Warmer, Warmer, Warmer

 

    One of the biggest environmental issues of the 21st century is the climate change of the planet. A big part of climate change is global warming, which is the gradual increase of the Earth’s temperature. This is usually caused by increased levels of greenhouse pollutants, such as carbon dioxide.

    The effects of global warming are vast. Some effects include the fast incline of sea water levels, melting of large sheets of glaciers, and the rapid temperature increase that doesn’t allow the ecosystems to adapt naturally. But one of the biggest effects of global warming is the hole in the ozone layer. The hole was formed mainly from the increase of carbon dioxide, the remnant of burnt fossil fuels. With the depletion of the ozone layer, comes the increase of ultraviolet rays from the sun. These UV rays can damage your eyes and cause skin cancer without proper protection. To plants in the ecosystem, UV rays can tip the delicate balance in the environment. It can cause diseases to the plant just like it does to our skin. In the ocean, UV rays also reduce the survival rate of plankton, the base of the marine food chain, therefore toppling the food web.

    This issue is very important to me because I would like to live in a clean environment, like everyone else. But I would also like to allow my children, if I have any, to enjoy a clean place as well. With global warming comes more pollutants, and I am pretty sure they are not good for anyone’s body. So, by reducing global warming, it can ensure a longer human life-span, for us and generations in the future.

    One of the biggest roadblocks to reducing climate change and global warming is probably the heavy reliance on automobiles. The biggest percentage of gases involved in global warming and ozone depletion is carbon dioxide, which comes out of cars’ exhaust pipes. Although auto-industrial engineers have successfully made cars with reduced carbon dioxide exhaust, most are either too expensive or too small for the majority of people to own. Because the United States is so vast, there is basically no way of getting around without a vehicle of some kind.

    Since there is no single solution to reducing global warming, let’s just take one small step at a time. One step is to try to drive as little as possible. For example, if your house is close enough for you to walk, skate, or bike to school, then do that instead of having your parents drop you off. Even if your home is slightly farther away to walk or bike, you can still reduce global warming a little by carpooling with 1 or 2 other families in your neighborhood. Or, with a couple of friends, take the Foothill Transit to school together.

These are only some of the ways of reducing climate change and global warming. If there are any other ways, be sure to try them.You’ll do it not only for us, but for generations to come.

Another Year Has Gone

 

   Another wonderful year has passed! It happened so fast I barely noticed it. Although there were more than a few disappointing events, the majority were positive and encouraging.

There were many times during the year when I enjoyed myself greatly, like watching movies, going to Indio last week, and attending various different parties. But one of the best times of 2013 was my summer vacation to China. Sadly, we only stayed in China and Taiwan for about one and a half months because of all my different summer activities. During that shortened vacation, we squeezed in a lot. About 3 weeks was spent in China, and 2 weeks in Taiwan. Almost a third of our meals were eaten at great restaurants, and the food cooked by my grandparents and uncle was just as delicious, if not better than some of the restaurants we went to.  My great grandpa, who recently 96 years old, attended some of the more fancy banquets, but not all of them, because of his bad left leg. But he still ate almost as much as the rest of us, and one of my aunts laughed and said, “Being old surely doesn’t diminish his appetite.” Watching my great grandpa wolf down every morsel of food placed in front of him was surprisingly interesting for me to watch. It was probably because for every bite of food he ate, a piece of food would attach itself to his nose, his chin, and even his cheek. This supply of food on his face would build up for a while until my great grandpa noticed the morsels on his face.

One day, my mom and I visited my great grandpa. He was in his bed, taking an afternoon nap. I said hi to him when he noticed we were there. Suddenly, he asked me, “Who are you? Are you a Japanese?”Then he seemed to know who I was, but didn’t get my age correct and asked again, “Do you have a job?” After a split second’s silence,we all doubled over in laughter. But then my great grandpa seemed to connect the two snapped nerves and his brain was functioning properly again.This was probably the most comical part of my summer vacation. To this day, I could still explode with laughter when I am reminded of that event.

One of the most challenging events of 2013 was my first, 2 day 36 hole tournament about two weeks after my 12th birthday. I was dwarfed by the surrounding big kids, for I was the youngest of the tournament. Luckily, the game started out pretty well, but got steadily worse. The continuous walking wasn’t helping , either. Minor blisters started to form in the uncomfortable golf shoes and the unbreathable leather material of the shoes was making my feet stuffy. There was also a constant mental pressure that kept taunting me and sometimes it would make me mess up a shot. After the first match, I spent a pretty uncomfortable night with sore leg muscles. The second match was slightly better, but not by much. I was lucky not to get last place, for a lot of these people practice almost everyday.

A goal I have set for the year 2014 is to never have a missing assignment, whether if it is my fault or not. This has happened a few times before and I certainly do not want a repeat of the consequences. The missing assignments took a long time to get full credit and were just an extra load I didn’t need. A way I think will stop having missing assignments is to check my agenda every night to make sure I did an packed away all the assignments I was supposed to do.  

       Even with some drawbacks, 2013 has been a great year overall. I hope that 2014 will be just as great as the previous year.
 

New Troop Bike Ride

 

    Ever since my mom and I received the news that my old troop was going to come to an end in December, we had been looking for a new troop in Claremont. Darren was also looking for a good troop, and his mom was the one who found a nice unit for us, which was Troop 403. The first troop activity we had was last Sunday, a 16-mile bike ride in the Azusa mountains.

    Magically, when we first heard about the bike ride, my mom immediately signed both of us up.  Then the following afternoon, she bought a bike from the village bike shop and somehow fit it into the mini SUV of hers. She even got a cute little basket to go with it.

    After we switched the small SUV for a van, we fit the bikes in snugly in the back, and set out for the Azusa mountains. In less than 40 minutes, we arrived at the parking lot of our trip’s starting and ending point. About 10 minutes was spent waiting for everyone to arrive. At around twelve, we started the ride.

    The first hour of the trip was pretty uneventful. Darren and I just chatted about our accounts on Clash of Clans. It was during our lunch break when things got a bit interesting. I had control over my mom’s phone at that time. With a downloaded app, I started playing random songs like Gangnam Style, and The Fox. A younger scout called Anzo asked, “Do you even have any good songs that one can enjoy?”

During a 1D song, Darren and I simultaneously started to dance to the music. Everyone in view cracked up. Soon I couldn’t resist the laughter, and joined in. After the One Direction song finished, Gangnam Style started playing again, and Darren suddenly did the dance move I remember very well from the movie Internship. As everyone chuckled, I literally started choking on my own sobs of laughter. Then, without warning, I suddenly lost my balance and tumbled to the ground. As I tried to push myself up, I only succeeded in rolling over on my belly. Finally, a kind scout helped me up on my feet.

    As we started off on our trip again, I let the songs I had play randomly. When the phone reached a song we knew, Darren and I would sing purposely off tune and as badly as possible. Some the scouts would stare at us in a funny sort of way and I doubled over in laughter so much, I almost fell off my bicycle.This continued until we reached a steep slope and did not have the breath to sing anymore. Luckily, I made it to the end of the uphill only with my legs on fire. Even more luckily, we were turning around to head back the way we came, and that meant we could go down the steep slope now.

Darren, Wesley, and I hurriedly made an agreement to see who could get back to the end the fastest. Darren got a head start, yelling, “SEE YE!” over his shoulder, leaving Wesley and me scrambling on our bikes in hot pursuit. I turned my bike’s gears up as high as it could go and zoomed down the hill, leaving Wesley on his little wheels, and singing, “What does the fox say?”

In the end, Darren won our unofficial official race. I got last, although all three of us were really close together. Worn out, we returned our bikes to the cars.

         This was probably one of the best activities I have had with Troop 403 so far (of
course, it was the first one). This memory of the first activity with this troop will stay with me for a long time.

 

Darren the Great

 

I have made and kicked out many friends during my time here in the USA. But a friend that I think will stay with me for a long time is Darren Chau, or Darren the Great.

    Up until third grade, I had not known that this Darren character had existed. The first encounter I had with him was when one of my friends took me to meet a new buddy he made. The new buddy he was talking about turned out to be Darren. Sadly, after my friend left to live in Japan with his family, Darren and I didn’t talk much until fourth grade.

    Fourth grade was when I got addicted to handball. Darren also played a lot of it and soon we found out that we made an excellent team. That was probably the official start of our friendship. The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew he would be a nice fellow and friend. Now I proved that statement to be true. At first, I wasn’t very good at handball, but Darren taught me the finer details, and soon I was improving.  Then, when we had different levels of math class, both Darren and I got put in the advanced one. Then in the math class, we magically got paired together to work on a math poster. All the fun we had drawing, doodling, and scribbling strengthened the bond between us.

    At first, Darren and I met only at school. But in fifth grade , our family moved into the house right next to Darren’s. From then on we started seeing each other more and more. Almost every morning, we would walk to Chaparral together. Sometimes, during the weekends, we would go to each other’s houses, and play video games, Nerf guns, and watch movies. I soon got addicted to a game called  Clash of Clans, which Darren recommended to me. This game also added one more topic to the list of subjects Darren and I usually talk about during recess or lunch.

    Not only is Darren a great game strategist, he is also a great singer. I am totally awed  by the fact that he can think of the words of his own made-up songs as he goes and the song still flows and makes sense. It really is amazing that his voice still hasn’t changed and has remained pure.

    Darren is also a charming and nice boy. He cracks lots of jokes and always remodels my Clash of Clans base for me whenever he comes over. When we play on Darren’s Wii, he always allows me to play before he does.

    Darren is, in short, the friend I have wished for for a long time. I hope he will stay with me for years to come.

 

                               

The Tacoed Thanksgiving Party

 

    This year’s Thanksgiving party was probably the most interesting one I have ever attended. It was celebrated at Big Justin’s house.  His mom invited our family and a couple other Chinese families over. Darren and Wesley also came to join the fun. The party lasted for more than five hours, and still we did not want to go home.

    My mom and I arrived at Big Justin’s house at around 4:20 pm, while my dad went to pick up the turkey we ordered from a nearby restaurant. Although everyone invited had already arrived by 4:45, the feast did not start until around 5:30, for the moms had to quench their thirst for gossip first. The meal was buffet style, with Wesley’s dad cutting up the turkey. For some odd reason, he gave me a whole turkey leg, so big I could knock someone out with it. I also had a lot of other food (mostly meat, no shrimp), and I was totally stuffed by six o’clock.

    After the meal was when things got a bit interesting. The big kids were down in the basement, doing something random. Darren, Wesley, and I were trying to annoy them by coming to the edge of the basement stairs and sniggering. We even got some lego robots and put them at the foot of the stairs. When Big Justin came to check, we told him that it was the robots, not us. Eventually, they were really annoyed and dragged us painfully down the stairs and into the basement. In the middle was a play mat, which the big kids put Darren and me on, side by side.

    What happened next was really weird. Big Justin rolled Darren and me into the mat and bound us. So there we were, stuck together and barely able to move a muscle. I bet that we looked like a human taco, inviting everyone to take a bite. Suddenly, a hand that felt like Wesley’s grabbed my foot, and tried to pull off my socks.  But I kicked furiously and Wesley only succeeded in taking of one sock off half way.

    Soon, Darren and I fought free, and everyone started tacoing everyone. I got tacoed 3 or 4 more times, and also rolled myself up and almost tripped someone while rolling. A boy in college who has the same Chinese nickname as me dragged his sister to the mat and tried to taco her as well. But she was strong and quick because of her training as a tennis player, and got free. We tacoed and tackled for almost an hour until we went back to playing games.

    This Thanksgiving celebration was one that I won’t forget soon. But even though it was awkward, the party was still very fun. This party will probably stay forever in my memory.

The Survival Author

    Gary Paulsen is one of the USA’s best authors writing about the wilderness. He is known for writing that doesn’t sugar coat everything and that provides vivid descriptions of the events happening in the wilderness.

    Paulsen had a very unique childhood. He was born in Minnesota, in May 1939. His father was an army officer, and spent most of World War II overseas, fighting. Only when Gary Paulsen was nine years old did he get to meet his dad. He and his mom joined him in the Philippines for two years before returning to Minnesota. Before he met his dad, he had been living with various different relatives. At school, he was never a really committed student, but had a special passion for books.

    When he was only 14 years old, he ran away from home to join a carnival. From there, he took many strange jobs, such as farmer, construction worker, engineer, sailor, and truck driver. He also joined the Iditarod, a 1000+ mile Alaskan dog sled race. All of these early wandering days of Gary Paulsen's life gave him enough adventure and experience to start creating his own stories. Paulsen went to Bemidji College in 1959, and worked as a trapper to earn his tuition. But after going to college for two years, he dropped out and followed in his father's footsteps, joining the army. At that time, he was working in the missiles department.

    After Gary Paulsen left the Army, he took a job in a California aerospace firm. It was there that he made his final decision to become an author. He walked away from work one night and never came back. Paulsen took a job in Hollywood to proofread articles in magazines, which was very boring, and only writing his own works enhanced his life. Then, one day, just like he did with the job at the firm, he left Hollywood silently and returned to Minnesota. He worked hard on his own writing, and soon he finished his first published novel, The Special War.

    While writing novels, Paulsen discovered his love of dog sledding. He participated to the 1983 Iditarod and again, two years later, in the 1985 one. But after he finished the 1985 Iditarod, he had to quit dog sledding for awhile because of angina. From then on, he devoted his life to writing, working sometimes twenty hours a day! Drawing from past experiences, he wrote many great literary fiction books, including one of my favorite sagas, the Brian series, which is a great survival story.

    Gary Paulsen has recovered from his angina now. Currently he is 74 years old. Only a couple years back, in his early 70’s, he ran the Iditarod race again for pleasure. He was more than 70 years old, yet he still survived the harsh climates of Alaska.

    Not only do I love his stripped down writing style, I admire his ability to survive in society, even without parents’ help. Gary Paulsen has just become one of my most important role models!

Chinese New Year=$, Fun, and Food

 

    The Chinese New Year is one of the biggest festivals celebrated in China. This holiday is based on the lunar calendar, so even though it is honoring the coming of the new year, it is always sometime around February on the international calendar. Firework dealers’ stocks of firecrackers and fireworks suddenly disappear, and the money in their bank accounts rockets up. Public janitors’ worst time every year has arrived, for almost everyone lights up rolls of firecrackers and boxes of fireworks, leaving empty, blackened boxes and carpets of red wrapping. No one is able to sleep before midnight, for the noises outside sound like a battlefield. In almost every story of the apartments, delicious aromas waft out from the dozens of traditional Chinese dishes  made for the annual family reunion dinner. All the windows and doors are festooned with red paper, containing Chinese characters of “happiness,” “good fortune,” or  “live long.” These were basic traditions that my family had before my parents and I moved to the USA.

    Chinese New Year has become a lot more simple since we moved here. One of the main reasons is because most of our family is still in China or Taiwan. A requirement of having a good Chinese New Year Party is having a lot of relatives. But we still have kept some of the traditions here.

    Since none of our relatives live here, this holiday is celebrated with friends. Sometimes Darren and Wesley come, but not always, and a couple of other Chinese friends my mom has made over the years.

    We usually host this holiday, since it’s my mom who invites everyone to the party. Most of these friends are great cooks, so my mom assigns them different dishes to bring. My mom, of course, will make her specialty, the Shanghai short ribs, and steamed fish. Rice cakes stand for “growing taller every year,” and glutinous rice balls mean “reunion with family and friends.” My mom prepares lots of red envelopes to give to her friends’ children. She hangs the remaining envelopes up as the red decorations on the windows. It’s not as elaborate as those giant paper-cutouts, but that will have to do here. First we eat our way through the delicious dishes made by my mom and her friends. The meal lasts for at least an hour, and I eat until I am totally stuffed. Then, the other kids and I run off to have some fun, while the parents sit around the table, sipping daintily on small cups of tea, and always keeping up a steady stream of the boring adult gossip or even more boring topic of their kids’ education.

Celebrating Chinese New Year has been a tradition since before I could remember. I know for a fact that this tradition was already really old when my great-great grandpa was just a boy. Our family celebrates this holiday because it is a tradition, not just for us, but for almost the entire Chinese race. Celebrating Chinese New Year is also for good luck, wealth and health in the new year.

Having a Chinese New Year party is very important to me, because in my opinion doing so is upholding the honor of our family and China. To me, not having this festival makes me not a true Chinese. Also, this holiday is the main source of my allowance.

Chinese New Year is a very big part of my life. If I ever have kids, I will make sure to celebrate this holiday with them and let them pass it down through generations to come.