Where would I go?

If I could go to any place in the world outside the U.S., I think it would have to be Scotland. I really like the weather and scenery there, and all the people have awesome accents. If not Scotland, then probably somewhere in Asia, because everything seems so different there. Also, I really like Asian food.... The only problems with going to Asia would be the mass amounts of pollution, and not being able to speak/understand anything.

Last week I went tubing with a bunch of friends on some river that I forgot the name of. It was pretty fun, I haven't gone tubing for a few years, and the last time I went was a bad experience (including rashes in various places, many insect bites, and bloody feet.).

Overpopulation

Japan and China are some of the most overpopulated countries in the world. In fact, China is THE most populated country in the world! Why? because there weren't any limits on the population growth. Recently China has passed an act that limits families to only 1 child. I think that this is a really good response to the overpopulation problem, but it probably could have gone into action a lot earlier. Also, China should start making things like birth control more available to the population.


Last week, I went to a fencing tournament in San Marcos, and got 6th out of 16 people. I probably could have done better, but I had some bad luck in the direct elimination round. For those of you not familiar with this, it's where you fence someone to 15 points, then if you lose you're out for the rest of the tournament, but if you win, you fence the person who won their bout, and so on, until the last two, who fight for 1st place.( yeah, sorry bad explanation..) Anyways, I won my first direct elimination, but then got placed with the one guy I couldn't beat, who ended up getting 1st.

Darfur

I think that the situation in Darfur is a huge mess of corruption, chaos, and genocide.The Janjaweed should be blamed because they're doing the actual killing. China should be blamed, because they're supplying the Janjaweed with weapons,and the rest of the world isn't doing much to help. I think that this conflict is definitly a genocide, because a group of innocent people are being killed.

Last week, I went on a ski trip with the music department of Anderson Orchestra. We went to Colorado, and it snowed a ton! We almost had to stay an extra day because there was so much! Anyways, I had alot of fun skiing, and it was just really awesome.

Culture

Yay, music! I love music! I play 2 instruments, listen to music all the time, and live in Austin, TX, the music capitol of the world! I'm even listening to music while I'm writing this! I enjoy techno/electronica, alternative, trance,(some) country, rock, and other genres that I don't know the name of. My favorite band is probably Coldplay, they're pretty much awesome. I also like Embrace, the Strokes, Gomez, the Arcade Fire, and some other independant artists such as Jack Conte, and Oren Lavie. I mainly like kind of quite or mellow music, and I don't really like heavy metal, or any intense stuff.

Last week was spring break! I mainly just stayed at home sleeping, but I saw some friends, and went to San Antonio for a day. This weekend, I'm going to a fencing tournament in Houston, hopefully I'll be able to get a rating! For those of you that don't know, in fencing, you get rated; E is the lowest, A is the highest. I'm currently a U fencer. (Unrated) But hopefully I'll be able to get up to E this weekend.

My Interests

I'm interested in many things, so I'll name a few. First off- movies! I love making and watching movies. It's kind of hard to make good movies by yourself, but I might have my friends help me. One kind of movie I can make by myself is animation! Right now I've been experimenting with stop motion animation, which is where you take a picture of an object in one position, move the object's position slightly, take another picture, and repeat. When you put all the pictures together, and speed it up, it looks like the object is moving on it's own. I was going to put up a sample, but blogger is being mean...

I'm also interested in reading, mainly fiction. Some of my favorite books are, "Ender's game", "Dog Days", and "New Tricks". Another thing I'm interested in is music. Some of the bands I like are Coldplay, Embrace, and the Strokes.

These past two weeks were relatively eventful. We had two orchestra concerts, once during school, and one after school. In the school concert I got lost on one of the pieces, then thought I knew were to come back in, but ended up playing on the wrong beat....oops.... Also, I missed most of my math classes last week, the first time, I left early to go to the orthodontist. Then, the next day was tax, so we didn't learn anything new. The the next day I played at the concert, and missed another lesson that turned out to be really important. To make up for missing class, I tried to come in for tutoring during lunch, but my teacher wasn't there. Finally I got caught up the next day after school.

Better to fall in love or learn to love?

In my opinion it's better to fall in love than to be forced to love someone. It's always better to have a choice, and you might not be right for the person you're arranged to marry. It would really suck if you had to live with someone everyday that you don't like, and it would probably suck for them too. When two people fall in love, then you know that they genuinely like each other, and will probably be able to live with each other for a while. Actually, before I was born, my parents and made a deal with their friends as kind of a joke. The "deal" was that if one of them had a boy, and the other had a girl, then the children would marry when they were old enough. Well, my parents had a boy (me!) and their friends had a girl, so........

These last two weeks have been moderately eventful. I finally saw Coraline in 3D, and it was AWESOME!! It was a good story, but mainly it was an amazing visual experience.(especially in 3D.) I also had a banjo rehearsal, which went pretty well. Some other things happened, but they're not worth writing about.

Global Warming

I used to not believe in Global Warming. I thought that Al Gore made it all up, just to get more votes, but now-a-days, I'm not so sure. Humans are a really annoying species, all we do is mess up nature for everything else. We're Jerks. We spill pollutants like oil in the water, we pollute the sky with fumes from our factories, and we're not really doing much to change it. I don't really keep up with all the political nonsense, but I think that Barack Obama will be making some major environmental changes to stop Global Warming. (CHANGE!!!! YEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!)
I think that everyone should do things like recycle, not litter, and just be more environmentally efficient. I'm not saying that you should go hippie, and live off your own urine, just be more aware of the impact of your actions.

These last two weeks, I really haven't done much, I went on a camp out last weekend, and it was pretty cold, we camped next to a shallow lake, and the next morning, the top was frozen! I skipped a rock, and got about 10 skips. I wanted to see Coraline yesterday, but I wasn't able to, so hopefully, I'll be able to see it today, it looks really cool. I think I'm going to get two buttons, and somehow attach them to glasses, and wear them to the theater. I don't know if I'll be able to see.........