New Month, New Projects

Happy Sunday!

This weekend has provided me with a big peaceful rest from schoolwork. Yesterday, I went to the local Junior Miss program, which is a scholarship program designed to encourage today's young women to "be their best selves." The winners of local JM programs go on to compete at the state level, and then every year in Mobile, Alabama, 50 Junior Misses go on to the national level at America's Junior Miss to represent their state. I think the Junior Miss program is a great opportunity for young women to showcase their talents, meet new people with new perspectives, and overall change their lives for the better.

After the past week, which was full of deadlines and exams falling one after another like dominoes, it was both relaxing and exciting at the same time to watch the Junior Miss program. It got my mind off of future stress, like that god-awful reading quiz coming up soon, and gave me the opportunity to converse with some amazing people involved in Junior Miss that I have not seen for a while. Congratulations to the loca Junior Miss of 2011!
Alas, it is Sunday now and tomorrow marks the first day of a brand new week as well as the month of March! It is mind-blowing to think that the third month of 2010 is already approaching our doorstep; it seems as though time is zooming by faster than ever now. Before I know it, it will be time for Prom (Friday, May 21!!), and then Seniors' Graduation, and then College. =D
Beginning tomorrow, March 1, 2010, I will be having my own private, personal NaNoWriMo! I am working on a not-so-little writing project that will be a gift for a friend of mine in the near future. I am so excited! I am making it a NaNoWriMo competition for myself so that I stay motivated throughout the project and can complete it in time. I have already started planning it out, and am eager to start working on it right away! You can check my current progress under the NaNoWriMo bar to your right. Inspiration, comments, and other encouragement is much appreciated! :) Unfortunately, I shall say no more about what this project entails, but I promise to update about the status of it throughout the month. Wish me luck!
I am also going to start up a blog ritual called, Question of the Day. It is sort of like a writing prompt, but it is more a prompt for the mind to ponder over. Questions will range from a variety of topics...feel free to answer them in your comments! =)
In addition, I hope to begin drawing a sketch of my idea of The Red Angel. I have already studied several anime pictures on DeviantArt to familiarize myself with the type of art I will be working with. It's going to be pretty difficult, as I have never been very good at drawing people, much less angels. When I am completely finished, I'll be scanning the drawing and making a blog banner out of it. If you have any suggestions, that would be great!
To close my blog entry for the day, I'd like to share with you some of my favorite pieces of anime that I found online:*

Have a great day! Goodbye, February...Hello, March!!

~TRA
*These anime were found on Photobucket and DeviantArt.

New Month, New Projects

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A Fantastic Friday

I have come to realize that there is an opposing force for everything in the world and in life; there seems to always be something on the opposite end of a spectrum, complementing the other and balancing the scale out. An antonym for all. You've got men and women, positives and negatives, love and hate, black and white, rich and poor, beautiful and hideous, beginning and end.

Like all of the above, there is a also an antonym for having a bad day. Obviously, that very antonym is, of course, having a good day! :) Now there have definitely been times when I had an absolutely awful day on earth that seems more like a night in Hell instead; on those days, nothing goes right and I am stressed out of my mind. On those days, it seems like there is no such thing as a good day. Nonetheless, it is on those days when I wish and hope for a good day...like today.

My favorite type of good day is the kind when good, little things occur and slowly build up into a really good day, or rather (excuse my cheesy analogy) a "mountain of happiness"; there I stand at the very peak, my stomach swelling with excitement as I look down at the rest of the world with a positive attitude. In my own strange, silly mind, each little happy event is considered a stone, which makes sense if you think about it. As the stones build up, a mountain is created. :)

Today's Happy Stones:

(reasons why today was a good day)

1) I work for my high school's newspaper as an editor and photographer. Today, we just published and distributed our first issue of second semester! It turned out really well. In this issue, I had written that "Texting While Driving Sucks" article for the Opinion Section and an article on the new Chinese students who immigrated to America from China (including my friend Charles). Yesterday, I got the most compliments on these two articles than I ever have for any other article before! At lunch, Charles came up to me with a grin glowing on his face and told me that, all throughout the day, several random students he didn't know approached him and either said hi, waved, or smiled. One of these students is a friend of my friend's; apparently, she had been reading my article intently and suddenly exclaimed out loud, "Hey, that Chinese guy is in my math class!" Many students know about him now, are willing to befriend him, and are extremely interested in his move from China to America. Knowing that I have been able to showcase Charles's life-changing story and provide him with new friends in this strange new country (strange to him, at least) has proven that I can truly make a difference and improve the lives of others through my writing.

2) After every newspaper issue is published, we always have a class party and a voting poll on Superlatives for awards such as Best Story, Best Graphic, etc. For this issue, I received Best Photograph! I did not expect this award at all, but it meant a lot to me. The photo I took was of a group of students wearing adorable snuggies. I got a delicious chocolate egg as a materialistic award, but the confidence boost was definitely the greater, winning reward (don't you just love a play on words?).

3) As the Opinion Section started brainstorming for our next issue, we gossiped about our last issue and the different articles that other student journalists wrote. Quite unexpectedly, one fellow Opinion writer mentioned that she loved my texting article and that it had literally made her fall off her chair, laughing. Our Opinion editor animatedly agreed and, before I knew it, both of them started quoting directly from my article and commenting on the hilarious sarcasm that dripped from underneath. All I could do was stutter a lowsy "thanks!" but inside my stomach was a bubbling soup of excitement and joy. Growing up, being a famous writer has always been my dream. I would fantasize about my books being chosen by school teachers to be read and analyzed in classes. I imagined what it would be like to win The Nobel Prize in the Literature department. And I imagined readers all over the world quoting my works of literature and magazine articles.

4) The episode of Smallville that had aired tonight was awesome, as usual! The suspense seriously set my heartbeat off and at one point I really thought one of the main characters, Zod, was going to die. Although Smallville has turned into some sort of horror drama, it has been great having key traditions, such as Clark coming to save his friend at the end of the day like he has done in so many other episodes, has truly kept up the spirit of Smallville and of Superman. Watching Smallville was a great way to end an amazing day.

You see, bad days come, but they also go in the end. However bad they may be, I have realized that those horrible, awful bad days are worth going through to get to the good days, which I know are just right around the corner on the opposite end of the spectrum. I know this, of course, because life is simply just a balancing act.



~TRA

A Fantastic Friday

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"Mouse Loves Rice"

So basically this is my favorite Youtube video ever. I am not a big fan of anime and manga, but this is the sweetest video ever, featuring various scenes from famous anime shows depicting love between characters. English subtitles are provided in the video, but the song is sung in Mandarin Chinese.
I heard this song for the first time at it last year's local Chinese New Year Festival 2009. An American man sang this song by himself in Chinese while playing it on the guitar. He dedicated the song to his Chinese wife and provided Chinese and English lyrics on an overhead Powerpoint. I thought it was a really cute and touching Chinese New Year gift and festival performance. =)
Watching this video always makes me feel happy and cozy inside...every time I view it, I get this urge to hug everybody I love and tell them they rock!! Hope this video makes your day!
Upcoming Blog Posts:
*The pros and cons of online gaming
*Three book reviews
*Neopets tutorial
*A new special writing project of mine
*A series of my poetry
*Healthy Choice steamers
*Personal recipes


~TRA

"Mouse Loves Rice"

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The Lucky Necklace

A few days ago, I stole from my sister's drawer. As I was getting ready for school last Wednesday, my curious little mind wandered towards the small, box-like drawer that sat on her bedside table. When I opened it, a mountain of treasures were revealed to me and immediately I had a blast from the past of when I was a young child rummaging through my mother's things.

Now, I have always some sort of infatuation with shiny things, especially jewelry. Even when I was little, I enjoyed tinkering around with clip-on earrings and plastic necklaces and rings that were too big for my finger. An old home video of my third birthday shows a Little Red Angel wearing faux rings and bracelets and demanding that a grownup take my picture with those flashing things on. As I grew up, I could often be seen creating doll clothes and using those jewelry-making kits that I got for Christmas and my birthday to string together my own colorful beaded necklaces and other accessories. I grew up loving the famous and ever-so-lovely Swarovski crystal shop and visited often. My mother finally took me to get my ears pierced for my 9th birthday when I was in 4th grade.

This obsession with jewelry died down after I turned to the age of tomboyism around middle school. I became the opposite of what I used to be, but thankfully my personality and style balanced itself by the time my high school career began. I still was automatically attracted to the jewelry section in various department stores such as Body Central, Belk's, and, of course, Swarovski (the image is from Swarovski.com; check the store it...their shiny stuff rocks! :P) whenever I went shopping with family. I still loved touching the smoothness of a pearl necklace and placing an assortment of earrings up to a friend's lobe one by one, trying to decide which one looked best on her. I always mix and matched for others, but rarely ever for myself.

Until last Wednesday. As I opened the first plastic drawer, my eyes widened and sparkled as they glazed over all the sparkling pieces of jewel set before them. They were mostly earrings and necklaces--my favorite types of accessories. Here was a set of gold hoops with a line of jingles decorated at the bottom. Over in the corner was a long, shiny silver necklace adorned with pearls and crystal balls. In there were two matching wooden teardrop hoops, painted purple. Underneath all of those lovely little things was a chain, simple enough to be overlooked. Hooked around it was a green heart pendant and several crystal ball shaped drops surrounding it.

Sounds pretty anticlamactic and somewhat plain, I know. But you know that really nice item that you have always REALLY wanted but never had the luck of finding at a store? Well, this necklace has been that item for me.

The excitement was even greater than if I had found the necklace at a store because it was right here waiting in the drawer this whole time. :) It may not be an exclusive teardrop necklace from the Swarovski crystal shop with a thousand shards of crystal cut in exact proportions that create mirrors even in the dark. It is, in fact, even more special than that.

It's amazing how the littlest things can make you feel like you're on top of the world. When I saw this necklace and searched for the rest of the chain with my too-eager fingers, I felt like a kid again, pretending that I was a princess going through my jewelry box and picking out my accessories for the day's tea party. Although it did not quite match the outfit I had put on for school, I wore the necklace anyway. All day long, I couldn't keep from grinning ear to ear and having an extra spring in my step as I waltzed down the school hallways. My self-confidence raised to about thirty degrees higher than normal as I received compliments from friends who stopped what they were doing just to feel the heart pendant and eye it with admiration.

Needless to say, this necklace made my day. And just in case you were wondering, my sister let me have it. :)

5 Recent Events That Made Me Feel Beautiful:

1) I found a simply dashing n e c k l a c e that I've always wanted hiding in my sister's drawer (she let me have it, by the way).

2) I gave my good friend an SAT workbook that I no longer need. The next day, she randomly came up to hug me and said that I was an a m a z i n g friend.

3) I made a m o n s t e r s a n d w i c h filled with delicious honey ham, a fantastic garlic cheese spread, white cheddar cheese, salami, and turkey! Two pieces of each ingredient was piled up between two pieces of potato bread. It took me two tries to fit my whole mouth on the concoction and take my first bite. :P I felt like a queen eating a royal sandwich!

4) I got an impulse to randomly d a n c e my way through the downstairs hall in my pajamas, singing the love song "Mouse Loves Rice," (or "Lao Shu Ai Da Mi") in Chinese.

5) I received many compliments on my recent "Texting While Driving Sucks" article that I wrote for my high school newspaper. The biggest praise that I can receive is one dealing with my writing; knowing that others are reading my writing and actually enjoying it and getting something out of it is my greatest pride and joy.

My question is this: What recent events, activities, and/or pleasant surprises have made YOU feel beautiful?

~TRA

The Lucky Necklace

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My "Texting While Driving Sucks" Article

As I have mentioned in past blog posts, I work for my high school's student-run newspaper. This semester, I serve as the Production Editor and write for the Opinion section. Our first issue of the semester comes out next Thursday...here is the article I wrote on how much texting while driving sucks:

"Texting While Driving Sucks"

(official title to be determined)

You twiddle your fingers on the steering wheel while sitting in your brand new Lexus on the intersection between Candy Lane and Cellular Drive*. The red light has not changed for two whole minutes, and you are growing impatient.

Suddenly, a loud ding! causes your heart to skip a few beats. You scramble around your pocket, pull out that must-have Blackberry and look up just in time to catch a glimpse of the green-glowing stoplight signaling Go.

Before pressing down on the gas pedal, you glance at the phone and notice a text that your BFF Sally sent, asking you about your last cruise to the Bahamas. Um, there is no question about it. You HAVE to text her back. Now. Never mind that this particular intersection is one of the dangerous ones in town. Never mind that you witnessed a car accident only last week, which caused you to be late for school. I mean, who wouldn't want to break their neck from texting while driving?

If you are that typical driver described above, you are a part of the 60 percent of teenagers who text while driving, according to a survey performed by Toluna in 2009. Congratulations. Texting while driving has been the most popular driving distraction in the 2000 era and it is still going strong. I personally cannot drive yet, so I have not had the pleasure to experience the apparently addictive habit of pushing buttons frantically while trying to keep my eye on the road at the same time. Quite frankly, I imagine that would be an extremely uncomfortable task. I am not at all against multi-tasking, but I would definitely rather wait to fiddle with my phone than risk breaking my neck.

Beginning in December 1, 2009, North Carolina passed new legislation prohibiting the act of texting while driving for drivers of all ages, not just teenagers. Those who are caught in the act must pay a 100 dollar fine as well as additional court fees.

Personally, I am glad for the new law. I have been getting tired of my mom randomly swerving and stopping the car unexpectedly at various intersections and turns because some genius decided to stare at his recently received text message instead of the road.

The bottom line is, texting while driving is a risk that may harm yourself as well as other drivers and even pedestrians. I do not think you want any injuries inflicted upon your fellow citizens any more than you want them inflicted on yourself.

Although most people would think that highways are the most dangerous roads for potential accidents, parking lots have much higher risks for motor vehicle collisions because cars are constantly backing in and out of parking lots and people are walking to and from designated shops. Nothing would make a dinner date sweeter than a big car crash in the heart of Olive Garden's parking lot as a result of texting distractions.

Not only is it against the law and dangerous, but it is also just plain rude. Honestly, no wonder that guy flicked you off the other day. Call him inappropriate, discourteous, violent or a number of any other synonyms for the word "rude," but consider the fact that his gesture may have been the only thing to catch your undivided attention.

If you have read thus far and still believe that texting is your number one to-do no matter where or when you are driving, by all means go ahead and whip out your phone to text Sally back or die trying.


~TRA


*Street names were replaced to protect privacy.

My "Texting While Driving Sucks" Article

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