Day Twenty-Eight: A New Goal

7/11/14, 11:59 PM PDT

I didn't wake up until 11:45 AM today. I think that's a new record for this summer. No doubt in part because of my AMAZING clip-on fan. It's so beautifully cold when I sleep now. Swear to god, I could probably sleep for 12, 13 hours straight if it weren't for the fact that I have to eat sometime.

Anyway, I spent most of today writing my part of the duet poem I'm working on with Samantha. I got pretty far on it too, I'm about three-fourths of the way through, which is pretty good. Later, went swimming with my family.

On to the big thing that happened today. So because of the wonders of Spotify, I got to hear a new song called "Love on Top" by Beyoncé. Wait, scratch that, it's not an entirely new song to me since I've heard it before from this vine:

But today, I actually got to listen to the entire song.

And holy SHIT, Beyoncé hits DAMN high notes. But my favorite part has to be the end where she just keeps raising the key higher and higher, GOD DAMN. Here, I'll shut up for a bit, give it a listen, it'll be worth five minutes of your day, promise.

Okay, so why am I raving so much about a song? Simple.

It's because I've made it my goal to be able to sing every note of that song.

"PBBBBBBTH, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA."
(via gifsoup.com)

I know what you're thinking. "But Michael! You're not a singer!" And yes, I know. I agree. I'm not a singer. I don't dispute that. But just because I'm not a singer does not mean that I don't sing at all. Because I do. A lot.

I even have a recording studio, see?
(via nixgear.com)

But god damn, I am going to learn that song. You know how effing AMAZING it will be if I manage to learn that? Scenario: I'm dragged into going to my dad's friend's son's sister's uncle's third cousin twice removed's birthday party. They're doing karaoke while I play Tetris on my iPhone. Suddenly, one of them asks me if I want to sing.

Now stop. Before I found this song, my answer to that question would've always been "no," usually preceded by a profane word. But if I learnt his song...

I won't just be saying "yes." I will be BEGGING them to ask me to sing a song. I will furiously scroll through the alphabetized artist list until I see the letter "B." I will look for Beyoncé. And I will sing the SHIT out of the song. Hell, I'll even do the dance routine if there's enough room.

And then I will instantly become the most popular person in that party. Using my newfound popularity, I will then ask all of the teenagers attending the party if I can add them on Facebook (and c'mon, after a performance like that, who wouldn't say no?). AND MY FRIENDS LIST WILL INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY. IT'S THE PERFECT CRIME.

But seriously though. I'm gonna learn how to sing this song.

RFotD: The "Great Bath" in Mohenjo-Daro is most likely the first swimming pool in history, created sometime around 3,000 BCE.

SGAT: Wrote a big chunk of the duet poem I'm working on with Samantha.

Day Twenty-Seven: Goodbye Gateways

7/10/14, 11:43 PM PDT

Let's start today's entry off with a shoutout to today's reader-of-the-day, Emily! (Is that gonna be a thing now? I'm not sure, I'll decide later) Glad you like my blog, Emily. And no, Samantha didn't tell me to do this, promise.

Anyway, last day of work today. We showed the movies that we have been working on for the past three weeks to the kids and the parents that came. Each class loved the movie that they made, but they always thought that the other movies were boring. Probably because they didn't know anyone else in the other movies and thus, couldn't laugh at them.

The parents had a similar reaction. They only liked the movie that their kid was in. Hell, some of them even left after they showed their kid's movie, which was a shame since all of the classes' movies were surprisingly decent. You know. As decent as a movie filmed, directed, lighted, and acted entirely by first graders can get.

"Alright, do a flip, say something cool, explosion. ACTION!"
(via kidsguidethailand.com)

Sometimes the movie did get pretty hard to watch, especially when there were long stretches of silence. But considering that Bartels had to edit three movies in one day by herself, I don't blame her for leaving it as a rough cut. Editing's hard work.

So since it was our last day of work as PM aides for Gateways, all of us TAs decided to get a little picture crazy. Huge thanks to Erin for letting me use some of her pictures! I'm not sure exactly how much publicity she wants for letting me use her pictures, so I guess I'll just say that in the next picture, she's the second one from the left.

Here's a picture with me and most of the people I got to know during work.

...Actually, I have no idea who the guy to the left of me is, I just needed
to say something to introduce this picture.
(via Erin Lu)

Young Woo also wanted Robert and I to take these three pictures.

Left
(via Erin Lu)

And...
(via Erin Lu)

Right.
(via Erin Lu)

Interestingly, if you click on one of those pictures and switch quickly to the other two using your left and right arrow keys, it sort of looks like we're shaking our hips. Sort of like one of those Captain Underpants "Flip O'Rama's."

Here's that "Flip O'Rama" in gif form.

And left and right and left and right...

Here's a group picture with most of the PM aides.

Flashing our paychecks too. We're pretty much making fun of
your poverty.
(via Erin Lu)

And another one, except where we wore our aprons like superhero capes, as suggested by Young Woo.

No one told the back row that we were supposed to look at the
camera, dammit.
(via Erin Lu)

I think this next picture's my favorite though, since I look like I'm 100% done with Tiffany.

"Whateverrrr, Tiffany. Godddddddd." *hairflip*
(via Erin Lu)

First thing that I bought with my paycheck? Sushi. Yes, sushi.

...Okay, technically it's not sushi, it was a California Roll, but whatever. Also took my family to eat at Boston Market. My treat, since I just got paid.

I'm just kidding, they practically forced me to pay for their food. But the food was delicious and only cost 20 dollars, so I guess it was worth it. Oh, and I got to take this Snapchat of my sister too.

Creepy, huh?

And I think I accidentally marked the end of my summer because look at what I bought.

"NO. TOO EARLY, MICHAEL. IT'S ONLY DAY 27!"

Oh, and I also watched a triplet birthing video with Samantha. No big deal. We're just weird I guess.

RFotD: AP Computer Science A is actually one of the easier AP courses available, with last year's students having a 67.1% pass rate and a 26.6% 5 rate.

SGAT: Worked a bit on my short film.

Day Twenty-Six: Helicopters and Extraterrestrial Kids

7/9/14, 5:23 PM PDT

Today at work, we finished all of the movies and the kids had some time to burn, so they decided to draw. I also had time to kill, so I decided to take a look at all of the kids' drawings.

Here's one that caught my eye.

What... what is it?

At first glance, it sort of looked like an alien... thing. Since I was intrigued, I decided to ask the kid that drew it.

"Woah, is that an alien you drew?"

The kid stops. He puts his pencil down. Turns his head. Looks me straight in the eye and says

"No. That's me."

It's a goddamn self portrait.

I laughed SO HARD at my mistake and luckily the kid thought the mistake was pretty funny too. And no, the kid does not look like an alien in real life. It's not like this comic at all, promise.

Also, look at what one of the kids made for me.

"Its body is like a chicken nugget!" -Samantha

He said it was a rabbit on a stick. I don't know why he's impale a poor rabbit like that nor why he would think that a rabbit could be that happy after being stabbed through its stomach, but hey, a gift is a gift, so I'm thankful.



Same day, 11:42 PM PDT

A few days ago, I started lying to a few of the kids at work by telling them that I fly a helicopter instead of driving. One of the kids (for privacy's sake, let's call him Bikhil) demanded that I provide him picture evidence.

So I photoshopped a picture of me in a helicopter.

Not bad, huh? Not bad at all.

It's not a super good edit though. Here's the source image.

...Wait, what?

Basically, I took a real picture of me in a helicopter and put in a picture of what my head currently looks like so that the kids will believe me. But still, I'm kinda proud with how it turned out. The head doesn't look that fake. Right? Riiiiight?

Oh and I also made this, as requested by Alex. A picture of me in flight.

Fly right into the future.

And why the hell not, have a picture of Yeti Angela too.

"I am content with my life."

RFotD: The first recorded sighting of a Yeti was made in 1925 by a German photographer.

SGAT: Worked on more of my short film.

Day Twenty-Five: I Have a New Fan

7/8/14, 11:59 PM PDT

So a few weeks ago, I found this posted on a wall in the public library.

Spoooooky.

Considering that every day after work, I have around an hour or two of down time, I decided I would try and figure this out. Even though I have absolutely zero experience with cryptography, I think I can figure this thing out since it just looks like a simple substitution cipher.

I drew out every individual character and tallied how frequently each character showed up as well as how often a character ended up at the beginning of the word. Then, I did a bit of research and found out which letters appear most commonly in English as well as which letters are most commonly found in the beginning of the word. Came up with this list after about 30 minutes of work.

Scribblings of a madman.

With those, I started filling in the letters that I was almost certain were correct. Here's how far I got before I left Panda Express.

It's like the worst game of hangman ever!

Yeaaaaah, still have a lot of work to do. I'll work on it over the next few days.

OH and I got a fan for my bed! It is SUCH a godsend because at nights, it effing BURNS in my bed.

Ignore the bear poster on my wall please.

Why is it clip on? Well, let me give you a little context on what my bed looks like.

Wow Michael, you have a really low ceiling...

And one more picture...

...Oh.

Yep, I have a loft bed. It's really nice, gives me a TON of room to work with since my massive mattress used to take up 70% of my room. I love it, but since heat rises, that means sometimes at night, it gets REALLY hot where I sleep.

Last night when I first used that electric fan? Best sleep I've had in months. Thank you, little fan.

RFotD: I'm tired again.

SGAT: Edited a bit of the summer movie I was supposed to finish last summer.

Day Twenty-Four: Starbucks Poetry Session

7/7/14, 9:40 PM PDT

Today was an INCREDIBLY frustrating day of work. All three classes filmed scenes for their movies today and all three classes were UNBELIEVABLY UNCOOPERATIVE. Obviously, since we're filming a movie, we needed the entire class to stay quiet but that just was NOT happening. Out of the entire hour-long periods, the first THIRTY MINUTES of each class was dedicated to ONLY making the class stay quiet. I did the best I could to try and silence these kids but it was just SO FRUSTRATING since whenever I told one set of kids to stay quiet, another set would start talking and when I walked over to that new set of talkers, even more kids would go back to talking.

Eventually, Bartels lost her patience and just shut the entire class up by yelling "QUIET ON THE SET" and clapping with enough force to probably bruise her arms.

Well done, Bartels.
(via livestrong.com)

Afterwards, met up with Samantha to write more of our poem. We started writing at Starbucks since they had free Wi-Fi, but then we decided that the tables right outside of Starbucks was much better since midway through they started blasting this SUUUUUPER sensual jazzy love music that had a singer with a really deep voice and Samantha just WOULD NOT STOP LAUGHING at how awkward the entire situation was. God, I wish I could've gotten the name of the song so I could link it here or request it to be played during Prom or something because it was HILARIOUS.

At one point, we had to come up with flaws that we saw in the other person and I think she HATES me now since the first thing I wrote (after much, much, much careful deliberation) was "chubby."

NOW HOLD ON. Before you yell at me about doing the unspeakable, at least give me a chance to defend myself. Here's what I imagine in my mind when I think of the word "chubby":

Aww, look at how cute it is!
(via twitter.com)

And now here's what Samantha thinks I mean when I call her chubby:

"I am fat, ugly, and sad."
(via taringa.net)

Obviously, I am NOT calling her a Blobfish. She is much (slightly) prettier than one. And in all honesty, I had a REALLY hard time coming up with any genuine flaws about her, so I decided to put down the first thing I could use to make fun of her that popped into my head, which were the chubby cheeks that she very much detests for some reason.

Pictured: Samantha
(via express.co.uk)

I don't know why she hates them, I think they're adorable. But I probably dug myself a deeper hole by writing this out, and she probably secretly hates me for calling her that today so I'll just stop talking about it for now, lol.

We got the outline done though! To celebrate, we went to eat at Yogurtland. Eventually, my dad picked us both up and we dropped Samantha off at her house.

The entire car ride back, this was my dad's face.

RFotD: We stopped watching "Summer Wars" at 1:03:00. For future reference.

SGAT: Finished outlining the poem Samantha and I are writing.

Day Twenty-Three: Je Ne Fait Rien

7/6/14, 11:40 PM PDT

Alright, I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you guys. Nothing happened today.

A visual representation of my day.

Seriously. Nothing happened.

The same as above, but in chart form.

Went to Souplantation to eat, came back home, passed out on the couch, then did... nothing.

As you can see, productivity stayed at a constant zero today.

Talked with Samantha a bit, practiced a bit of Melee, watched Kings of Cali 4, ate leftovers for dinner and... nothing.

Check.
(via leadwithintention.blogspot.com)

Well done, Michael. Pats for Michael!

"I'll go get the beverages."
(via lanniedatpetour.tumblr.com)

RFotD: When Twister was first introduced in 1966, critics claimed that it was essentially "sex in a box."

SGAT: Worked a bit on Samantha's and my duet poem. Also, possessives with a proper noun and a pronoun are really confusing.