Moho and Jack

Just a heads up to everybody, I may wind up moving this site to the Wordpress blog I created and mentioned last post. I will do this if Moho continues to not post.

I am most pleased that you posted, Moho! And to answer your question, I have seven actual days of school left, though I will be out of town after five (for a math tournament).

Come on Romeo, man up! 

I have to say, Romeo and Juliet is definitely not Shakespeare's best. I appreciate the language and the poetry, for it is extremely difficult to do and the word choice is excellent. Also, the use of literary elements and figurative language is brilliant. However, Romeo is a problem.

Okay, alright, I realize that you're sixteen and a hormonal teenager, but honestly, it took you about seven hours to go from being totally in love with one girl to falling head over heels for another. Emotions are a roller coaster at sixteen, I understand, but have a back bone! A girl doesn't love you back. Move on.  Being a little mopey and depressed is fine, but oh my goodness, locking yourself in your room and depriving yourself of sunlight? Whining and secluding yourself from all human interaction? For DAYS?!

Then, you meet Juliet, who brings the sun back into your life and has such beautiful cheeks that you wish you were a glove just so that you could touch them (wait, what?). You proceed with the most cheesiest poetry I have ever heard. Okay, it's sweet how you love a girl you just met an hour ago so much, but tone it down a bit?  There's a difference between romantic and...scary. 

Here's the thing, Romeo and Juliet is not a comedy. If it were a comedy, then I would have no problem with Romeo. However, it is a tragedy. I know the point is to display immature, young love, but Romeo is just too much. Romeo and Juliet is considered by many to be the ultimate tale of love. However, I am at loss as to why. Yes, it shows two lovers that are willing to do anything for each other, but just a few hours before meeting Juliet, Romeo was ready to do anything for Rosaline. Is love supposed to be so fickle? I sure hope not. 

Dear Jack,

I am extremely sorry for not posting in so long. I promise after this week it will be better!  MUN Banquet tomorrow! I'm super excited! I got to meet my co-chair today for the first time! I'll tell you how it went later. Oh, and how many days of school do you have left?

That's all for tonight everyone!

Goodnight!

I am saddened, Moho, that you still have not posted. It really won't help your writing to say you're going to write.

In the meantime, I would like to discuss today's topic: reading.

It was not too long ago that I found myself reading regularly, plowing through books with the force of a freight train. I finished the first six Harry Potter books in approximately a week — the seventh in about a day. But since I discovered the internet in its entirety, I've found myself reading less and less. Now, this pattern is occasionally broken; I read The Hunger Games in six hours, and Macbeth in two days. But on the whole, that's about all I've read by choice this year.

So what I find myself questioning how severely a lack of reading affects me. It is clear that my writing and speaking has gotten worse as a result of it, but has it impacted the rest of my life?

I would contend that yes, it has, though the impact is minor compared to that on my grasp of the English language. For example, my spelling has gotten much worse. But, most subtly, I know less.

When you read, you pick up knowledge. Be it random, useless facts or fascinating historical anecdotes, reading teaches you things, and a lack of these things can hurt you and your personality.

The difference is gigantic in quiz bowl, where you never know what you will be asked. Honestly, I think that if I read just a book a week, I'd be even more of an asset to the team. After all, my biggest weakness is the liberal arts; if I could shore up my skills in that area, I'd be akin to superman, a veritable super-quiz-bowl-man. At least, that's what I like to think. It is equally likely that my ego is now getting in the way of my logic.

In conclusion, it's fine not to read, unless you want to be a writer or you anticipate being on Jeopardy any time soon.

Moho, I couldn't even imagine going through that — it must have been terrifying. I'm so lucky that there's nothing in my backpack that I need (other than over $400 of stuff). And I'm sorry to ask this, but could you please add extra lines between your paragraphs? It's hard to tell where the paragraphs are in your posts.

Now, on to today's topic: mathematics! Now, as some of you may know, I am very interested in mathematics. I can not underestimate this. If I had to rank my hobbies and passions, I imagine that it would go something like this:

1. Learning math calculus
2. Learning brand new math
3. Learning competition-level math
4. Learning number theory
5. Science and Quiz Bowl (tied)

Let $f(x) = \log_{10}(\sin(\pi x)\cdot\sin(2\pi x) \cdot\cdot\cdot \sin(8\pi x))$. The intersection of the domain of f(x) with the interval [0,1] is a union of n disjoint open intervals. What is n?

"No no no no no. This CANNOT be happening to me. Fuck my life." I repeated those very words to myself for the next half hour, the longest half hour of my life.

"Coach Pulose! Have you seen a blue Adidas backpack anywhere? It's mine, and it was next to the fence with everyone else's bags, but it's not anymore, and I really need it back! It had everything! My phone, purse, and review materials!" I was hoping and had my fingers crossed that Coach had seen it, or at least knew where it was.

"No, I haven't seen it. That's not good at all. I'll search the grounds; you should go check with security." Wonderful.

I nodded my head and ran inside the school.  I have misplaced my phone before, almost lost a $300 camera, and even managed to loose my iPod, but never had I ever felt this much panic towards loosing something. It hadn't quite hit me yet, the direness of the situation. Coach scouted the grounds around the track searching for it, but didn't find anything. Security? No luck there either.

Before leaving the school, I told one of my friends what had happened, to spread the word, and keep an eye for it. Disappointed and disheartened, I climbed into my ride home and broke the news to mom. Following that was a phone call to my Dad to cancel my Verizon cell phone account.

That's when it hit me. Four-hundred pages worth of outlining for history alone, gone. All my bio notes, gone. All my math stuff, including a one-hundred dollar graphing calculator, gone. Cell phone, gone. School ID with my picture and my planner with my address, gone. By then, it was impossible to hold back tears in frustration. Out of all the backpacks and running bags sitting along the fence around the track during the track meet, mine had to be the one that got stolen.

I got home and went straight into the freezer and grabbed ice cream. In events like this, ice cream is the ultimate remedy. Afterwards, I headed up to my room and checked my email. There, waiting for me in my inbox, was an email from Facebook telling me that the friend I had talked to about my backpack had posted on my wall. The post read as follows:

"MOHINI!!!
You would never guess what happened. I was walking to the bank from school, right after you told me about your backpack, and then I saw it on the corner of Winton and Monroe!!
I checked you folder, and it's definitely yours. And it's EXTREMELY heavy/packed/stuffed/needs a slim fast.

Anyways, let me know your address so I can drop it off tonight.
You owe me a big hug in school =)"


Favorite person? I THINK SO. Within fifteen minutes, he was at my house with my backpack. THANK GOD. Of course I checked it for any tampering, but I was just so HAPPY that I got all my stuff back. Even better, everything was exactly how I left it. I honestly don't even care who took it or anything. I'm just so relieved to have everything back. Nothing was missing :).

Now, a few words for my amazing co-blogger:

Dearest Jack, what's up? Yes, yes, I know I didn't post last night. I kind of accidentally feel asleep and...the next time I opened my eyes was to my alarm ringing, signaling the beginning of another tiresome day at school. Anyway, seeing as how the fact remains that I failed to post yesterday, I'm ready for any challenge you have thought of :). Well, as long as it's not too...I'm at loss of a word. Anyway, good luck on learning Japanese! How I wish they offered Japanese as a language at our school! By the way, did I tell you that starting next year, Mandarin Chinese will be a language that students can take at BHS? I'm not taking it, but I know some people that are.

Alright, good night!

You did not post last night Moho. A suitable punishment will be prepared.

On a brighter note, hello everyone! Today I will be discussing my planned foray into the Japanese language, and its implications on my life.

Recently, I saw a girl in my AP Computer Science class reading manga. That seemed pretty normal to me, at the time. But when I got a second glance, I did a double take — was it in Japanese? And lo, it was!

Now, this may seem like nothing but a silly, pointless anecdote to you, but it meant a lot to me. You see, I kept telling myself that I would learn Japanese, and then thinking it an impossible feat. But now I know that it is possible! And with a little guidance from this unnamed acquaintance, I soon be embarking upon my Japanese journey, jovially and jubilantly, if I may add.

The road will not be an easy one. I will begin by learning the writings of all of the kanji from Heisig's renowned Remembering the Kanji. Though some hate it, I found it child's play to learn the first 60 kanji (in his list) via this method.

After that, I will learn the Hiragana and Katakana, while simultaneously studying vocabulary, grammar, and the reading of the kanji. It appears as though, using this method, it will take me from one to two years to reach literacy.

Now, what lasting impacts will this have on me? Well, for one, I'll no longer have to read my manga translated; furthermore, gone will be the days of subbed anime.

But most importantly, I will have done something that I've always wanted to do. And if I can manage to pass the JLPT 1 (the hardest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test) by the time that I'm applying to colleges and, yes, for scholarships, it'll look freaking fantastic on a resume. Or so I assume.

Unfortunately, I can't learn until summer — at which point I'll be done with the state math team.