The Avocado

Blogger keeps changing its look, which, to a person like me who cannot find anything and easily loses concentration is extremely disconcerting. If I need to spend more than a millisecond looking for where to sign in, then the layout sucks. So as you can see, I am posting again. I am doing that because I am very busy. It is obvious that I have a lot of work to do, but my excuse is that I'm blogging as I wait for the printing to finish. Problem is, I have yet to click print. I have decided to move my books, utensils and self to my room, although I don't know how I came to that decision. The last time I tried it my mother found me lying on my bed, a binder beneath my head, drooling slightly, with one hand firmly grasping a graphing calculator and the other holding a pencil, fast asleep. Although my room lacks a computer and people walking through it constantly, it does have an extremely messy desk, dirty articles of clothing, and an unmade bed, all of which makes me want to scream and perform random acts of violence. It will cause me much frustration and sweat to organize it a little, and I don't know what I will do.

A week ago I started to feel a sharp pain in the middle part of my back whenever I would bend down or move a certain way. It was definitely a new pain, not soreness or anything I'm familiar with. It has been getting worse, and it's apparent that I have injured my back in some way. I did not improve matters by going to the fitness center on Saturday. Doctor I will see soon. I will find out if I'm merely aging or if I committed a hateful back crime. It might have been a special stretch I tried, though that felt really good at the time.

Signs I am overloaded (workwise; I'm always overloaded foodwise): constant posts; spelling and grammar errors; lack of coherence; disorganized writing (though some may argue that my writing is always like that); increased sarcasm. However, I don't think you will catch me complaining. Not blatantly at least.

I'm graduating soon. In about a week. I've never really gotten the point of ceremonies. All you do is dress up, prance around in silly (or nice) shoes and have your parents plus everyone else's parents watch you do it. It can be fun, I suppose. Perhaps a formal and elaborate conclusion is necessary before a person can truly 'move on' to another 'stage' in one's life. It would be a little odd to clean out lockers like every year, say goodbye to teachers like every year and take finals like every year with the only difference being a piece of paper. But with all that aside, it is not slightly, well, overrated? With the valedictorian speech, the graduation song that you walk out hearing - which my graduation class voted to be the Star Wars Theme. I'm going to really inspired to do great things with the Star Wars Theme ringing in the back of my head.

I'm just glad my school is among the smaller ones, so I won't have to suffer through hundreds and hundreds of people walking across the stage. It must be tough for the principal. I hope the valedictorian speech is decent at least; not cheesy or overly reminiscent or just bad. Last year I attended a friend's graduation and the speech sucked. Nobody laughed. Nobody cried. Maybe I will cry. From tripping over my 10.5 cm heels.

Readers may have noticed that I have been posting more frequently than usual. How often I blog is directly proportional to how much work I have. The more work I have, the more I blog. Why do more important things when I can tell nobody in particular about nothing in particular?

Yesterday was the graduation breakfast, where teachers cooked greasy bacon and pancakes in the school cafeteria. I ate too much as usual, and felt lethargic (as usual) during math work period so I passed the time being sarcastic and mean to the people around me. I'm kidding. I sat in an unattractive posture and drooled on my math textbok.

The main theme of the grad breakfast, in my opinion, is receiving the letters people wrote to themselves in grades eight and ten. Unfortunately, our counselor 'could not find' our grade eight letters, and lacking self control, I couldn't wait to open ten one, so I opened that first, spoiling my chronological plan. The writing was big and childish, although legible as opposed to now. I wrote that I was in grade ten (duh, as if I wouldn't know), and mentioned trivial things. I told myself who I liked at the time, and talked about a date I went on. It wasn't embarrassing as I had imagined, for I find most of my writing embarrassing. Come a first years I wonder if I'll read my old blogs and cringe.

I was a lot less sarcastic two years ago. I think I was nicer, less critical of myself, and less bitter. I had many goals and stated them in the letter. I accomplished a few and do not feel upset at ones I didn't accomplish because things have shifted, and some things I no longer consider important. I received a forward a few days ago, containing a quiz supposedly made up by the Dalai Lama, and it asked me to list animals and such. The procrastinator that I am, I took the quiz, and though I don't think the answers were extremely accurate, they were interesting nonetheless. One question asked me to write down my animals of preference from a list. I put pig first, because pigs are cool and I once held new born pigs on my grandmother's farm. The results stated that my choice of pig as my number one perferred animal meant that I considered money to be the most important thing in life. I don't. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, love and relationships were the last in my list. At the very bottom, I was told to forward the letter to as many people as my favorite number or something really bad will happen to me like my crush will hate me or I will never get laid or I will fall and die the next day. No way the Dalai Lama was any part of that.

I came across Lotus Child's website several months ago and immediately liked the three songs on their site. For the next little while I did my assignments with their music in the background and became very familiar with those three songs. Wanting to see them live, I would often check the news section, but all the appearances were in clubs and venues for the 19 and older. Things were hectic in the months following, and I stopped frequenting Lotus Child's website.

On Thursday morning I was doing service in the library and, being the good service student that I am, I was checking my email. It was then that I suddenly remembered Lotus Child and like old times, I checked the news section on their site. I was surprised to see a scheduled appearance in a nearby highschool on the 21st. Never one to know the date or time, my first thought was Damn! I missed the one performance I could have attended! After various physical expressions of anger I calmed down and realized that the 21st was the next day.

Lotus Child performed last the evening of the event, and they were definitely worth the long - though somewhat enjoyable - wait. In general, live performances are not as acoustically pleasant as recordings, but Lotus Child achieved amazing balance. I can go on forever about their playing, vocals, harmonizing, and stage presence. They are talented musicians who obviously find music and performance to be a catharsis, and it makes me happy to see a group of people who share an inherent love of music playing together. Their energy was contagious, and I had a great time.

I finally had the chance to purchase their cd that night, and played it on the way home, keeping the mood going. Never before had I found a cd in which I've liked every single song. I have been singing shamelessly along ever since. On the bus today I suddenly remembered about LC's stickers, which I forgot to take on Friday night. How unfortunate.

It's unusual for me to praise a musical group because I'm so incredibly picky when it comes to music. I take everything apart,pick at every single detail and usually give rather negative comments. If I ever work as a critic I'd be the one getting all the hate mail. Lotus Child is, to put it plainly: good. The drummer did not drown out everything with ostentatious cymbal hitting and did not overdo the bass drum. The band played extremely well together, which, for a big chamber music fan like me, is a great thing. I'm all about unity and the entire group as opposed to individual instruments. But if I have to say something less than positive about Lotus Child, I'd have to say that while their harmonizing is beautiful, it is a little overdone in one song. I think that's all.

When I think about it, many groups have good chemistry, superior musical insight, so I believe the reason I like Lotus Child so much is that I like their songs, their melodies and choruses. Their other qualities reinforce that.

Thank you Lotus Child, for making music.

I've always wanted to move away for university, to live in residence, eat cafeteria food, and study in a tiny and poorly furnished room. As I type this, the word 'bohemian' comes to mind, but it isn't that I'm attracted to. Living on your own sounds so exciting, so boundless in its unprecedented freedom. I know that it's not all fun and games. The responsibilities, the adjustment. But being a person who finds being home alone for four hours incredible, I cannot fanthom being away from home months at a time. The idea in itself is too wonderful. Naturally, when the time came to apply to universities, I applied to places I cannot reach by public transit. However, somewhere inside, I knew my true nature, and that I was too lazy, too chicken (and too poor) to move out.

When the offers arrived, I had discussions with my parents. They expressed their wish for me to remain, and their reasons were well justified. I mailed in a few declines, but I kept two - one being UBC, the one close to home, and the other Waterloo. When I was younger, far too young to even think seriously about universities, my dream was to attend UC Berkeley or Waterloo. The Chinese have always viewed Waterloo as the ivy league university of Canada, and it is the only Canadian university that my relatives in China know of. My dad asked his coworkers and the co-op students about the best engineering schools and they all said Waterloo and U of T. He would come home everyday and ask about my decision. I don't want to decide. To be honest, I'm scared of going away. I'm scared of regrets and of future complications that could have been avoided had I stayed home. As a result of too little prayer and complete avoidance, I still have not decided. To complicate things, Waterloo has just offered me some money. Hopefully, in the next week, I will know what God wants for me and choose my university with confidence and excitement.

After much confusion and questioning, an agreement was reached and the teacher's strike was called off. I took the mock provincial Monday afternoon, which was a lot shorter than I expected, and didn't tire my hands that much. The essay topic for the last section was along the lines of ''experiences help shape relationships'', for which I wrote a story. It started out great, and I was rather pleased with the opening paragraph. But unfortunately, it got weaker and weaker as it went along. The beginning could have led to something great, but instead ended up like bad chick lit from the clearance section. I'm not entirely disappointed though, and hopefully my mark will be alright.

I spent all of the past two days disinfecting my computer. I spent hours on the phone with four technical assistants in India (one at a time), and scanned my computer for 7 different viruses. Needless to say, I'm going a little blind.

The teacher's union might be striking tomorrow, but nobody is sure if the schools will be open. The School Board's website annouces that there will be no school tomorrow, but the news, which is more recent, claims there will be school. Normally I wouldn't care - I don't mind school, I don't mind staying home - but since a mock provincial exam is scheduled for Monday afternoon, a strike will mean moving the exam to Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday morning, I am writing a four hour AP calculus exam. Now, I am not one to complain, but having to write tests approximately 7 hours straight (with a half an hour lunch break in between) is not what I would call the key to successful results.

My dad just came downstairs to tell me a 'tentative agreement' has been reached. So I better stay tuned. It strikes me (no pun intended) as odd that people are trying to make decisions late Sunday night. In any case, we'll see what happens!