Slice of Life

1000 Kanji and Counting! Woot!

2009-01-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Today, I got to a little over 1000 kanji in RtK. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel pretty good about it. Now, that means at the rate I've been learning new kanji, I'm probably not going to finish by the end of the month (to do that, I would need to do around 150 some-odd kanji everyday plus reviews). I'm going to adjust my goal to finishing before the 20th of next month. That gives me about, well, a month to go through them all.

REAL New Years Resolutions

2009-01-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

Hello, and Happy New Year to everyone. I wish each and every single one of you a blessed 2009.

Now, I've put together a few New Years resolutions that I will actually strive to fulfill. Yeah, I know, New Years Resolutions are "srs bzns," but yeah. Feel free to doubt me in making these reality:

• Start Running Again
For about three or four months last year, I ran almost every night. After summer came, it fell to the wayside since I was really bad at structuring my day when I wasn't forced to. Then, my physical state just went down hill, and now I'm back at square one. With the stress from school, I'm going to need this.

• Learn Japanese
This is probably the biggest goal on the list. Since I'm doing this on my own, this is going to be a real challenge. As a sub goal, I'm going to complete the book, Remembering the Kanji I, by the end of the month. That's a little over 2000 Kanji, or Chinese characters. I've already gone through 508, so it's a really good start. From then on, I'll just continue to review them while tackling other aspects of the language as well.

• Take a break from MUN, at least for a few months
Not really a goal, but with all the stress MUN has created for me has driven me crazy this entire school year thus far, I need a break from this for at least a month and a half. If I start again too soon, I'm going to burn myself out, especially if I try to pile Japanese over it too. Edit: Actually, I quit.

And, uh, that's it.

UCLA MUN 08: My Experience

2008-11-11T16:11:00.000-08:00

I left for UCLA Model UN on Friday and came back on Sunday night. I have to say, it was a rather interesting experience.

• I roomed with three other girls, and I'd say 'twas a pretty good experience. They were nice people and everything. But next year, I'll need to get one of those blindfold things because I learned (again) that I cannot sleep with the lights on. Well, unless I'm really, really tired. Oh well. At least I wasn't in the room of five.

• As far as competition went, I did much better than last time. I can talk better and all, and I found a few more things I need to work on. I just don't like how even though I spent 15+ hours more on research, I only got 5 more points... I really need to work on efficiency. .__.;

• Saturday night in Westwood was fun. :O The dance was eh, but the stuff before that was fun.

Oh Look, The Election!

2008-11-04T20:29:00.000-08:00

Here I come with another update on my status.

•School work's been taking less time. I must be getting used to the work load or I must've had a lot less projects back then. But...
• ...MUN's been a barrel of stress that's been taking up my time these days. I'm looking forward to it, but every conference takes forever for me to prepare for. All my work will pay off this weekend. I'm sure of it. :)
• Oh look, the O-man's president. Wasn't crazy about him or McCain, but I couldn't vote anyways, so the vote's at the mercy of my "superiors."

Busy as Heck

2008-10-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

Wow, I have not touched this thing since school started again. A lot has been going on, and I haven't had the time/thought to/felt like posting anything here for a long time. So, here's a little update of a long time.

• I've had lots of school work that's been keeping me busy. I have just realized the ungodly amount of time I spend on my history homework every night I have an assignment. If I had one, I wouldn't be typing this thing up. Throw group projects from other classes every week or so, and there's very little time for me to mess around...

• ...Speaking of which, I should be working on stuff for school and MUN right now, but, well, I don't feel like it right now.

• The time I do have to mess around with, I tend to blow it off on TF2. If you also play, you can find me on Steam here.

~Shoyren

School Again

2008-08-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

• Guess who got the Orange Box yesterday. Oh my gosh, it's so much awesome! <3 So far, I clocked about seven hours in Team Fortress, five of which just evaporated without me being aware of it. I just wish Half Life and Portals didn't crash on me or make me dizzy.

• And of course I got the games the Saturday before school starts.

...

Brilliant, aren't I?

"Shook Me All Night Long"

2008-07-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

I should be hit over the head by AC-DC for the lame pun, but oh well. A pretty big quake happened over here in sunny So Cal. Probably the biggest I felt since I can remember. Strangely, the phone lines are screwed up, but my internet seems to be working fine. :/ Not that I'm complaining.

Vegas

2008-07-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Came back from Vegas yesterday evening. It was interesting to say the least. Oh, and I'm underage, so there will be no mention of gambling here.

• To be perfectly honest, food makes me happy, especially breakfast. I think a good portion of my time there was spent eating.

• The mall I went to over there was huge. o_o It's the kind that's actually a bit confusing to get around even with the map since it had multiple wings and multiple levels for each wing. Still, it was fun shopping there. Well, except for being outraged by how freaking expensive it is to by a pair of worn out pants just because it has a tiny embroidered moose on one of the back pockets. But, that's just me.

• Swimming isn't as fun as it was when I was little. :/ Went to the pool at the hotel, but it wasn't all that enjoyable. Maybe I just don't like being around strangers in that sort of setting. *shrugs*

Yeeeeeeeeees!

2008-07-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

• I turned 16 a few days ago. I don't really wanna bother getting my driver's license since I'm deathly afraid of driving at this point.

• I got a new computer! :D It's super fast and the monitor's really good. My tablet seems to work pretty well with it even though it wasn't exactly made for wide screen monitors. The only problem with it is that I can't seem to get Photoshop CS2 to work with it, and openCanvas 4 isn't compatible, period. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with it. I'll need to put Civ 4 on this thing later. >.>

:P

2008-07-18T10:45:00.001-07:00

Nyeh!

Blarg...

2008-07-10T00:57:00.000-07:00

Dang, when you go to your blog about your life and you have almost nothing to talk about, you know you gotta go do some stuff. >.>

• Been lovin' the Venture Brothers. "The Buddy System" kinda reminded me of "Tag-Sale." I really hope that Dermott kid isn't related to Brock, 'cause that'd be too obvious for me. "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman," also great. While if felt a little Mary-Sue-ish in the beginning, the whole female parallel was handled so well, I didn't really get that feeling at all afterwards.

• Birthday's coming up. I feel somewhat unaccomplished about my past year even though I know I did get a lot done. I dunno. I need a more productive outlet that the internet and staying up this late... Buh-Bye.

~Shoyren

Marginal Reviews Galore!

2008-06-23T13:31:00.001-07:00

Well, not much is going on with my personal life at the moment, but here's some stuff on what I watched a few days back.

• On Friday, I watched Venture Bros. (Home is Where the Hate Is) on the [adult swim] website. Most I've laughed out loud this season. I had to watch it twice because I liked it so much. Not as much backstory here, but I like how they're doing something with Sgt. Hatred. The boys were great in the episode too, like clown!Dean. Heck, it was all great! <3

• I went to the movies on Saturday with some of my friends. We saw Get Smart and Zohan.

Get Smart was pretty good in my opinion. It was pretty funny and even a bit... cute? There's action, but it wasn't a huge thing to me. I heard it was originally a TV series way back in the day, so my opinion might've been different had I seen it. Maybe I'll start watching the Office now... >.>;

But oh my gosh, Zohan was awful. Waaay too raunchy and disgusting for my taste. I can see raunchy-ness being funny once or twice, but it gets more ugly than funny after that. Definitely wouldn't see it again.

Go Team Shoes!

2008-06-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I saw a little tutorial on painting shoes with your own designs. Well, It inspired me to do the same. I bought some white canvas shoes this morning and worked on them for the past several hours. Because I'm such an avid fan of Venture Brothers, I decided to do Venture-themed designs for it. To the left is what I made. Personally, I'm quite proud of the result.

Note that I decided not to paint these since they looked pretty good without it. Also, I couldn't get the completely plain white shoes, so this is the closest I could get. (Not really complaining though since it doesn't seem to detract from the stuff I did make myself.)

The "Final" Stretch

2008-06-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

• On Friday, I saw a teacher playing Guitar Hero. I saw him playing it from a window in the hallway, and went, "Wait- is that?" Turns out I was right. I think it's one of the coolest things I've seen a math teacher (I think he teaches math) do in like, forever. XD

• I took that subject test on Saturday. The incompetency of the management at the test center was amazing. I had to sit there for an hour before I could even start the dang test. >_< At least I think I did pretty well on it.

• This week is finals week (no pun intended with the title of this post. Really). It's also the last week of school. I should be studying for my finals tomorrow (English and Biology) but I don't feel like it, so I'm not. Today, I had my P.E. and Art class "finals," so today was rather boring. XD

And after Wednesday is over, goodbye freshman year, hello summer!

~Shoyren

Project DONE!

2008-06-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

Ugh...

Just finished...

my share of group biology project...

OMG, it feels to good to have it done...

I only have this week and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week until school's done. Sadly, those three days are for finals... which are starting to scare me.

Not to mention I have my SAT Biology Subject Test on Saturday. Wish me luck! <:[

~Shoyren

"Luke, I Am Your Father"

2008-05-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

• Today, when I was shelving books at the library, there was this Star Wars event thing going on. What do I see when I leave? A Millennium Falcon car. XD It might not've been that well done, but it just showed me how... dedicated fans of any series/movie/whatever can be. (Though to be fair, I might end up doing something similar for Venture Brothers if given the chance. :P)

• I just checked out a book on Java today. Since I'm thinking about getting a job in computers, I thought it would do me some good for me to learn some coding to see if I actually like it first. So far, it seems pretty cool, so hopefully I'll stick with it.

• I also got Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2. It's a pretty cute game. Team Awesome rocks! >:D

And... that's it.

~Shoyren

"Two houses both alike in dignity"

2008-05-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

Haha, I'm so late. I know I should've posted this days ago, but I was lazy. Okay, here it goes:

• The title has nothing to do with this post. Really, it doesn't.

• UC Irvine MUN went okay. I won a research award and a several other people won the other awards. I'll need to work on my assertiveness if I want to do much better. Well, just another thing to work on this summer.

• And then we had the MUN Banquet on Tuesday! It was so much fun, especially seeing everyone all dressed up in the *ahem* "international attire." ♥ I'm gonna miss all the seniors next year, but at least they're going to do awesome things when they leave.

• I have tomorrow and Monday off for Memorial Day! I don't know what I'm gonna do the whole time, but I've got a few things to do so far.

• School is almost over for the year, and I don't know what I'm going to do this summer. @_@ I'm excited for the end of school, but terrified by the massive free time at the same time. D:

Okay, that's about it for now.

~Shoyren

MUN FTW

2008-05-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

Hehe, I'm gonna be gone all weekend. I'll be at UCI kicking delegate butt. >:D I might post a blog on it (with glorious pictures) afterwards.

~Shoyren

John Freeman! Over Here!

2008-05-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

This.
Is.
EPIC!

I don't even play Half Life, and I've been rofl-ing for the past day or so over this. *dork*

Watch! I command you! >:(

Mmph

2008-05-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

This be my first post. So let me start off with some info:

You shall know me by the name of Shoyren.
I am 15 years old.
I am a freshman in high school.
I am an internet junkie.
I am (fairly) new to the Blogosphere.

Bleh, and I have a sore throat. Thank goodness for painkillers.

In a few hours, I'll be headed to my grandmother's house. I'll need to take some homework with me 'cause English just slammed me with a couple huge projects that need to be done sometime next week. Oh well.

~Shoyren