I can’t live in the same house for 10 years, I can’t even imagine it.
The longest time that I have lived in the same place was 5 years. The five years from when I was born to when I was 5 years old. Thereafter, I move to a different place at a frequency of about every 1 to 3 years. As a result, I can quickly adapt to a new environment, but at the same time, I get bored of the same environment easily.
I imagine in the future— if I could, I will sojourn in different places around the world until I can’t anymore.
If I am trapped in a place for long enough, I will first be tired of the daily routine; waking up in the same bed, eating at the same table, and shitting on the same toilet. Then, my eyes will be irritated by my unchanging surroundings; seeing the same trees out the window and opening the same door every time I go out. It would be the most terrifying torture in the world to me.
In order to prevent me from developing mental issues, I will constantly alter the house and explore different ways to do things. For instance, if I grew tired of sleeping in bed, I can go camping in the yard(if there is one). Or if I can’t stand the trees outside, I will plant new ones.
After all, I’m still not sure how long it will last until I just can’t do it anymore.
I’ve been traveling a lot recently, and it’s just reminded me how terrible traveling is for me. I really can’t ever travel healthily. It always ends up with me needing days to recover and feeling completely out of it both mentally and physically.
Mostly I hate flying on planes. The altitude really affects my ears, so I’m popping them for even weeks after I fly sometimes. Not even eating something or chewing gum helps. I have to be wearing the special pressurized earplugs and chewing gum to even feel somewhat okay when the plane takes off or lands.
Besides my ears hurting a ton, I get super swollen from flying. My fingers get too big for my rings to fit on them and my feet swell up so I have to loosen my shoeslaces a ton for them to fit into my shoes. Probably because I don’t drink enough water, but I lose my appetite and feel sick when I eat or drink anything when I fly, so I can’t really force myself to drink. Also, nobody likes going to the bathroom on planes. I avoid it if I can.
photo credit: tibco.com
When I get to my destination, I’m always so exhausted that I can barely even remember the events that happened when I look back on the memory. I get overwhelmed so easily when I travel that I’m on the edge of having a meltdown. It’s not super fun to go through a ton of pain just to forget why I was even there and only remember being agitated.
When I get back home, I need several business days to rest before I really feel like myself again. It takes a long time for my body to readjust to being home, but it takes my mind even longer. I have super realistic dreams every time I sleep, and when I’ve just traveled they’re even worse because I wake up and don’t even know where I am. It’s hard for the fact that I’m home to register in my brain, and I’m still in fight or flight mode from the new environments freaking me out, so I just end up in a terrible mental state for a week or two after traveling for even just two days.
Needless to say, I need a good few months of being strictly at home again. Honestly, that was one part of lockdown that I didn’t mind- I didn’t get to travel anywhere.
I’m from the U.S., so it shouldn’t be surprising that I have a vendetta against England. There’s literally no way to explain how it started other than that I’m from the U.S.. I’ve just uncontrollably despised England since I was born. Anyways, here we go.
They drive on the left side of the road
Driving on the left side of the road is just fundamentally wrong. It doesn’t make sense. The majority of people in the world are right-handed, so theoretically, people should drive on the right side of the road. Also, pretty much every country other than the ones that used to be controlled by England drive on the right side of the road. By the law of “majority rules,” England is incorrect.
Hear me out on this one. Yes, the metric system makes a lot more sense for generic measurements, HOWEVER– using kilometers per hour is stupid. I know that pretty much all of Europe uses kilometers per hour and Celsius, but this article is about England specifically so I’m gonna pick on them. Using Celsius and kilometers per hour is dumb because they have no standard of what’s too much or too little. Hang in there, I’ll explain. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is way too cold, and 100 degrees Fahrenheit is way too hot. And 0 miles per hour is too slow while 100 miles per hour is too fast. Celsius not only doesn’t apply to the human body, but it has no reasonable standard of being too hot or cold. Like 0 degrees Celsius isn’t incredibly cold, but a human would die at 100 degrees Celsius. Celsius was a measurement system created for water, not humans. And I think it’s convenient that there’s the same metric of what’s too big or too little between Fahrenheit and miles per hour. This reasoning might sound stupid, but I’m sticking by it.
This one is really dumb. I’m not even gonna try to defend myself. I just think their accents are unattractive. Australian accents? Wonderful. Scottish accents? Great. German accents? Really pretty. English accents? Gross. The only good thing about their accents is that they’re really easy to mock.
Like, in this economy? Something’s gotta be wrong with them if they think having a monarchy and a democracy at the same time is a smart idea. I mean, I don’t know much about how a monarchy works, but I know that it didn’t work out well for France, so I’m gonna assume it’s a bad idea overall. Plus, the royal family mostly works as a publicity stunt. They should just get rid of it.
Boris Johnson sucks so much. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that a good amount of people in England agree with me, but I’m still gonna hold it against them. I don’t like him.
Since I’ve already hated on them so much, I guess I’ll put in something I like about England.
Russell Howard is from England
Russell Howard is a comedian with his own show from England. He’s really funny. I love him. He’s probably the only good thing that came out of England.
I hope you enjoyed reading my passionate ranting about hating England. I don’t get super patriotic very often, but I definitely whip out the stars and stripes when England comes up in conversation. I will never stop arguing for why I don’t like England.
My favorite sport is football. Not the bloodsport played with the oval ball by yanks, but the beautiful game, joga bonito, or if you lack any sense of intelligence and cultural awareness “soccer”. Specifically the Barclays Premier League (also called the English Premier League).
The thing that sets footy apart is the fact that supporters of teams are allowed to be rowdy. Fans consistently scream obscenities, light flares, and heckle the players and opposition supporters.
Partizan Belgrade vs Red Star probably has the most heated rivalry (between fans) in European soccer. The clubs represent their fans’ political ideology and personal identities. These clubs’ fans have literally stabbed each other over support, and fights are a given outside every fixture. Most notably, fans light flares inside the stadium which seems like it should be illegal, but hey…it’s the Balkans.
VC: Copa 90
English fan culture is equally unique. Fans mostly just yell the most obscene and insulting things they can, oftentimes insulting dead relatives and getting into players’ heads. The chants they yell in support of their players are often touching and tailored to their players. For instance, Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters often chant, “Heeeeee’s Koreannn, He’s only on loan for a seasonnnnn, but we think he’s fookin brilliantttt, he’s Hwang Hee Channnnnnnn,” in honor of the Korean loaned star.
VC: The Wolfpack
These chants unite fans in ways unthinkable to American sports fans. Here is a foreign Man U fan leading the chants, known by all supporters, in a local pub.
VC: Football Away Days
I implore you to go explore the world of football chants, fair warning, it can get kind of raunchy.
VC: SommitSports
(THESE ARE THE RAUNCHY ONES PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!)
VC: SommitSports
These fan groups are stems for identity, FC St. Pauli fans broke away from Hamburg SV fans because of the racist, sexist, and all-around toxic supporters, forming their own group that stands for inclusion.
When fans or players are acting a little wild, it’s called “shithousery.” Here are a few examples.
VC: Vaulted
VC: Dan1S
Football > Ovalball. If this didn’t convince you I don’t know what will
I thought New York was such a mess all around. I thought New York has so many crimes happening every day. I thought New York only had cloudy days. I thought New York had nothing that attracted me. I thought I knew all the facts about New York.
My parents told me so much why they didn’t like New York.
I watch the news on television about how terrible New York is.
However, It’s really different from what I expected.
My parents are right about the environment. It is a little messy all around the street, plus, there are lots of homeless people who come to me asking for money. Although there is trash all around the city, New York City is still attractive to me. After all, the people, the city, and the weather make it impossible for me to not see how perfect NYC is.
The best part that I will never forget is when I went to Time Squares for the first time. That night, right after dinner, my friends took me to Time Squares. The city looked vivid with the colorful LED lights and screens shining all over the city. As I walk towards the center of the street, listening to some random people playing the song, Empire State of Mind by JAY- Z, I feel alive again for the first time. At that moment I knew I became a New Yorker and I wanted to be a New Yorker. Watching people walking pass by with smiles on their faces. Don’t tell me it’s not paradise while everyone can be whoever they want to be and enjoy the night with their loved ones. It’s difficult to describe with words as there are so many beautiful and exciting moments happening every second.
Leading up to the college visit trip I took last week, I was adamant about applying and going to NYU. So adamant in the fact that I was prepared to apply early decision, meaning if I got in I would have to attend.
When I tell you I was saved by a thread I mean it. I was millimeters away from making the worst decision ever.
NYU was not the place for me. I had thought that going to a school without a campus would be fun, my experience this summer in New York made me feel free, and living in New York and attending school seemed ideal. This was mostly because I was with one of my closest friends whose sister went there, so we spent most of our time shopping and eating rather than being students. It was a whole different story at the school. The tour guide talked more about her getting cut from the quidditch team than student life and did many other similar things, making me realize that maybe I wanted more of a college experience.
I had just gone to see Michigan before NYU, where I went tailgating and sat in the student section at the Big House. My friend who goes there showed me around and showed me what it is like to be a student at a big school. I had the best time and realized that this is something I can’t go without in college. I also thought the traditional campus layout would make studying easier, everything was just more simple.
These two factors combined and made me realize what an idiot I had been. Judging my college choices on a fun week I had without considering schools, sheerly basing the biggest choice I will have made in my young life on location.
I feel super relieved I changed my mind about applying to NYU early decision, and that I went on the tour as the feels at the schools were different than the ideas in my head of what they would feel like. It feels surreal that I was that close to making such a big choice based on nothing.
So, as many of you already know, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched a couple weeks ago. Now that might not seem like such a crazy thing, but it most definitely is. This telescope is the most complex telescope humankind has produced to date, it has the ability (hopefully) to see the first light emitted from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago. Now that fact is confusing to some, how can we see back in time? Well, basically, light has a speed of 299 792 458 m / s to be exact (approximately 670616629 mph). We measure this in terms of distance, as lightyears. Say a super bright lightbulb is turned on somewhere ten light-years from earth, it would take ten years for the light to reach us so that we could see it. Now if we take that principle and scale it up, the further we look, the longer it’s taking for us to see that light, so if we look at something 13 billion lightyears away, then we are seeing 13 billion years in the past, and since the universe is constantly expanding finding something 13 billion lightyears away is not very difficult. Anyway back to JWST, it will be in an orbit we have called “L2” which is just behind the Earth so it will constantly be in Earth’s shadow, it will be 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the earth, which is far past the moon. From that orbit, it will take pictures. A lot of pictures. Of course, our time with the JWST is limited so NASA has allocated certain hours for researchers for an approved project. This telescope will bring in a new era of research, we may learn the origins of the universe, and if not we will still learn so many things from this telescope. Things like planets with potential life, we will learn about the formation of galaxies, and many many more things. I am excited to see the pictures this incredible telescope will take.
“Do you miss home?” “Do you miss your parents?” As an international student, these are the questions that I receive most often from people. My answer has always been no, and inexplicably, I’ve never missed home while I’m in a foreign country.
But that answer has changed recently.
During Christmas break, I lived near the LA area, where large Chinese community exists. There, you can find almost anything from China and other places in Asia. I never knew that there could be such a place in the US.
When I had authentic Chinese food in one of the restaurants, I suddenly realized that I do miss home. Or more precisely, the two years of my life in China before I came here. I miss my old school, my friends, and my hometown Nanking. I had a sudden urge to book a flight and go back at that moment. But after 5 seconds, I remembered that my friends are not in China either, they are in Germany, Ireland, Canada… just the same as me.
The feeling of nostalgia was something that I never experienced, and I now I finally understood how other people felt when they say they missed home.
When I was a wee boy, I had uncontainable energy and need to be moving. This symptom of ADHD never ceased, including the time my dad had taken me to his work office so he could make sure his files would be safe before our family went on vacation. My attention was not on my dad’s files at all, as one would expect of a six year old. I was focused on my dad’s rolling, cushioned, and spinning chair. I was more than focused by this chair, I was enticed. In my little six year old mind, I had to jump on this chair, I didn’t have a choice. It is a well-known rule to young children, that if there is a rolling, cushioned, spinning chair, you have to spin. So, that’s what I did, I spun. A six year old reached terminal velocity that day with the help of his also little brother. But this record promptly switched to a vault record as I soon went flying across the room. I must’ve been in the air for minutes until I speedily barreled into the corner of my dad’s conference desk. I was physically stuck on the desk for a few moments before falling off and causing further trauma to my head by banging it in a recycling bin. At this point in time I started teleporting between settings, ending up in beds I didn’t remember crawling into, or rooms I didn’t walk into. Eventually, I ended up in front of a screening of Batman: The Animated Series. I didn’t know how I had gotten there, but I just knew I didn’t want to leave. Sadly, I was put to sleep as the intro was ending, I soon woke up with 23 stitches in my small nose. I didn’t know 23 stitches could fit onto a nose, let alone a six year old’s nose, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was how cool I would look going back to Kindergarten.
Crested Butte, Colorado. The best place to ski during the winters and get bitten by ants in the summer.
The duration of my vacation was about two weeks and it started with driving to TacoTime. The closest TacoTime was at a Vegas truck stop, the food made my stomach hurt. After eating the deep fried burritos, we started driving to St. George, Utah.
The view was spectacular and the climate was hot, like once I stepped outside the car I felt as though I was going to die from heatstroke. My sister and I swam in the pool, she tried to drown me. The next day we went on a hike on the outskirts of Zion National Park. The hike was called Spring Creek and it was in a slot, the different colors of the rocks were breathtaking.
After the long hike we explored St. George. We went to a couple of thrift shops, we did not find anything cool enough to buy, and visited Brigham Young’s winter home. We learned all about the Mormon church and were even approached to join, but we didn’t convert.
The next day we went on a small walk to Dixie rock and drove up Kolob Canyon. We made a couple of pit stops because pictures or it didn’t happen. Eventually we made it to our one mile hike to a lookout spot. While walking back to the car we heard a rattle, we almost got attacked by a rattlesnake.
After a couple of hours, more like nine hours, and a McDonald’s pitstop we made it to Grand Junction, Colorado. I tried Dairy Queen the first time, not worth the hype. We finally made it to Gunnison.
Our trip consisted of hiking, hiking, and more hiking. We hiked down the entirety of Crested Butte Mountain during a lightning and thunderstorm. The weather was bipolar, either too hot or too rainy and stormy. I toured my first college, Western Colorado University. The campus was gorgeous and the school had lots to offer, but Gunnison is the most boring town in existence.
My mom, sister, and I all went rafting. Every time we are in Colorado during the summer we go rafting, and get the craziest photos. Our family met us in Colorado and we went to an insanely late dinner, our reservation was at 9 O’clock pm. We went to a place called Slogars, they specialize in fried chicken.
Overall the trip to Colorado was amazing, but it was time to head back home. We drove to Bryce Canyon, Utah. It was two Best Westerns and that was basically the town. The food was not good, like LAUSD’s cafeteria food was more edible. In the morning we went to hike the Peekaboo Loop trail. It turns out that since there were mudslides before the trail was closed we illegally hiked a trail.
My mom found a nice restaurant in the town over, and the food was actually edible. We ordered pork chops, burrata, bread (OMG the bread was to die for), crab mac and cheese, french onion soup and a carrot salad. We could not leave without getting dessert, so we got three different options: chocolate bourbon mousse, cheesecake, and a rhubarb crumble.
The next day it was time for us to head home, we drove and drove and drove until we home. The trip was amazing but being home and sleeping in my own bed was exhilarating.
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