Went out to lunch the other day with Frankie; went to Kent's bbq yesterday... which happened to be hosted at somebody else's house. My cousin moved back into the house. Still got a lot on my mind... I don't know.

My financial aid situation is so screwed up... arrrggghhhh! I SO don't need this mess right now...

We had our after-graduation party, "Project Graduation," tonight. It was supposed to give kids something to do other than run off and get drunk, I suppose. Yea, way to celebrate your intellectual achievement: by going off and killing a bunch of your brain cells. (Well, that's assuming that alcohol kills brain cells, which I guess I really don't know that they do, but let's pretend. =P) You know, I really wonder what the big deal about graduating high school is. I mean, maybe it's just the whole thing about Asian culture & education, but aren't we supposed to graduate? If you don't, then I'm sorry, but quite frankly you're a fool! Haha, maybe it's just having gone to school in an elite district like Plano; I mean, when 1/3 of your class graduates "with honors," don't you feel the slightest urge to look down on the underachievers?

But yea, anyways, back to the subject of the party... ummmm... I guess it was alright. There was a decent amount of food, but I wasn't particularly hungry. Some of the martial arts club members got together, and we got a complimentary caricature-thingy... turned out kinda goofy, but I guess that's sort of the point, no? There was dancing too. You know, girls dance with each other all the time, but you don't often see guys dancing together. Bringing this phenomenon to our attention(s) (once again), Jeremy suggested that several of the guys try it out. Well, that was a fine mess, hahaha, I bet it looked like a swaying huddle or something similarly odd. Heh, but anyways, then I danced a couple for real... Slow-danced with Vivian, "regular" one with Tracy, slow one with Erika, and another slow one with Vivian to round it off. Still don't know what to say about it; it was... ummm... satisfying(?).

When the party ended at like 2:00AM, I didn't feel like going home, so Erika suggested we go to IHOP. Well, this was the first time that it was ever brought to my attention that there are 2 (possibly more) IHOP establishments in the area! Haha, so being me, I naturally decided to show up at the WRONG ONE! I got a call on my cell like 20 minutes later telling me what happened, so I had to drive all the way across town to the other IHOP... Well, I still wasn't hungry, so I just had some coffee... quite a lot of it actually- somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 cups, haha. I get the feeling I'm not gonna be sleeping well tonight. =P Oh well, I've got a lot I wanna think about anyways... *sigh*

Our graduation ceremony was today. It was quite boring, but I guess it did bring about a sense of closure to things. And I didn't think of it till later, but dang, those caps just kill your hair, hahaha. Oh, and when we were throwing our caps into the air, it was taking me an extra long time to get the tassel off, and a falling cap clunked me on the back of the head, hahaha, D'OH!

(*Note to self: final class rank= 12 out of 776)

On Friday, I went to kung fu for the first time in 2 weeks- nearly died. Saturday, we had to do a lion dance/kung fu show, blehhhh, it was so freaking hot; I think I got sunburned too. =( Then at night, I went to one of those open-invite parties. I didn't really know the host, so it was weird. Well, the party was... umm, [not quite what I expected]. I watched Spiderman with some friends on Sunday- it was a slight bit cheesy, but fun. It was pretty late when we got out, and we couldn't find any open restaurants, so we decided to have a little online ramen noodle party- we all made instant noodles, then opened up an AIM chatroom. Hahaha, it was great. On Monday, I watched Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Man, that movie is soooo long. I had to go to the bathroom before, during, and after it. I thought it was better than the first movie, but man, Anakin is such a jerk, hahaha! Then my dad hosted a barbecue at our house for his golf buddies- good food. And I learned (once again) how hard it is to keep 8-year old children entertained.

We went to Main Event this evening. I owned with the high score in laser tag again. Afterwards, like half of the group came to my house, and we watched Ocean's Eleven. It was better than I expected; it kinda reminds me of The Score.

And thus it ends... my 12 years of PISD schooling. You know, I don't exactly feel overjoyed like I expected to be. Instead, I feel this... [emptiness]. It feels like it ended before I even got into it- like I missed the experience altogether. Now I almost wish it wasn't over.

I took the AP Macroeconomics and Physics C makeups today, so I was at school until like 5:00. When I walked out, everyone had already left; the campus was deserted... It was one of the loneliest feelings I've ever had at school (, and I feel lonely quite a lot). It wasn't how I envisioned it ending; I thought there would be some moment of triumph, some sort of epiphany, with beams of light shining down & heavenly music playing. No, this wasn't how it was supposed to be... it can't end like this...

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper."
~ T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

Monday was our last "real" day of school. It was hell, cuz I had quite a bit of work to make up. And I finally took the final for my PE correspondence course. Whew, that was a huge burden off my shoulders. Taking correspondence was the worst mistake I ever made; you need too much motivation to actually do it. And if you don't, you have to pay for an extension, making it cost just as much as (if not more than) summer school. Plus, every day you don't finish, it haunts you- something lingering in the back of your mind, eating away at your sanity! Ummm, yea, correspondence is NOT for me.

I took the makeup AP for US government on Tuesday- suckage. Then Kevin, Edward, Zack, and I went to Purple Cow for lunch. Later in the afternoon, we had a graduation rehearsal, which was utterly useless. Then, Kevin & I had been invited to present our science fair findings at an Urban Agriculture Conference. Our mentor helped us make our project into a poster for display, and we stood in a hall while scientist-type figures walked by and occasionally stopped to talk to us. It was an interesting experience, and we got some souvenirs too.

On Wednesday, I had to take my finals for government and physics class. To make exemption, you have to have at least an 80 average for the 3rd six-weeks. Well, having slacked off thoroughly, I managed to let my grades slip... 78 and 79, grrrrr... so close.

Well, the end approaches, and people begin to go their separate ways. It's been fun, guys- y'all know who you are... I wish the good times could have lasted forever. I have just one favor to ask: don't forget- college may signal new beginnings, but don't forget your past. Till our paths cross again, my friends...

"It's something unpredictable,
but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life."
~ Green Day "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"

OMG! so screwed... 3 papers due tomorrow, plus make-up AP's to cram for, etc. Yea, an all-nighter is all but a certainty now, blehhh...

*I had to go in to A&M today to prep a poster for a presentation that we're doing in 2 days at an agriculture convention. Yea, I was working on it for like 2 hours, and then Microsoft Publisher crashes on me. NoOoooOOOOoo!!! Well, it only took me 1 hour to do it all again... after that, I was like, screw it, I'll let my mentor figure the rest out. Then, I made a little showing at our school LASER (science fair club) party. They did it at Main Event, and we played laser tag, haha, how fitting for our club, no? Yea, we were all on the same team, and as a whole, we REALLY sucked it up, hahaha. I managed to get the high score of the game though... scoring more points than the rest of my team combined... but we got slaughtered nonetheless. Then it was back home to die working on hw.

ISEF was quite a trip. Nowhere near as fun as Detroit was 2 years ago though. =/ Five kids from Plano were there: Me, Kevin, Alice, Paul, and Andrew (,who almost never chilled with us).

Saturday. Not much happened. We arrived around 5:00ish, ate at Joe's Crab Shack, then bought groceries for the week. It was a lot hotter than I'd anticipated; equivalent to Texas heat.

Sunday. We went and registered our projects, and found that we had an SRC violation- that's like the ultimate science fair sin. We'd marked our project as a first-year study, but they looked at some of our previous work and couldn't tell how it was different. So we had to schedule a meeting and argue our case in front of these 2 judges. There's a time limit of 15 minutes in which you have to convince them of your position, otherwise your project gets disqualified and you may or may not have to go home. We kinda negotiated, and I think they let us slide if we labelled our project as a continuation. It was weird though, cuz then half of our paperwork labelled us as a continuation and half otherwise. Oh well, whatever. then we went to set up our boards. It went pretty quickly cuz I'd brought my power screwdriver. Later, we found out we had more violations... huge pain in the butt. Cuz of that, we were late getting to the Student Exchange- it's the first real chance we got to exchange pins (a tradition) with kids from other states and countries. It was probably the most fun event of the week. They also put together this room with free arcades, karaoke, ping pong, foosball, and networked computer games; they called it the Digital Dugout- this was the best place to chill. We stayed there for hours. It started raining really hard as we were gonna head back to the hotel so we made like makeshift ponchos out of garbage bags- it was hilarious!

Monday. After it rained, it turned cold really quickly. Alice hadn't brought any winter clothes, so we went to the mall. An amusing little tidbit: the mall there had a Walmart connected to it, hahaha- I thought that was hilarious(ly ghetto). Anyways, I bought a discount sweater from the GAP for 5 bucks. I normally don't shop at the GAP, but I figgered, what the hey? I got 5 bucks to blow... That evening was the opening ceremony. It was really crappy. First of all, the dinner was organized very poorly- it was like a buffet kinda, except the food was spaced out across a stadium filled with a massive crowd. Then a mini-ceremony, and then a semi-concert. They'd given us these pens that light up and doubled as glowsticks, so that it was quite amusing. Left the party early, played cards, ate junk food in my hotel room. Note to self: dried jello doesn't come off of stuff very easily.

Tuesday. We went to Churchill Downs (where they run the Kentucky Derby) to see the track and stuff. We took two different tours. I was never really into horse racing or anything, but it turned out to be okay. I picked up a bunch of trivia facts about the sport. There was this 3D panoramic movie that was pretty cool. We took some really funny pictures at the (horsey) museum, but they might not have turned out so well. =/ At night, there was another welcoming event; they had us watch a minor league baseball game- sooooo boring, hahaha. And we saw some Japanese guys that we'd met 2 years ago in Detroit: Aki and Dais. I was surprised they remembered us... or maybe they were faking just to be nice, I dunno, hahaha, but it was cool.

Wednesday. There was a mix-up regarding a brunch that we thought we'd get but didn't, so we had to figure lunch out for ourselves. We ate at a restaurant with super slow service, so we had to rush to make it on time for the judges interviews (the actual competition part of this week-long event). Judging was separated into 2 rounds with a break in between. We had NO judges during the first, so all of them were squished into the 2nd round, back to back to back to etc... It took us a couple judges to finally get into the groove, and deliver a smooth presentation, ack! We got a special judge who was really interested in our project, and later on, he brought around his buddies to listen to our gig. =) Then there was another break, then a round of unstructured judging- basically judges go wherever they want. We thought that a special judge was gonna come back and talk to us, but she didn't- grrrr... didn't get any judges at all. Left in a sour mood. They had a "mixer" that night. It was in a park, and they had this no-name band playing. It was quite a disappointment... this was supposed to be the highlight of the week.

Thursday. We watched an IMAX movie, Extreme. Man, soooo boring, hahaha... I think I was the only person in our group that didn't fall asleep (, but I was very close, haha). That night was the special awards ceremony. Kevin & I won the soils award from the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), YAAAAAAAAYY!!! =) The award was worth $1000- I was ecstatic.

Friday. I woke up with a headache, so I was in an irritable mood all day. In the morning, there was the government/colleges awards ceremony. They got really behind, so it took forever, and no one from our group won anything. I got so bored I started making origami cranes halfway through. I made 5 or 6 of them, and I was gonna trash 'em when I walked out, but some kids asked me for them, so I gave them away. Wasn't hungry at lunch time; felt like puking. I went to the convention center and took a nap on a bench. In the afternoon was the grand awards ceremony... where they actually give you a place. The tension was unbelieveable- my heart was beating like CRAZY. But alas, we walked away with nothing- how disgraceful. We were the only ones we knew who didn't manage to place. =( That basically ruined the rest of the trip. I thought there'd be another party that night, but nope, I was wrong. =/ For dinner, we went to a teppanyaki place called Shogun- it was pretty good. After that, it was back to the convention center to tear down our projects. Started handing out extra pins. On the way out, this Puerto Rican kid approached me and told me that I had "weird hair," and that it reminded him of a "Chinese hat or something." Haha, I didn't know what to say. We chilled in the hotel for the rest of the night. One of the guys we met wanted to see a kung fu demonstration, so he asked me if I could kick the ceiling. Not knowing that ceiling tiles are remarkably soft, pulled a jump kick and knocked a hole through a tile, hahaha, D'OH! Yea, that was pretty stupid- heh, hope they don't notice. =P

Saturday. We had KFC at the airport. We thought it'd be different, for some reason, since it is (or rather, was) Kentucky Fried Chicken... nope, we were wrong. Boarded the plane and came home at about 1:30.

Wow, this week has been hell. 4 AP's down, 3 to go... English was pretty bad; I thought the fossil was a metaphor for a scientist, hahaha, D'OH! Calc BC was pretty killer too... much harder than I anticipated. And I'd never taken a free response practice for it, so I had no idea you had to work so fast, arrrggg. Statistics wasn't a piece of cake either, neither was CompSci AB- I think my programming skills completely just went down the drain this second year. Yea, that recursive free response was DNG. Ok, so a summary of the first week of AP's would be: everything was hard.

Thursday was our school's Senior Awards Ceremony. Kind of a silly waste of time. They handed out these paper certificates and stuff. WHEEEEEEE!!! Went to Starbucks afterwards to relax; played a game of chess with Edward... I lost.

I'm leaving for ISEF (International Science Fair) in Louisvile, Kentucky on Saturday (05/11) around noon, so I had to pack tonight. Packing's no fun, blehhh.

ISEF should be [interesting]... a week of fun with minimal amounts of work. I'm still disappointed that they decided to host the event in Louisville though. =/ And I'm getting screwed over for the AP's I haven't taken yet. I opted to take the late versions, rather than trying to take the tests in Kentucky. I think the late version's harder or something; last year, we had to redo our Spanish orals cuz the tapes got messed up... the second time was soooo much harder than the first. No good...

Today was my last day of Chinese school. *sigh* the memories...

I spent all morning cramming for the final, but all my studying proved fruitless as I still managed to get slaughtered on the test. =( Oh well, there was like probably a 70 point curve or something, and I managed to pass, haha. Ummm... and they gave us semi-diplomas and a $50 "red packet" (which happened to come in the form of a white envelope). Yea... thus concludes my 9 or 10 years worth of Chinese school. Man, if I'd only managed to remember half the stuff I learned, my Chinese would be quite impressive. I do want to learn, but there's just so many other things I've had to focus on... if only it were a class in real school. =/

My mom went back to Taiwan on Wednesday. =(

We got a new computer- a 1.1 GHz Celeron. I thought it'd be a lot faster, but it wasn't. And it runs Windows XP, which is just bleeeehhhhhh!!! It tries to be too helpful, and ends up just being a nuisance. So I spent a long time trying to configure it to be as close to Windows 98 as I could get it. Oh, and our home networking system didn't work with XP- had to download a bunch of junk and overhaul the software. Conclusion? XP is a pain in the butt!

On Thursday, we had a "senior brunch," which consisted of cookies and nachos... kinda lame. We had an assembly, and I won a $250 scholarship- whatever. And we had our last martial arts club meeting of the year too. After the meeting, I treated the guys to Java... *sigh* The memories... =(

Darius's (surprise) birthday party was tonight. His sister coordinated it, so I bet a lot of his friends didn't get invited. =/ Well, it was pretty cool; I still find it hard to believe that Darius didn't suspect a thing. Anyways, we watched tv and people played DDR. I ate a ton of food, as always. We had cake & icecream... For some reason I can't remember, we decided to see how fast everyone could eat large amounts of icecream. It was hilarious. As for presents, people gave more gag gifts than real gifts, haha. Tracy got him Sock-em-Boppers, haha, those things are soooo fun. Mike & I split the cost to get one of those Gundam models. Darius didn't look particularly impressed; he was like, "when am I ever gonna build this thing?" Heh, later on in the party, Vivian and I built like the entire thing for him- sooooooo fun! Hahaha, most fun part of the entire party! =P