The Two Escobars

On Friday last week in MUN class, we watched a documentary called the 'Two Escobars'. The ‘Two Escobars’ is probably one of the most moving and emotional documentaries on the impact of sports to the world. It is obvious from the film that the impact was indeed very big, affecting the lives of no less than atleast 35 million people, the population of Colombia at the time of the two Escobars. One Escobar, Pablo, was drug dealer who was ruling the Medellin Cartel with an iron fist. The other, Andres, was a nation-wide soccer player. The two were completely opposites. One eventually divided the country, while the other united them. Soccer had been the only connection between the two, in which Pablo was the owner of their team, and Andres was the star player. The documentary circled around the events from the era of the drug-dealing leading up to the World Cup, the country’s elimination, and Andres’ eventual death. I thought the entire situation in Comombia was horrible, but I admired the spirit of the national soccer team. At the end, however, the reactions of the Colombians to the country’s performance at the World Cup was unsupportive. The country had lost its first game in the World Cup, and had subsequently received death threats. Also, a brother of one of the players had been killed. On the second game, everyone's thoughts and emotions were elsewhere, and Andres accidently scored an own goal, causing Colombia to be eliminated. Drug lords of Colombia betting on the country had been angry at Andres and murdered him. This film makes me really depressed and I feel like crying everytime I think again of the ending of the film, where they show the bloodied upholstery on the seat of Andres' car, where he had been shot. It was horrible to think of, especially since they showed footages of Andres during press conferences and in the changing room where he had this expression which could give you a stab of pain and sympathy for him. It was horrible. It must have been a tough time for him after he scored the own goal, and it wasn't as if he WANTED to score for the US. I think people need to think more before they act selfishly and kill someone. The nation had gotten its punishment however: they had lost one of the world's greatest soccer player who was actually PROUD of his own country, even at the very end, when they had betrayed him.

The PSAT

On Saturday, we did the PSAT. Like, the official one. The day before, I went through the 'SAT Manual'. I really wanted to get a better result than the practise test, because I know that many people hace actually improved from last time. I want to improve with them too. I thought it would be kind of embarrassing if I got a lower mark than last time. That would mean I just got lucky on the practise. I think its important that I get a good mark, on both the PSAT and SAT. Let's ignore the fact that its for college, etc. It also gives me practise taking tests, and gives me experience on how to actually revise for a test. Also, my family is in general pretty high-achieving, like my cousins. I think it kind of give me pressure to be on the same standard as them. I don't believe that I'll ever reach erica and derek, but I could always try. And I want to prove to them that I can get pretty far too. Also, I'm naturally competetive, so I want to stay on top, and be the one with the highest score in freshmen year again. I don't like being defeated, and I don't like being second. No one ever remembers who second place is. But people do remember the one who gets first place. I live by that motto. I also live by another chinese motto, which means literally translates to: There are people beyond (this) person, and a sky beyond (this) sky. This means that no matter how good you think you are, or someone else is, there is always someone out there who is better. This motto keeps me going. Even when I am in first place, I don't relax, and I keep moving, because I know there is someone out that is better than me. And plus, if I do stop and rest, someone could catch up. I think a lot of this also comes from the Taiwanese education, where being on top really matters. I think that's all asian education.

Lists

'Lists' are a very important part of my life. I make lists everyday. The most usualy kind of lists I make is homework lists, where I just list down all the homework I have to do. But that's not my only type of lists. I have literally a hundred different lists. Just random lists. Most of which have already ended up in the recycling bin and is now part of another paper. I do lists for all sorts of reasons. I never really knew why I actually make lists. Like when people are bored in class, they normally doodle, etc. but I make lists. It helps me stay awake and focused. So before, I didn't know why I made lists. Until one day in english class last year, we had to write a short story focusing on a particular character which we made up. I made up a character who, like me, made lists. Using this character, I explored different reasons as to why people make lists. It really helped me get into the character, and not only that, I learned more about myself (though ofcourse the character was slightly more exagerrated). So I concluded that making lists is a way of helping me organize life. As a teen, it is most common that I would feel a little bit lost sometimes. So making lists really helps me, even it is a really random list that has nothing to do with anything. I have lists of all sorts: I've probably got about 10 lists of attempting to name all the countries in the worl (I've never actually finisheed), 5 lists of the 50 states (I always go up to >45, then miss out a couple random states), numerous lists of animals (normally categorized into different types: for example arctic animals, amphibians, reptiles), and I've even got lists on things to do while bored in class! There are also really random lists like 'weird icecream flavors', 'different things to put on pizzas', 'oscar winning films', '(celebrity name, ie. John Travolta) films', etc. I really enjoy making lists,  but too bad most of them were scribbled on scrap pieces of paper, and never really kept. I think I should get a notebook and keep all my lists in there. Without lists, I'd be complete 'listless' (excuse the awful pun).

Exhaustion

Today, I felt one of those familiar pangs of exhaustion. For the last couple of days, I've been sleeping pretty late, at around one or something. Normally, like a couple of months back, my normal sleeping time was at about 11, and now its been gradually pushed back to 1. That's not good at all. Now, I don't even feel remotely tired at 11. I've been trying to get my sleeping patterns back to 11 but its really really really hard. I try to do it on weekends because its easier. However, when I lie down at 11, I can't even close my eyes.Now its really annoying. So in my World History lesson, I was fighting to stay awake (hard as it was). Then at the end of the day, I had PE and girls basketball training right next to eachother. In PE, we played a game of 'captain ball'. It was really fun, so I got really engaged and ran A LOT. So by the end of the lesson I was dying from the heat and the sweat. Then we had basketball practise. It was REALLY difficult that lesson because we did fitness training. We ran 6 floors of stairs (3 laps), trying to do each in under 2 minutes. Then  we each did 3 sets of pushups and situps (each lasting one minute). By the end, I was dying. So when I came home, the first thing I did, after I took my shower, was crash onto the sofa. I fell asleep for about an hour or so, then my mom came back and told me to get up and do homework. So I got up and went into my room, and before I could even get my homework out, I crashed onto my bed and fell asleep again. I slept for another hour till my mom came in and woke me up again. I had a REALLY hard time waking up; I kept falling back onto my bed. So in the end, after ages of waking up and crashing down, and dinner, it was already somewhere around quarter to nine. So I started homework REALLY late today. But I managed to try to stay really concentrated and finished all my homework. Everyday, I remind myself to concentrate more and turn off facebook and chat and finish homework early so I can go to sleep. But everyday I still sleep really late and put of my 'early sleeping' plan till tomorrow. Its really hard. So now I try to plan out all my homework evenly on eachday in my notebook to make sure I have a fair amount of homework each night, not too much, and not too little. So now I have to go to bed, and try to fall asleep. I really hope I don't push my sleeping schedule any further into the night. The only way I'm managing to stay alive is from sleeping much more than usual on weekends. I know this is really really unhealthy and not a good habit, so I'm going to try to sleep earlier. Starting tomorrow.

50's, 60's, 70's

The topic of this journal is, yes, based on the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, but no, its not about the political and economical statuses of the times. It's about music. Unlike a lot of people my age, I love music from these three time periods. I have a youtube account and I've got a playlist just full of songs from then.
50's: One of my favorite songs from the 50's is 'Mack the Knife', by Bobby Darin. I listen to it almost every other day and can never ever get sick of it. I also really like 'Catch a falling star' by Perry Como. Another of one of my absolute favorites is 'Fever' by Peggy Lee. Its so addictive for me. Also, I really like 'Earth Angel' by The Penguins, and I've heard it ever since I could remember.
60's: I LOVE 'Moon River' so much. Its one of my absolute favorite favorite songs. I can never ever ever ever get sick of it. I listen to it so much its unbelievable. I also absolutely love 'A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square'. I also LOVE this song so much, especially the Nat King Cole version. Another song I like from this period is the Elvis Presley song 'Are you lonesome tonight?' I also like a couple of the Beatles song from this period. Especially 'Blackbird', its such an amazing song. Another song I like is 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco'. Also, I like the song 'Don't Rain on My Parade' sang by Barbra Streisand on the musical 'Funny Girl'.
70's: One of my favorite songs is also 'American Pie' by Don McLean. I also really really like 'Hotel California' by the Eagles. Also, I like some of the Beatles songs. But there's not a lot of songs I like from the 70's. Although in the 80's, I do like the Stevie Wonder song: 'I Just Called to Say I Love You'. I kind of like the Gloria Gaynor song, 'I Will Survive' but I think it kind of got old and its become a sort of joke now. Another song I find is fun and cool is 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' by Cyndi Lauper, I've listened to it countless times.
These are just some songs I like from this period of time. Some others of my all time favorite artists include: Queen (I love Queen so much), Michael Jackson (sometimes), The Police, Louis Armstrong, etc. Some modern bands and artists I like are: All Time Low, Fall Out Boys, My Chemical Romance, Busted, Avril Lavigne, Rihanna, etc.

America's Next Top Model

On Sunday I watched the last episodes of the reality show America's Next Top Model Season 16. As usual, Tyra Banks hosted the show, and as usual, it was funny. I watched this season pretty late, actually. I started when I think there were the 5 finalists left and they were going to Morocco. The five finalists were: Hannah, Alexandria, Molly, Kasia, and Brittani. Before I saw the episode of Morocco, however, there was an episode flashingback on the whole season. I saw the contestants get eliminated one by one. At the beginning, my favorite was Monique, partly because she was really really pretty and had an amazing body, but also because she had an air of leadership with her. She had her own opinion, but wasn't bossy. My least favorite right from the beginning was Alexandria. During one of the challenges (in which they had to shoot an ad for a brand of coffee), Alexandria was being REALLY irritating and bossy. She kept saying, "I think you should do this, I think she should do that..." She wasn't even the director! Who was SHE to boss people around? Personally, I found that irritating. However on the episode before the top 5, i felt really sorry for her. She won one of the challenges and won a brand new car. All the other girls got jealous and started backstabbing her (but infront of her). They all thought she didn't deserve it. One of the girls almost got kicked off because of this. Anyway, the girl who evetually got kicked off was Jaclyn. She was this really tall (mid-sized) brunette who was like a really spoiled girl. She couldn't even make her own bed. So as the season went on, my favorite was Hannah. She is like a typical girl-next-door, with like an amazing personality. So the top 5: the first to get eliminated was Kasia. She was a plus-sized model, and I admired her for it. But she had a bad photo shoot and couldn't really find clothes that fit her. The next was Alexandria. Even though I thought her photo was actually really pretty (but apparently "not high-fashion") I didn't get to see the last two episodes though, because they aired in taiwan tonight and tomorrow, and i usually watched them on Sundays. So anyway Brittani won in the end, with Molly runner-up and Hannah in third place :( .I know from wikipedia. In America, its actually up to somewhere in the middle of Season 17 (All Star), in which the contestants were returning ones from previous cycles who didn't win. The one representing Season 16 is Alexandria (grrr).

Reasons I shouldn't be writing this Blog post

There are several reasons I shouldn't be writing this blog post. First of all, I am really tired and I think I might fall asleep on the keyboard or something. If I fall alseep straightaway, this will gaurentee me about 5 and a half hours of sleep. Second reason, I still need to print my MUN country profile homework, but I think I'll do that tomorrow morning. Third, I am so tired, I've been spelling every other word wrong and was having to go back every 3 seconds to correct a spelling mistake. Fourth, I am just typing and I didn't even plan out this essay and I'm just writing whatever is on the top of my head, and my fingers can't stop. Fifth, I have a cold, so really, I should be getting some sleep. Sixth, my mom has been calling for me to go to sleep every 10 minutes. I guess she'd been waken by the loud keyboard noises. Seventh, my computer is on the verge of dying from excessive using. This laptop is so old that it can only last about one hour when on batteries. It is actually been so overused that it is starting to make a noise that I know a normal laptop can't. Eighth, I just accidently wrote 'Nineth', proving I am so tired I can't even count anymore. Nineth, I can't think of another excuse except my guts are telling me to go to sleep. I realize that all these 9 reasons circulate around me not having enough sleep and that I'm tired. I think sleep is very important and provides you with essential energy. Except I'm not getting enough. This week, I've been going to bed at around half past 12. It is now half past 1. I realize sleep is important. And that my bed would feel really really really comfortable right now. And that it is beckoning me to lie down. But as tempting as it looks, I realize I have to finish this sentence. Then finish this post. Then post it. Then check if it posted. Then I can turn off the computer and go to sleep. Which is exactly where I'm heading right now.