Month: September 2013

Dawn Patrol

Daphne PsaledakisLeave a comment

Today, for the first time, I decided to join Dawn Patrol. Dawn Patrol is a small group of students at my school who head to the beach at 6:15 on Sunday morning to learn how to surf.

Now, I’ve been telling myself for years that I wanted to learn how to surf. It’s always been something that fascinates me. I love movies about surfing, and I think it’s an amazing skill to have.

I’ve actually been surfing twice – once with a family friend when we lived in San Francisco, and then once when we were in Cabo. But those times I never did more that ride the whitewater to the shore. Today, I went past the point where the waves were breaking, which was a brand new experience for me.

It didn’t exactly go as planned.

As it turns out, when you’re about to be hit by a wave and you’re my size (about 5’2″), the wave looks a heck of a lot bigger. It’s also a lot easier to be tossed around. I had a really hard time getting past the point where the waves were breaking, but once I did, it was amazing.

I didn’t ride very many waves. But the amazing part of the trip for me was sitting on my surfboard in the ocean, feeling the swells come up and down underneath me, and watching the sunrise and the fog clear away. It was an incredible feeling.

I did only catch two waves, once after I got out, and then again when I was ready to go back in. I didn’t stand up, in fact I did the exact opposite and got tossed around quite a bit. On my last wave, the board hit me in the face while I was underwater, which wasn’t very pleasant.

Overall though, the trip was worth it. I may not have made huge progress, but at least I got out there and started to get a feel for it. And watching the sun rise was perfect.

I definitely plan on going again. Maybe after I catch up on my sleep though.

A Little Change in Scenery

Daphne PsaledakisLeave a comment

This summer, I was lucky enough to go to South Africa for five weeks. Because I was there for so long, I feel like I can’t just write about it in one blog post. So I’ll write about one part of it now, and another part later, and eventually you guys will get the whole story.

That’s the idea at least.

A couple months before school ended, my dad and I scrambled to pull together this trip for me. I wanted to go visit my old babysitter, who I hadn’t seen in about ten years.

Only thing is, she lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Somehow we pulled it off, and I found myself on an 18-hour plane ride a couple days after school let out for the summer.

My dad warned me before I left that it would be winter there, and that it would be cold. I basically told him he was being silly. I mean it’s Africa right? No way it could be cold.

Wrong.

It was freezing. I optimistically brought my shorts and sandals with me (along with jeans and boots, thankfully), and I definitely could have saved myself the extra weight. I never even put them on.

I lived in jeans, boots, sweatshirts, and down vests. It was freezing, and made even worse by the fact that there was no central heating. The only way to escape the cold was to take a nice long bath. Nevertheless, we still got out and explored.

The scenery in Cape Town is stunning. I’ve never seen anything like it. You look one direction and see mountains, and you look the other way and see nothing but blue ocean.

The mountains aren’t the same as they are here – there are less trees and more rocks and flowers. The views it allows of the city are breathtaking. Every direction you look there is something new to see, something beautiful and different from anything you could find in the states.

It’s absolutely amazing to see.

Cape Town

Speak emotion, not words

frog3Leave a comment

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When a human speaks what comes out?

Is it failures, hopes, dreams?

Do the words represent freedom?

Or just a logical way to communicate?

Humanity has not always been united in this regard.

Thousands of cultures have existed.

These ancient people made art, tools, and crafted language.

Progress always had it’s price.

Skin color, cultural values, and language all warped.

People could their differences to others.

It is these differences that has caused conflict.

A False Democracy

frog3Leave a comment

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An entity was built a while ago.

Its purpose is not always known.

Sometimes it serves.

Other times it does not.

It’s inaction lets a nation rot.

Angry people yell and frustrate easily.

Yet never blame themselves for a problem they create.

The powerful man was given his power.

Not by sword but by the check of a ballot box.

Why should one blame an evil that they create?

It is the will and determination of one citizen that can make all the difference.

Democracy or dictatorship, in a sense the citizens choose.

When not happy a single spark of injustice can change a nation.

Phonebloks: The Phone of the future

callmemaybe32Leave a comment

Last night I was on Facebook, just cruising as I do and I see a link shared by my Dad’s company.

The caption of this video was this, “Very interesting idea. Would you adopt this phone technology? // #phoneblocks”

I was like, “well this might be interesting.”

I have had an iPhone for 5 years. I got the iPhone 3 on my 13th birthday, and from there I haven’t thought about having any other phone.

Droids have come out and the iPhone still seems better. The Galaxy series came out, and still the iPhone seems better, but this Blok phone is the 1st phone that I have thought about actually switching to.

This phone isn’t out yet, but the concept is great.

Electronic waste is an ever-growing thing in this world, and our phones are contributing to this issue greatly.

Our phones aren’t made to last, they are made to last until a new one comes out and then suddenly stuff starts to break.

This block concept eliminates the phasing out of the entire phone.

There is a block for every component of the phone, so if one breaks, you just replace that block.

It allows the user the ability to customize their phone. Photographers can upgrade to a bigger camera, old people can go simple so they know what the hell they are doing and don’t have to ask me how to press a button that says “phone” to use the phone.

(Love you mom).

This idea needs funding, and it needs to be spread across to all of the executives across the country so people know about it.

On October 29 they will send a blast out to all major companies to try to get the process rolling.

They need our help to get the word out.

Go to phonebloks.com and join the Thunderclap so that they can get enough people to make their dream a reality.

Not only could this introduce a brand new, very cool phone to the market, but it could cut down on waste and help the general well-being of the world we live in.

Doll House

kirbyfullyloaded1 Comment

I have terrible nightmares 5/7 days of the week.  Here’s my most recent one.

I was in a house. The halls were washed with ghastly bluish-purple light, the color of a fresh bruise.  The kind of bruise where the blood is mere millimeters from leaking out of the damaged skin.  The walls were covered with photographs in dull black frames. Photographs, with dusty, cracked glass laying spider webs over sallow, sagging faces. All other manner of macabre things hung alongside the photographs. Things… I can’t even describe. Not a centimeter of the walls was visible.  They bulged, distended like sick a stomach, breathing in and out with slow, rasping breaths stirring the musky air.  The decorations breathed with them, watching, waiting, and smiling.

I realized the things on the walls were half eaten, disintegrated beyond the point recognition.  They were shells to an anemone, digested and pushed back out as to create armor for the soft-bodied mouth-stomach.

I found myself, against my will, walking into a room.  The door locked.  And the floor beneath me, the bed beside me everything was inhaling, feverishly trying to pull me in, to get closer.

And then the dolls came.

They marched and crawled and slid and rolled out of the walls with their button eyes dangling, ogling, bouncing madly from their heads on invisible tethers.  Their red, smiling mouths dripped with viscous blackness, filth bubbling forth from lips like rotting sausages.

They reached for me, groaning and laughing with their hollow, putrid, sweet voices echoing terribly around the room.

All the while the house tried to suck me down, somewhere dank and foul, into its roiling stomach.

It wanted to me…  To devour me and digest, to make me part of the decorated walls.  To use my bones as armor and garnish its halls with my skin until it decayed into a mass of putrescence too fetid and melting to drape across the picture frames.

I don’t believe in God. But when they first emerged and started toward me I fell to my knees and begged God or something -anything to save me.

And of course, nothing came.  As I knew it wouldn’t.  There is no God.  And nothing will ever save me but myself.

I burst through the door, the wood of the door frame too weak to hold the rusting lock. The dolls chased me, coming slowly, but steadily with their jerking, broken movements, and the floor rolling and pitching and trying to throw me back into their rotting fabric arms.

Now they were corpses and dolls at together. Flesh melting off their stuffed fabric bones, the smell of rot and mothballs and decaying silk filling the air, their stringy hair writing and hissing like snakes.

The bruise-light made their white, white skin look monstrous… Thickened, oxygen-less blood sloughed like pig slop behind their papery skin.  There was a gruesome, delighted gleam in their black button eyes.  One that promised a gristly embrace when they caught me.  And there was no doubt that they would… No doubt at all…

Unforgettable Summer.

eternity1030Leave a comment

Summer vacation would never be better than spending time in a big city like New York.

I personally always consider the Big Apple an artist. She paints herself into a large, colorful picture that embraces different views and various culture.

However, instead of hanging out and having fun in the crowded city, my summer was mostly spent at a more academic spot –NYU.

Before my summer started, I applied to NYU’s precollege program and  waited a long time to start the exciting experience.

When I arrived at the campus, which consisted of lots of different buildings located around the Washington Square, my heart started to beat strongly and eagerly. God, I do love this place.

Then my six-week school prgram started. Just like colleges, each student had their own schedules and for me, as I applied to the journalism program, I chose “Report in NY” and “Multimedia Journalism” in order to get a more professional experience as a journalist.

The classes went well. For the Multimedia class, we stepped outside the classroom and shot pictures and videos, and interviewed people -basically everything about the topic of the story we were dealing with. As for me, I did a profile story on a subway musician at Times Square Station; a story about the heat in the city and how the weather affected people’s lives; and a review story on the CNN Tour we went on as a class. My favorite -or my most successful- project was the final which was about, “Dining at NYU.”

It was a brand new experience for me to present news via multimedia ways. I learned a lot about shooting skills, and the editing process of videos and what should be shown or not shown. Six weeks were absolutely not enough to become super good at it, but at least I got a unique opportunity to start something valuable.

Walking around in NY with my camera shooting the life of the city, has been my dream for a long time, and it came true. I did enjoy it.

“Report in NY” class was more traditional compared to the other one. We found stories by ourselves and did all the interviews and edited them until it reached the perfect level.

The most part I liked about NY was that it was not hard at all to find stories. Things were happening all the time around us. The city was busy and so as the people.

Talking to different people and listening to their stories only made me more obsessed with journalism. Because I do want to share them with others and let more people know about the world around us. And I guess that’s what I’ve learned this summer.

Besides studying, I also went to other places in the city to relax. It’s New York, as long as you are in the city, it would never be boring.

My summer was busy with classes but at the same time, I felt fortunate to learn something new, to meet new friends, and to get more knowledge about New York.

It was a life-long unforgettable experience for me and I will miss that purple place very much.