Translating Interviews

[Translating Interviews]

Gin not being the main focus kind of grinds my gears, but at least there isn't an anime original org member introduced yet.

lol, this just feels like a passive aggressive reference to Irish from movie 13.

[What's on Your Mind?]

There's nothing I want in return, haha.  You can see them as gifts, because they aren't doing much good in my backlogged games.

 

A majority of people in my school took the BC exam, even though most of them have only learned AB or aren't even in the AP classes.  I didn't realize this, but there was a lot of peer pressure to take the harder test, even if it meant self-studying.  Of course, since a lot of these people were seniors, a lot of people regretted their choice after the exams, ahahah...  gg no re classmates, gg no re...

It's too bad something you really prepared for wasn't that prevalent on the BC exam, but it's good to hear that you felt you did well regardless!  The AB exam wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  As for the Lit and Physics 1 exams (yeah, that's the Physics test I took), well... it's a long story so I'll save it for the other thread, eheheh.

Just have Bio left myself.  Yes, let's suffer together....

 

Pfttt, you're too good for that Asuna gif, but I guess it fits the scenario well enough.

 

OMM: We're watching Pride and Prejudice in Lit because of AP exams, and as much as I hate to admit it, it's a rather well done adaptation of a subpar chick-book.  Better than a lot of manga->anime adaptions at the very least.  All the girls in my class gushed over the rain scene, and I was just sitting there thinking about how uncomfortable it must have been to act that out, all soggy and wet.

Ahaha, you're far too kind. I'm not comfortable accepting your hard work without offering anything in return. Plus I haven't touched my games for a while, so they'd also be sitting idle in my games if I were to accept them, lol. 

 

Oh geez, most of the people in your school took the BC exam? Most of the people in our school ended up taking the AB exam, haha. Self-studying stuff like polar coordinates and Taylor series seems quite difficult, I'm not gonna lie. Kudos to them for being able to do that--though I can't help but wonder why they didn't just take BC in the first place, lol. I think you're one of the only people I know who thought the AB exam was not as bad as what you originally anticipated. Most of my AB friends said that they crashed and burned on the free response. Glad to hear that it went well for you!

 

lol I didn't even realize that gif was from SAO until you mentioned it.

My tactics for avoiding SAO have been working, I see... 

 

I have no idea what we're doing in our English class after APs are over. One of the other teachers is letting the students read Hamlet, but I don't think our teacher has anything like that planned .-.

However, my life is going to be freaking great after I'm done with APs. The only thing I'll have to worry about is the upcoming standardized tests I'm planning on taking. Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop.

I haven't read Pride and Prejudice yet, though I probably should sometime soon, haha.

 

I GOT MARTH!!

 

GOD BLESS YOU AMAZON!

GOD BLESS YOU GOD!

 

The shipping cost is kinda high, but I guess that's what I get for not having Prime.

Oh yes, and God bless Swagbucks for letting my buy this without the aid of my parents, fufufufufu...

 

What a day.  What a damn fabulous day.  I'm so happy right now, forget the UBW episode tomorrow.  I just want it to be next week right now and have the Hero King himself arrive at my door.

 

 

--

OMM: I managed to take solid naps in a few of my AP classes and it was the greatest thing.

[Tell us a secret about you!]

I wonder if chrome does run better depending on your processor. I think my old laptop was also an i3 and it used to crash at least twice a day but my current laptop's an i5 and it rarely crashes. 

As for going between all of them, it's a matter of just never moving tabs, kinda sorting them by type (like all my webcomic tabs are next to each other), and remembering their approximate locations haha. Having less tabs open does make it feel less hectic but I prefer only having one window open 

The only time when I resort to my i3 laptop is when my i5 laptop is having internet connection issues. My old i3 laptop is so laggy, it's absurd. I've had times when I wanted to defenestrate the damned thing because of how frustrating it is for me to work on it. Ranting aside, I truly do believe that the processor makes a difference on whether a program crashes--not just Chrome. I've had times when Word crashed on my i3.

 

40 tabs seems a bit overwhelming though, haha. I definitely wouldn't be able to keep track of all of them. The most I've ever worked with was ~20 tabs. For instance, if I ever need to look up an image on google in bulk, I'd open up a new window instead of aggregating them with my social media tabs or YouTube subscriptions. The most windows I'll ever have open for Chrome is three though--one window could be dedicated to entertainment, another one might be dedicated to school stuff, and the last one is saved for whatever else I might need it for.

 

 

Haha, I might sound like geeky again but anyways, there are lots of variables that affects this. So you just can't say that it's becoz of the processor :3

well, yeah.

I wasn't trying to isolate processors exclusively, lol

[DRAGON BALL SUPER]

...and maybe Krillin won't die for once.

[What Gets on Your Nerves?]

thanks for the heart attack.

[Tell us a secret about you!]

My mac would freeze after a couple tabs, haha. 

I always thought that Macs themselves are nice computers (everything runs pretty smoothly on there), but I'd only buy one if I could replace the apple interface with windows 7.

 

 

Nope! Chrome tends to be a little slow once I first start my laptop up but it rarely crashes or even freezes my laptop \o/

Sometimes, I feel like whether Chrome crashes or not depends on the processer you have.

I've had Chrome crash on me before, but that was only on an i3 laptop.

I don't think Chrome has ever crashed on my i5 laptop.

 

also, how does one even operate 40 tabs at once, lol

those are some serious multitasking skills you got there

I personally like when I have as few tabs as possible (even if it means opening a new window). It just makes everything feel a lot more organized.

[What Gets on Your Nerves?]

Only dead ones? So alive ones are ok?

slightly offended because I love reptiles

[What's on Your Mind?]

Oof, everyone in my school is keeling over in agony because of allergies.  I'm just grateful I don't have seasonal allergies, or at least I don't think I do.  It would hate it if I suddenly developed them, because as sad as I am to see winter leave I love myself some spring sunshine.  I hope spring isn't making you suffer too much!

 

Haha, I'm wouldn't say I'm extremely lucky, since I've played hundreds of hours of 3rd gen games, spanning Hoenn and Kanto, never using Repels, and yet only now have I run into a random shiny.  I will admit that I've had a lot more luck in 4th gen games and even 5th gen (RIP Skorupi, Bianca will never be forgiven) and heck even that Wonder Traded Flabebe was really lucky I guess.  If I knew you in real life, I'd trade you a handful of my shinies, since I have far too many of them and not enough time to train them all up and give them the love they deserve.  It's a shame Nintendo discontinued Wii and DS WiFi.

 

And ohmygosh, thank you so much for those formula sheets!  You're a life saver!

I feel so unburdened after that Calc exam.  Joking, Lit and Physics tomorrow, ahahahahah ahah ahhh hah h

I hope the BC test wasn't as lethal as you expected it to be, haha.

I didn't get my spring allergies until 7th grade. It definitely sucks, but at least the spring weather is nice, heh.

 

I haven't encountered a random shiny since Platinum, lol. I haven't touched my games in a while either, so I'm really in no position to complain. I used to use the wifi to play Mario Kart and trade on the GTS, so it's too bad that they discontinued it. Ahaha, I wouldn't be able to accept those shinies from you though--especially since I have nothing to offer in return, haha.

 

And I'm glad those formula sheets helped a bit! 

The BC exam was... not that great, ehehehe. The multiple choice was pretty bad, but I think the free response went a lot better.

I also anticipated a polar question on the free response this year so I really crammed up on it. I was really disappointed when I discovered that there was only one polar question on the entire exam--one single multiple choice question. I also forgot the formula for calculating speed at one point so I just bs-ed an equation that looked remotely feasible/passable. And I managed to get it right, hehehehehehehehe.................

hell yea.

 

I heard that the AB exam had an inverse question. Yikes, I probably would've struggled a bit with that one.

 

Hope the AB, Lit, Physics exam went well for you!

 

Two down, two more to go.

You can suffer with me for the Bio one, heh.

 

 

--

OMM: My friend drew a huge smiley face on my hand at school today, and it has made me feel unreasonably happy every time I look at it.

[What Was the Last Video Game You Played?]

 

Oh gosh, there’s no need to apologize.  I’d have been more surprised if you had somehow sent out a reply on time, haha.  I know how stressful AP tests are, as I’ve been studying for them recently myself, haha.  I’m so screwed for the Calc and Physics tests, oh my gosh…  It’s probably even worse for you since you’re feeling the recoil of the trip you just had and all the make-up work that comes with it.  As flattered as I am by your devotion to reply back in the wee hours of the morning, you really didn’t need to go to such lengths.  You should have gotten some sleep or finished some of that calc work you fell asleep on.  Thank you, but you should put yourself first, haha.

 

I’m really glad you had so much fun in Tennessee!  I don’t think I’ve ever been to that state.  Wow, it sounds like you had a blast.  It makes me a bit envious, haha.  An underground waterfall and an aquarium, huh?  When I was younger, my family used to take a bunch of trips to various caverns along the east coast.  You know, the ones located in the middle of Nowhere, Virginia that have tours and little gift shops where you can buy rocks and stuff.  Those trips weren’t the most exhilarating, but I look back on them fondly.  And I don’t think I’ve been to an aquarium in years, geez.  The most recent thing that counts might have been that zoo/aquarium hybrid I visited while in China two summers ago.  But it was kind of unkempt and wasn’t the nicest experience.  That must have been a really fancy hotel to have a patio and a bonfire.  I don’t think any of the hotels we slept in during band trips had things like that.  Or maybe they did, but there was a really strict curfew so we were never given the opportunity to wander around the hotel at night.  I’m glad you managed to, to an extent, stargaze.  I know how difficult it can be to put into words how an experience like that made you feel; my Common App essay gave me writer’s block more times than I can remember.  I actually agree with you, sometimes the moon and clouds in the sky at night actually enhance the stargazing experience.  I know pro stargazers avoid cloudy and moon-y nights like the plague, and I’m sure it’s frustrating if either of those is preventing you from getting a good view of a particular constellation, but it’s still really nice.  Moonlit nights are just as good as starlit ones, haha.  You’re also super fortunate to have shared this experience with friends!  I would love to go stargazing with friends of my own, but it’s hard to find people sympathetic to my cause.  One of these days, one of these days…  Ohh, and the clouds you drove through sound kind of interesting.  I also rarely find myself sleeping on buses.  It’s not because I have work to do (sometimes I’m just letting my mind wander as I look out the window), but it’s more so I find it really difficult and uncomfortable to drift off.  More often than not though, I’m just sitting in a nearly soundless bus because everyone else had already nodded off to sleep.  I never get work done on school trips, eheheh.  I’ve tried occasionally, but it’s never worked out so I guess I must not have been trying very hard.  Ah, I’m really glad your orchestra did well!  It is kind of strange there were only bands competing and no other orchestras, but whatever.  

 

And the band trip last year was just a really informal thing.  I can’t remember exactly what is was, but it was some Disney hosted mini-concert, not a competition.  My school’s band understands that no one’s really in the mood for an intense amount of music during an outing to Orlando, so they hang loose during the yearly trips but pull out all at the stops at local competitions.  I’m not sure how much I’ve talked about my band trip, but I know I did cover some of it in bits and pieces during our long exchange or elsewhere on this forum.  I’ve already mentioned how Epcot completely blew me away, if only because of the Japan section of the World Showcase.  Funny thing is, I only just realized that the Epcot globe thing, apparently called Spaceship Earth, did indeed used to have a Mickey wand attached to the side of it (it wasn’t just child me hallucinating) that was added in the year 2000 and then removed in 2007.  I know I also mentioned how I didn’t really enjoy the trip as much as I could have just because I’ve always been at odds with the band program and many of its members.  That’s not to say it wasn’t a ton of fun, because it definitely was.  I can’t deny the fact that our jazz band, at least last year, was absolutely phenomenal.  Our solo alto sax player was superb; I think he was planning on studying music in college.  When the jazz band performed on the outdoor stage, the sun was already down and the dusk was cool and comfortable and the music was good, haha.  It would have been nice if there were actual friends with me, but ehhh I’ll still take it over a regular day.  Hrm, I also vaguely recall mentioning how I got completely soaked through during a classic Florida surprise storm, from which I never fully recovered.  My shoes were squelching even after I got back to the hotel, a few hours after the downpour.  I don’t really want to bother you with the smaller details, but those were probably the biggest highlights of the trip last year.  Eheheh, and I’m also having a bit of trouble remembering what else happened…

 

Huh, maybe your classmates are just really lucky or my classmates are just really inconsistent, because there are two or three deserving candidates I can name off the top of my head who were rejected from every single Ivy League and had to settle for a public school, hoping to redeem themselves through a transfer and/or graduate school.  I don’t really know why this happens, though I think there are rumors and whisperings going around the Interwebs that you have a higher chance of being rejected if you apply to all 8 Ivy League schools, because it looks like you’re only applying for the name and aren’t legitimately interested in any of the individual schools.  Ivy Leagues are pretty overrated, and I’m not saying this because I’m salty that I never got into one or because I’m trying to be a hipster, but as someone who’s gone through the college application and research process, I do have to say Ivy Leagues are generally not worth it.  Unless you’re dead broke, you’re not getting a penny in financial aid from them because they don’t give out merit based scholarships, so it’s a middle-class family trap (especially if there is more than one child in the family), money-wise at least.  It’s good for bragging rights, but if you got in by BS-ing saying “I’m interesting in majoring in East Asian Religious Studies, hurhur” when you really have no clue what you’re doing, there’s not a ton to be proud of.  Not to mention, you’re most likely going to be wasting a lot of your time and money when you realize you’re in the same class as people who have the next ten years of their lives planned out while you’re still deciding what a good major would be at the end of your freshman year.  As much as my sister loved Dartmouth, she agrees that it was pricey and that she could have saved a lot of stress paying off her debt by instead going to Rutgers, or a public school of a similar caliber.  But hey, if an Ivy League has a program that you like and you’re willing to pay up and you’re lucky enough to get in, knock yourself out.  I know I’m not Ivy League material; I don’t have much self-motivation or inner drive and I’d most likely literally fail out, haha.  Anywhoo, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant on Ivy Leagues, heheh, sorry about that.

 

Aww, it’s too bad to hear that your grades aren’t exactly where you want them to be.  Junior year was rough, for sure.  It’s definitely my weakest academic year of my life thus far (hopefully it stays that way even after I go off to college).  It’s good that you’re aware of this weakness, and it’s a shame there isn’t more time in the school year to bring your grades up this semester.  Before we know it, it’ll be mid to late June and bam another sweltering summer break to sit through.  I know you’re probably upset that you have a downward trend going on, but the case was the same for me and I think I turned out alright, all this considered.  Your profile, from what I can gather, is much stronger than mine, so I’m confident you’ll get into better schools than I did, or at least receive more scholarships than me.  And from what you’ve said, you’re still planning on taking the SATs again?  How did you do last time?  Or rather, nah it’s fine, you don’t have to tell me, haha.  If you’re not satisfied with your score, I suppose you wouldn’t want to share it.  And which SAT II’s do you plan on taking?  I didn’t take too many myself, but I did well on all the ones I did take (barring US History, ironically enough).  There’s no need to kick yourself over this lull in your grades; think positive!

(Oh, and it wasn’t because you started talking to me that your grades are down….. right……….??)

 

Eheh, yup, the furthest west I’ve been was Las Vegas, so I guess I was pretty close. But the weather in Vegas can’t compare to the weather in LA I’m sure.  You’d think with a sister living in LA, I’d have a higher chance than most people to have visited the city before, haha.  It probably has to do with my mom’s fear of planes and the unrealistic notion of planning the mother of all road trips by driving from sad old Edison to SoCal (and back!).  The reason why she was fine with flying to China and to Vegas was because you can’t bring China to Edison nor can you bring National Parks to New Jersey.  You can, however, bring a single young woman back “home”, and since my mom doesn’t really care for LA as a city she doesn’t feel it necessary to fly there, hauling the whole family along.  So I guess that’s why I have yet to lay eyes on California soil.  Of course, once I'm on my own and eventually find a job and settle down somewhere, I’ll find time to actually visit my sister instead of have her come over every Christmas.  I’m definitely curious to know what the hype is all about.  I wear jeans exclusively in public, all year round.  When at home I revert to shorts or sweatpants, depending on the weather.  It makes anime watching more comfy, hahaha.  And there’s no rule saying you can’t wear your shorts during the winter!  Joking, I don’t think it’s a very good idea to wear clothing out of season like that, though there are a lot of girls and guys who do.  I just think it’s kind of funny whenever I see a girl at my school walk in in the dead of January with a skirt and winter jacket on.  I’m guessing with leggings it may not be too cold, but I’m not sure how well those keep in heat.  Ah well, how people want to make fashion statements isn’t my business.

 

Oof, your experience with your phone is like my relationship with /r/amiibo.  I didn’t mean to be so dependent on it, but now I check it religiously, every few minutes if I’m not watching anime.  It’s paid off, since I managed to pre-order Lucina because of it, which I otherwise would have had zero chance at, but still.  Dark Pit and Palutena aren’t even due until the summer, and Ganon isn’t going on shelves until fall.  I have trading fodder in the form of Shulk and Rosaluma, so I shouldn’t be this anxious and check the subreddit all the time.  I really should cut back and take a break.  I guess I’m just kinda worried about the Marth restocks, which were scheduled to happen in May.  And welp, it’s May.  Sigh, the ride never ends, does it?  When I have a smart phone it’ll be even worse, since I’ll even be able to check on the go.  Once I get Ganon, I’ll end this madness, bleh.

 

Yikes, people in cliques definitely are hard to talk to.  It’s still really admirable of you to be able strike up a conversation with nearly anyone though.  It’s a skill, even if you don’t see it as one, that you should be proud to have.  I guess I’ll try my darndest best to be a bit more open in college.  It’s a whole new start after all, so why not?  Not to mention, the Weatherhead School of Business is relatively small, and I’ll be spending the next four years of my life with that small group of people, so it wouldn’t be very smart of me to be reserved early on.  It would probably just makes things weird down the road.  Ahah, I do appreciate the encouragement.

 

You may feel it’s still too early for you to be thinking about colleges, but before you now it it’ll be summer break and I know you’re not going to spend every day with that UMich summer program.  You’re more likely than not going to have some time to visit colleges, and you’re going to have to choose which one’s you’re seriously considering.  Heck, in exactly a year you’re going to know where you’re going to spend the next few years of your life.  That being said, biased as this may sounds, I recommend you consider Case Western, haha.  It has a very good engineering program, and its pre-med program is phenomenal, since there are so many nationally acclaimed hospitals right on campus.  I believe you’re thinking of pursuing some kind of science related major, so there’s that.  The tuition is on the lower end for a private school, and since they’re known for being super liberal with their merit-based financial aid, it’s probably the cheapest private institution you’re going to find.  Not to mention, it’s relatively close to where you live.  They’re the only Common App school I know of that doesn’t ask for additional supplemental essays, and there is no application fee, so with a few extra keystrokes you can probably apply with very little effort.  Of course, these are just suggestions; if you really don’t even want to bother applying I guess you don’t have to, haha.

 

Another quiet week regarding amiibo passed (which is good, I guess, since it wasn't stressful at least).  However, I did get around to actually playing some video games.  I know, not the best timing given AP tests are right around the corner, but I couldn’t resist.  I’m nearly done with Spirit Tracks, for real this time.  A while ago I mentioned I was almost done, but I was sorely mistaken.  I thought I was close, but that was because I was approaching a false ending of sorts and there was still a lot of hidden stuff that I didn’t realize I had to go through.  I thought there were originally five-ish sections of the game: the beginning/intro, the forest realm, the ice realm, the water realm, and the fire realm.  You’d think the fire realm would be the climax, but nah they pulled a quick one on me as there were the hidden sand and dark realms I still had to go through.  Sigh, so the game took a few hours longer than I originally thought, but now I know I’m at the very end.  I’m fighting the final boss, actually this time.  In other news, you probably already saw this in the other thread, but I ran into a completely random shiny Tentacool in my Sapphire version.  Phew, thank goodness Hoenn has too much water.  It’s not my favorite Pokemon, and it’s nature and stats are rather subpar, but it’s a shiny (in a 3rd gen game at that!) so I have the urge to train him up.  I don’t really have the time for it though, but I’ll see what I can manage over the summer.  I still need to put getting a black trainer card in Pearl first, as I have yet to RNG abuse the final member of my three-mon dream team, Latios.

 

The strange things is, the pre-calc classes in my school don’t cover much at all.  The class teaches you enough to do well on the Math II SAT IIs, but no more.  I didn’t learn what a derivative was until just a few months ago, eheh.  That’s why AP Calc just feels like a completely different monster than pre-calc was, which was just a class teaching harder versions of algebra II problems.

 

Even though KissAnime (which is what I assume you use) has 1080p of all new and popular anime, streaming quality is still worse than download quality.  The videos need to be compressed just a tiny bit, so it’s not a 1:1 upload.  Not to mention, KissAnime gets almost all their stuff from HorribleSubs, who get all their stuff from Crunchyroll.  By the time HorribleSubs uploads the torrent link of Fate/stay night, I‘m able to download and watch it from them before KissAnime can even finish uploading the 720p version.  Why not cut out the middle man, right?  Since my parents go shopping without fail a few minutes before 1:30 pm EST n Saturdays (the moment UBW’s download links are put up by HorribleSubs), I’m always free to watch the anime in the way that I prefer: lights off, locked door, full screen.  And yes, 1080p KissAnime isn’t quite as good as 1080p HorribleSubs.  It’s only marginally worse, but I took the time to carefully compare the two, especially during the action scenes.  I know… I… probably shouldn’t take anime watching so seriously… Eheheheh……………  Anyway, for whatever reason, I also never have my laptop leave my desk.  I’m kind of OCD about it, because if it’s not positioned and angled perfectly straight I can tell immediately and I need to stop what I’m doing to fix it.  Gosh, I really need to loosen up in college.  Don’t mind me, I’m just being the usual dork that I am, haha.

 

Ah, it’s kind of too late for me to go to prom now.  The first wave of tickets were sold for around $95, but now they’ve jacked it up to $125.  I don’t know if it’s a form of punishment or a way to make up for my class’s lackluster fundraising spirit.  Even if I was willing to pay the “late” fee, I think they’ve already organized table charts and stuff.  For dinner, I’m guessing there are a bunch of tables set up and you’re allowed to request who and where you want to sit.  Since I’d be buying a ticket late, I wouldn’t have a choice and would be thrown in an odd-numbered group awkwardly, and I’d like to avoid that scenario.  Without a Facebook, I’m going to have a tough time finding out how prom goes down, but I’ll try my best!  (I don’t even what which building we’re using as the venue…)

 

And once again, there’s no need for you to apologize!  The upcoming weeks will be hectic, so feel free to take a week off or at least postpone your reply for a few days!  Good luck on your AP tests! 

 

Oh dang, you're taking the physics exam? Physics 1, 2, or C? I heard that the Physics C exam is one of the hardest out there, so good luck to you if you're taking it! Actually, best of luck to you regardless of which exams you're taking, haha. I've been debating on whether to take AP Stats or Physics C for a while now, and I'm leaning towards Physics C. Would you recommend taking it? Or rather, out of all the AP physics classes offered at your school, which one would you recommend for me to take? Ahaha, it was completely because of my carelessness for not posting my reply on time. I wanted to finish my calc homework before posting my response (which I had nearly all typed out), but I dozed off before that could happen, ehehe...

 

The aquarium we visited was really nice and even had an area where you could "pet" the fish, ahahaha. The underground waterfall we visited was also spectacular! There were lights at the bottom of the pool that lit up the waterfall and it was absolutely breathtaking. The crashing waterfall also sprayed a light, breezy mist everywhere in the cavern. Gosh, I wish you were there with me to witness it. You seem like the kind of person who'd enjoy something like this, haha. We tend to stay in quality hotels during orchestra trips, but saying that this was a "nice" hotel would be a huge understatement. Actually, as disappointing as this may sound, most of my friends weren't stargazing with me. The majority of them were either staring at or playing with the crackling bonfire, and the others were partying with the background music. I just gazed at the sky for most of my time there, but still managed to hold a few conversations with friends. Haha, the clouds that we drove through really kept my friend and me occupied for quite some time. After a while, both of us even mistook a passing truck to be a passing cloud, lol (twice, actually, ehehe...). I just love letting my mind wander. Geez, it's so difficult for me to concentrate on homework during trips. Everything becomes a distraction, and it's too easy to come up with excuses. I always keep telling myself to get it done, but it never happens.

 

Honestly, I don't think our orchestra rehearsed too much for this festival either. I wouldn't really call this a "competition" (even though we were competing with bands), but it's not on my turf to argue about linguistics, haha. Our director/conductor was pretty loose about winning--especially given that he didn't seem worried at all. He treated the trip as more of a vacation than preparation for the festival, which was nice. It might've been because he's retiring this year though (oh my gosh what's going to happen to the orchestra after he leaves)... I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed your trip to Orlando! Was there anything else that was particularly memorable about your trip? It must have been awesome seeing the jazz band perform in such fitting conditions, heh. I'm also curious to know what other aspects of Epcot made you take such a liking to it, haha.

 

Going to Ivy Leagues just for the sake of reputation seems tacky. There are tons of schools out there with programs that can compare to, or are even better than, those of Ivy Leagues. I know Case's med program caught my attention, haha. Also, I've heard from a few friends that Ivy League schools can be quite generous with financial aid if you can't afford it. Apparently, if you get accepted by one of them, they don't just want you there, they want you there. If that's the case, then there's nothing wrong with attending the school, but it really isn't worth going broke for--basically what you said, lol. Ahaha, I still don't know what I'm going to major in when I head off to college. I'm planning on consulting my physics teacher when everything begins to wind down. Since he's a physics teacher, he might skew me towards something in the engineering field, but that's fine. I just need help deciding and I need someone to help push me in the right direction. He's a very wise man and I feel really fortunate to have him as my physics teacher this year.

 

It sucks that my junior year isn't going to get me anywhere, but I'm confident that my first semester senior year will make up for it (or at least help me appeal to waitlists). I'll be honest, I was shocked when I got my SAT score back. I did worse than I anticipated and my math score was embarrassing. I was utterly dumbfounded because I did better on the writing section than I did on my best subject. Ahaha, and the worse part is, I thought I nailed the math section. I recently got my ACT scores back, and managed to redeem myself with a 35 in math (still slightly annoyed about the one question I missed though). The ACT math is harder than the SAT math in my opinion (mostly since it covers more material like algebra 2 and trig) but it's still one of the easier sections for me. My overall composite score still wasn't that great, although I find it ironic that I did better on the ACT than on the SAT (especially since I was mainly focusing on the SAT at the time, and only spent about a week's worth preparing for the ACT). But whatever, hopefully some summer practice will bring rise to some better scores. As for the subject tests, I plan on taking Math II and Bio M this year. My cruddy grades is one of my biggest regrets, if not my biggest regret, of this year. Probably around 90 percent of my stress constitutes of my junior year grades so it's impossible for me not to kick myself over them, haha. I appreciate your concern though! 

 

I know you mentioned before that you've gone on road trips, but damn. Your mom was planning on driving all the way to California? And back? Just to avoid riding on an airplane? Holy geezus. That's insane, haha. The farthest we've driven was to Hilton Head (South Carolina) and it was just so we could save money, lol. But seeing that you've never gone to California before, I'll help fill you in: I know you mentioned before that your sister told you about this, but......... the weather is great almost year round, and it can be surprisingly mild. I personally think that the conditions there are better than those in Florida. It's definitely worth a visit, and I'm genuinely surprised that you haven't set foot on California soil yet. The only downside is that it feels like spring/summer year round (though I guess it could be considered an upside to some, haha). I'll wear jeans more often than not, but when I'm not, I'm wearing either soccer pants, capris, sweatpants, or shorts. Summertime is the only time when I'm able to take out my capris and shorts, so I try to take advantage of it whenever possible, heh. My parents would constantly hammer me about not wearing enough. Even though today was supposed to be in the 70s, my dad forced me to wear my trench coat on top of my t-shirt before heading off to school. But I'm not crazy enough to wear spring/summer clothing like shorts in the winter. Yeah, there are also quite a few people around here who like to pair leggings with skirts in the winter. I never understood why they dressed like that unless it was for some formal presentation. I rarely wear leggings+skirts outside of tennis, but I can still affirm that they don't do the greatest job of keeping you warm.

 

Geezus, you're making the amiibo ordeal sound more stressful than school, lol. Checking the subreddit every few minutes feels like a bit much, but considering how competitive/active some of these collectors are, I guess it's understandable. I'm glad you managed to get your hands on Lucina, but you should really wind down for a bit, haha. This may seem a bit contradictory to my previous statement, but for your sake, I hope you'll be able to gather the rest soon!

 

I'm really happy to hear that from you! Definitely don't be afraid to approach people because many of these people can be a lot friendlier than they seem. Even if someone appears to have a resting grump face, he/she may suddenly light up when approached. I wish you the best of luck when you head off to college! 

 

Actually, I've been considering Case for a while now (even before you posted about it). I've been getting emails from the school, advertising and asking me to visit the campus. Initially, I thought these emails were sent to everyone just to inflate the applicant pool (kinda like what UChicago does), but I eventually took a look at the school and I started taking a liking to it. The UMich summer program is only two weeks, so I'm planning to devote the extra time to studying for the SAT/ACT. However, that doesn't mean I'm not planning on visiting Case, heh. I want to visit around August (definitely subject to change since I haven't scheduled anything yet), and if I like it, I'll probably apply. If I get accepted, the only way my parents will let me go is if I manage to get some scholarship/financial aid since the out of state tuition is pretty pricey--so I'm glad to hear that the school is liberal about it, haha. 

 

Playing video games before AP tests isn't too bad of an idea in my opinion. There's no use in cramming the day before the test, so why not take a break from all that studying and play some video games? As long it's not a rage-inducing game, I personally think that it's a great way to loosen up and de-stress before the test. It's good to hear that you're getting far in Spirit Tracks, but you're making it sound like it's a chore, haha. It was really easy for me to get lost in Hoenn's waters. Often times, I had to look up an online map of Hoenn just so I could keep track of the places I have or haven't visited yet, lol. And once again, congrats on the shiny Tentacool! Be sure to update me on how its training goes or its speed-run (if you're planning on it). Ahaha, I still can't get over how ambitious you are for chasing after that black trainer card. Hopefully all goes well for you!

 

Calc still felt like a entirely new concept despite having touched on it in pre-calc. I personally thought that pre-calc was just an "enhancement" of algebra 2 with a morsel of calc incorporated into it. I guess calc was a new way of approaching math. The concept felt so abstract though. Like how taking the integral of area gives volume, or how the derivative of position is velocity. I got used to it after a while, and things started making sense, but I still can't get over how... different it is to what I'm used to. It gave me a tiny head start in physics though, so I guess that's one good thing that came out of the class, haha.

 

I'm most comfortable watching anime during the nighttime. It's a weird habit of mine that eventually grew on me. I'm not too uptight about the quality as long as it's still HD or isn't anything like 240p, lol. I don't have a regular anime watching schedule either. In fact, as much as I'd hate to admit it, I'm actually a bit behind on stay night because of my chaotic schedule that I have yet to tame. But on the bright side, at least I'll be able to binge when I have the time as opposed to getting internally hurt from waiting between every episode, ehehe. I'm also not a fan of downloading stuff on my laptop. I had a bad experience with an emulator I attempted to download a while ago and ended up with a pesky trojan. I considered asking my dad for help (he's a computer science guy), but god knows what would've happened to me if I did. I was forced to seek online help to eradicate this virus, and getting rid of it was a painstakingly tedious process. So yeah, I try to avoid downloading whenever possible after that somewhat traumatic experience. In other words, lesson learned. The experience made me unreasonably paranoid about what I download, so I never download anime. But that's okay. I'm perfectly happy watching 720p/1080p on KissAnime, and I don't want to become too picky about video quality, haha. Likewise, I also feel uncomfortable when someone adjusts the position of my laptop or when I'm forced to move my laptop somewhere. It has more to do with it's problematic power jack than anything else, but it has also made me somewhat OCD about how it's positioned, ahahaha...

 

Damn, prom tickets are $95? I'm not sure what the cost of tickets is for our school, but geez. I didn't expect your school's to be that high, haha. Homecoming tickets were $15 per person here, so I'd assume that prom might be a bit more, but not nearly as much as $95. Phew, maybe I'll consult one of my senior friends later and ask how much it was. I keep forgetting to ask, but it'll happen eventually. Your school's prom also seems really organized with this whole fancy dinner stuff, so maybe that might also be why. I'm still a bit stunned that our prom ended a few weeks ago. Actually, I can't believe that it's May already, haha.

 

Believe it or not, but my workload has been lightened quite a bit because of AP tests. Most of my AP classes are in study hall mode for the time being, so I actually have a bit more free time than I used to. But that's only if I'm discounting the preparation for upcoming AP tests, lol. My schedule is still a bit rough, but it's getting better.

[What's on Your Mind?]

Oh nooo, it was practically time for me to start waking up and getting ready to go to school when you posted this!  Goodness, and you even took the time to reply in that other thread!

Hmph, as much I appreciate the sentiment, you should have put yourself first and gotten some rest, b-b-baka.

Woah, snowing even now?  Phew, I love snow and all, but I still need a solid chunk of my four seasons.  Huh, I wonder how Cleveland's going to be...

 

OMM: Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I wanted to kill a few minutes yesterday so I played a bit of Pokemon Sapphire (the old GBA one).  Bleh, I almost forgot I was in the middle of a speed run to RNG a shiny Kyogre.  I was surfing from Lilycove to Mossdeep, just trying to hit up all the trainers while avoiding as much water as possible.  I had considered stocking up on some Repels back in Lilycove, but decided against it.  I've always wanted to avoid using Repels when possible, because what if run into a shiny, right?  I was feeling impatient and just wanted to get things done as soon as could, but I forced myself to stick to my guns.  Right before reaching the opposite shore, I stumbled upon this little bastard.

Wooohooooo!!  My first ever 3rd gen non-RNG abused shiny!  It's not my favorite Pokemon and the nature and IVs aren't the best, but it's a shiny!!

I told Lady Luck not to be a stranger, but damn I didn't quite expect this.

(I'm going to run out of luck before June, seriously...)

well, in my defense, I did end up getting some sleep...even if it was on top of my calc homework

 

haha, the trees have finally blossomed after what seemed like forever

it's too bad allergies hit me like a truck this year, or else I'd be going on and on about how nice the weather is outside

I'm sure Cleveland's going to be just fine! The lake-effect snow might even be an upside for you, lol

 

also wtf how do you have so much luck finding shinies

jk, CONGRATS (again)

 

--

OMM:

this AP calc exam is going to be the death of me

for those of you guys who also need the formula sheet for calc (or maybe in the near future), you can refer to this I guess

[DRAGON BALL SUPER]

[Updates Concerning Gosho's March Hospitalization and irregular manga schedule]

Maybe something along the lines of "Updates Concerning Gosho's March Hospitalization"

[What's on Your Mind?]

Just realized my physics teacher is making the rough draft due this Friday.  God damn, I haven't even started.  And I thought this was supposed to be fun......

 

Wow, I just guessed the whole teacher not checking a homework thing right.  I guess there are only so many things that get high schoolers giddy, haha.

I'm glad your tennis coach was reasonable about it all!  Instructors that treat their activity like the most important thing in the world can be a pain, so I'm glad he's not one of those people.

 

 

 

I thought I was going to have to stay up late, but goodness you have it much much worse.  Good luck with all your work and try to catch as much sleep as you can!

I've been having pretty bad experiences with doing homework at the last minute so you're not alone.

In fact, I just fell asleep while doing another one of my calc packets and here I am now... past 5am.

 

It's the little things, haha. When teachers start bombarding you with homework, them pushing the due date back or not checking the homework at all is an absolute godsend. Sometimes I decide to live on the edge and test my luck once in a while, heh.

 

My coach does expect commitment from the team and he's been teasing me for skipping so many days. I do feel kinda bad, so I'm trying my best not to skip any more. He's been pretty chill lately, but I feel like I'm on his bad side now, ehehe.......

 

 

OMM: The weather was absolutely phenomenal today.  The sun was out, but it wasn't too hot or dry or humid, and there was a slight breeze.  The grass was super green because it's all new blades, and the sky had a gradient to it I never noticed before.  It was robin egg blue around the edges of the horizon and a deeper lake blue when you looked straight up.  There were only simple cumulus clouds in the sky, the kinds you can make images out of.  It's the kind of day you use to lie in the grass and roll around a bit, maybe even take a nap.  It was the kind of day that made up hazy memories of your childhood, of school breaks and weekends, no homework, best friends.  Not a care in the world.  It was the kind of day you used to take for granted, because damn there hasn't been a spring day like this a long while.  It's even better because the cherry blossoms are in full bloom right now.  Thank you, Mother Nature, for reminding me of the important things in life during this stressful week.

aw man, you just reminded me that it was snowing around here when I was gone

the weather here is bipolar, I swear

glad to hear that you're enjoying the weather though, haha

[What Was the Last Video Game You Played?]

 

Oohh, an orchestra trip!  Awesome, I hope you have fun!  Where are you going?  Or I guess, once you read this, it would be more like “Where did you go?”  I’d like to hear all about it, haha.  It seems all music related trips are organized this way.  The yearly band and orchestra trips at my school start on Wednesdays after school or Thursdays in the morning and last until Sunday at night (which is when I assume your trip will end).

 

(Ah yes, and I’ve decided to cut up the paragraphs, since those bloated things were getting out of hand.)

 

Yeah, getting into an Ivy League is definitely impressive.  That being said, not getting into an Ivy League isn’t a slight on your ability to do well in college either.  The biggest factor that determines whether or not an Ivy League school will accept you is luck.  It’s like seventy percent luck and thirty percent preparation, which consists of grades, extra curriculars, SAT/ACT scores, demonstrated interested, race, etc.  There are a ton of really talented and deserving people I know, both in this senior class and senior classes prior, that should have gotten into Ivy Leagues but didn’t.  Their resumes were jam-packed with stuff, and they honestly put my profile to shame.  I had a ton of respect for them and felt that at least one Ivy League school was in the bag.  It’s a shame none of these people were accepted and had to settle for something a little less.  All still really good schools and everything, but they had the potential for something much greater, that’s for sure.  And it’s only getting harder from this point out.  A perfect SAT score means much less than it did ten years ago.  I’m just really glad I got into as many as I did, haha.  Really, you have no idea how bad my math grades were sophomore and junior year.  You know I’m really honest and open about things, but gosh those grades are embarrassing enough for me not to say out loud, eheheh.  

 

I’ve considered at the very least visiting California, or heck the west coast in general.  Not sure if I’d be willing to live in LA permanently, but it’s like Young People City, USA there.  A ton of Americanized Asians and it always seems to be on the cutting on edge of what’s hip, cool, and “in”.  It’s not just rumors or hearsay either; my sister insists LA is probably one of the few places in the world that lives up to the hype of the stereotype.  It’s really enticing I must say, but as you said I’d have to give up snow.  And I’ve always been a winter person more than any other kind of season person.  I’m just more comfortable wearing a comfy sweater than a t-shirt, and I’m not sure if I’d be okay with wearing shorts all year round.  

 

Aw, but there are still so many things you can experience with the old DS, like Ace Attorney and 999.  As I suggested a while ago, you should invest in a bootleg DS chip that can play roms, like the M3 DS Simply.  It will play any DS game you want, so it would save you the money the entire AA library would cost you.  Maybe look into it in college?  

 

Gasp!  You’ve become one of those people!?  I don’t think we can be friends anymore…  Nah, just kidding, I don’t discriminate.  I’m overly attached to my gaming consoles, and while I don’t bring them around with me everywhere I wouldn’t want others to judge my character because of that, so I won’t judge a person based on how often they check their texts.  Well, of course, if they’re obnoxious about it and put lives at risk by texting while driving that’s a different case, but still.  I’m a stubborn guy, so even when I’m off to college I’ll probably be super detached from my cellphone.  I have this bad habit: whenever my parents lend me a phone to hold on to when I go on a school trip or something, I keep it off.  I only turn it on to call someone, and after the call is made I shut it right back down and don’t think about it until I need to make another call, heheh.

 

The problem with me is that even if I know I have something in common with somebody and consider talking to them, I end up chickening out because I’m just shy and self-conscious enough to keep my mouth shut.  As I’ve said before, I don’t think I give people very good first impressions, honest.  I don’t smile very often, and my resting face gives off bad vibes.  I also stutter a bit more than I’d like with strangers.  I feel like I’d scare off most people I try to get to know.  This is why I probably don’t say anything unless approached, eheh.  Pathetic, I know, but I can’t really help it.  I’ll try to get my act together when I go to college though.  And yes, I’m also really grateful for our friendship brought on by our mutual interested in Pokemon.  You’d think someone like me would have no luck when it comes to making good friends, haha.

 

I was actually kind of surprised when I found that you liked PSG.  As you can imagine, it’s something nearly all girls I know, anime watchers or not, would steer clear from given its heavy sexualization and profanity.  Honestly, I’m rather impressed you decided to watch it instead of brush it off as nothing more than pure fan service.  What’s even more impressive is that you were open-minded enough to not nit-pick and judge and dislike it just for the sake of disliking it, so good on you for that!  I’m curious though, what made you want to watch PSG of all anime?  It’s a series I’ve considered watching for a while now, but I haven’t gotten around to it because, you know, I still have quite a few on-hold shows that need to be dealt with first.  Not to mention, PSG is relatively low priority for me right now, so it won’t be for a while when I watch it, hah.  If you’re one for the vulgar and profane, I’d recommend an anime I mentioned earlier: Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san.  It’s nowhere near as popular as PSG, I think because there’s no fan service, but its sense of humor is horrifically insane.  If you have the time and are in the mood for it, check it out.  Ah yes, speaking of SnK, I don’t think you realize this but the second half of Levi’s backstory OVA was released and subbed a few weeks ago, so be sure to get around to that!

 

I’m not all that impressed with the changes myself, and they’re ignoring a lot of issues with the physical education and health classes, but whatever it’s a step in the right direct for those lucky to be still attending the school in the coming years and for those that are willing to put in the extra work.  It’s my high school’s 50th anniversary or something, so that’s pretty cool.  The newspaper just published a few articles related to that, quoting some old documents and stuff from years ago.  It’s crazy to see how much everything has changed, haha.

 

After much debating and moments when my mom barged in my room while I was watching anime to “talk”, it’s pretty much final I’m going to Case Western.  My parents wouldn’t have completely prevented me from going to any school I was accepted to, but they would have strongly advised against it.  My mom is going to respect my decision, and just wanted to make sure I knew what I was going to get myself into, which I did.  The accelerated integrated studies program is going to be a bit of work, but hey if it means being able to avoid having to pay up for a graduate school down the road (which my sister says is expensive and a pain) and graduate with everyone else in four years, I’m all for it!  I haven’t sent in my deposit yet, but I’ll probably do that later tonight or at the very latest tomorrow, so by the time you read or at least by the time you get around to replying the decision is going to be final.

 

Yeah, I got into the hunt “late”, and but late I mean one month after the initial release of wave one at the end of November, haha.  In any other case, given it’s already the end of April, you’d think I’m more of a veteran hunter, but by amiibo standards you’re late if you didn’t get the holy trinity (Marth, Wii Fit Trainer, Villager) for MSRP at Target, heh.  I’m not sure why I absolutely needed to get my hands on amiibo after I made the connection to F/sn.  After all, I could have just made 8 level nine CPUs duke it out and be satisfied that way, but I guess since amiibo are crazy strong and because you can name them and have their name appear on the victory screen it would be nice to get physical counter parts.  Not to mention, some extra Nintendo merchandise can’t hurt, right?  I knew Smash 4 was going to be a long lasting game that I would have fun playing for potentially even ten years, so I wanted to take advantage of everything it had to offer.  It’s not too unreasonable for Walmart to put up pre-orders at three in the morning, since that’s midnight on the west coast.  This of course put west coast amiibo hunters at a significant advantage (huh, maybe living in LA has more perks than I thought).  My dad would probably be really annoyed if I woke him up so early/late to order a “toy”, but he’d have gotten it done.  The pre-orders for Lucina and Robin were up for a solid hour, and pre-orders for the rest of wave 4 lasted a little bit longer, which is really good.  It was a shame I missed out on that chance, buuuuuuuuut…

 

(new paragraph to make things easy on the eyes)

(edit: never mind, typed it all up and there’s still a long paragraph, gomen…)

… I managed to get Walmart’s second big wave of pre-orders on the 22nd!  You probably saw me post about this elsewhere, but I feel like I can vent more freely here (hope you don’t mind).  I check the amiibo subreddit religiously, and it’s one of the tabs I always have open including my e-mail.  I got home on the Wednesday after school (whoo, happy Earth Day) and was honestly pretty pooped out, but slipped into my regular schedule of logging into the subreddit to refresh every couple of minutes while I checked anime news and whatnot.  My mom called and told me I should take a nap, knowing how tired I must have been, and I told her I would.  I had actually planned on catching a few z’s, and the subreddit looked like it was having a slow day anyway, but for whatever reason I didn’t.  Thank goodness too, because at 4:34 PM EST, a few minutes before my dad was expected to get back home from work, someone posted that Robin and Lucina were back in stock on Walmart.  I was right there when it happened.  “submitted just now”, “0 comments”, the whole nine yards.  I immediately clicked on the link, tried adding Lucina to my cart, and when I did a dialogue popped up saying the item just sold out.  Welp, looks like it was a single canceled pre-order or a glitch or something.  Happens a few times every day on the subreddit, whatever.  I went back and started refreshing the topic page, waiting for others to post that the pre-orders were somehow already out.  To my surprise (and very soon worry), people started posting that they secured a Robin/Lucina pre-order.  Okay, good for them, they somehow beat me to the punch.  No big deal, I don’t have a PayPal and needed to wait for my dad to come home anyway.  But then it was more than just a handful of people.  It was a lot of people.  After about three minutes, around ten to fifteen people found success.  Hold up, this wasn’t a glitch or canceled orders, this was real.  I started freaking out.  I opened up Lucina’s page again, and clicked on that enticing orange pre-order button but Walmart adamantly declared they were out of stock.  This couldn’t be right.  I read through more comments and realized that some people pre-ordered fine while others were told they were out of stock.  People were freaking out, in good and bad ways.  Why could some people order and others not?  What was going on?  Comments poured in by the second and it was becoming exceedingly difficult to get a grasp of the situation.  On the subreddit, people started opening up new topics to made heads and tails of the situation.  Some suggested it was a browser issue.  But that wasn’t the case since sometimes Chrome worked, other times it didn’t.  Firefox?  50/50.  Internet Explorer?  Sometimes.  Incognito/private mode?  Varying amounts of luck.  People thought maybe it had to do with having a Walmart account or not, but that wasn’t the case either.  Geographical location had no bearing on the issue.  Clearing cookies and cached files didn’t always work.  PC vs Mac vs mobile didn’t make a difference.  The subreddit was losing it and so was I.  I grabbed up all the Internet-accessing devices I had in my house and tried to order Lucina.  I made a Walmart account as fast as I could and hoped my dad would arrive home soon.  He eventually did, and by that time my brother and I (yes, he helped me try to pre-order the unpre-orderable) hadn’t found any success.  I tried all combinations of anything I could, and I was a mental wreck copying and pasting and typing stuff into half-asleep computers.  Somehow I randomly got incognito Chrome on my main HP laptop to work, though I swear it wasn’t ten minutes ago.  I was hyperventilating at this point, because it had been over twenty minutes and this amount of time to pre-order during the day was unheard of.  My dad was kind of confused but sensed I was anxious like you couldn’t believe so he used his PayPal info to order her for me.  After navigating through a really glitchy and slow process, bam: “thank you for order etc.”  I was stoked.  Damn, I still haven’t fully recovered.  I got my confirmation e-mail at 4:59 PM EST and after sticking around the subreddit to watch others either succeed like me or flounder and fail in hopelessness, the pre-orders ended just a few minutes after five o’clock.  I had snatched a Lucina with barely any time left.  I was left breathless and physically exhausted.  Staying up late the night before didn’t help.  What a day…  If it weren’t for your birthday present, I’d have thought this was the best day of the month, potentially the year.  I feel so accomplished and so lucky.  Things could have gone wrong at many times, even right at the beginning if I had taken a nap.  I’m so grateful, and I couldn’t be happier!  I check every day to make sure my order hasn’t been canceled, and thankfully it hasn’t been so far.  Maybe this is just the romanticist side of me speaking, but I’m glad you wished me luck in your previous response.  I believe it made a difference, silly as it may sound, haha.  I’m so so so glad I have Saber, ready to fight alongside my purchased Lancer and Rider.  Now I just need to Wait/sit tight (you see what I did there?) for the remaining Servants to be summoned.

 

Oof, high A’s you say?  Eheheheh, welp, maybe it’s just your grading system is a lot easier than mine, or maybe it’s because I have lower standards than you do, but when I said my grades went up I didn’t really mean by that much… heheh (how did any college accept me, seriously?)  Though I guess it’s not like I particularly like calc or anything.  Some parts still really irk me, and it’s still one of my least favorite classes of this year, no, of all time (it’s math after all).  Haha, sorry, but it’s just not that bad for a math class.  Still really dislike having it first period every day.

 

I never bring my own laptop with me on trips, so I’ve just never bothered with having tabs open in advance or downloading episodes prior to leaving.  I’ve just always had good and often times misplaced faith in the hotels, haha.  I might consider this when my family goes to Disney World.  Since it’ll likely be a significant amount of time, I should probably bring my laptop.  I only didn’t bring it with me while visiting colleges because I didn’t want it to get banged up while unpacking and repacking (I’m really protective of this thing).  I actually download my anime quite a bit.  Every Saturday, when UBW is to be released at 1:30 PM EST by HorribleSubs, I’m sitting there hitting the refresh button.  The moment the 1080p version is out, I immediately click on the link and start torrenting, and the moment it’s done I dim the lights, lock the door, turn up the volume, and watch through the whole thing without skipping the opening or ending.  I did something similar with SnK.  *cough* Of course I don’t have an amiibo and anime obsession ahahahah… hahaha… aha… ha… (please send help…)

 

Dehydration, huh?  That sounds rough.  I've actually never had problems with dehydration, as I have the habit of drinking tons of water all the time.  Not to mention, I'm actually more prone to sweating a lot.  I think my body just has a lot of water inside it, heheh.  It's kind of annoying, especially when I'm not exercising and it's just a hot day and I'm sweating profusely while everyone else is a bit uncomfortable but not dripping all over the place.  It's one of the reasons I prefer the winter to the summer; I just have too much water in my system to live in a humid or warm environment, haha.  Anyway, don't push yourself too hard while playing tennis!

 

That carnation fundraiser sounds nice.  I feel like people in my school just didn't really care enough for fundraising.  It seemed boring, tedious, and kind of tacky.  I think singing grams were pretty popular around Valentine's Day, but that's pretty much it.  I'm not one to talk though, since I didn't participate in any fundraisers and I guess I'm part of the problem.  Prom tickets are pretty much done being sold, and they're already organizing a seating chart for the dinner portion apparently.  I didn't realize there was a sit down and eat aspect to prom.  Hm, the more you know...

 

Leaving up the Christmas tree until spring isn’t actually a normal occurrence.  Usually we don’t put up a tree at all, and I guess we just forgot that it’s there.  I don’t think it’s going to come down until… ever…

Edit: My parents just took it down today, haha.

I'm sorry for being so inconsistent recently, eheh.  I rushed while typing this so I went back and added a bit to the end.

 

Gosh, I'm terribly sorry for being so late. With the trip and APs coming up, my schedule has been getting pretty screwy lately.

gomen, gomen.

 

Haha, yup, you guessed right. Left Wednesday and got back home Sunday night. And gosh, it was so much fun. We got to see an underground waterfall and we went to an aquarium. I originally thought that going to Tennessee wouldn’t be as eventful as some of our previous trips, and boy was I wrong. A lot of people liked this trip more than the Orlando trip from last year since it was so hectic. This year’s trip gave us much more chill time, which was exactly what I needed to escape from school stresses for a short time period. One of my highlights from the trip was relaxing on the hotel patio next to a bonfire with a bunch of friends. It was quite lively, but relaxing at the same time—it’s a bit hard to explain, haha. I put my head down for a while and just stared at the sky. Granted most of the stars were still drowned out by light pollution, but the sky was still breathtaking. There was a perfect ratio of clouds vs. sky that night. The clouds were effortlessly passing by the moon, and the way they were backlit was absolutely stunning. I had some small talk with a few sophomore and junior friends and just sitting by the bonfire with everyone, chatting and clowning around like there was no tomorrow—it was such a nice stress reliever for me. All of my worries were temporarily suppressed and I was at bliss. It’s a shame that this was short-lived, because it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a while. I just can’t seem to gather the words to explain how at peace I was, ahahaha…The bus ride back was also fun-ish. During the first few hours, we drove through some hilly areas, and the elevation was high enough for us to see the clouds up close. The cumulus clouds were very, very low hanging, and we even managed to drive through some of them as if they were fog. It was quite relaxing to see, haha. Most of the people on the bus were sleeping by then, so only a few of my friends and I were awake at that point. It’s funny because we were frantically trying to finish our homework while everyone else was sleeping soundly. Gosh, we kept telling ourselves that we would finish it back at the hotel, but we never got around to it, ehehehe… Seriously, you wouldn’t believe some of the excuses we made to avoid doing homework, lol. As for the festival, both of our orchestras received top marks. I thought it was strange because there wasn’t a single orchestra we were competing with in this one—they were all bands. One of the higher level bands was playing the fifth movement of Symphony Fantastique (Berlioz) which we played in our winter concert. They played it entirely without an orchestra, and it was… odd, to say the least. It just didn’t feel the same without hearing the strings, haha. I guess it just didn’t feel as climactic at some points. Apparently, this was also only the second time when an orchestra managed to top all competing bands in this specific festival, which felt like a pretty awesome accomplishment. Also, I’m curious—how was your band trip last year? Did you also compete in the Orlando Music Fest?

 

While it’s true that getting into an Ivy League is quite the accomplishment, it shouldn’t be something that people should get all worked up about. There’s nothing wrong with transferring into one if they aren’t accepted at first, haha. It’s pretty easy to predict who’s getting into Ivy Leagues around here though. If he/she isn’t getting into Harvard, he/she’s getting into Yale or UPenn. But sometimes, I’m more surprised about the acceptances than the rejections. Some people are getting into these top tier schools when I feel that other people are much more deserving of them. Maybe it has something to do with colleges looking at applications holistically, but it truly has led me to believe that getting into certain schools is just a game of luck. My grades aren’t looking too great either at this point. My freshman and sophomore years were pretty solid for the most part, and everything went downhill after junior year started. I’m still trying to get out of this huge hole I dug myself into last semester, but with the school year ending within a matter of months, it’s probably not going to happen. I’ll be taking relatively easier APs next year (with the exception of Physics C since I’m still debating on whether or not to take it), so hopefully I’ll be able to hoist myself up enough for colleges by the end of first semester next year. At this point, I’ll be relying on my standardized test scores to make up for this huge mess. I’ll be cramming up on my SAT subject tests after APs are over and on SAT/ACT practice over the summer to squeeze in some last minute improvement. Gosh, it makes me so mad that I didn’t try as much as I could have last semester—especially since this “downhill trend” is going to look awful on college applications.

 

Wait wait wait. You’ve never gone to the west coast before? California has gorgeous weather all year long and I’ve been heavily considering about moving there, ahahaha. I do enjoy winter (especially during the holidays), but the winter around here can be quite harsh sometimes. December is easily the best winter month, and everything else after that is just… bland. Dark, cold, and just eventless. January has always been one of the more depressing months for me, and February isn’t much improvement either, to be honest. However, I’m still not willing to give up winter for the sake of moving to someplace like LA. It’d be nice to vacation there once in a while, but I don’t think I’d be the type of person who’d live there long-term. I do enjoy wearing shorts and capris when I have the opportunity. Although I love wearing jeans, they can feel a bit restricting at times, haha. I also love wearing t-shirts, but I still love my sweaters all the same.

 

Yup, definitely going to look into a bootleg DS chip after senior year is over. I’ve been meaning to for a while now ever since my friend mentioned it a few years ago.

 

I’ve assimilated into this technology-dependent society far too much than I would have liked, to be honest. I never realized how much I “needed” a cellphone until junior year started. In sophomore year, it just sat in my backpack and the only time I took it out was for calling or when I needed to charge it. Now checking my cellphone has become a daily habit of mine which can’t be stopped at this point. My friends might text me asking for help, and the tennis team might message us with last minute changes on matches and events. As much as I’d like to put my phone down, I just can’t anymore. It’s actually quite convenient, in a way, but it’s also tiresome having to constantly check my cellphone just so that I won’t miss an update.

 

Haha, I also have a tendency to stutter but most people seem to overlook that during most of our conversations. I brush it off like it’s nothing because it doesn’t bother me. If I’m with my friends, they might tease me (especially with some of the freudian slips I make), but it’s all in good fun, heh. It’s usually not the content of the conversation that’s memorable, but the impression that it leaves off. I don’t care what we’re talking about as long as the conversation was mutually effortless. I can talk about anything and everything as long as it’s not too personal, so it can be easy for me to approach some people. There are, however, certain people who I find myself having a hard time talking to. People who tend to travel in heavy cliques are people who I tend to avoid and/or have trouble talking to. I could awkwardly ask one of these people what the homework was for a certain class, and the “conversation” would end there. There’s nothing to lose when talking to strangers, haha. Worst comes to worst, you might have a “bad” conversation, but it won’t really matter he/she is just someone you met in a line. Sometimes, you might meet that same person again at a workplace or something, and the next thing you know, you guys are laughing it off and suddenly he/she becomes a real good friend of yours. I love that feeling, and whatever risk that comes with it is totally worth it. Please do try it out sometime! I’m sure you’re much more capable of making friends than you make yourself out to be, haha. I mean, just look at the range of conversations we’re having nowadays, lol.

 

The purpose of PSG wasn’t to promote profanity, which is why I was perfectly okay with it. The profanity was just added humor, and it did work in its favor at times. What caught my attention was the art style of the show. It seemed to be satirizing western cartoons, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. So I tried it out, and I was not disappointed. There were certain episodes/scenes that made me feel a bit uncomfortable (mostly the episode that showcased a bunch of retching), which is why my enjoyment ended up as an 8-9 rather than a 10. I’m not the one to indulge in vulgarity or profanity unless it’s for humor because I’m not too big on ecchi or hentai. But I do find certain kinds of vulgar or profane humor to be highly amusing (I can thank the internet for that). Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san sounds pretty interesting after reading some reviews, so I’ll check out a few clips when I have time. And thanks for the reminder once again! I’ll be sure to get around to watching the rest of Levi’s backstory later as well!

 

So CWRU is your final decision, huh. Good for you, and tell me how it goes in the fall! It sounds like you’re really going to enjoy it there, which I’m glad about, haha.

 

Oh damn, that must have been quite the emotional rollercoaster for you. But I’m really happy that you managed to secure a Lucina amiibo! It’s crazy how glitches work sometimes, but geezus, 4:59? And it ended only a few minutes after? Haha, I can only imagine how relieved you must’ve felt. Perhaps “catharsis” would be a better way to describe it, heh. Glad to hear that everything worked out in the end! Best of luck to you summoning your remaining servants!

 

I don’t know how the grading system is for AB, but I’ve had friends who’ve dropped BC for AB at the end of first semester. According to them, it’s was a lot easier since nearly all the material in AB was already covered by BC by the time they dropped the class. Most of my AB friends also said that the class is much easier than pre-calc (most of them also took honors pre-calc instead of regular). The grading system stayed relatively the same—rarely any curves. Hmm, I’m not sure. Maybe AB is a bit slower than honors pre-calc? (we managed to touch on derivatives and concavity in that class before taking the final). Much of calc is just built on the fundamentals coming from pre-calc, so maybe that made it easier for them as well. Also, that’s funny, because I also have calc first period, haha though it’s probably just a silly coincidence

 

I never bring my laptop with me either—I was referring to mobile devices like phones and tablets, lol. I also don’t find the need to download anime. I know a few sites that often have 1080p in their video players, so I don’t have an issue with the video quality. But, of course, I don’t watch anything unless my parents are away or sleeping. I can’t risk having them barging into my room in the middle of an episode then confiscating my laptop. Schoolwork also gets in the way of anime watching so I usually save it for the weekends if I can. Haha, I’m quite protective of my laptop as well as it almost never leaves my desk. 

 

Dehydration is only a problem for me when I’m playing tennis in hot, stuffy conditions. It’s not until my head starts throbbing when I can anticipate an oncoming headache. By that point, it’s already too late to rehydrate myself, and I have to resort to an ibuprofen pill before it gets worse. This has been going on for the past few years so I’m pretty used to it by now. Sweating usually isn’t much of a problem for me unless, like I said before, I’m playing in hot, stuffy conditions—which is usually the cause of my dehydration.

 

Haha, I don’t think fundraisers are boring, tedious, or tacky at all. Well, I guess it depends on the occasion since the Noodles fundraiser is wayyy too overused around here. But at the same time, I don’t participate in fundraisers as much as I should. I usually won’t have my parents drive me to a restaurant to support a cause since I don’t have that kind of freedom. A lot of people (including teachers) can be very enthusiastic about fundraisers, so I guess it all evens out in the end, ehehe… For prom, most people either go to the mall or a fancy restaurant (or at least that’s what I gathered after being bombarded by those kinds of photos on Facebook, lol). Tell me how prom goes if you decide to attend! If not, maybe tell me how it goes for some of your friends, haha.

 

And once again, sorry for being so late on the reply without a warning beforehand :c

[The Disappearance of Conan Edogawa: The Worst Two Days in History]

The Moonlighters are currently the only sub group I know that is attempting to sub the special.

I think I read somewhere that their translator is having laptop issues, so there isn't any way to predict when they'll finish.

 

However, if you guys are willing to follow their updates, you can visit their website:

http://the-moonlighters.ml/

[What Did you Google Lately / last ?]

I use Swagbucks for all my "free" gift card needs.  "Free" in quotes, because some people may consider time to be money. 

I'm not sure if it's better or worse than Bing, but I'm close to earning $50 from it, so hey!

 

Also, if you're interested in making a Swagbucks account, help a bro out and use my referral link: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Akazora

made an account just for the helluvit, lol

 

probably not going to use it for much, but I'm happy to help whenever I can, haha

[Quote Factory]

You have a point there.

Seriously though, how long

will this convo last?

it is kinda off 

topic from this thread, so I'll

probably stop here

[What's on Your Mind?]

Oh my gosh, how do you do it?  I got a lot of sleep these last two nights because seniors were exempt from this state testing for the underclassmen, and yet I was still dozing off in the middle of physics.  Maybe it was just a force of habit, since that class is honestly pretty bad and I don't learn much even if I do pay attention.  And while I don't think I'll be participating in the official senior skip day (whenever that is) I'll most likely take the day off and have a friend taxi me around to my local Toys-R-Us's, Best Buys, Walmarts, and Targets on May 29th to nab a Lucina on release date if I can't get my hands on a pre-order.

 

Speaking of physics, I'm actually going to have to write up my report on the Wii and Wii U.  Some sneaky little bastard claimed the DS topic before I could, bleh.  I'm not really complaining though, since this is still going to be lots of fun.

 

Ahh, you can't expect to say that and not get me curious, haha.  What kind of miracles are we talking about?  My-teacher-didn't-check-the-homework-I-didn't-do level miracles, or water-to-wine level miracles?  Also, I'm fairly certain you are the only dskfjsdflkdaalkdfg alive at the moment.

lol, it really varies day by day

there are some days where I miraculously manage to get 5-6 hours but still end up tired af during the school day

we also had a bunch of state testing for juniors but since it wasn't timed, I managed to squeeze in some nap time after finishing

 

haha, tell me how your project goes

sounds like loads of fun, heh

 

as for the miracles...

our English teacher checks in our homework randomly, and on the two days that I didn't do it, he didn't check it in, ahahahahahaha...

...and about a week ago, I discovered that I had an invitational tennis tournament that conflicted with the orchestra trip

I already skipped a match for a state conference I had to attend, and I'd be skipping another match plus the tournament for the trip

the coach made it real clear that skipping more than two matches would result in getting kicked off the team (a tournament technically counts as three matches)... so yeah, in total, I'd be skipping four matches if you want to put it that way

I couldn't skip the orchestra trip since it was mandatory for everyone to go, and I was a nervous wreck when telling my coach about this

surprisingly, he was okay with it

and it was a huge relief

I was so happy

I just

skjfhajghdklgjhdfj;gsdf;gsdflgdfl;kg

 

 

OMM: I still can't get over the fact that I managed to secure a pre-order.  I'm so happy, my mind is spinning...  And to think I would have missed her if I had taken a nap, which I was seriously contemplating.  Wow, just... wow.  Thank you Lady Luck, I owe you one.  Don't be a stranger!

CONGRATUFREAKINGLATIONS

 

 

--

OMM:

so apparently, I have two calc packets to do, four essays to read and answer questions about, rhetoric exercises to do, a 300-500 word essay to write, and an editorial cartoon analysis to do... which is all due tomorrow

 

the only thing I got done on the bus ride back was one calc packet

at least the trip was fun.

 

rip sleep.

[What Did you Google Lately / last ?]

I still remember the time when yahoo had a fair market share when it comes to "searching stuffs".

Dunno what happened lol. Google just took over.

 

Bing... what can I say...?

yahoo used to be my main search engine (and even my homepage) back when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth

but you didn't hear that from me

 

my friend uses bing just to spite me, lol

 

 

#AllSearchEnginesMatter

#SearchEngineEquality

 

 

if Bing has one saving grace it's that you can be rewarded actual gift cards if you earn enough points through searching things 

lol that's just desperate of them

but I actually might end up looking into that later......

 

 

Hey now, don't forget Ask Jeeves, lol.

ahahahaha, I remember when I used to use Ask.com

I never referred to it as Ask Jeeves though, haha.

[Quote Factory]

It does not take long

to save up for a DS.

2DS, that is. 

but if I buy the

console I won't get any-

-thing productive done.

[What Was the Last Video Game You Played?]

 

Ayup, she’s been working there for a few years now.  She studied business in Dartmouth, though I’m not certain what she majored in.  It was something along the lines of a major in finance and a minor in English, or something.  Not the most impressive portfolio on the surface, but hey it’s Dartmouth so it works.  Dartmouth doesn’t even have a designated business school, and the only reason why my sister went there was because she didn’t know what she wanted to study and so applied and ultimately attended to generally highly ranked schools.  If she knew what she wanted to go into business as a high school senior, she probably would have applied to a more cost efficient school.  After all, though everyone starts off Googling “best colleges” and ogling at all the Ivy Leagues lined up nice and neat, everyone eventually realizes those are just schools generally ranked.  A lot of the highly ranked business schools are black horses that most people have never about, just look at this list.  In fact, almost no Ivy Leagues are listed.  Dartmouth is not at all known for its strong business program, because it doesn’t actually have one, haha.  My sister was still able to use its name status to land her a job at Deutsche Bank in NYC immediately after graduation.  It paid a lot and the benefits were good, but my sister had a rough time because she worked long hours, her bosses were kind of bad, and all her income for the first few years went toward paying off her college debts.  That’s why she applied for a job at Disney, in the finance sector.  It didn’t pay as much as the benefits weren’t as great, but the hours were good, the workplace was comfy, and, well, she lives in LA which I hear is amazing, especially for those who want mild weather and clear skies year round.  According to my sister, it’s paradise.  Once you’re there once, you never want to leave, unless you’re craving snow I guess.  She has a lot of free time now.  Sometimes she goes to museums, other times to charity events, and occasionally she gets together with friends to go on a road trip.  Every once in a while, since my sister’s a social butterfly, she’ll also go out to a club and party, drink a bit.  Even though she’s just started graduate school at UCLA and she’s been a bit busier, I think she’s still enjoying life.  Eheh, I know I’ve strayed off topic quite a bit, sorry about that.  Whenever I’m waiting in line for something, if possible I whip out my DS and play a bit.  Nothing too big, maybe a bit of grinding or soft resetting or a solo run.  I can imagine how strange I must look, standing in lines in the modern day and playing with a rickety old flip-screen stylus device instead of the smart phones every third person is staring into.  If I’m with my brother and/or sister, we talk and whatnot, and if I’m with friends or acquaintances we chat a bit as well.  But I’m not one to start conversations with strangers, not even ones my age.  I’ve been approached on occasion by friendly people like you and I reciprocate just fine, but I’m never one to initiate conversations.  Heh, I kind of regret it, because I’ve met some really awesome people and friends through sporadic convos.  There’s probably a lot I’m missing out on.  Well, that’s fine, as long as there are nice people like you going around willing to put up with dorks like me, life’s not too bad, haha.

 

Haha, I’ve been on MAL long enough to realize that some shows are severely underrated or overrated on there.  It has to do with the way the ranking system works.  I don’t think you’re aware of this, but your vote only adds to the average score if you’ve seen one-fifth of the anime, or some other arbitrary number.  This rewards longer shows and hurts shorter ones.  For example, let’s say 1,000 people start watching an anime that is planned to have 25 episodes.  The beginning is, for whatever reason, a train wreck and 900 people drop the show after watching only 1-4 episodes, giving the series 1s-7s.  The other 100 stick it out to the very end and think that the anime is a masterpiece.  They give it 8s and 9s and 10s, and the overall average on MAL ends up being way up in the 9s or at least high 8s.  The vast majority who watched it and disliked it were completely silenced by the algorithm that ranks shows on the site.  Of course, my example is an exaggeration but it demonstrates how broken it can be.  In theory, it prevents people from trolling and giving shows low scores out of hate, but it’s not like they can’t just set the anime as “25/25 complete” and do the same thing.  This is why long shows are severely favored.  If you watch a whopping 39 episodes of a 200 episode anime before dropping it, all that time you spent watching a series (more time than most anime) is all for naught as your opinion isn’t represented.  However, one only needs to watch a measly three episodes of a 12 episode anime to have their rating count.  This is why as much as I use and reply on MAL, it’s rating and ranking needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  Shows like Gintama are severely over-represented (just take a look at the top anime page) while I’ve found a handful of hidden gems rotting away in the 7 or even 6 range, and it’s a terrible pity.  Shows this season like Kekkai Sensen and Punchline are falling under the radar.  I’ve never seen PSG, but similar shows with raw humor like Yondemasu yo Azazel-san are easily swept under the rug and short one-episoders like Harmonie and Voices of a Distant Star are buried into oblivion.  It took a lot of digging and good luck to find these, as you can imagine, haha.  Anywhoooo, this is the second time I’ve rambled so far, and I haven’t even finished my second paragraph yet.  Ohh, are you talking about this SnK trailer, the first ever footage of the series revealed?  Goodness, it’s over five million views now!  December 8th, 2012 huh?  I checked anime news regularly even back then, so that must have been the day I discovered the show.  Time’s been flying ever since.  It still boggles my mind how big this show got.  The trailer had only one to two thousand views when I first saw it.  Same goes for the first opening, which has nearly twenty million views now.

 

Yeah, sasuga oppressive Edison Township school system.  Ah well, I’m out of there soon enough.  It may have limited me in a sense, and I probably would have been happier in a different district, but I managed and I turned out alright if I may say so myself.  I’m not a complete shut-in and I think I’ll work fine in the real world, haha.  Phew, Calc 3?  That’s a thing?  Goodness, that’s crazy.  I know my township is actually trying to improve upon the education system and expand the curriculum by adding an “applied calculus” class that didn’t exist before for seniors who show promise and take an AP Calc course over their sophomore-junior summer and “super calc” as a junior, whatever the Devil that is.  It’s going to be implemented next year.  I guess it’s a step in the right direction.  I see, I realized I never even knew rackets strings could break in the first place.  I didn’t even know there were places to get them fixed, like tennis stores.  That’s really good though!  I guess it can be seen as kind of weird if you get a bit too excited over breaking your strings, but if it’s an indication of how much spin you’ve been putting on the ball then it can’t be all too bad.

 

Brandeis is a pretty neat school, for sure.  It’s one of the newer ones I applied to and probably one of the smallest ones as well.  I liked it a lot over the summer when I visited it, but I’ve since realized it’s probably not the best fit for me.  It has one of the newest and most underdeveloped business programs out of any of the school I’ve applied to.  While it’s overall a great school, I don’t think I’d walk out with a very impressive resume which is one of the reasons I’ve decided not to go.  It’s good that your sister seemed to have a good time there!  What did she study?  Oh gosh, an anime convention.  I’m going to attend one at the end of the school year right before summer starts.  It’s called AnimeNEXT, and it’s pretty much the biggest (or only noteworthy) anime convention in sad, old New Jersey.  Eheheh, I actually haven’t told my parents I’m going yet.  At the end of last year’s AnimeNEXT, they were selling ticket bundles at a discounted price four about a one-week period, for those who knew they were going to attend 2015’s.  A group of my friends convinced me I should go, so I had someone else pay for my ticket.  I’m going to officially ask my parents after AP tests are over and pay him back then, haha.  I’m actually surprised your parents are okay with letting your sister go to a school so far away.  Sure, the Boston area is famous for having an insanely high concentration of good schools, but the drive seems pretty crazy.  My parents only allowed my sister to go to Dartmouth because it was an Ivy League and because, as their first child, they naturally tend to spoil her a bit.  I don’t mean that in a negative way, since she deserves it, haha.  The thing is, my sister was the one who didn’t always handle the distance well.  Apparently, my sister broke down crying her first semester because she was missing home and that sort of put my mom on edge.  Of course, as you could probably tell from the first paragraph, my sister and I are on completely different wavelengths when it comes to a lot things, so I really doubt I’m going to end up like that, but mothers will be mothers.  Also, before moving to Cali my sister had gotten over her home-sickness, so after a decent amount of squabbling my mom let my sister go.  She didn’t actually have much of a choice, since my sister applied for a job in secret, heheh.  My mom just absolutely needs to see my face every once in a while, and while I can definitely video chat her (I’ve never video chatted anyone before, but there’s a first for everything) she still worries about things like my health.  Also, if I ever go back home, I’m going to have to take a plane trip and while I enjoy those my mom is relatively terrified of them and doesn’t really approve of me using that mode of transport.  Ah well, as much as like CWRU my second choice is University of Maryland.  It’s a school my mom would much rather I attend, and though she’s been pretty stubbornly arguing with me this past week since my last post on this topic, just recently she’s starting to lose steam and telling me to do whatever I want as long as I don’t come back crying to her.  I don’t think I’ll be able to make a final decision until the very last day, April 30th, since deposits are due the first of May.  Oh gosh, and Hurricane Sandy was awesome.  I know a lot of people were affected negatively, but here in Edison we just got some strong winds and power outages.  School was out for about a week, so it felt like another fall break, especially since our power went back up after only a day and a half, which was great.  It sucked for those who had no power for the duration of the week though.  UMich is pretty darn cheap in-state, but goodness me that out-of-state tuition is absolutely insane.  It’s nearly on the level of a private school’s cost.  I guess that’s one way to keep to the in-state vs out-of-state quota in check, heh.  I know you probably haven’t thought of this yet, but what kind of colleges do you think you’ll prefer?  Small or large ones?  Nearby or far away?

 

Mhm, I actually never really considered getting amiibo beforehand.  It sucks I didn’t realize Marth would work as Assassin until after the November release date.  He was super easy to preorder back in October and not that hard to find in stores for about a week.  It wasn’t until winter break, when I re-watched Fate/Zero with my sister and started playing Smash 4 that I got really hyped about both and started making connections between F/sn and amiibo.  Luckily, I was able to preorder Sheik and Ike successfully.  Sheik isn’t very rare, but Ike was a to-be unicorn, so I have that going for me.  It’s only going to be harder from this point onward though.  Speaking of which, Walmart released their preorders at an ungodly time just yesterday at three in the goddamn morning and sold out an hour later.  Ironically, you know for this past week that I’ve been staying up super later, well past that time, but Thursday night into Friday morning I unfortunately decided to catch up on sleep.  I can’t believe I was so close yet so far.  If the preorders were only a day or two earlier, I would have been on reddit when it happened and gotten a Lucina, even if it meant waking up parents to snag them, since I don’t have a Paypal or anything.  This sucks, and now I only have Amazon and Target to pin my hopes on.  Target said they weren’t going to be doing preorders, but their intel has been kind of shady when it comes to amiibo so I’ll be keeping an eye out.  Oh, and also, my Mewtwo download codes were e-mailed to me a few days ago.  I haven’t put him in my Wii U version yet, but definitely will when I get the chance.  I would still prefer to give the 3DS code to you over anything else, but the e-mail clearly stated the code expires July 31st of this year, which is a day after your birthday I think?  Sigh, that’s a bummer.  The only thing I can recommend is find a really nice friend of yours who has a 3DS and have him or her buy you Smash.  You can quickly borrow your friend’s 3DS to download Mewtwo onto your game, and then hold onto the cartridge and not play it until you can afford a 3DS/2DS of your own.  Of course, you’re going to have to pay your friend back later for the game, haha.

 

Funny thing is, I’ve had a somewhat better impression of math since I started calc, in other words, when I started senior year, haha.  I don’t count pre-calc since that class was just algebra 3 and I detested algebra, eheheh…  It’s not like I particularly “understand” calc more than algebra, or that I’m more fascinated by it.  It’s just that the class is a lot easier, so maybe I’m convincing myself it’s not as difficult?  Hmm, analyzing can be good, and as much as I like critiquing things I read and watch, I do try and remind myself I’m in it to have fun.  I’m not going to be an English teacher or professor when I grow up (er, I least I don’t think I am), so I don’t always have to be so high strung about things.  Even for anime that I watch, sometimes I give or dock points for petty, subjective reasons.  Hey, I’m only human after all, right?  So though you may read some of my ramblings on good or bad anime elsewhere on this forum, take it with a grain of salt.  I can be a blind fanboy just as often as I’m an unreasonable grader, hahah.  Spring break was pretty fun I guess, but only in retrospect.  The more I try to remember how it went down, the more I realize how much of a mess it was.  I was sick as could be most of the time off, and even now I’m not fully recovered.  I have a really dry cough and I’m sucking on Ricola as I type.  Thank goodness I can’t overdose on these.  The car trips wrecked my sleep schedule, and because I had somehow lost my ability to fight motion sickness I was forced to watch anime when I got to the hotels.  It was then I received a grim reminder that not all places had the Wi-Fi capable of streaming HD anime and watched low quality episodes late into the night, mainly due to the fact that I had to wait for the videos to buffer.  I wouldn’t exactly call it efficient, haha.  I probably didn’t look presentable while visiting colleges, sleep deprived and coughing.  At the very least, I didn’t feel very good about myself.  I don’t think it could compare to that migraine you had a few days back.  Hopefully you’re much better now!  I’ve never had headaches of any kind before, but they sound terrible.  It must have been especially bad if you wanted to kill yourself.  I know you just said that in the heat of the moment, but still, it worried me, eheh.  So yeah, my spring break was kind of janky.  It’s high points were UBW episodes and your birthday gift, haha.

 

Yeah, your prom is super early.  Honestly, the school year never feels quite over until at least after AP tests anyway.  Ehh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a promposal live before.  Honest, I really haven’t.  Maybe it’s because I have terrible luck or maybe it’s because my class is just doing them in secret instead of during school hours.  They probably do post pictures all over Facebook though.  Though pretty much everyone is paired up at this point from what I can tell, since tickets were put up for sale this past week for a discounted price, there are still a few stragglers.  There’s this one friend of mine who still needs to ask out his girlfriend.  I guess he’s in no rush, but gosh prom is in less than a month and there are APs to worry about in between.  The girls all have their prom dresses picked out, but guys are just procrastinating getting their tuxes to kingdom come.  Ohh, how was prom?  Or rather, how was it from what seniors have been saying?  I know two years ago there was some drama at our prom.  Sigh, what a way to end the year…  My class is terribly unmotivated compared to yours.  We’ve always been nearly dead last at all battle of the classes events.  We only one a small fundraiser this year, but that’s about it.  The juniors pretty much have us at their mercy.  Funny thing is, everyone knew we were short on funds, but no one gave a damn.  It was a bit of a running gag for a while, too.  “Yo, prom in the cafeteria guise!”  It’s nice “we” got our act together at the end.  I use that term loosely, because I actually never helped fundraising at all, haha.  I know last year there was this small effort to get a safe post-prom party organized by the school, but I don’t think it was very successful because we don’t have one this year.  I guess everyone’s just going off to random people’s houses to, urh, do whatever.  Sounds shady as an overcast hell, but whatever.  I’m going to be playing Smash 4 until I pass out, unless my parents decide that as punishment for being a social outcast I wash the dishes or something…

 

Oh geez, speaking of synthetic Christmas trees, we still have ours up in the family room even now, eheh.  I don’t think we’re ever going to take it down, no joke.  I don’t mind though, turning on the lights gives the room a night warm feeling.  Haha, memories of Christmas on a summer’s night; that would interesting.

Edit: Whoops, posted this in a rush and forgot to add some links.  Also, fixed some glaring typos.

 

Our orchestra is going on a trip, so I’ll be gone for the rest of the week. I decided to post this early because I’ll be leaving tomorrow midday, haha.

 

Ivy Leagues have such a high reputation that doing anything at one of the schools seems impressive—even if the program is a bit lackluster. Getting into an Ivy League is a remarkable feat in itself, so it all evens out in the end, haha. Gosh, it seems like your sister is living the dream right now. I’ve heard so many positive comments about UCLA’s campus, so it’s great that she’s enjoying life at the moment! A job at Disney is awesome. Even if it means less pay, I’d think that everything else the job has to offer completely makes up for it. My parents often joke about moving to Cali because of how nice it is over there. Michigan weather can be awful, and we have a running joke around here that we only have two seasons: winter and summer. We might experience 60* conditions on one day, and 40* conditions on the next. Living in Cali would be a nice break from Michigan’s bipolar weather, but I’d have to sacrifice the snow. And not to mention, half of my wardrobe would become obsolete, lol. My DS is currently collecting dust because I’ve done everything there is to do with the games. I can’t go on wifi since it’s been shut down, and I’m too stubborn to reset my games for sentimental reasons. Ahh, well, hopefully that won’t happen once I get my hands on a 3DS. I bring my phone everywhere with me nowadays. People ask me to exchange numbers with them, the tennis team uses a group chat to inform us about whether or not a match has been canceled, and it’s a lot more convenient than using a PC to check my email. I remember telling myself back in middle school that I didn’t want to turn into one of those people who’re obsessed with their phones. Although I don’t think I reached that level of obsession yet, I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed myself for relying on it so much now, haha. I guess the apps are also nice ways to keep myself entertained when I’m waiting in line and have no one to talk to, I suppose. I still try to talk to people whenever I can though. Recently, I made a new friend (or acquaintance I guess) after discovering that he’s applying to the same summer program that I did. We had some small talk about how we discovered it while waiting in line in the counseling office. It’s easiest to approach people when you find out that you have similarities with them, and I’ve made many of my friends just through that. And I think it’s also how I met you—which I’m grateful about, haha.

 

Oh geez, I never realized that there was a certain system for this rating business on MAL. But in hindsight, I still think this system beats the usual of counting everyone’s rating equally. There really is no way of getting an “accurate” rating of a show because different people have different things that appeal to them. And likewise, different people also have different rating systems—so a 5 from one person could be equivalent to a 7 from another person, if that makes sense. I do agree that the current MAL system is a bit broken, but it’s impossible for all anime to rated from the same ground. Most anime sitting at 6s or 7s usually have reasons for being there, which is why I tend to steer away from them unless something catches my eye. In PSG’s case, it was probably the trollish nature of the show (which I absolutely loved) or the profanity that turned people away. And for this reason, I usually don’t recommend this anime as something people should watch. Even though I enjoyed its raw humor, its appeal isn’t universal--you either love it or hate it. But we could also create a system where we compare anime of similar genre. For example, magical girl anime could be compared with other magical girl anime, slice of life anime could be compared with other slice of life anime, etc. It’s not much improvement from the current rating system, but this method of ranking could provide some form of common ground, albeit not much. Maybe even create a system that shows the demographics of each show? How big the fanbase is could also cause inflation in ranking, which--unfortunately like you said--can cause hidden gems to go left unnoticed. Keeping up with new seasons of anime can help unearth these hidden gems, which I guess is a benefit that comes from being an avid anime veteran, haha. Gosh, I only started on SnK towards the end of freshman year. I started right when episode 7 aired and I was hooked. I didn’t expect it to blow up as much as it did, though I’m glad I was able to experience the hype with everyone. It’s times like this when I wonder how it got so popular. Was it the art that stood out? Was it the plotline or characters? There are lots of anime out there with plotlines much more unique than SnK’s. For all I know, it might have blown up for the same reason Gangnam Style blew up. Ahh, the internet will never cease to surprise me.

 

Apparently calc 3 is supposed to be some college class that isn’t offered in the normal school curriculum (it comes after calc 1 and 2, which is the BC course), so those who take it only do so to fill up a math credit. Geez, your school is going to let people take AP Calc over the summer? There’s a lot of material in an AP class and two months usually isn’t enough to cover it all. It took BC around one semester to finish the calc 1 material, and we just finished the calc 2 material right before spring break started. To fit all of that over one summer is insane. Even fitting the AB course in one summer is a bit much. Gosh, and I thought chem online was bad. Also, I’m not trying to sound overly critical or anything, but “super calc” sounds a bit silly, haha. It's good that your district is revamping the education system though! Yeah, I didn’t even realize we had a tennis store nearby until a few years ago when a coach told me. Strings aren’t supposed to break too often so breaking mine felt like an accomplishment. Or maybe it’s just me, lol. 

 

The cost of going to Brandeis is getting far too high now, so my sister is fortunate to be graduating this year. Even I initially thought about applying there, but I guess that’s not going to happen now, haha. My sister is majoring in econ and has a minor in comp sci, which I have no idea what she’s planning to do with. I don’t think my parents care too much about how far away a school is as long as there’s a sensible reason for going there. If I got into an Ivy League or if I got a scholarship into some far away college, they’d probably be okay with it. Otherwise, I’d be out of luck. Afraid of plane rides? Plane rides are relatively safe and very rarely will any problems occur. There’s nothing to be afraid of, really. But if your mom is that against it, I guess it can’t be helped. You don’t seem like the kind of person who’d regret going to CWRU since it gave you such a good impression. University of Maryland isn’t a bad choice either, but I’d go with whichever appeals to my interests more. Remember, it’s you who’s going to spend four years of your life there, not your parents, haha. Unless there’s some huge tuition difference between the two, or maybe if the living conditions or expenses of either are subpar, I’d much rather go to a school that would give me the better college experience. Of course, that also includes factoring in surrounding cities and potential programs or opportunities, so it’s a pretty tough decision. Your mom might be right in wanting to keep you close to home, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide. I’m sure you’ll be fine wherever you go, haha. I don’t really have a preference in colleges at the moment. The size doesn’t matter to me, though the distance may bug my parents a bit when they’re moving my stuff if it’s far away, lol. Oh, and let me know how that anime convention goes if you attend! 

 

Ohh, so it wasn’t until winter break when you started investing time into getting amiibos? That’s actually fairly recent, haha. Was there any particular reason why the connections you made with the Fate series compelled you to buy amiibo counterparts? Oh gosh, your parents would allow you to wake them up in the middle of the night to let you buy amiibos? And why on earth would Walmart open up preorders at three in the morning? Geez, that’s awfully cruel of them. If it’ll help, you could create your own PayPal and have your parents store some money in there so you won’t have to bug them. From my experience, I think PayPal is almost universal (except for competing sites like Amazon), so it really helps to have a bit of money in there when you’re in a pinch. If not, you could get a debit card (either that or a credit card which you’ll have to get anyway if you plan on reaping the full benefits of PayPal). Good luck with your amiibo hunting endeavors! I don’t mind that the Mewtwo code expires on my birthday. I could always buy one when the time comes, which is perfectly okay with me. Buying Smash isn’t top priority for me at the moment since I’d rather wait until college to play it. Thank you for the suggestion though, haha.

 

A lot of my friends have also had better impressions of math after starting calc. These were the same people who were struggling in pre-calc the previous year, so they decided upon themselves that AB was a better investment than BC. They ended up getting high As as their final grades because of how much easier it was for them. First semester was a complete mess for us, but all of my AB friends were breezing through the class with no trouble. Naturally, how much you love a subject can depend on how well you’re doing in the class. So yeah, most of my AB friends ended up reconciling a love for math, while most of the BC kids ended up dreading its existence, haha. I don’t consider myself a reasonable grader either, especially since I do hold a bias for certain shows. I don’t trust ratings as much as I do reviews. Rating systems vary from person to person so a number rating can be meaningless at times. But by the same token, some of these reviews seem like they’re written by blind fanboys or fangirls who praise every aspect of the show, which is why I’m so wary about what I watch these days. Oh gosh, you still haven’t recovered from your cold yet? I really dislike that dry, scratchy feeling in the back of my throat from the aftermath of a cold. I’m assuming that this is what you’re experiencing at the moment. I hope you get well soon! During one of my road trips, I discovered this handy trick that allowed me to watch anime without the need for immediate wifi: open up a window or tab with anime you want to watch and wait for it to fully load in an area with wifi before you leave on your trip. Then you’re all set. Once the video is fully loaded, you no longer need wifi to watch it (as long as you don’t close your windows or anything). It’s not so much a trick as it is a silly practice I use during road trips or airplane rides, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being a useless “suggestion” for you, haha. Of course, you could also download the episodes beforehand, but that’s if you don’t mind how much space they’ll take up. Most of my headaches come from playing tennis as a result of dehydration. I rarely get “normal” headaches these days. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I had one of those. Headaches vary in intensity for me, so all I can do is swallow an ibuprofen pill and hope for the best. I typically get these headaches a couple times a month, although most of them tend to be mild enough for me to sleep them off. The one I had last week just happened to be especially agonizing, but I don’t get those too often. I appreciate your concern though; the message was very heartwarming, haha. 

 

Our prom is usually in May so I really have no idea what they were thinking when the date was changed to April this year. From the Facebook pictures I’ve seen, a lot of the seniors seemed to have a nice time there, so that’s good, haha. Prom is usually a huge deal for the seniors at our school so I was rather surprised by the lack of fundraising at your school. Our school isn’t exactly rolling around in money either, but most people around here tend to care enough to participate in fundraising. For example, at the beginning of the year, our school sells carnations at a dollar per flower (along with a personalized message) and has them delivered to classrooms right before homecoming. Most people buy them for friends and it’s arguably one of the biggest fundraisers we have.

 

Ahaha, I don’t think my parents even bothered to put up the Christmas tree this year since we spent most of our winter vacation down in Florida. Do you normally leave it up till spring?

[What's on Your Mind?]

Four hours felt pretty good after less than two hours.  And it's nice to know you're looking out for me, haha.

 

OMM: My physics teacher said the science report could be about anything science related, so I'm going to write up seven pages on the Nintendo DS.

lol, I ended up with 90 minutes of sleep last night because of all the backlog of homework I needed to catch up on after attending a state conference towards the end of the week. Funny thing is, I didn’t feel groggy at all during the school day (or at least until the end of 5th hour). Even better, I didn’t fall asleep in any of my classes either. Yeah, my sleep schedule is wrecked beyond repair at this point. But of course, I hope you’re catching up on sleep and participating in senior skip day when you have the opportunity. Take a break once in a while, heh.

 

ahahahaha, I once wrote a physics project satirizing Dora, and I had way too much fun typing it up.

A report on the DS? Hey, no one’s stopping you, haha.

 

--

OMM: miracles happening

miracles happening everywhere

sdsdfkljsdfkldfjdkljgdfklgfkgjsfl;g

praise the lord I am the happiest dskfjsdflkdaalkdfg alive at the moment

[Movie 20: The Darkest Nightmare]

At this point, I’ve learned to take everything I see in DC movie trailers/teasers with a grain of salt.

[Translating Interviews]

Q13: What do you really take care of when you create a character?

A: I don't want him to look like a character I've created in the past.

(note: Erm. Kaito/Shinichi, Sayaka/Aoko/Ran, Yaiba/Conan...)

I think Gosho created Ran and Aoko, and Shinichi and Kaito as lookalikes in order to emphasize the parallels between them.

ex. They’re childhood friends, Shinichi and Kaito have alter egos, Ran and Aoko are tsunderes, etc.

But yeah, that statement of his does seem a bit contradictory otherwise, haha.

 

 

Lol. I can imagine it going until vol. 145.

but why stop there when we can make DC last another 20 years???!!2!!!!!2//2!?!!!1!?!!1 /sarcasm

[FOUND OUT!]

Pshh... people do drugs for a reason...

Well, if I wanted a shot of dopamine or a high of some sort, I still wouldn't be saturating my body with ecstasy or weed. But whatever. I’m not the one to judge what people do to their bodies. It’s not my problem, lol.

Also, I live in a relatively safe area. If I lived in the slums of Chicago, I wouldn’t be nearly as shocked by this whole drug smuggling business.

 

 

Oh geez, went through that realization myself in my junior year.  It was a bit unsettling, but I tried not to get my jimmies rustled.

And word, how do people find drugs?  They must not be as hard to come by as unicorn amiibo, otherwise no one would have them, but still.

Maybe there's an app or a subreddit for that.....

Your junior year as well?

…and the fact that these students have yet to be caught by the faculty or their parents...

like geez, you’d think these people or their belongings would reek of weed by now, haha

 

 

I had a similar revelation about a year ago when I found out what the majority of my classmates from grade school had been up to after high school began

ahaha, you too?

looks like I’m late to the party then.

 

also, happy weed day, y’all