivation for losing my procrastinating habits will hit rock-bottom, because the less work I have, the more I feel like lazing around.

Of course, since I’ll be taking four AP exams in May, I shouldn’t really slack off. ‘Cause from what I heard, AP exams are hard. Especially if you’ve got either: a) an online teacher, so you basically have to teach yourself, or b) a brand-new AP teacher that doesn’t teach. At all.

In both cases, you’re on your own.

Which means I’m burnt toast.

Why didn’t I get into Law Studies?! I wanted to take that course soooo bad! But nooooo, they put me in AP Environmental Science instead. The boring class, where all we do is copy Powerpoints or do worksheets and I feel like my chances of scoring at least a three on the exam is slipping away day by day.

Oh, and did I mention that walking into traditional AP classes was awkward? Nothing against the people, and I’m blaming myself for this because I should be used to traditional electives since I took that Creative Writing class in ninth grade, but IB and traditional students are so segregated that if you put us in the same room, it’s definitely going to be tensive for the first few classes. All the trads are thinking, “Oh God, there’s those nerdy IB kids,” while we IBers are going, “They’re gonna shoot me” or something.

Okay, fine, most IB students don’t think that. But we’re kinda… apprehensive about approaching regular students. And this is going to make me a hypocrite, but we’ve really gotta open up to the rest of the school.

Well, it’s not really hypocritical in my case, because I had no trouble fitting in with the Creative Writing class. In fact, one guy even developed a certain… affection for me during my second semester as a ninth-grader. See? I totally belong with them!

… Fine, I don’t. Make me look hypocritical.

But there is one AP class I do like: AP Euro. Everyone keeps saying that my teacher, Ms Cubano, is a slave-driver, but she actually teaches, and I’m actually awake during her class.

Yeah, you can tell how interested kids are by counting how many pairs of eyes are actually open.

I totally love AP European History. Well, that’s probably because I haven’t had my first test yet, but I did have a quiz, and do you know how relieved I was to find out that it wasn’t as detail-grinding as Mr. Mills’s World History quizzes? To pass last semester, you’d have to have memorized the entire book, word for word. And I’m (mostly) not kidding. All of the people in that class who managed to grab onto that precious ‘A’ confessed that they spent hours and hours memorizing the textbook. Like I did. If you asked us what was the second paragraph of the ninth chapter in the World History textbook, we’d probably have given you an exact answer, plus thrown in a small analysis just for the heck of it. But now, we’re back to a normal course where comprehending the main ideas of each chapter is prime and memorizing word-for-word is for idiots. Yay!

 

Yay. War. And a little Olympics and some Chinese Culture.

I don’t know much about the Georgian war itself, so I won’t try to attack and ramble about how the US government and the rest of the world is taking it, but apparently the country is attacking South Ossentia separatists after they claimed Ossentians attacked their people. Russia intervenes and forces the Georgians to retreat because they support South Ossentia, and they see the Georgian invasion as a sign of hostility towards the motherland and a possibility of a genocide (since Georgians were supposed to have killed about a thousand people before the Russians came in).

And then the article goes on to describe how McCain and Obama has been at each other’s backs over the war. Obama is going for halting the violence peacefully, I guess, with peacekeeping forces and the like, while McCain thinks that’s a stupid idea and wants a more aggressive approach, like kicking Russia out of the G-8 or whatever. McCain and Obama are both going for a halt to Russian intervention, because it’s tearing up Georgian cities (Wait, wasn’t it Georgia trying to shatter South Ossentia in the first place?), although McCain’s views are putting him at an advantage against Obama:

War in Georgia, Politics in D.C.

By MASSIMO CALABRESI, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008

… Obama’s campaign made two early missteps. First, in its initial statement, it called for restraint from both Russia and Georgia. “Generally, when a country is being invaded you don’t call on it to show restraint,” a senior McCain foreign policy adviser responded. (The adviser declined to be identified, aware that the criticism could also apply to the Administration, which also called for restraint.) Then Obama’s campaign released a statement questioning McCain’s objectivity in the crisis because a top McCain aide, Randy Scheunemann, had lobbied for the Georgians. When the Kremlin’s own lobbyists made the same point, McCain’s campaign fired back. “The reaction of the Obama campaign to this crisis, so at odds with our democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow, doesn’t merely raise questions about Senator Obama’s judgment — it answers them,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement Saturday.

Article from www.time.com

Wahoo. While all of the world’s leaders are watching the Olympic opening ceremony, we’ve got a brand new war to deal with. This planet just gets better and better.

Speaking of the Olympics, did you see that 4×100m men’s swimming relay on Sunday?! Holy crap was Jason Lesak good! I can’t believe he managed to clear that gap between him and Bernard in like, the last ten meters of the race! And then Michael Phelps went Tarzan afterwards, and he was grinning like crazy all throughout the medal ceremonies. I pity the Frenchies. Ha, but it was their fault for bash-talking the Americans.

And it was even funnier in yesterday’s events. Michael swam in the 200m freestyle (I think), won gold, and was stretching during the medal ceremonies because he had a 200m fly semifinal to attend in twenty minutes. And he made it into the top spot, too! That guy is crazy.

Oh, and I love how the Japanese gymnasts, even though they were favorites, completely failed yesterday. They were tumbling and falling all morning (in China), and if you ask me, it looked like they didn’t care much whether or not they placed. Once they began to suck, they just quit altogether.

The American team, however, were awesome. Well, so were the Chinese, but none of the guys on the US gymnastic team had ever been to the Olympics before, and they ROCKED. I guess to them, the loss of the Hamm brothers meant that it was their time to shine.

I got my learner’s permit yesterday. All my friends are scared of me, because I’m not only a female, which apparently makes me driving-impaired, I’m also an Asian, and thanks to the traffic legends in China and India, I REALLY can’t drive.

In Beijing alone, it takes about an hour to drive three or four miles because the streets are so clogged up with cars and taxis. And at every intersection, there’s about a million bikers waiting to cross because not all Beijingers can afford motor vehicles. And some of the bikers may be toting a second person on the uncomfortable seats hovering directly over the back wheel. I’ve had to ride on those secondary seats before, and they hurt my tush like heck. I don’t see how other people can sit for two or more hours on them. They were intended to carry books and backpacks, not people’s butts.

In India, as my friend Apurva would say, “It’s every driver, pedestrian, cow, and animal for himself.” You can find on YouTube countless videos of cars going the wrong way on streets, and even pedestrians filming themselves crossing the roads where drivers are doing the minimal to avoid running over something.

Okay, back to summer homework. *cries*