Finally, here comes the very belated blog post you have been longing for! Many things have happened to me since I last posted on this blog - four months and six days to be exact, and I will try my best to recall as much of these events in an chronological fashion. I am not sure where I should begin, but I will start with the trip to Las Vegas for the math competition back in late March as that is the first thing comes to mind.

As mentioned two posts ago regarding the math competition in Las Vegas, I (and the rest of team, along with our chaperones) traveled to Las Vegas on March 25th. The flight was about six hours long and I don't think I have done anything special on board except dreamed about what kind of delicious dinner I would get once the plane lands to feed my hungry self. Fortunately the plane did not crush despite it was pretty rocky the whole time, however, my dream for the delicious dinner was crushed. The plane landed on time and I was taken to the Flamingo Las Vegas hotel by a really cool cab driver, but the nightmare started the moment we stepped inside the hotel - we waited in the shopping center for approximately two hours before receiving our keys to our rooms. After that I dragged my starving self to the buffet inside the hotel - the food wasn't disastrous but not what I have dreamed about on the plan, and that at least one of the staff isn't very professional, so to speak.

I guess I should move on to something more interesting before boring you out.

We went to a few workshops at the conference and prepared for the competition on the 28th. I wasn't as nervous as I should on the day of the competition, just being the chill guy that I always am. However, being at the national level of the competition, I knew the competition is going to be tough. Well, the competition was tough indeed. Even though my team answered every question correctly in the first round of the Jeopard-styled (but the rules are different) competition, taking the highest possible amount of points, there was still a tiny gap between my team and two other teams in terms of points. On the second (final) round, the competition was still fierce, but my team was on a roll, answered every questions right and took in the highest maximum amount of points once again. The ranking changed, my team is now on top of the chart with a comfortable margin.

We waited for some time and the results came in - my team placed second in the competition. Although we excelled at the team competition, but the whole competition also took our individual test scores and team engineering test score into account. I was rather upset that we didn't win the competition, but I know we did our best and I am proud of my team. We went on to congratulate the winning team and they were undoubtedly remarkable in the competition.

On the night of March 29th, the night after the competition and our last night there, we decided to walk down the Las Vegas Strip for some sight-seeings. The Strip is not as amazing as I hoped it would be but it was still a great experience nonetheless.

We left Las Vegas the next morning, stopped at Chicago Midway International Airport for two hours where I had some bitter French fries from McDonald's, and we flew back to Columbus.

I shall conclude my memoir of the Las Vegas trip and move onto something BLOODY now.

[photo courtesy of Yuen]

Blood donation! :) I donated blood for the first time this year during my school's Blood Drive on April 24th. I guess I didn't have enough breakfast that morning, my stomach started feeling uncomfortable soon after the process started and the Red Cross staff had to have me lay down, which relieved my urge to throw up. I might donate blood again and I will make sure to have a full breakfast before going. :)

[by USAFOTO]

May 8th was my school's senior prom. There isn't a lot to talk about it besides that it rained (I don't like rain) and that the dinner served at the prom was subpar. Seriously, if the dinner's not good, I want my money back. (I can't do anything about that though, unfortunately) On that same day, I understood why (some) girls spend onsiderably more time than (most) guys to get prepared, which I find ridiculously understandable.

Finally, I would like to note that I will be attending The Ohio State University in the Fall of 2009 majoring in Computer Science. I would also like to thank Ed for giving me the opportunity to intern at Emerge Inc. again this summer.

(Today, well, yesterday was the last day that I had class at my high school. I will be going back there next Thursday for the rehearsal for graduation, and on June 6th, I will be honored at the graduation ceremony for completing four years of high school and other achievements as well. Hopefully I can write about that soon.)

Many of the following thoughts are rather spontaneous and are probably not coherent (not making sense), please bear with it. If you want to skip to the recent news with me just click here. Thanks.

I suppose that it's a bit too late to say "Happy New Year" now but I owe you that nonetheless, if I haven't greeted you in such way already in the past month.

Thanks to Timmy for pointing out that I haven't been updating my blog as often as I should've been per the commitments I have made in my New Year's Resolution. More than once I have thought of writing a new post, however every time the thought are overwhelmed by more urgent and important works, and be demotivated by the exhaustion.

As I am writing this post, I came to realized that "overwhelm" is a big word. The challenges and works I face everyday may not be necessary comparable to that in the real world out there, but enough to, well, overwhelm me. I said the word is big not because it's long or difficult to remember, but rather it is big because people who are overwhelmed are people that are given responsibilities to.

I have been keeping up to some of my New Year's Resolutions, while the rest are falling apart. Not that I haven't been trying to keep up to them - I have tried, and am trying very hard to do so, yet there are things that prevent me from being free from doing things that I wish to do.

Perhaps it's just that I am not keeping up to the resolutions, perhaps there are twenty starving tigers on my way, or perhaps these are all the excuses only to make my sorry self better.

I know I can do better. I just need to try harder, and I will.

Well, I am glad (and you should be happy) that I am still doing the "right" things. A few people asked what exactly does that mean, and to which I simply responded with, "Well, the 'right' things." There's one thing that I have kept to myself for many years, well, considering there's no necessity of sharing there's really no point of doing so but I guess I will share it here.

So the story goes that my elementary school best friend is an early (cigarette) smoker. He was a great friend, not a particular bad student, does his share of homework, and he smokes. He started at a very early age, second grade, perhaps, my memory is not refreshing very well at the moment. Anyway, so one afternoon when we didn't have school I was hanging out with him at the condominium which he resides (resided?) in. Out of nowhere he and his older brother (by 2 or 3 years) started smoking. They offered me to "enjoy" it, and I declined the offer without having to think twice.

Boring story, yes, but it's significant to me because I did the right thing. Every time someone offers me to do something similar I would think back to that incident and would simply tell them, "No."

"No" is a complete sentence.

I smile at it every time seeing it inside my guidance counselor's office.

Haha, I know, I am lame. :)

I guess I should move onto the recent stuff instead of boring you out.

My Best New Year's Gift Ever.

Well, so far. I am not the kind of person that celebrates holidays. Not even my birthday. I don't have a good reason or explanation for this. I just don't feel like it, that's all. On New Year's Eve I received my acceptance letter from The Ohio State University. Although not entirely surprised as I have been informed of a few close friends of mine having already received the acceptance letters from the OSU a few days prior, but I am still happy to find out that I did get in (at last!) and even more so, relieved.

Winter, Snow, and the Beauty of Nature

Christina walking toward a swing at Woodward Memorial Park after a mild snow storm.

There was a mild snow storm around Columbus last week and due to the extremely cold weather (to us Ohioans) school was canceled for a day on Friday. The three-day snowfall built up a feet or so of snow in some areas and to take advantage of this very distinctive beautiful feature of Winter I decided to go, and invited my girlfriend Christina to join me to go to a nearby park to snap a few photos. The park was phenomenally beautiful that day, with the nearly undisturbed snow on the ground. It gave me this strange yet familiar feeling of utopia.

I would love to spend my whole day there, but I'll just say that being in a below-freezing point environment for over 30 minutes is not the coolest thing. No pun intended. (Sorry, Maddox.)

Straight A's Again!

Almost, almost. Just 3 more percentage points for my college-level Physics class and I would have straight A's in my report card again. I was pretty upset when I found out that I don't have an A in that class and even more furious when I found out that Physics is the only class that I don't have an A. I guess I was just taking things for granted because I wasn't really expecting to get A's in my two other AP classes.

On the upside I am breaking my own GPA record once again with a 4.5 (on a 4-point GPA scale) this time. :)

This post is getting longer that I have intended so I will just wrap it up by saying that I am pretty happy with life right now despite being somewhat stressful, but this is just life right? We just need to continue to live, laugh, and love.

Once gain, Happy New Year.

photo by Nathan Livings, used under a CC-license

I am supposed to have a New Year's Resolution this year (2008) but I didn't feel like having one when I started writing one last year so at the end of the day I ended up with nothing on the list. I guess I am in the mood of having one for the year of 2009 and that's of course, the reason why I am writing this post to inform you of my New Year's Resolution AND to invite you to push (literally and/or figuratively) me to achieve these goals.

In no particular order (never mind it's now in alphabetical order):

• Be an early riser
• Be less apathetic (but not pathetic)
• Be more proactive and manage my time better
• Gain a few more pounds on my skin-and-bones body (and then get fit/fitter)
• Get a part-time job/internship (will not be looking for any until later in the school year though)
• Give back
• Keep doing the "right things"
• Reduce stress
• Stop "lying" :)
• Update this blog more often
• and more ... (I'll add more things over the next few days)

Inputs are welcomed! I need more ideas (so that the chances of having something actually done would be higher)! :)

Time 1 Human 0. Once again, time had the upper hand: I wasn't able to catch it and only to have it flew by.

Unknowingly, it's been over a month since I have updated this blog and over two months since I have actually posted something more meaningful. I wish I could have written about all these events earlier, however I was unable to do so due to the many time constraints caused by various school related assignments as well as numerous college and scholarship applications which I have to complete.

Given the level of the stress which I have faced (and hair-pulling) over the past two months, one might mistaken me as impostor of Albert Einstein.

Enough with my complains, I shall now present you with a list of interesting events that I have attended/participated in the past few months chronologically.

photo by Christina

Homecoming!
On the night of October 11th I attended my first (and possibly last) high school homecoming. Like previous years, I had absolutely no intention of going this time around either. However, I finally gave in when *cough* that someone asked if I would like to go as her date.

It's been a while so I am not sure if I had fun there. Let's just say that I did (and I probably did).

Detroit: Math Competition
If you have been reading this blog for a year or so you should be able to recall that I went to Madison, Wisconsin last year for a math competition in which my team placed third. This year's competition was held in Detroit, Michigan during NSBE's 2008 Region IV Fall Conference from November 21-23.

I suppose that this is good enough.

This year my team is more experienced and that our readiness level is OVER 9000, we have won the competition by a rather huge margin. As arrogant as this may sound, I said to one of the opponent teams (jokingly, we already befriended with each other before the competition) that, "You guys did great, but we did better."

Next stop: National Competition at Las Vegas in late March, 2009.

And ... that's all. I thought there would be much more to share but in the end there are only two major things worth writing about (there was a few other things, like the senior breakfast, but they are not really major).

P.S. If you would like to see the photos from the above events, feel free to ask.

Turned 18 today.

Thanks to everyone who wished me to have a happy birthday, despite that happy isn't quite the right word to describe this ordinary day.