Why post on LJ if I deleted the link on my Facebook site?

Seeing that only Mayuri and Chad (maybe) reads this, I might as well go away (oh and Christine too might read this. and if you do, i must say i love you). So that's practically it for this LJ.

Yep.

I ended the near-20 hour flight schedule with a sight many people will never see in their lifetime. As we neared Orlando at night, I could see fireworks set off everywhere in the sky below our plane. It was absolutely beautiful. It was like seeing colored stars blinking in the night...

Yep, I'm back in America. The land where I'm free. And the land where I'm from. I love America, now more than ever since I've been to China. I'm grateful for the life I have here and the opportunities that I can access. I must thank my family, the ancestors, and the gods (Buddhist ones) for my lovely life. I'm never more happier.

Well, a teary-eyed farewell to my kin has ended and I need to move on here in America. China was a bout of romance, but the beauty continues here in America...on and on.

until I get on another plane and go home and get another bout of sun and humid heat. And then try to find work that's not the typical Publix or restaurant busser job that's more like getting something scientific done like last year. And then get a cell phone which I asked for almost two years. And then get my car sold because it's too old but then I cannot go to work.
Going back to the states is gonna be great.

As of right now I'm just tired because I went to Hangzhou, this tourist city 3 hours south of where we live. It's beautiful there: Xi Hu (West Lake) was a nice walk but there were too many people around. This was such a touristy city that every quarter mile you go, there's a solicitor asking you if you'd like a boat trip, your photos taken, hotels, everything. And they follow you like a mile if you just ignore them. Tourism in China is worth it but only if you don't pay attention to the gross distractions.

So now I'm attached to this home as my real home. It's comfortable, a little noisier, close family, and now the mosquitoes don't bite as often. I love it here in China: the ridiculous amount of people that you see everywhere (I wonder if someone in China will either have my exact same name or look almost exactly like me because of probability);
the rude drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, and dogs;
the dust that fills the air almost everywhere you walk;
the appreciation that you will smell cigarette smoke in every public area;
the surprise you get when you don't smell a bathroom when one is about half mile away;
the MahJong playing every weekend night;
and the family and my life here, being alive and well.

Finally, back again to using the wonderful Internet!

Yeah so my parents took me to this conference thingy at this hotel by Tai Lake. It was a nice experience but a little boring perhaps. The hotel was pretty sweet. It was a five star hotel with nice lawns, fountains, lake views, few restaurants, chandeliers, etc. The coolest thing was the ambient music in the bathroom playing 24/7.
Well the thing was about...I don't really know. Something about getting foreign Chinese people to work for Wuxi, I guess. So I phased out of their important stuff and went right into the eating and fun.
Best of all was the giant Buddha statue by the lake. I meant this was huge; it was definately bigger than the Statue of Liberty. I'm getting a little tired of China, and I'm held to the Nanchang home as my permanent home. I don't know how I'll feel when I get back to the home home. I wanna go home. Shall I try to get a plane ticket home early?

Had fun.

So I haven't been touching my LJ very much yet since I'm so busy doing things and running around China. I won't write a long winded novel about my experience, but here's an overview of what I did:

>There's AC now, but it's (I swear) more than 100F outside.
>Every morn I wake up to rice porridge and little mantou buns which I must say are yum.
>Depends on what happens, I usually do stuff on my comp like what I'm doing now.
>Since FEE, I played a lot of Mahjong
  >Mahjong is such an ingenious game.
  >I've gotten good at it, and I'm trying to figure out routes to the fastest "chong."
  >Mahjong definately makes me think.
>About 3-4 times a week I go swimming in big public swimming pool where so many people occupy it that traffic occurs when you want to swim laps around the pool.
  >The British call pools "natatoriums."
>Taxis are crazy for a fact.
>I just hate how the Chinese directly translate into English or mispell something on a store sign or something.
>Shanghai:
  >Big.
  >Air is better than Wuxi and there's no mosquitoes so it's more comfortable than Nan Chang home.
  >Aunt Qing has this cute little pomeranian dog which I love to cuddle with.
  >Nanjing Road isn't up to all that hype; you can't bargain and things a pretty expensive.
  >Shopped +++.
  >I learned how to bargain prices and deal with sellers. Especially at the Xiangyang market where they sell counterfeit name brands.
  >The Bund and PuDong were fun. Photos are a must.
>Back in Wuxi. Dusty.
>Had a lot of dinners where whenever I touched cold appetizers, I got a stomach ache.
  >I really really shouldn't say this, but I had a lot of beer. The men pressured me to drink. Drunk yesterday. Bad experience. Never want to drink so much beer again.
>Karaoke gives me headaches.
>Chinese people don't like Japanese cars even though European cars are more expensive here.
>Had a photo of whole family yesterday. Ah, reunion!

That's about it.

So about a few minutes ago, I finished my "Freshman Essay Evaluation" (FEE). Clearly, as the title has stated, FEE sucks. I had to read four articles about how adolescents lack sleep and several scientific studies proving we need to adjust school times. Ironically, articles about sleep made me go to sleep (hahahahaha, people at MIT are funny). I wrote about 1,100 word essay summarizing the overall content about the four articles and their common ideas and such. Second, I read a rambling paper about this guy who hated computers in schools. Based on that, I wrote I disagreed, but his arguments are quite well merited. What a rambling day...I'm on the verge of sleep (every time I go to sleep, I think about those four fricken articles).

Sorry I rambled on and on in my second to last entry. I wanted to capture the scene of China...at least I tried. I'm getting used to this place. I'm over my cold but I'm being bugged by mosquitoes. Already in a week, I have exactly 19 mosquito bites. Today, I found out the reason why I had so many in my room: there was an air conditioner hole in the wall that opened to outside.

Pretty much the whole week was slow. I went swimming a bit and I liked it there especially on the weekdays when it's not crowded. I tried to work out at a gym someplace, but I almost had a heat stroke because they refused to turn on the AC and opened the windows so that the polluted air can come in. Wonderful. For the rest of the week, I read a bit: I finished Michael Crichton's "Prey" in one day. The book was good, but I thought that it was written for the purpose of being made into a movie. It had a good plot and lots of scientific background knowledge, etc.

Well shouldn't ramble too much in a single article.

WIKIPEDIA IS BANNED IN CHINA!

So all of you might be wondering where I am. On Saturday evening in China (America’s Saturday morning), I touched down at the airport in Shanghai. The journey was an adventure itself. We left early morning on Thursday to go to the Orlando airport. We arrived at 6:30 to check-in for the flight to Chicago at 8:30 in the morning.

At first, we sensed that we might be late, since the check-in line was about a mile long stretched out. Impatient, I tried to use the electronic check-in, and I found that the kiosk told me that the flight was delayed to 1 in the afternoon! We would miss our connecting flight from Chicago. So a whole bunch of Chinese travelers were panicking, and rushed to the counter to ask for help. United’s service treated us poorly, and kept telling us not to nag them even though we were not. The lady spoke slowly to my mother as if she didn’t understand. With so many angry Chinese customers, I understood their frustration but they probably felt a little racist.

So we had to catch another flight to Shanghai on the next day, staying in Chicago for a night without compensation. Luckily, we called a cousin in Chicago, where she lived near Chinatown and could accompany us in her apartment. The flight left at 1:45 in the afternoon, because the delay was caused by a late crew arriving on another airline was also delayed. I assumed otherwise, something like a strike or a snoozing pilot.

The flight to Chicago was mediocre. Upon arrival, my cousin, Xinxia, drove us to her apartment. It was dingy and dark, but typical for the west side Chicago where I was once acquainted. Her roommate was on vacation so my family could sleep somewhere. We left to shop for some goods, and Xinxia showed us one of the biggest Target stores I’ve ever seen. Two stories! After buying what we needed, we headed to Chinatown, where we had trouble deciding on where to eat, until we went to a humble Shanghai-style restaurant. The food was very satisfying, and I was already content despite the flight wait.

I was bored, and I didn’t feel like heading back to sleep. So Xinxia drove us to Hyde Park where we used to live in Chicago. This neighborhood gave me good memories, as many things still stayed the same. I asked to drive up to our old house, where we stared at it for a while until the owners spotted us, and let us in. Somehow a tradition, the house was occupied by another Chinese family, as it was resold two years after we had left. I didn’t see my previous bedroom, but I already felt comfortable by the nostalgia. Leaving, my mom asked to go to an old friend’s house. Capriciously, she called in and we interrupted other guests who seemed angry at our presence. But the visit was pleasant, and we left for home and slept for the day ahead.

At the Chicago airport, I waited for more than two hours since check-in only took 15 minutes, quite unlike the one in Orlando. I squirmed in the lounge seats at the gate, so I decided to explore. I had explored in the Orlando airport, riding the tramway back and forth but soon it got boring. Maybe the O’Hare airport was better. So I was determined to walk from the farthest end of Terminal 1, where our gate was, to the farthest end of Terminal 3, which was all the way across. I explored the underground walkways, and took pictures of interesting sites. When I reached the pinnacle of my journey, I decided to time myself on the way back only walking in a quick pace. But when I was reached back to Terminal 1, I heard that the flight to San Francisco was boarding! I ran to the gate, and my mom freaked on me.

So the rest of the several hours were indescribable. Mostly sleep. I watched some part of “King Kong,” which I had seen before, and a bit of “Nanny McPhee” and “Chronicles of Narnia.” The two movies I saw whole, “The Interpreter” and “Transporter 2,” were interesting. The first was good and had a pretty strong political message. The second was just interesting. This was the first time in years since I had plane food, which I thought was pretty much imitational crap.

A shaky and discombobulating flight ended on a drizzly dusk in Shanghai. The airport facility was amazingly spacious and attractive, but I realized something was not right. The spaces were almost dead silent. But was it my stuffed up, sinus-affected ears? I was not sure. At the customs and baggage claims, thousands of people were waiting, but there was no buzz of a typical American airport. I assumed that the lack of conversation was due to Chinese custom in public places.

After clearing every part of the airport, we found a party waiting for us, consisting of my grandfather and a friend who could drive us. Also there were two of my aunts (so, so many) and another cousin (thus so many also). Leaving to go to the parking lot, I will never forget that feeling that came over me. That smell. The smell was almost fragrant but many times choking and stale. It was the smell of men in the corners smoking a pack of cigarettes, of sliced watermelon sitting by the table, waiting to either be eaten or rot in the sun, of the dusty tin mines that drown you out with rust-colored powder on your skin, and of the men, women, and children spitting saliva onto the taxi-car ridden streets. This was the unrelenting smell of China.

Still sleepy, I refused to doze off on the road to Wuxi, the hometown of my family. Ironically, napping was an impossible task. Though the highways were wide and well-built, the drivers were far from orderly. Our van swerved here and there, sometimes straddling two lanes for more than a few seconds. Every once in a while, an impatient taxi driver would honk for no reason, pass another car anyway, and race past at least 30 km/h over the speed limit. But more astounding was the sight of Benzes, V-Ws, and Buicks everywhere as if they were our Tauruses and Camrys. The Chinese road was built upon the utopian dream of smooth driving by utilizing new construction, only to be destroyed by drivers everywhere.

At Wuxi, we first went to aunt Ying’s house (her relation being my dad’s younger sister). We climbed up a smelly stairs to see her rococo penthouse. At this place, I had my first Chinese dinner, consisting of meat buns, qing chai (bok choi), xi chai (it makes your rice reddish-pink), fish, and other good stuff. My mom didn’t want to stay much longer and wanted to go see her family at Nan Chang Jie. Driving through the old business district, I saw the familiar gray cement houses topped with layers of uncertain black tiles. Now, there were a few more attractive signs decorating the contrastingly drab stores they advertise below. The road underneath the car is still recognizably bumpy, potholes here and there. This part was the China part of China—this was home, the evocation of conservative Communism and the children running about under the gray angles of this semi-slum. I felt comfortable knowing that tomorrow’s forecast is clear and sunny skies, but is really overcast with gray skies of dust.

This was just day 1.

GRADUATING!

What do ISEF and MySpace have in common?...
They are all full of bullshit.

its all about physics in the past few days.
So I won 5 grand this weekend, tripling my personal assets, making me very happy. But suddenly, I have this computer science case study due tomorrow, so I found out that I'm screwed. And I'm screwed even more for not studying for WHAP, Lit, and Computer Science at all even though the AP tests are this week!
But this week was beyond awesome. I met Dr. Ying, who by the way everyone should meet. This dude is funny and friendly, and he gives out lots of $. I mean lots. Friday I went to Orlando to meet with him to go to field trips around the Orlando Science Center and Lockheed-Martin. Pretty awesome tours and such. I spent the whole weekend either doing science talks or studying like crazy for physics. So today I just became 5 grand richer and I feel beat yet elated.
So probably on another hiatus for now. Be back.

I sent my reply letters. So it's final on MIT and no to Caltech. It's a month until school's over...it feels like the year just went by so quickly, everything interrupted by this and that. Gotta be off for a while.

Wow I had a long day. I woke up and I went out to buy some shaving cream from Walgreens because I decided to shave and I had this sample razor I wanted to use. When I started shaving, I accidentally cut the top of my lip and it hurt like a @!#*^%$*&&*. So I was pissed off and I thought I would have a bad day. My dad insisted to lecture me on the physics class, and it was alright, but I left home late.

I was a little early, so I went to Sonics for some lunch, and they took more than 15 minutes to get my food to the car. So I was pissed again and I was late. So waiting for presentations took forever, and I couldn't get myself to memorize the presentation order I made on the notecard.

So I went with Carter, Stephanie, and Rebecca, and I was told I was second. Stephanie's was pretty good except there were many technical difficulties and I could tell that she improved everything too. So just before I went I had to set up and all, and the computer starts to malfunction and crap. It took forever, but I went soon thereafter. I tried to be all professional and all, but it wasn't the greatest work I've ever done. It was a little too casual, especially when I said "...but don't worry, this is not as complex as it seems." I felt that I was too condescending or something, saying that they have no knowledge at all. But it went well, and not everything flowed smoothly. The questions were decent, but this one cop asked my who my mentor was. I told her the truth and I said that this was unconventional but this experience at least is a learning process. They liked it, and Mrs. Mason was stunned but thought the material was too complex. She asked a lot of questions, and she hardly understood, being that she's an English teacher.

Rebecca was alright. She did a good job with her piano recital but she sounded pretty snobbish and all. I doubted that she previously couldn't recite any music at all. But it was nice.

Long day...I need sleep.

Everythings going good...college all set. Just waiting for adventures in the future.

Today in research, we had this thing where we made a container to catch a raw egg from tall heights. And me and mike did a good job of making one and it tested out perfectly many times in the past. But today, when he dropped it off the balcony, the egg bounced out and it cracked on the ground. But it didn't leak. So we were still good and qualified, and Mrs. Galaida gave us 1st.

Then crap happened. Because Blake Rainwater (RAINWATER!!!(!)?!!?!) got second because his was heavier and taller than ours, he started complaining. I had no problem, but he was really making a bitch for everyone. So I told him to shut up and get it over with, and we are not going to get a recall. His partner was okay with it, but Blake was so fucking selfish for 1st. At first I really didn't care, but he got on my nerves. Mrs. Galaida told both of us to shut up and I did. Then, when we went inside, he still started the subject up, and I just kept quiet. And I said "I have no comment." And he just started up on me and said that I was being cheap and he really wanted to pick a fight. So I told him that he was being an ass and ruining everyone else's mood, and Mrs. Galaida told both of us, BOTH, that if we don't shut up, she will make us do bookwork. What did I do wrong? This motherfucker just kept blabbing on and on about how he shouldn't lose as if it were his whole life. Again, I really didn't care; I just cared that someone was bitching about it.

So here's the scary part. I think the Rainwaters are social deviants and should be exterminated. No, I'm not taking any violent actions against anyone, but some people with certain upbringing or genes should cease to exist. It's genecidal, I know, but hey, that's kinda the way Chinese people are...and Hitler. Kali is bad enough and alhtough Blake is not a blatant queer, he can be really arrogant and uptight, and that's exactly how their whole damned family is. But do and don't take this seriously, but people like that should be taken out.

Well that's my whole spiel about idiots like Rainwaters.

So it comes down to this:
Accepted: MIT & Caltech
Rejected: Harvard, Stanford, Princeton

So now do you see the pattern?..."tech" schools?

But I'm so happy because MIT offered me big $$$$ for financial aid. :-)

Yesterday was insane. I woke up early to go to school so I could get a ride with Mrs. Ladd to science olympiad. The funniest thing happened ever in the car, when David and Ming started rhyming, and Ming rhymed out something about being Chinese and his great "eggroll and dumplings."

So I sat around for like 3 hours since my events were in the afternoon. Me and Ming were in the Disease Detectives, and we had to find out what happened to these ppl who died. Lucky us, I saw this thing like five years ago on the discovery channel where they showed that some deer mice poop can carry a virus. So we did really well. Then disaster occurred...

I was to do physics lab w/ kern because I did it last year, and this year was about kinetics and linear motion...easy. So kern wanted to be in it, so I said ok. When we got into the lab, he made numerous steps toward failure: 1. Before the test started, the proctor freaked out at him for opening the test early. 2. We were told the catch the cart on the way down the ramp. He didn't do it, and when he did, it bounced off and fell onto the table. 3. He refused to measure the 250 g weights, and assumed the weights were exactly 250.00000000 g. 4. When we got skewed results, he told me he tweaked the numbers a bit. 5. kern didn't know any relationship between velocity and acceleration despite being in calculus. 6. His handwriting was totally illegible.

So I freaked and soon forgot when me and julian went to do the circuit lab. The old dude gave us like a 20 minute lecture and made us answer these short questions. I think we got the RC constant right, but I didn't know whether the curcuit resistors were series or not. So me and Julian came up with random values. Turned out they were really close...Lucky bastards.

So I got 1st w/ Ming in disease detectives, and 3rd in circuit lab. We kicked ass. We took 3rd in school overall, and Mrs. Ladd was really happy. When I got home, I went over to Julian's and killed some time. My parents watched "Alexander," which was terrible beyond belief.

end in "Institute of Technology," I was rejected.
Thus proves that I am a nerd/geek.

Has anyone seen "The Assassination of Richard Nixon?" It's really good but eerie. It's about this awkward guy played by Sean Penn, who tries to apply for a loan for a tire business. He is a salesman, but winds up thinking selling things is lying. So he hates Nixon because he is angry about everyone disrespecting him and he thinks everything is racist and unfair. So he plans to do something unexpected...You have to see the movie to find out. Sean Penn was really good in this film...this guy is a natural.

denied!
yep, didn't get one from Harvard...two more decisions to agonize over.
I decided to release their decision b/c I want to be as honest as possible. Other azns want to keep things "down low" about everything. They're just parasites of American education.
So...heh.

OK its official: I can't go to CPW. Plus, when I checked for Airtran tickets that are "reduced fare," I discovered that most of the "voucher restricted" ones are during June. Oh well, since my dad claims that I experienced MIT when I was just a little kid (somehow, vicariously, I knew what went on in undergrad MIT). So overnight is probably the best option. sometime???
So now its spring break and i'm doing physics. I think i will do E+M at ISEF, then Mech at school for alternative. Mech is easier and the alternative is harder, so it balances out, see? E+M's first subject on electric fields and Gaussian flow etc. is killing me. I'm rusty rusty rusty on calc. I even forgot about definitive integration. So its a long step to succes.
Now i have to leave to see dr. rassoul, who missed me the first time I wanted to see him.

Yesterday night, my parents just decided that it was okay for me to go to CPW. When they say I do homework and I procrastinate, didn't they just procrastinate big time? We got a financial aid statement from Caltech and it wasn't so pretty. We still have to pay for 3/4 of the net tuition, so my mom thought that Caltech just screwed us. So she talked to a friend of ours, and he said that they drove from Chicago to CPW to let his daughter experience it. So she said maybe CPW is OK, since its free and all.
So I had this long talk with my dad, who is so stingy and thinks that once I get the financial aid package from MIT, I might not even get a cent from them. He's a pessimist. Finally my mom convinced him, and so he called Airtran to change a flight. Well, earlier this year, my dad got a free voucher to Airtran because on one of his business trips, an old woman got a heart attack and they had to land in the middle of Kansas. So he got a ticket to Boston during the middle of July...Why July?!
So he called and they said they can only give us the voucher ticket on the 6th but not the 9th. We talked whether maybe I'd go early on the evening of 8th. But then my mom said that I can't handle a subway or taxi ride. OK maybe not the subway, but I'm not a little kid. I can get a taxi myself. They still think I would get lost in Logan Airport just like Kevin did in Home Alone or something. How lost can I be? I'm smart enough to go to MIT and I can get my way out of a garden maze. Plus, this isn't my first plane ride alone.
So today, my dad wanted to wait longer so Airtran just might open up another seat for the 9th. Good luck to that... So theres a big chance I won't go to CPW.