Amaranthine Forever

I am freaking out. My mind is a swirling mess of terror and fear. help. I know God has a plan for my life and wherever I end up is the #1 best place for me to be. Someone tell that to my pale, shaking, hands please.

and hopefully will stay that way for a while! I got interviewed this morning from my school and I'm sending the link to this blog as well. Hi, make me faaamouss please. This post is going to be really random so I warn you in advance. I miss the old blogging swag days. 1.) Life has been really really crazy. Stuff with boys, stuff with school, stuff with college, stuff with life. I really wanted to do NaNoWriMo again but couldn't :( 2.) I'm down 5/12 college applications submitted! MIT gets back to me in mid-december, only a couple weeks away...excuse me while I go scream and cry into a pillow. 3.) My instructor from E2 made an awesome documentary video about what we did at MIT and I"m in it a lot...I'm the Asian(the one with shorter hair and tanner skin). 4.) AMAZINGNESS HAPPENED in the form of I got to go the the LA red carpet premiere of the favorite movie adaption of my favorite book, Ender's Game! I went with Ender's Ansible and got t...

at my house. Hence, me sitting typing in a Starbucks.  And I just realized I"ve spent the entire day without my glasses or contacts on(and don't have them with me now) Whoo..... How's life? My current situation is pretty symbolic of my life right now, unfortunately.  After I had probably the most amazing summer of my life, the school year kinda crashed down on me. So I'm a senior in high school! Only two semesters(really, one) left....I started this blog in 8th grade Surreal, huh? Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time to reflect what on school, college apps, gold award, school.... School has been more challenging and with a larger workload than ever before. It's mostly my fault, what with my ridiculous overachiever schedule. I have five AP classes, and my teachers, though good, are prettyyyy hard graders. Here are my impressions of each class: AP Calc-My lowest grade. I screwed up the first big assignment, but got a perfect score on the last quiz an...

Mostly I've been sleeping. The first day back I got 10 hours of sleep and it was maagicaal. I've been going to sleep early and sleeping in every day since then, and taking naps in the middle of the day. I feel like I've been catching up! Our last day at E2 was the symposium and dance. The symposium was really cool, and seeing all the different projects was awesome! It was really long though (from 9-3) and by then everyone was exhausted, so there were always a ton of people asleep during the presentations(including teachers and TAs). We got our little diplomas and class pictures(really cool) but were bummed to find out that our meal cards had expired a day early. I had $20 still left on there! After the symposium we had several hours of free time, which was the first time I had had more than 10 minutes of free time all week. I didn't know what to do with myself! I ended up trying to nap and then giving up and wandering through Simmons with some of my friends. We fo...

1:12 AM. Happy late afternoon(for an MIT student) guys. So we finished our project and are presenting it tomorrow.  Here's how it went: Our lab hours to completely build the ROV from scratch were, as usual 1-4:45 and 7-10:30. We have never, ever, ever gotten back before midnight. Except this time, we were being "charged" for every hour we went over planned.  So we were super determined to get it done before then. We organized, planned, and prepared, and at 7 we attacked our pile of materials(which we calculated carefully and "purchased") with great zeal. And we actually did it too! I wired the control box myself, which was cool since on Monday it was driving me crazy and I didn't know anything about it. At around 10:30, we were by far first to finish and fluttering around getting ready to present to Ms. Schroyer. The TAs and instructor don't actually instruct us at all except on the tools the first day. They just answer questions and most of th...

First break all day today! Fifteen minutes, let's go. Awesome things about E2: The people. They are incredible. Imagine your typical classroom with average kids, lazy kids, and smart kids who usually answer questions and do their homework and try hard and everyone looks up to and depends on. Then imagine all those kids taken out of their high schools and put into this program. That's how I feel when I talk to the other kids. Every kid here is smart. We work in groups. Normally I worry about being put in groups with "dead weights", lazy kids who rely on me to do all the work and just derp around and let other people decide things. There's nobody like that here. There's no bad groups because everybody here is the kind of person who contributes, who innovates, who goes beyond the expected. It's an electrifying  environment. Everyone works really hard, carefully notates all the steps, and thinks  about what they're doing. Small things. If their work is t...

I guess the most important thing is that we finished building our robot! It was a lot of work. My group was the first to be done by far! :D We would have been faster if we hadn't blown a fuse XD. The wiring was the most work. Here are some in progress pics and a demo video I made XD. https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a. akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/ q71/s720x720/73588_ 151474631720026_1740879144_n. jpg https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a. akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/ q71/s720x720/993337_ 151240538410102_1956811971_n. jpg https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a. akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/ q71/s720x720/1150143_ 151240941743395_11336685_n.jpg http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=wW1ST7151OE A picture of Trang and me in front of the dome! :D https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn. net/hphotos-prn1/q82/s720x720/ 625489_151474858386670_ 387249408_n.jpg Everyone here is very smart and nice and they really encourage us to get to know everybody. Since we were delayed in building the robot we were a lot behind an...

THEY DO NOT LIE ABOUT THE WORK HERE. I got up at 6:45 to go running and had one five minute break in the afternoon and then get to write now but the rest of the time I had literally no time to stop or breath or explore MIT or do ANYTHING. These are the two dashed emails I wrote to family and friends: It is 7:03PM :D. This is the first break i have and I actually have to get going in like one minute they just knocked on my door. I got up at 6:45 to run on the track with a group of friends and have been busy with no time to go back to the dorm at all or stop we went to two talks the first was the graduate school dean she talked alot about her research of designing armor based on scales and stuff in nature. Also google center info session and dean of engineering. Underwater robotics is really really really cool we solder and cut pvc pipe and have a lot of wires and batteries and motors pictures maybe too. We are making a underwater robot controlled with a tether. we were in lab...

Super exhausted. XD Yesterday we went on the Freedom Trail with Kevin and William from E2 and Rebecca from Girl Scouts. I It was awesome, relaxing, fun, saw many historical sights and a lady playing a glass harmonica and a chocolate making demonstration. E2 is AMAZING already. I met so many people and having a horrible time forgetting faces and names. Simmons is so cool with undulating walls and random colors and a super clean and modern yet earthy aesthetic appeal. They really really really really emphasize that we're going to be doing a LOT of work. They messed up with my course and sent me the electronics email. I was kinda bummed cause underwater robotics was my first choice. When I got here it turned out that I actually was in underwater robotics and they made a mistake. Today I got to Simmons and checked all in. The room was nice and I excitedly ran up and down the hallways and met people. Then we had our orientation and an Engineering Design 101 class, then more orien...

Just dropping in to say that I am now in the Boston area(deceptively close sounding, it takes over an hour to drive to and from Boston at any hour of the day because of traffic). I visited Harvard yesterday and MIT today, taking the T. Besides visits, we're basically hanging out, going fishing, playing video games, going on the trampoline, good times, good times. Harvard: Pretty nice campus, PACKED with tourists, most of the people weren't even Harvard students, spread out and urban and kinda small. Not really my thing and  somehow it didn't feel like "Harvard" to me. XD I imagined it to be more like Cornell, big and looming and silent and impressive. The Harvard Natural History museum was amazing , packed to the gills with all sorts of fish and birds and birds and birds and insects and birds and large mammals and displays and AMAZING rocks and geodes and tons and tons of stuffed birds. MIT was...wow. MIT is definitely my top choice and I haven't even do...

Really loud, busy, and exciting! Crazy drivers and traffic. I couldn't imagine trying to drive in the streets, even riding is scary. XD The first day we went, we walked around and went to the Museum Of Chinese in America, a must-see for any chinese people in New York City. It reminded me a lot of the tenacity and hardship my Chinese ancestors went through here. Where I live, there are more Asians than anybody else, and there are a lot of stereotypes of Asians being more smart or privileged, so it's hard to believe there was a time when it wasn't normal or cool to be Chinese. I think Chinese have assimilated into American culture to an unusual degree, so it was heartbreaking to read about the backbreaking manual labor in laundries or restaurants just so they could live in a place so they could live in America. It broke my heart to see and hear the primary source recordings and documents of the degrading hardship yet untainted pride of my ancestors. One of the people me...

My parents' alma mater! Really cool as well. We can see the University from our hotel right across the Genesee river. A lot of things have changed since my parents graduated, but I had a lot of fun walking to my dad's dorm, seeing where my mom and dad met, and visiting where my dad used to do research. We went to get a copy of the alumni book at the world-famous Optics institute and the receptionist just scheduled a meeting with me and a professor and the undergraduate coordinator when she heard I was a rising senior. XD It turns out that the Optics department is very in demand but they can't graduate enough students to keep up with it(there are only 90 undergrads in the department with only 10 or so last graduating class). So they really try to recruit more students. Optics is a specialized branch of engineering dealing with a broad range of things from light to lenses to lasers. Most colleges don't have an optics major, so I'll definitely consider it if I en...

Cornell is super amazing and GORGES(haha overused puns FTW). I liked the atmosphere and rural-ness of the campus a lot more than I liked Stanford's. The info session was pretty good too! The gorge was beautiful and had picturesque bridges and green trees and waterfalls... It was overcast today, which was GREAT because it was actually a tolerable temperature, just in time for my first campus tour of this trip. It was really deserted because summer, but I really enjoyed Cornell and it has been bumped up to third on my list. This is a photo of me taken at the BEAUTIFUL Ulrich Library. Here's another picture:  I feel like Cornell is one of the less-hyped of the Ivy Leagues, but I think it's amazing. It's the only one I'm applying to(College of Engineering, possible MechE major). They let you shop around for different engineering majors before locking you into one, have a great co-op program where you can work full time for a company, and have lots of ...

but the hotel still didn't have real maple syrup at breakfast D:<. Also, it's over 90 degrees and humid every day. The falls are really nice though! This morning we went and walked a very long time from the falls to the Duffiden Islands Nature Reserve. Lots of bug bites :(. Pretty though! A nice(though hot) walk. The tourist marketers have got this thing NAILED! :D We decided not to go on the iconic Maid of the Mists Boat despite the loudspeakers claiming it was THE ONLY WAY TO TRULY EXPERIENCE LE FALLS. The general area is really cool too, with lots of fancy hotels and fountains mixed in with souveneir shops. We're going back to MURICA tomorrow! The only difference I've found was the people with accents and they call the bathhroom "washroom." And the channels on TV are lamer! There was this freaking weird ad for a movie called "Sharknado" playing that was about a tornado carrying flying sharks that attacked a town. The canadian film industry?!...

Canada is super awesome, but pretty hot and humid. After a red-eye flight, transfer, 3 hour time change, and being crammed into a rental car with the suitcases barely fitting for three hours, we got to Niagara Falls. After getting settled in, we went on a hike down a steep hill right to the river. We met a girl and her friend from around here, and we learned that she had recently been hitchiking from Columbia back up to Canada with barely any money and relying on the kindness of strangers. She was really enthusiastic and it sounded amazing. I was worried about safety, but she said that nothing had happened to her and the people were so much nicer than they made it sound on the news with dangerous reports about Mexico and everything. She described sleeping in the backs of trucks and in other people's houses, and it seems so much like a rawer experience of a different country than what most people get during their travels. She was fluent in Spanish and extremely enthusiastic about t...

I'm sitting outside our gate waiting for our 12:59 AM flight to JFK airport and then flight to Buffalo and then drive to Niagara falls. We are going on a three and a half week trip to Niagara Falls, various locations in New York around the east coast, and then my one week course at E2@MIT! This morning I actually got the email asking us to rank our project courses and preferences--the following are all the course descriptions. Architecture   This course introduces architecture as a way of thinking and making. Students are taught to use a variety of media including pencil and paper drawing, digital modeling, digital collage, full-scale prototyping, and scale physical models. Students work collectively to design, build and speculate on the implications of a construct that will respond to social and environmental forces. This year, the project is a pavilion for cell phone conversations--a place to wander into in a public setting so as to obtain some privacy and isolati...

Divergent, by Veronica Roth, is near the top of the list when it comes to books hyped as being "the next Hunger Games'. The Hunger Games, in turn, have come to symbolize any sort of dystopian super-hyped blockbuster series of novels/movies. And I'm okay with that. Despite all my mixed feelings about the series, it's an excellent, well-written, engaging, intelligent series with a not-horrible movie adaptation. So when I heard this series compared to it, heard a little bit about the content of the books, and saw its epic looking cover, I had high hopes when I picked it off the shelves. All in all, I think Divergent had the possibility to be at the very least an entertaining action book with a simple but interesting plot and some cool scenes/characters/technology. What actually happened? Erm... Setting/Premise: This premise is pretty much the selling point for the entire series. In a world where society is divided into factions ...... This whole divid...

So here I am guys! I've made the full journey from being a hater to actually cosplaying at an expo(mah dream for a couple months. My costume(Ciel Phantomhive from Kuroshitsuji I did get some compliments and waves and some people even asked to take my picture which made me really happy. I got a lot more attention outside of the con hall, like in hotel lobbies and stuff though XD. So I actually wasn't going to wear the costume until the 4th of July when one of my friends convinced me to. The convention was yesterday, the 6th, so I pretty much had to finish the costume the night before... fun times. Kyoko from Puella Magi Madoka Magica! I really want to make this one. On Friday we left at about 3:30 and arrived at the convention center a little before 5. Not too bad at all! There was no line to pick up badges that late, but it was still really crowded! Some convention center shots:   Halo? and mandos   Prussia from Hetalia   L, Light...

Ender's Game: “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.” ― Orson Scott Card , Ender's Game   Speaker for the Dead: “No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.” ― Orson Scott Card , Speaker for the Dead   Xenocide: “From all wise men, O Lord, protect us.” ― Orson Scott Card , Xenocide     Children of the Mind:   “Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to...

My piano recital went really well, so thank God for that! :D I wasn't as nervous before I went up. Road trip today! We're going to visit Berkeley and Stanford. :) Couldn't find Ender's Game audiobook to listen to in the car! All five digital copies in the library were out, can you believe it?

I got my report card for junior year so that official makes me a senior now. :) I went to a friend's high school graduation yesterday! It was for OCSA(performing arts school) so of course it was epic. The Star Spangled Banner was in four-part harmony and they sang three other songs. It was very beautiful, all the kids were talented, gorgeous, and headed for some great colleges. ;) Started my internship at the UCI medical center! I'm going to get my badge soon, with my photo on it so it looks all awesome. Piano recital tomorrow...Piano and I have a not-good history, so I'd appreciate all your prayers! This weekend is busy. Tomorrow we're going to the optometrist(far away optometrist), then piano, then church, then Elephant bar. The next morning, we leave for the Bay Area. We're visiting UC Berkeley on Monday, and Stanford and coming home on Tuesday :O.