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The cabin we were staying at was smaller than the one at the Smokey Mountains trip but still pretty large. There was a ping pong table downstairs and some darts. Vinh, TL, Bien and I were planning on staying in the room with the bunk bed but they kicked us out to a different room which I was then kicked out of but then they let me back in for some reason. The day after we arrived was hiking day. In the Tennessee trip, we had also gone hiking and I was expecting much of the same. The adults seem to love going outside into the woods even though they never seem to fully prepare which is why we got lost in my own backyard once and this time we ended up walking around several hours on a trail that was too long for amateur hikers such as us. After I woke up from the two hour long car trip we got out and started hiking. I’d like to describe everything in more detail but there’s only so much you can say about hiking in the woods. I never saw anything really exciting. The main attraction of course was the trail we were walking on which seemed to have been designed by someone on crack. Instead of having the trail move up the mountain they instead decided to have the trail slowly go up the mountain along its side and then have a staircase at the very end. Because of this monkey design, a lot of water which probably came from the top of the mountain made the trail muddy and we had to hop around on rocks to get past it. At this point we had been walking uphill for about twenty minutes and that’s when my grandmother and brother decided to stop. The rest of us moved onward. I wanted to go back to the cabin but of course we just had to go to the top to take some subpar pictures of the view. It took us about half an hour to make it to the top and there was nothing special at the top. We didn’t want to walk back down the trail so we started poking around to find a different route back down. Vinh found a path and told me to come with him and I did even though I was so tired I was thinking about jumping off the edge of the cliff. There’s no easy way to express how tired I was through words so I’ll just tell you that I’m unfit, do not play any sports, and all of a sudden I’m forced to walk five miles up the top of a mountain. The path we went down was rocky and not suitable for children but we went down anyway and that’s when the adults told us to come back but then we told them that there were people coming up from there so it was probably a way down and they made us walk back down again. It only made me rewalk about ten feet but I was dying and it felt like it was mile run day again. Even so, we somehow managed to get too far from the adults and ended up lost. I had a headache and felt like throwing up but I kept going and we eventually wound up back on the trail we started on. Everyone stayed behind for some reason and I walked down the trail alone. Five minutes later Ryan passed me and five minutes after that Vinh caught up to me. This whole time I had been thinking everyone was as exhausted as I was but it seemed as though I was just fat because both Ryan and Vinh were still able to run and TL was walking faster than me. Maybe it was because I was wearing a backpack but every time the trail decrease in altitude by just an inch it felt like hell because it made me walk faster than I actually wanted to which wasted energy so I had to put energy in my toes to stop from going too fast. Ten minutes later we made it to the bottom and still had to wait for everyone to catch up. The end.

I haven’t been playing on my Switch much anymore and that is because the green controller and sometimes the red one drift. Drifting is when a direction is inputted even when you don’t touch the control stick. I can just set the Switch on the table to stretch for a bit and my character will start moving left and fall off a cliff. My blue controller wasn’t drifting, but I couldn’t use it because it was broken. However, I was fiddling around with it today and it started working again. It wasn’t even drifting. I was starting to think that is was too good to be true, and that’s because it was. The stick is fine, but all the other buttons on it (ZR, L, etc.) aren’t working. So now I’m still lacking a functional controller. Thanks Nintendo.

What is the meaning of life? You probably have an answer. But did you come to that answer on your own, or did someone else tell you? And whatever you think the meaning of life is, is it true? How can you know what is the ultimate truth, the absolutely correct answer. Maybe the truth is that there are multiple answers. However, can you be sure that this is the truth? And of course, you’re reading this blog and taking these questions very seriously, even though I’m spouting random questions for a high word count. It’d be nice if there was a deity that simply came out and said the absolute truth, but no such thing exists. So of course, people have to come to their own conclusions, but people have different ideals and truths. So which one is truly right? I don’t know. Over time, some people’s ideals become so popular that many people develop an almost unhealthy obsession with it, praying and worshiping as if there were some holy deity saying, “If your ideals do not match mine, go die.” I don’t know what a right ideal would be, but what about a wrong one? Can there be an objectively wrong opinion?  In my opinion, yes. Am I right about that? Maybe.  Why does there need to be a true ideal anyway? Why do people need some laws to live by? I think that it doesn’t matter anyway, because humanity is pretty insignificant. We all think we are some dominant species, but that’s just on our planet. What about all the other lifeforms in other galaxies? Humans are relatively weak, and the majority of us aren’t that smart either. Humans are bound to be wiped out one day, but I don’t really care because I’m not going to be in that unlucky generation. Probably. So I think that there’s no reason to look for a truth that doesn’t exist, and to just take and live life as it is. But of course, this is just my version of the truth.

The Tower of God is the anime of this season. It’s the one everyone was hyped up for, and the one everyone wants to watch. So how does it hold up? Did it disappoint or exceed my expectations?

The opening moments of the show are bizarre cuts of characters, dialogue, and a bit of exposition. Unlike most other shows, it does not spoon feed you information in the first ten minutes of the show. While there’s nothing wrong with the show straight up telling you what’s going on and what kind of place the story is in, it’s nice to see something that makes you figure out things for yourself. After the opening credits  you are met with the main character, Simp Lord. Simp Lord is simping after this girl who wishes to climb the Tower of God. Simp Lord follows her and ends up in the tower. The show has a very unique visual style, since it was based off of a web novel, and it shows. The art can look a little strange at points, but the visual flair adds a lot of personality and charm the the experience. Also, this scene is absolutely gorgeous. Instead of something more normal, the way Simp Lord enters the tower is completely baffling. The floor turns out to be a giant door that slowly opens up and swallows him whole.

When Simp Lord wakes up, he is in a dark hallway with a strange creature watching him. The creature is the one administering Simp Lord’s first test. He tells him that he must pass the test to go to the next floor. When I first started watching, I was hoping to see something that hadn’t been done a million times, and this show does not disappoint. Simp Lord must enter a room with an enormous steel eel and destroy the ball that it is protecting. This is way better than some generic trial like, “Defeat this dude to progress.”

I won’t spoil the rest of the episode, but I highly recommend you check it out. Of course, the show isn’t perfect. The second episode starts adding some comedy which I think completely clashes with the solemn and grim tone set by the first episode. Comedy in a serious show isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I feel like they should’ve waited for a better time to use it. Dark or dry comedy would’ve fit the show way better than funny anime faces. However, this is just a small nitpick, and this show keeps continuing to impress me, so I’ll let it slide. I give this show a 9/10.

I have to write another blog because my father says my last one was too short. Yeah, he probably has a big checklist whenever he reads my blogs and thinks, “Hmm, the minimum word count is 10385, and he was one short.” My blog was short because that’s all I had to say. Nobody wants to read a blog where the narrator is rambling about things that don’t matter. Also, I’m going to say it. I do not care about the corona virus. The reason it’s such a big deal is because the media wants it to be. The virus isn’t especially deadly or anything, but it’s constantly making the news because it’s being spread everywhere and there is no cure. That’s it. It’s like an incurable cold, but everyone thinks it a big deal. Like, “Oh no, better shut down school, wouldn’t want to catch a cold! Time to stock up on toilet paper too!” Also, I have to take piano lessons over the phone now, which is idiotic. I already despise going to piano lessons, and now I have to take instructions from a lady on my phone. Oh and, I hate the piano. It’s dumb and nobody wants to play it. It’s the instrument that you force your three-year-old child to play just so you can say, “Yeah, my child can play the piano, and he’s still a fetus.” And then the kid will grow up and say something dumb like, “I just love the piano. Ever since I saw it I knew that it was the thing for me.” No, your parents made you play it when you were still in the womb and you probably didn’t even know what you were doing.

There is nothing to write about because I don’t care about the ongoing pandemic. However, I do get school off, so that’s nice. It’s not the end of the world because of some virus. I doubt that humans could survive for millions of years and get wiped out by some measly virus.

A few of my earliest memories was of me waiting for summer to come so my cousins would come over. Khang and TD would do random things and I would waddle along after them as if I were actually a part of the group. I used to really look up to those two, but now that I’m older with a mind of my own, I realize that they are both lazy potatoes, though I’m no different. One of my favorite things to do back then was bully TL, and it is a hobby of mine that I still continue today, though for different reasons. Back then, I made fun of TL because it was funny and then she cried and it became hilarious. Now it’s because Tl brings up some painful memories of my elementary life. You may not believe me now, but you will someday look back on how you acted in elementary and regret everything. TL and TQ act so much like my childish eight-year old self that it is not funny, just sad. The way TQ watches obnoxious Youtube videos or the way TL acts in a social setting is just too much to bear, simply because I used to act the exact same way. As for why I bully Khoi, that’s because he’s an narcissistic pretentious condescending asinine credulous naive is because we do not value the same principles. I’ll be the first to admit that I was an annoying brat when I was younger, but I really don’t think I was this bad. People say that being young is an excuse for being a bad person, but I think that only really applies to kids five and under. Everyone above that may not have a completely clear vision of morals and ethics, but they know when they’re doing something wrong. Who knows, though. I don’t actually know what Khoi’s age is, so he could be three for all I know. He certainly acts like it. Khoi does have one redeeming quality, and that would be his interest in technology. It’s a good thing to like something useful at a young age. I would know; I only really cared about Roblox and Minecraft when I was eight (I think that’s how old Khoi is). However, he’s really ostentatious about it, and it just ends up being a bad quality. As for Vien, she acts like an egirl-in-training. My other cousins will describe it as “sassy” and “cute”, but this is really what I think. I don’t really have anything against her, but as she sides with Khoi most of the time, she’s just collateral damage when I go on my bullying crusades. Last is Angel, who I have only met twice but will be included in this list because I need a higher word count. To be completely honest, I had no good reason to make fun of her, other than to inflate my ego. I was immature back then, and I guess a little girl who hardly spoke English was in easy target in my eyes. When I met her recently, she seemed a lot more quieter and reserved. She’s probably traumatized.

Now for the grand finale: Who is the most greatest cousin?

nam

 

There are 7.8 billion people on this planet, and I am the only smart one. This is scientifically proved because everyone I have ever met mistakenly believes that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (I’m not typing that every time so I will refer to it as the s-word) is a proper word in the English language. It is definitely not.

To begin, take a look at the word “anyways”. Anyways is considered a word, but it’s classified as slang and is only used in colloquial text. The reason anyways is not looked at as a proper word is because anyway is an adverb, and adverbs can’t be plural. Even so, anyways is a word in the dictionary and you would not be looked at twice if you said it in a conversation. I mention this because it proves how vague the requirements for a word can be. Is it a word because it is acceptably used and in a the dictionary, or is it not a word because it contradicts English rules? Anyway, that brings me back to the s-word. Yes, the s-word is in the dictionary, but does that really make it an accepted and proper word? People who say think that the s-word being in the dictionary proves that the s-word is a word are mistaken. The s-word appears in Oxford dictionary, but it does not appear in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, so I could just as easily say that the s-word is not a word because it does not appear there.

In fact, if we go by the logic that “the dictionary is always right, so if the s-word is in there, it’s a word”, then you would have to acknowledge that the Merriam-Webster dictionary states that the s-word is a nonsense word that was simply made up by Helen Herman.

Compound words are words fused together to add a new meaning to the word, such as “bookstore” and “ballpark”. The s-word is an would be an example of one, if it actually made any sense. If the s-word were open compound (ice cream) or hyphenated (forty-nine), then it could have more than two words. However, since it is closed compound, it does not make sense for it to have so many words together, as no other closed compound word has more than three words combined.

Lastly, the word is simply not even combined correctly. Super is a prefix, so that part is correct. Cali is a root, so that part is also fine. However, every other part of the “word” is not an actual root of suffix. It’s just a random series of letters, designed to give the illusion of a sophisticated word with many roots.

Back in primary school (I said primary and not elementary because I am very smart), the teachers handed out these little chains that you wear around your neck. Of course, since I was a simple-minded kindergartner, I started chewing on it. What the chains were actually for was to put these little charms on it. Every quarter, the entire school met up in the gym and they would hand out awards for each class. There was a music award, gym award, homework award, and the best one, the principal’s award. There were two of each award handed out to every class, and it was always one boy and one girl who got them, in the name of equality. Actually, there was one award that wasn’t just limited to two, and that was the homework pass. Every person who finished all their homework assignments for the entire quarter was given the homework award. The homework award was probably the worst charm because everyone had one. I probably had at least twelve of them. I never received an award that wasn’t the homework award. Years passed, and every time they called the boy and girl to receive the music award and the gym award or any award, I was never called. While all the other kids flexed on me with all their different charms, I had a pitiful chain with just a bunch of homework charms. Eventually, I stopped caring and just threw my homework charm away after they gave it to me. On the last day of what I think was second or third grade, I was not present at school because I went to Virginia or New Jersey. I don’t really remember. When I got back home, the school had mailed a principal’s award to me. If you didn’t know, the principal’s award is the most prestigious charm out of all of them. It’s the one you bring out when you want to flex all the charms you have. I don’t think they gave me the charm because I was a good student, but it was just because I missed the last day of school celebrations. This theory was proved when Khang was also sent a principal’s award. The charm was useless to me anyway since I had already lost my chain. I never did get to flex that principal’s award.

My plan was to drop out of the spelling bee after I won, but everyone kept congratulating me and wishing me luck on the state bee, and by that point it was already too late to chicken out. In the mornings, I usually do schoolwork and socialize once I arrive for a while until the bell rings, but today I got dragged away by the English teacher to do the announcements (the announcements are just videos of the student council reporting some school news that the teachers show to the students). She wanted to announce to the entire school that I had won the spelling bee, which was pointless because

A. Everyone already knows that

and

B. The spelling be happened last week.

It was a huge waste of time, and I also did not want to be part of the announcements. If you didn’t know, the kids in the morning announcements are absolute laughingstocks at my school. Every day, we watch the student council do some cringe-worthy skit on the screen that the teachers thought would be hip with the kids. I know it’s wrong to laugh at other people, but I must admit that I started dying of laughter a few times from some of the weird stuff the teachers cooked up. To give you an idea of some of the lunacy that happens in the announcements, I’ll explain what happened last week. The teachers must’ve thought that the kids at this school have too much negative energy (they’re not wrong), so they decided to have one of the council members do breathing exercises on the morning announcements. For two awkward minutes, all I heard was a girl breathing in and out slowly, while quietly chanting, “I choose kindness.” I think the teachers thought that we would the breathing exercises as well, but most people just sat there and laughed while some kids mockingly breathed in and out really hard.

I always thought that the announcements were recorded in the main office, but it turns out that they were taped in the library. There was a small room with the council members, a green screen, and a computer. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the backgrounds of these announcements. It’s always some cringe-worthy photo of whatever the topic of the video is that day. Let’s say the announcement is mainly about Frosted Flakes. Then they’ll put some giant stock photo of Tony the Tiger behind on the green screen. Whoever thought the green screen was necessary needs to burn.

Anyhow, the English teacher made me stand next to these two girls who would be talking, and then I would say my lines. Oh wait, I didn’t have any lines. My job was to just stand there. I liked and didn’t like the fact that I didn’t have to say anything (the word for this is ambivalent). The first girl said something about the spelling bee, and then the other said something about a new record of 25 rounds gone. Then the second girl said that I won and would be going to the state. She mispronounced my last name horribly, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to stick around any longer than I had to. The teacher wasn’t pleased with the final result because I was looking at the floor and the walls and the ceiling and pretty much anywhere but the camera. She then asked if we wanted a retake. I said no, but everyone else said yes, so I went back to the green screen. After the second take, the teacher realized that I was not going to look at the camera, so she said we were done. It’s already bad enough that I’m going to be laughed at on the announcements, so I’m not going to make it worse by actually showing my face.

Luckily, my homeroom teacher is pretty laid-back, and half of the time he forgets to show the announcements.

When I went upstairs to go to science, I realized that I went to the wrong room. On the days that we’re doing a lab experiment, the teacher moves downstairs to a different science room because that’s where all the glassware is. So, I dashed downstairs to the alternate science room, and made it just before the bell rang. Of course, all the seats were taken, so I sat down at the last table with a bunch of weird people. We were doing an experiment to see what happens when salt water evaporates. I didn’t really care and started to zone out until the teacher said that the salt will start to explode and that piqued my interest. I usually like to do my work alone because most of the other kids can’t be bothered to figure out simple worksheets (most of the time they just look off of my paper). In other words, most partners are just dead weight. Unfortunately, the teacher makes us work in pairs because “scientists work together in the real world”. I was paired with the girl who claims she had ADHD (which I doubt), and she was an utter clown. What you’re supposed to do is filter out the salt-sand-water solution so only the saltwater is left. It’s simple enough, so I had the clown do it while I sat back and took a short nap. Of course, she found a way to screw it up. Some of the sand wouldn’t come out of the cup, so I told her to use put a tiny bit of water on it so it would come out and into the filter. For some reason, this clown thought I meant pour water into the filter, so she dumped an entire cup of water into the filter, rendering all our previous work worthless. I had to remake the solution and remeasure all the sand and salt. After I did all the number work, I let the clown pour everything again. It was a big mistake, because she messed everything up a again by making the exact same mistake as last time. Then when the teacher came over to see why we were taking so long, the clown had the audacity to blame everything on me because I didn’t tell her that she wasn’t supposed to do that, which is untrue, because I clearly remember starting to go nuts and start yelling after she dumped the water the first time.

On our next filtration attempt, I held the filter in place while the clown poured. As I was doing this, some kid shouted that I wasn’t wearing my goggles. It was stupid because I wasn’t even at the boiling part yet (thanks to the clown). The teacher is really strict about goggles though, so she told me to put them on. I couldn’t because I was holding the filter, and if I let go, all the sand might get mixed back in the water. So, the clown tried to shove goggles onto my face while I held the filter. After a bit of the clown sticking the goggles legs into my eyes, I had enough and smacked her hand away so I could put on the goggles myself. The filter dropped, but thankfully the sand didn’t fall. Once we finally filtered the water successfully, the teacher lit our fire and we boiled the salt water. The teacher said that once the salt starts popping, we had to move the fire away from the test tube with the tongs. Of course, the clown wanted to use the tongs, and I foolishly let her. After about thirty seconds of boiling, the clown got scared that the salt would scald her, so she moved her seat all the way back. I told her that she needed to be close when the salt started to blow since she had the tongs, but the clown didn’t listen. Then I told her to give me the tongs if she wasn’t up to the task, but she wouldn’t hand them over. It was lucky that the teacher was watching when our salt started to pop, because she took the tongs away from the clown and moved the fire herself. I took out my science notes and started answering the questions about the lab. As you can probably guess, the clown read off of my notes.