Allergy Season

Today, is the first day of allergy season for me, I think. This morning, I had a stuffed nose, for absolutely no reason. I hate the fact that I was born with allergies. Right now at this moment, I have a runny nose, and also, I can't breath properly for some reason. Normally, this lasts a few days, until I find some sort of medication or just let it go. I hate having allergies. Also, when I moved to Europe, I started hay fever. I hope, that now that I'm back in Taiwan I won't have hay fever anymore. But apparently, some people still have hay fever, because their body is adjusted to having allergies at a certain time of the year. Another sympton of allergy that I really hate is havinga sore throat. It makes my voice sound weird, and I can feel something stuck in my throat. Even if I try to clear my throat, it doesn't work, and only makes it worse. At one point last year, I found it really hard to breath, especially if I'm lying down. Usually if things get really bad, my mom gives me allergy pills. But I know for a fact that allergy pills aren't really good for your body. Or worse, if you use it too much, your body and the allergy gets accustomed to it, and starts developing an immunity for it. And by then, you'll have nothing that can help with allergies. So I only take allergy pills when absolutely necessary. Allergy pills are taken before sleep, and work the next day. So I take the pills when, for example, I have a flute concert or an orchestra performance, because the allergies affect my breathing, so it makes it hard to blow the flute. I hate allergies so much.

Lost

Today, I experienced a feeling of 'lost'. Its really hard to describe. So basically this is what happened: because I got braces, I found out that I can't actually make a sound on my flute anymore. Normally, I don't really like practising the flute, but today, when I saw that I couldn't even make the slightest sound, I felt a deep sense of 'lost' and depression. For me, the flute has always been part of me, and who I am. I've been playing it for quite some time, so I've become attached to the instrument. I used to be able to play it whenever I like, when I'm feeling happy or down. Now that I can't play a single note, I felt a feeling of both sadness and also a feeling of being lost, and not knowing where I am, like a part of me has been taken away. But I talked to the orthrodontist, and he told me to just get used to the braces and find someone who can help me adjust to the changes. I felt relieved afterwards.
At the beginning of this year (2011), I also had another experience with loss (well, almost-lost). My rabbit was really sick at the beginning of the year. There was blood everywhere, and at one point, she was dying. She was on the verge of dying, and she was at the vet. Those three days, I couldn't sleep, and kept crying over and over again. Therefore we were really relieved (and REALLY lucky) that she survived it. But for about 5 months continually, she kept bleeding, but gradually, through healthy eating, etc. she became better. Now, she is really healthy.
But that experience taught me a lot. It taught me to cherish everything. Although actually contrary to the popular saying "You don't know what you've got, until you lose it", it was more of "You know what you've got, you just didn't think you'd lose it." On some level, it has the same meaning, that we have to cherish everything around us, not just the ones we think we'll lose, but especially the ones we never expect to lose.

The Science of Deduction

'The Science of Deduction', an article allegedly written by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is perhaps more than an article. It is the base of everyday life, but sometimes it just depends on how deep the deducting goes. Deduction is not only a fictional detail of lives as great as Sherlock Holmes, but it is also everywhere around us. For example, parents try to find out which of the children had stolen from the cookie jar, or students try to find out why a teacher is absent. For me today, I came across a question in my geometry textbook: Alan, Ben, and Cal are seated with their eyes closed, one infront of the other (Alan looking at the back of Ben's head, but can also see Cal, and Ben looking at the back of Cal's head). Diane places a hat on each of their heads from a box they know to contain 3 red and 2 blue hats. They open their eyes and look forward. Alan says, "I cannot deduce what color hat I'm wearing." Hearing that, Ben says the same. Cal then says, "I know what color I'm wearing!" How does Cal know the color of his hat?
This question took me a few minutes to work out. And here is my answer: The only way for Cal to know what color hat he's wearing is only if his hat is red. If Alan says he cannot deduce what color hat he's wearing, then that meants that the 2 sitting in front of him cannot both be wearing blue (then Alan would know he's wearing red). Thus, it leaves us with 3 possibilities: they are both wearing red, or one or the other is wearing either blue or red. But then Ben announces that he too cannot deduce what color he is wearing, eliminating the possibility of Cal wearing blue. Because if Cal was wearing blue, that meant that he could then deduce that he himself must be wearing red, for if he was wearing blue, Alan would know that he (Alan) is wearing red. So that leaves us with Ben having to wear a red hat. This took me a while to work out, but when I did, I felt a sense of achievement.
As Sherlock Holmes would say, "Elementary, my dear Watson!" (though in actual fact, this has never been said through the original 60 stories, but was in fact coined by a 1915 novel, Psmith Journalist, by P. G. Wodehouse)

Braces

On Saturday, I got braces. It was totally unexpected. The visit to the orthrodontist was meant to be just to check on what type of braces I'll get, etc. But they had a spare chair and dentist, so I sat down and they put braces on me. It's what they call an 'invisible' brace, whereby the metal blocks they used to use is now a type of transparent plastic, but the wire is still visible. They also put a spring somewhere along the line on my braces, to somehow part two teethes and make the other one grow out. At the beginning, I thought the braces were ok, and that they didn't hurt at all. The only thing I was concerned with was that it felt kind of weird and stuck out in my mouth. I couldn't even smile properly (afterwards, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom to try to figure out a new way to smile without looking weird). That day, nothing much happened. I ate normally, and found out that a lot of things can get stuck in braces. But on Sunday, I was in a lot of pain. For some reason, it was as if someone had just put the screw on, my teeth started hurting like there was something pressing on it. I couldn't eat at all for breakfast, so instead I put a Papaya and milk in the blender and made some sort of smoothie/milk and ate that for breakfast. At lunch, I tried to eat fried rice, but couldn't chew at all. My teeth were aching and my jaw felt really weak. So I drank a bowl of soup. Aside from that, I had a massive headache which I presume was also caused by the braces. Also, because of the spring in my mouth, it was cutting the inside of my mouth a lot. I also had a hard time opening my mouth, because some brace at the back of my mouth would get stuck onto the inside of my cheeck. I hate my braces, but so far, its only braces on the top row of my teeth. I will be getting braces on the bottom row next month, and that is not something I'm anticipating with joy. I dread the arrival of November 5th.

Camp PAS 2011 - Day 3

On the last day of Camp PAS, I woke up pretty early, and woke up Jenny, too (because that's what friends are for). We went to the lobby, and saw some other people awake as well. So we wondered around, and danced in the rain. We then went back to my tent and I changed the bandage on my knee. After breakfast, we had to pack up our tent. That was probably one of the most difficult tasks I had to deal with in my life. It took us ages to try to fit the tent in a little yellow bag. We tried so many different ways: we sat on it, we jumped up and down on it, we tried to stuff it in with all of our hands, (we almost broke the zipper) etc. In the end we called for help. After, we had to write our camp reflections, of which I wrote one page. In the middle of that, our tent were called back to 'clean-up', but turns out, it was just one jacket that someone left behind. After that, the whole school sat in a circle and Ms. Sherry announced different certificates. Red got the 'Most Improved' award, which I thought was pretty stupid. Our team didn't improve at all. If anything, we became worse because everyone just lost faith in the team entirely. Our way back was pretty much the same, maybe noisier. In our car on the train, the guys were playing truth-or-dare so we were pretty much entertained all the way. Most of the time, I just listened to my ipod. It died about 10 minutes before we arrived, and I was desperately trying to revive it by swining it around, etc. At the train station, I realized I left my ticked on the train, and was panicking, but thankfully, a friend picked it up and handed it to me.
I thought camp was pretty fun, except for the fact that it was raining, and it was muddy. Also, I hated the bugs. I had a total of 15 mosquito bites on just my legs. There were a couple on my arm. But thankfully, I wasn't sunburned at all, I just got tanner. Another thing I realized was that cats in Hualien are REALLY tiny.

Camp PAS 2011 - Day 2

The second day of camp, we woke up quite early, because there were people talking, plus, we didn't actually sleep well anyway. After breakfast, we travelled to rafting place. We put on this useless blue helmet I think was for decoration, and a life jacket. I thought we looked a lot like ninja turtles. There were 10 people in our raft, including a teacher. There were 3 girls (including me), and 6 other guys all older than us, plus Mr. McCool. It was kind of fun, but most of the time, I was worrying about my injury on the knee getting wet. We were pretty well-coordinated and we came from last to somewhere in the front. Then we got stuck on a piece of rock because some guy in the motor boat pushed us there. At lunch, I saw that my injury got pretty disgusting, but there was nothing I can do about it, so I had to make-do and put pieces of tape around the bandage to try and make it stick. After lunch, we continued rafting, and we went to the front again. But our group was going a bit too fast, so a motor boat came and tried to hold our boat while others caught up. The tip of the motor boat was pushing right where I was sitting, so in the end, I was straddeling the seats in the middle and trying not to get pushed off. So at the end of the rafting trip, we went to take a bath, and afterwards, I cleaned up my injury, which didn't hurt, surprisingly. After the rafting, we went back and ate dinner. The girls in our tent were pretty slow at whatever they were doing in the tent, so I had to wait for them, and in the end we were late for dinner, and I had to sit at the vegetarian table. It was probably the healthiest dinner I've ever had. At night, we watched aboriginal people dancing and learned about some of their culture. It was kind of interesting, but the girl sitting in front of me got hit with a glowstick or something. After that, we put on our own shows. The shows our group put on were pretty crap. Everyone admitted it. I loved the show that  I think team Yellow put on. That night, we stayed up and played truth-or-dare. It was fun, except when you had to do a dare. So that night, we had a lot of fun watching people embarrasse themselves, until some teachers told us that our tents were crashing. Turned out, most of our tents were fine, but anyway, the game was ruined, and everyone went to bed. Since our tent was leaking water, we got to sleep in an air-conditioned room, which was REALLY cold at night.

Camp PAS 2011 - Day 1

Our journey to Camp PAS was through a bus, a train, then another bus. On the train, we were seperated by our team colors (mine was red). We met up with our tent members, and decided on a tent leader. Our ride there was pretty much normal. I spent the ride listening to music, exploring my new phone, and walking around and basically socializing with different people. I wore a jumper which had my name on the back, and that caught a lot of attention. Everyone thought it was pretty cool to have names on clothings. I had to explain a lot of times throughout camp that I got it from Belgium, when I was on the netball team. Everyone on the team got one, and we each had our full name and school name + sport on the front, and our nickname on the back. Anyway, towards the end of the journey, we had to make a tent flag. Ours had our initials sowed on, alongside some cut out chickens and ghosts. When we arrived, we set out to put up our tent. It went pretty well, actually. Afterwards, we split up into our teams and had a game in the pool. Unfortunately, I had an injury on my knee, so I couldn't join in. It was really boring and frustrating sitting on the side of the pool while everyone else had fun in the water. After, we went paddling in a lake. That was really fun. There were 5 people in our boat, but one of them didn't do anything (since there were actually one 4 places). We were winning, along with another boat (in our team). But one of the boats from Blue caught up. So in the end, we came somewhere like 3rd or 4th. At night, we had a barbecue, which was a disaster for our group for 3 main reasons: our group didn't have a light (we had to use a flashlight), the fire was really bad in the beginning, and we didn't have any teacher to help us. We tried to make-do and eat whatever we can. That night, I looked up into the sky, and saw the most beautiful night sky and stars I've ever seen. There were SO many stars, and it was really pretty. Our tent had a leak, so the four of us in the tent had to squish up next to eachother. So basically, it was a pretty horrible night. I ended up sleeping on my side, and since we didn't have pillows, I had to sleep on my blanket (later on I felt cold, so I had to sleep on my arm, and it was numb the next morning).