Month: December 2013

Mirror Reflection

indigoshellLeave a comment

It’s dark.

No. It’s a soft dark. It’s dark where everything looks painted in black, but not dark where forms would be invisible.

My watch says 3:00. Why must I wake up at 3 in the morning? My roomate is sleeping soundly, turned away from me.

Sleep. The thought forms in my mind. Sleep. Sleep. My body instinctively curls into the fetal position as I begin to drift.

It’s dark.

No, it’s brighter now, and my watch says 4:00. Something really doesn’t want me to sleep, I think, uncurling from my sleep position. The moonlight still shone slightly, but the moon was sinking to make way for the sun.

The blankets fall off me as I slide off the bed, treading on cold, bare feet towards the shared bathroom outside our room.

The lights are quiet. The room is yellowed, giving the white stalls an old and stained look.

I resist the urge to look up as I wash my hands. Don’t look at the mirror. Don’t look at the mirror.

The urge to glance up is far too great. My reflection’s staring right at me. I don’t blink and I back away carefully, reaching behind me to open the door. My reflection blinks. I rush out.

Back in the darkness of my room. Now it’s really dark. I stand by the door to wait for my eyes to adjust and for my heart to slow.

Click.

The flower-petal light in my closet turns on and I collapse to the floor, avoiding my own reflective gaze in the mirror. Don’t look at the mirror. Don’t look at the mirror.

I can’t help it, I really can’t. I want to know why she watches me. I need to know what’s behind.

There she is, standing there perfectly like a picture frame. She’s me, but I’m not her.

Behind me is another closet, with another light, and another mirror. Click. The light turns on.

My reflection looks scared, she knows there’s something behind her. I try to look but she moves with me, blocking my view. Always blocking my view.

Move, I think, move.

No, I hear, no.

I begin to back away, and she does too. Slowly, one step at a time, back to the darkness of my room.

My breath halted in agitation as I whip around to look at the other mirror. My reflection isn’t there, only the reflection of the mirror in my closet. The reflection goes on and on, like an infinitely long hallway that will never end. A hallway that reflects eternity.

I look back into my closet. She’s standing in the hallway, her quiet features stretches in terror of what hides behind her.

One more step back. One more step back. I step into the other closet, and my reflection starts screaming. Not screaming out loud. But she’s screaming very loud. She’s very small now. The figure hiding behind her is getting larger, overpowering her. It’s swooping in front of her, cutting her off from me.

I keep stepping back. I touch the other mirror. My reflection is gone, swallowed by the black figure crowding the mirror in my closet. I look behind me into the mirror in the other closet.

There’s nothing there?

I look towards the mirror in my closet.

Is it getting farther away? Get out, get out. Her screams are bloodcurdling, I feel her fear rising with every breath I take. GET OUT.

I run, run towards the scratched mirror in my closet. GET OUT.

I’m still running. I can see her, I can see my reflection. She’s getting closer, she’s running with me. Don’t look back, don’t look back. Her movements are swift, like she had been running all her life.

Behind me is the mirror abyss, the hallway that leads to nothing. The dark figure rises up behind me.

I hit something hard. It’s a wall, but I can’t see it. I can feel it. It’s a wall.

I can see my reflection. She’s screaming, pounding at the wall, pounding at it but it won’t break. Her body is bloody, scratched by a million shards of glass. Her figure is torn, is that bone and marrow I spot?

The darkness is rising behind her.

It’s not darkness. It’s a creature. A beast. A beast with no form, a beast that was once human. Trapped in an eternity of mirror reflections, the human turned to beast and beast turned to darkness.

The glass breaks, I fall to the ground. The room is dark, I can’t see my reflection. The lights are off. The moonlight is bright.

Bright enough for me to see my reflection. The lights are on, giving the white stalls an old and yellowed look.

I see her, I see my reflection washing her hands. She doesn’t look up. Look up, look up.

She looks up. Why do you look scared of me? Where are you going? She’s backing up into the bathroom door. She doesn’t dare tear her eyes away from mine.

The room’s dark again. I don’t want the darkness. The darkness is where the beast lies. I turn on the flower-petal light in my closet.

There she is. She’s scared. Don’t be scared. You’re not the one with the best lurking behind.

Admissions

enternity1030Leave a comment

As far as our college applications go, I’m pretty sure that everyone is now stressed out and curious about how the college counselors would review our apps. It reminds me of a great movie I watched this summer – “Admission.”

“Admission” is a comedy directed by Academy Award nominee Paul Weitz, starring  Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.
Every spring, high school seniors anxiously await offers from college admissions. At Princeton University, admissions officer Portia Nathan is one of the counselors who evaluate thousands of applicants.

On her visit to New Quest, an alternative high school, she then meets with her former college classmate, idealistic teacher John Pressman – who has recently surmised that Jeremiah, a gifted yet very unconventional New Quest student, might well be the son that Portia secretly gave up for adoption years ago while at school. More importantly, Jeremiah is about to apply to Princeton.

Now Portia must re-evaluate her personal and professional existences, as she finds herself bending the admissions rules for Jeremiah. She recommends Jeremiah to all the officers who refuse to admit him. And the result does not change – he gets rejected. In the end, in order to get her son into Princeton, Portia steals Jeremiah’s folder and changes the decision into a “Yes.” Portia quits her job and starts a new life.

Even though the movie is mainly about love and family, I personal find it is also a fairly helpful movie for high school students to get more knowledge about the process of applying to college and more closely, about how the officers review our materials and make the final decisions.

If you haven’r watched it yet, I strongly recommend you to do so!
And also, good luck to all the seniors!

“There is no formula to get in. Just be yourself.”   – Portia

Turbines

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In our APES class, we are doing a research project on renewable energies. “Wind” came up across my mind immediately.

Since the first time I saw a huge turbine on TV, I’ve been curious about how the turbines work and how important they are.

Wind exists because the sun unevenly heats the surface of the Earth. As hot air rises, cooler air moves in to fill the void. Therefore, wind will blow as long as the sun shines.

The use of wind power originated back to the ancient mariners who used sails to capture the wind and explore the world. Later, farmers used windmills to grind their grains and pump water. Nowadays, more and more people are using wind turbines to wring electricity from the breeze.

Wind turbines have various sizes. The biggest wind turbines can generate enough electricity to supply about 600 U.S. homes, and farms sometimes have hundreds of these turbines lined up together in particularly windy spots such as ridges. Smaller turbines are mostly settled in the backyards to produce electricity that is enough for a single home or small business.

However, wind power also has disadvantages.
Wind turbine can be a threat to wildlife such as birds and bats. Wind, sun, and rain are not always consistent and are often hard to predict, which cannot always make for a reliable energy source unless the energy can be stored. In addition, wind turbines make plenty of noise which is regularly reported as a problem in the neighborhood.

The only thing I don’t really understand when I was doing research on the turbines was that many people think the turbines look ugly.

For me, I see nothing wrong with such clean and grand inventions. They work in the wind, they are brave!

Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen

kirbyfullyloaded1 Comment

My favorite female character in A Song of Ice and Fire has to be Daenerys Targaryen.  

I didn’t like her at first.  She irritated me when I started reading A Game of Thrones, the way she always deferred to her brother, how tremulous and frightened she seemed.

She was a sad character.  I thought her whole story was going to be about how terrible her life was -her marriage, her family, her exiled-royalty status.  Those things paired with Viserys mad obsession to reclaim the Iron Throne had me convinced Daenerys’ chapters would be unbearable.

But I quickly came to realize I was wrong.

She took to her new status as Khaleesi, gaining regality and confidence every day, and came to love her husband, Khal Drogo, deeply.  I started to like her more and more as the uncertainty and fear drained out of her like so much blood from a wound.

Daenerys took on a queenly manner, kind and devoted to her subjects yet commanding respect.  She won her people with strength, charisma, and eloquence.

She is revealed to be trilingual, fluent in the Common Tongue, High Valyrian, and proficient in Dothraki, and begins to reiterate, “I do not have a gentle heart.”

Daenerys comes to embody her House words, “Fire and Blood,” becoming Mother of Dragons and determined to her place as rightful queen of Westeros.

She is shown to have become both strategic and cunning, wrecking havoc in Astapor and gaining the undying loyalty of the Unsullied.

Yeah.  She’s pretty much a badass.

Thanksgiving Pie

Daphne PsaledakisLeave a comment

Let’s be honest. The best thing about Thanksgiving is the food. Particularly, the traditional pumpkin and pecan pie. Personally, these are my two favorite kind of pies. So when Thanksgiving rolls around and I have an excuse to eat pumpkin and pecan pie everyday for a week straight, I’m pretty happy.

Pumpkin pie though can be tricky. The stuff you buy at the supermarket is terrible. You’ve got to go either with homemade pumpkin pie, or buy it from a bakery not situated next to the deli and cheese sections. This Thanksgiving I had the best pumpkin pie I’ve had, well, ever. It was made by a friend of ours, who runs a small local bakery in Boulder, Colorado. Her pumpkin pie was absolutely amazing. It practically melted in my mouth. The crust was perfectly flaky. And she topped it off by sprinkling streusel on top of it.

It was perfect.

Now to pecan pie. It’s so good. Perfectly sweet, with a little bit of crunch to it. My family has always made pecan pie for thanksgiving. We have a family recipe that never seems to fail. This year, my dad and I made four pies. I don’t know why we made that many, but we did. Unfortunately we burnt two. We ate one by ourselves, and I brought the fourth pecan pie back to school with me to share with my roommate.

Well as it turns out, my roommate doesn’t like pie. Of course, she’d never actually tried it before (we all do that). So last night I forced her to try the pecan pie I had brought back to school with me. Well it turned out she hadn’t even tried pie crust before, which she thought was pretty. Then she tried a bite of the actual pie.

The only thing she said for the next couple minutes was “Oh my God.”

And she kept eating.

That just proves my point that pecan pie is one of the best. And Thanksgiving is a pretty good excuse to make a lot of them.

Sweeeeeet

enternity1030Leave a comment

Speaking of desert, my favorite would definitely be a “macaron.”

A macaron is a French sweet meringue-based confection made with eggs, icing sugar,  almond powder or ground almond, and food colouring. The macaron is commonly filled with ganache, buttercream or jam filling and sandwiched between two biscuits. The name is derived from the Italian word “macarone.”

Macarons are usually really small. It is mildly moist and easily melts in the mouth. There are numerous flavors and each has different colors. The traditional flavors are raspberry and chocolate to the new ones such as matcha, lemon, green tea and rose.The fillings also range from jams to ganache to buttercream.

Macarons are more and more popular these days. In Paris, the Ladurée chain of pastry shops has been known for its macarons for about 150 years, and even McDonalds sell macarons from McCafé. Outside of Europe, the French-style macaron can be found in all over the world, not only in U.S, but other nations like Australia, Korean, Japan.

I’ve not tried all the flavors of macarons yet, but my goal is to try all colors of them and then decide which one is my favorite, right now it’s rose.

But if you are not a “sweetness” lover, you probably will not enjoy macarons that much, because to be honest, they are really really really sweet!

Oh, btw (to my dear friend Emmy), they are not hamburgers!!

Big Day is Coming!

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As the Thanksgiving break is coming, most of my friends are already planning on their “Back Friday” shopping schedule.

Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it’s one of the major shopping days of the year in the US.

The term “Black Friday” can be traced back in the 1960s. “Black” refers to stores moving from the “red” to the “black,” back when accounting records were kept by hand, and red ink indicated a loss, and black a profit. Ever since, the Friday after Thanksgiving has been known as the unofficial start to a holiday shopping season.

As the retailers began to realize that they could draw big crowds by discounting prices, Black Friday became the day to shop, even better than those last-minute of Christmas sales. On “Black Friday,” most retailers put their items up for a BIG sale on the morning of Thanksgiving, or inform their customers through emails days before the actual event.

On Black Friday, crowds of people will line up in front of the malls or stores waiting for the opening. Many retailers open up at 5 am or even earlier to hordes of people.

At the same time, those people who prefer to shop online also get the deals. Many online retailers also have pre-Black Friday or special Thanksgiving sales.

Anyways, get ready for the break and this BIG DAY!