Schedule (Or timetable, whatever you want to call it)

I might be treasurer of my sophomore class. Yays! More stuff for college.

I never did post my new schedule, did I? Okay, well, here it is:

Red Day (A.K.A. Day 1)

Block 1: Chemistry with Dr. Patel

Block 2: Study Hall (Or ‘Free’) with Mr. Mills (My American Government/World History teacher last year!)

Block 3: Trigonometry with Ms Petkova

Block 4: First Half: AP Environmental Science, Second Half: AP Statistics

Blue Day (A.K.A. Day 2)

Block 1: AP European History with Ms Cubano

Block 2: English II with Ms Dickerson

Block 3: French II with Ms Chestnut (Same as last year… unfortunately)

Block 4: Same as Red Day

At home, I’m taking AP Macroeconomics, which I constantly forget to do, resulting in my temporary suspension for not submitting enough assignments (!!! I WAS AHEAD BY, LIKE, TWO WEEKS!!! GIMME A BREAK!), and I’m worried about the final exam, which is suppose to be a practice AP exam, which I KNOW I’m not prepared for.

My new schedule is pretty balanced. Except for that Study Hall every-other-day thing. It’s inconvenient, because the classes I don’t have much homework in are on the days I have Study Hall, so I still have to finish the majority of my homework at home.

And my ballet classes are still from 8-9:30 PM, and somehow I never make it to bed before 11:30.

But at least my body is getting used to six hours a night. I’m not getting sick from sleep deprivation anymore, yay!

 

Teeth Dream + My Own Laptop (?)

I thought I was the only one who had teeth dreams. Then I went to www.philsproof.com, and found out that the majority of people have those. You know, the dreams where your teeth fall out for no reason? Even if you’ve already lost all your baby teeth? Yeah, apparently they’re a sign of insecurity or something, and since I haven’t had one in about a year, that’s a good thing, right?

In my dreams, I think I lost more teeth than I actually had. It was like my oral anatomy suddenly turned from homo sapien to Great White Shark. Then I wake up, surprised to find that my pearly yellow teeth are still intact.

I will make a personal header for this blog, soon. Well, when I get access to the Adobe Photoshop computer.

Speaking of which, I think I finally have my own laptop! Okay, it’s not my own, it’s my dad’s company’s, but my mom nor my dad have been barking at me to give it up to them to watch their movies/DVDs on, and now I can do my homework (And update my blog) from the privacy of my room, FINALLY.

Although, I do need to save everything on a flash drive, because I don’t have my own printer… yet. But one day, I’m going to be printing out twenty-page papers every other day, and it’s going to annoy the heck out of my dad because the ink runs out whenever he or my mom tries to print something. And then I can safely argue for them to either move one of our printers into my room or buy a new one just for me.

This laptop does have a downside, though–it’s harder for me to get my work done. I mean, there’s that lovely little blue ‘e’ button right on the desktop, and of course that looks more appealing than the Church Reformation of the sixteenth century that I’m typing about on Word.

But I will NEVER EVER set up a firewall to restrict my Internet access while I’m doing homework. What idiot tortures him/herself like that?

 

My Wishlist + A Small Mercy

I envy doctorfabulous. Asian parents who actually want their kid to go to a state college? GASP GASP! Whodathunk that such a thing existed?

I may sound a bit spoiled, going against my mom on things that might be good for me to get into a good college, but to put things in perspective, the main reasons why I rant on and on about this are:

1) I don’t have freedom. At all. I mean, I don’t have a curfew, but I don’t need one because of my metaphorical house arrest. My mom takes joy in dragging me along the path in life that she wants me to take.

2) Take away the piano, please. It’s not going to make much of a difference on my college transcript, and I hate it anyway.

3) Oh, and while those miracle workers are at it, could they eradicate all the narrow-minded Asian parents? Wait, nevermind. That would pretty much wipe Asia off the face of the planet.

I probably am spoiled. But because of the verbal and slight physical abuse I take everyday, I consider myself to be a very depressed, spoiled brat.

… Depressed and spoiled work with each other, right?

My friends find my Chinese nickname, Zhao Zhao, to be very… ambiguous, I guess. Apurva, Jason, Sean, and Naveen (My afternoon carpool on Fridays) claimed that it can be incorporated into anything and everything, and to prove it, they’ve sung my name to that cat food commercial (the “meow meow meow” one), the Star Wars theme, the Mario theme, and even laughed with it.

HOW TO YOU LAUGH WITH “ZHAO ZHAO”? HOW DID THEY EVEN MAKE IT WORK?!

That’s not all they did, either. They spent the thirty minutes of driving time saying my Chinese nickname over and over, and practically made an entire language out of it. Imagine, a language with one syllable. If they ever make different dialects with it, my ears are going to shrivel up and die.

Oh well. It’s nice to hear my name used in a different tone than the “ZHAO ZHAAAAAOOOOO!!!!” that my mom yells everyday. Makes me feel a little happier about my cultural nickname.

Speaking of which, Jason also used my nickname in Beijing Opera. For those of you fortunate enough NOT to know, Beijing Opera is an extremely annoying style of Chinese singing in which there’s a nails-on-a-chalkboard instrument called the erhu, some annoying clackity clackers, and singers wearing ridiculously colored/coordinated robes and headpieces and sing in a nasally, shrilly tone that would drive anyone who isn’t used to hearing this daily INSANE. And to hear my name being used in such a way pretty much tore my insides apart, because he did such a good impression!

Still, I never thought I’d hear my name be used for thirty minutes straight in a positive way. Wahoo! Guys can be helpful/supportive (Jeez, I never thought I’d see that day)!

… I am going to stop talking about my mom. I swear.

 

I’M POSTING!!! YEAH!

Okay, I can’t make this too long, because not only do I have an online course to finish up and a whole lotta homework, the spacebar on this computer is busted and all I’m using right now is that tiny suction cup thingy anchored down with tape.

I’m not a very technical person. I don’t know what the heck the suction cup’s for.

I know I’ve neglected all my emails. But ever since I made a Facebook, all I’ve gotten is somewhere around twenty messages in my inbox, and people like Jess know that if I see a small army of email, I freak and log off immediately.

Which is probably why people try not to email me that often, thank goodness.

IB starts again. Boohoo. Mom’s giving me even more pressure to shapen up and get all set for Ivy League. I was Googling up people’s opinions on the Ivy colleges, wondering if it’s worth all my misery, and I came across an interesting section that said many Ivy League hopefuls/students (lucky ducks) didn’t have a plan beyond getting that big fat acceptance letter in the mail.

Which is TRUE TRUE SO VERY TRUE!!! I mean, I know I want to be a pediatrician or something (I gave up on the graphic design dream when my mom pressured me to stop wasting my time with street jobs like that), but I haven’t exactly planned out how to get there, besides show an office that I’m an Ivy League graduate and be handed my ticket to that prestigious career.

Which, turns out, won’t work because hospitals and offices don’t care if you went to Ivy League or not. The only field where you might get a golden ticket is if you go to Wall Street, and I’d probably escape to Antarctica if I do anything related to business.

See?! Why can’t my mom stop living in the 80’s and freakin’ see that Ivy Leagues aren’t all that jazz anymore?! I bet she doesn’t even know that the whole clique started not because of good education, but because of their ultra-amazing football teams.

Okay, fine, I didn’t even know that until I Wiki-ed Ivy League colleges yesterday, but at least I know NOW. My mom still insists on reading these stupid stories about how brilliant Asian kids make their way to the great colleges, not knowing that THOSE BRILLIANT ASIAN KIDS ALSO HAVE MISUNDERSTANDING PARENTS WHO WANT TO LIVE THEIR DREAM LIVES THROUGH THEIR POOR CHILDREN.

I mean, yesterday, my mom told me (and I quote, translated directly from her snippy Chinese), “I’m making you take piano lessons just so you can win an award and make it to a top college.“

She’s beyond blind. I’M NOT GOING TO WIN A PIANO AWARD BECAUSE I’M THROUGH WITH MY PIANO LESSONS. I want to be happy my whole damn life, woman. I could care less if I get into Cornell or Brown or whatever. I could care less if I make half a million dollars a year.

Ack. Okay, I’m ranting about mom again. Bad Zoey, you’ve spent enough blog space ranting about her.

So, the Olympics are over, Phelps finished his quest (Although with some debate over his win over Cavic), and Beijing is now going back to its hazy old habits with the jumbled traffic and mass construction. I hope Beijingers will realize that having less pollution is an awesome thing in life and push the government to keep things ‘Olympic-ized’.

I love how they named the main arena the Bird’s Nest. Teehee, and it looks like one, too. Wonder who’s the crazy architect who came up with that?

And now all the Asian American families here are rejoicing, because now they can return to their beloved families without worrying about being frisked, cuffed, and booted out at the airports or going to court over attempted Olympic sabotage (“All I did was order a Happy Meal! How was I suppose to know that the cashier was a Tibetan?”). Oh, and Beijingers are also rejoicing, because now they can open up their street shops again and chug out as much pollution they want on the streets. Wahoo! No more having to check if it’s odd or even license plate day!

Gaaah! Twelve-thirty already?! Must go do homework now!

 

I’ve cured my no-blog-itis!

I told myself I wouldn’t blog today, because I have much more important things to do. Like get back on track with my AP Macroeconomics course, because I’m supposed to have it finished by now, and I’ve still got a few sections to go. Oh, and translate my French oral. Stupid French. Why couldn’t we have an eighty-page workbook instead? At least we wouldn’t have to make stuff up. Or memorize it. And the teacher wouldn’t even bother to scrutinize the entire book for correct answers. Lucky Spanish people.

But blogging is so much more interesting!!! And it kills my eyes, so I have to think and type fast. When am I ever going to get contacts? Oh, right. When my eyes turn into solid steel and become infection-immune, because my mom thinks contacts will be my sight’s demise. She’s way too traditional. The only thing twenty-first century that I think she endorses is computers on cable. Which she gets mad at frequently because they freeze and slow down too much.

I think computers are the reason why modern people’s patiences are wearing too thin. They’re so fast now that if we have to wait more than two seconds for a page to load, we start concocting drastic schemes on how to destroy the CPU.

I’m an impatient girl. I admit it. Once, when my mom was suppose to carpool Apurva and I back home, she didn’t come at the time she said she would. Or five minutes after that. Or ten minutes after that. So I called my dad to pick me up, and he told me to either wait for fifteen minutes or take a taxi.

Okay, this is Florida, for goodness sakes. The taxi-per-population here is like one per five hundred thousand. And if you do manage to find a taxi service, then you’d have to wait about fifty minutes for them to get to you, because they’re just so far away. Diana says she has a taxi service on her cell phone, and it takes less than thirty minutes for them to arrive, but she’s rich, which is another problem for me: I can’t afford a taxi. My parents don’t believe in allowances, and they never give me extra emergency money besides lunch and math competition money, so my cute I’m Happy Bunny wallet is always empty.

So there I was, barking at my dad that I couldn’t wait fifteen minutes, because my mom was NEVER GOING TO COME, and I couldn’t get a taxi because 1) taxis are an endangered motor species here, 2) if I did call one, it would take forever for them to get to the school, and 3) I was flat broke.

He finally relented after I spent about fifteen minutes yelling into the phone (And drawing attention. But that’s my mom’s fault, because she’s got the voice of a stick of TNT, and never learned how to whisper or talk in low tones on the phone because she thinks the other person can’ t hear her when they’re probably holding the phone about a foot away from their ear.), and he started getting ready for the drive.

Then, after about two minutes, my mom’s tiny Toyota Corolla suddenly came teetering down the street, and I called my dad again, which I was pretty reluctant about, because his lecture on being patient and waiting was right.

So now the situation was: Mom, thirty minutes or so late; Dad, irritated; me, learning an important lesson on patience.

And now I try not to get mad at computers, because all that adrenaline wasted isn’t worth it. Besides, now that I’m getting about six and a half hours of sleep a night (And I’m supposedly on vacation!!!), I’m too tired to imagine the best way to break the darn screen with a sledgehammer.

Yeah. While all my other friends are getting a good ten-to-twelve hour night’s rest and sleeping in until eleven (like I used to be able to do), I’m waking up at six thirty in the morning and going to bed at twelve, because the Olympics are in China, which is halfway around the world, and half a day’s worth of time difference.

Now I have to study for an online exam. Waaaah!

Later, 9:09 PM

I am DA BOMB. I finished three online lessons today. Can somebody give me a whoot-whoot?

*Crickets chirping*

Fine. Be that way.

I found a rather interesting article on Time.com (Wow, what a surprise there) that said that people who kept food diaries lost twice as much weight as those who didn’t, because:

Dear (Food) Diary By SANJAY GUPTA, M.D.

… “it’s not just writing it down that counts,” Stevens says. It is also about using that record to identify eating habits that need to be modified. While most people think they know what they eat, they really have only a general idea and tend to have selective memory, especially when it comes to the foods that aren’t so good for us. With a detailed food diary, you can see where those extra calories are coming from…

…There is another part of the food-diary experiment that really seems to be working for me. In addition to being honest and diligent about the diary, I am showing everything in my diet diary—down to the last morsel—to my wife. Stevens says it’s all about accountability. You may have been thinking about eating that extra cookie, he says, “but you didn’t want it to show up on the diary at the end of the day.” Tonight, we are eating 6 oz. (170 g) of grilled tilapia with steamed broccoli and a handful of steamed brown rice. I originally thought we were going to have steak tonight, but my wife got hold of my food diary. And, yes, she saw those M&M’s.

— With reporting by Danielle N. Dellorto

Dear (food) Diary,

Today, I started off the day with a small bowl of Chinese food. It had lettuce, tofu, and cooked bacon (WHO COOKS BACON IN AN ASIAN COOKING POT?), and maybe just a tad bit of rice. I don’t know. I really have no use for this diary, considering that my mom monitors everything I eat, and I’m only allowed about as much rice as an African orphan may consume in a day. Maybe a little more. Maybe.

But anyway, my breakfast was lightly cooked in oil on my aluminum-foil-covered stove (I’m not kidding. My family’s so Asian, my mom put aluminum foil all over the stove to make sure it doesn’t get dirty. Yeah, sacrifice appeal for cleanliness. I’ll have to post a picture sometime), and it was vegetable oil, so my breakfast was about two or three hundred calories. At the most.

Then for lunch, I had leftover vegetable-oiled lettuce, tofu, cooked bacon, and noodles with sauce. There were a few pieces of chicken, but I don’t like the fatty skin, so I didn’t eat it. My lunch was, once again, two to three hundred calories.

For a before-dinner snack, I ate almost a whole bagel. Almost. And there were no sugars, so that was maybe a hundred calories, at most. But I haven’t had any bagels in a long time, so I was happy. All I’ve had since summer began was… well, Chinese food. And not the nice, fatty, soy sauce/teriyaki-dipped Chinese buffet-style food, either. Just a smidgen of vegetable oil, some sauce, and lots of green onion. Stupid green onion.

For dinner, I had–oh, forget it. I’ve been writing the same freakin’ thing in my food diary for TWO AND A HALF MONTHS!!! I AM GOING INSANE! WHERE ARE THE CARBS?! WHERE ARE THE CALORIES?! I’M AN ASIAN! I NEED CALORIES!!! OTHERWISE I’M GOING TO END UP RAIL-THIN AND BOAST THE FLATTEST CHEST IN THE WORLD!

Ahem. I have no idea where that chest comment came from. I shall conclude with the fact that I ate more traditional Chinese food for dinner, and my entire intake for this day was definitely less than a thousand calories.

Needing the Bad, Sugary Carbs,

Zoey Li

I wonder what the average American’s food diary looks like?

Dear Devil Diary,

This morning, I started off with two Eggo waffles and three pop-tarts. If you think that’s bad, later I found my spouse’s perfectly prepared breakfast of bacon and pancakes (because his/her waist is non-existant), and I ate it all. So my calorie intake was about a thousand right there.

For lunch, I had one of those ramen noodle things I picked up a the Chinese grocery store near my home. I thought it would be okay to eat, because, psh, the thing is as dry as the Sahara and the packets of flavoring and seasoning are tiny, but after I finished the bowl, I turned to the nutritional facts and practically had a heart attack right there. Did you know that one of those little packages has about 1600 calories in it?! And 168% of the suggested daily amount of sodium intake???!!

Dinner wasn’t any better. I had an extra large fries, extra large drink, two triple whoppers, and one of those badonk-a-donk butts. Oh, and I stole one of the kids’ Happy Meals.

Santa Claus is going to hate me.

Not lovingly yours,

A Hopeless American

And whose got the priority in China?

China Quake Rebuilding Costs $147B

Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008 By ASSOCIATED PRESS

(BEIJING) — China’s government estimates it will cost $147 billion to rebuild from the massive earthquake that struck the central part of the country in May, according to state media…

…Soon after the quake, China set up a $10 billion reconstruction fund — compared with the $40 billion spent on the Olympic Games that are under way in the capital, Beijing...

Yes, that’s right. The world comes before China’s own people. Look good before all the strangers out there and neglect the tragedy-ridden people at home. That’s the Chinese government for ya.