Year Three, Almost Free 9: Early Halloween and Mom at Work

Greetings, Tim!

The temperatures these days have gone down at a remarkably fast pace. In the early morning, when the sun is barely out, you would probably shiver in your blankets when you wake up. My case, however. Was quite different. I managed to untangle from my blankets and cast it away from my bed, sending a pillow not far behind. It’s been a while that this kind of tossing and turning had happened, but why did it have to be today? I am sitting in the metro, with my jacket zipped up to the chest and the hood is on as well. Facing the sun, I’m typing out this letter, sniffing my runny nose and living in the prospect of catching a cold.

Halloween Season!

There is one person in my class who’s visibly more excited about this festival of distinct characters, and that is Allison.

I recall her telling me about her happy memories in America and how she used to celebrate Halloween here and there. She kept trying to subtly suggest that we hold another Halloween costume party in school like how we did in the previous two years, but much to her dismay, no one was in the high spirits of Halloween celebrations with the tests so near.

On Saturday morning, not long after I had awakened, I received a message from Allison to check out the Halloween parade/fun fair that is held across the street our houses are on, in a park.

I looked out from the window. There were already parents bringing kids with some Halloween costume on, walking over for the park. I squinted a little, letting my eyes travel down along the roads and then located some workers setting up poles and cones on the road, cutting off half of the wide road for the Halloween parade to pass through.

This is just a part of the small crowd, some distance away from the park.

At around one in the after I got a call from Angela, who was also in the area at the moment. She was looking for a study buddy, but that evening, I had something else to go to, so instead, I asked her if she wanted to check out the park with activities together.

Before I met Angela, I saw a little boy dressed as a bag of jelly beans and was taking pictures. He was so cute that I felt the need to take a picture of him. Afterward, I had my phone in my hands at all times, always ready to take pictures. Along the swarming crowds Angela and I went, we pointed out some outstanding and/or adorable costumes the kids had on. The best one we saw, as we both agreed, was a green traditional Taiwanese electronic steamer that used to be the kind of appliance that is present in every household. It looked like this, but neither of us had the time to take a shot at the boy who apparently has innovative parents before he disappeared into the crowds.

Focus on the jelly bean kid. NOT on the Annabelle girl on the left hand side.

We were convinced that you couldn’t find a place more crowded than the streets were than the Saturday afternoon Tianmu streets, but we were proved wrong by the even larger crowd crammed into the park that is more often empty than not. There must be over a thousand of kids in it, all of which were dragging their parents, either quite reluctant or looking at their children with loving, smiling eyes as they obligingly followed in the warm afternoon sun.

When the Incredibles meet the zombie family

We understood that the holders of the event really gave the best they got when we saw there was a small area rounded up on the grass fields, with nylon ropes. The area was reserved for pony riding! I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was brilliant. We already had Halloween in the afternoon; why not add several horses?

This one deserved mentioning. I was just wondering if there will be a kid dressed as a horse and he went right in fron of me!

One of the perks about living in Tian-mu is that this is one of the several parts of Taiwan where you can actually describe as cosmopolitan. This is the place where Taipei American and Taipei European School are located, and being international schools, international students are all living around this district. It would be weird if you don’t see over ten foreign-looking faces a day. This is the reason why this large Halloween event is held here.

Halloween isn’t officially here yet, but Happy Halloween, everyone.

End

Too soon? Sorry, I feel like I have just crammed a whole semester’s worth of textbook into my head, and it is kind of swirling now. I think I need a rest. I planned to write another entry about checking out Mom at work in her new workplace at nine in the evening, but I think now I can only put up the pictures:

 

Mom at work

Sorry again about the halt.

Sincerely,

Hugo

Year Three, Almost Free 8: Hundred Days and a Birthday (that was not Mine)

Hello Tim!

This week, we were touched by the number of days left before our GSAT takes place.

There are less than a hundred days left.

In Retrospect......

Current days of intense studying brought up memories about three years ago. I was still a middle schooler, supposedly preparing my high school entrance exams. Let me say that again, with an obvious emphasis on the word “supposedly,”  for I really wasn’t. Even up until the impending and possibly dreadful thirty-day countdown, I was sitting at the desk, playing computer games, singing along with the music I was playing (I could still remember which songs I had played the most often right then) and staying up until at least three in the morning watching American TV shows. Those were some atrociously corroding and decadent days stuck in the swamp of the Internet and the devices that came with it. With the neglecting attitude I held, I would say that I deserved worse scores. I didn’t get into my first and second most wanted school, only to become a student in ZZSH (which later proves to be one of the best decisions I have made in my life) I recalled the 70% distant and upset, 30% true concern tone of my mother when I called her at school to inform her about the score I ended up with.

Come to think of it, entering EHP could easily be interpreted as a second chance. Although I haven’t really fit into the descriptions of a diligent student in the past two years, with slight improvements made day by day, I’m determined to move toward it.

Matriochka: A Word That Now Means More To me than just a Russian Doll

I’m not sure if any of you remembered my entry about the French duo Fréro Delavega and their woeful separation that broke hearts of countless fans (add me into the crowd), but while one of them left the media for personal issues, the other half of the Fréros stayed active. Just recently, on October 12th, Jérémy Frérot released his solo album, Matriochka. The word (which can also be spelled as 'Matryoshka') originally meant a specific sort of Russian dolls, predominantly carved out of wood, and when you open it, you will find a smaller version of the doll (often with the exact same design), snugged girly with the previous and bigger, hollower one. You open the one found inside and would not be surprised to find a similar pattern. You might end up with six or five of the said wooden dolls.

Russian dolls

The prelude of this album of Jérémy was entitled, “Ouvre cette poupée ”, which is easily translated into “open this doll”.

The music sounded, and when the voice of the chanteur chimes in, the silky voice that we have all been waiting for, sang:

« Ouvre cette poupée

Qui est le messager

D’une autre poupée... »

(Open this doll

The herald of

Another doll)

I finished listening to the whole album, deliberately spent two days on it. Some of the songs included inside were in resonance with some of my heartstrings and when his voice plucked them, I couldn’t help but writhing in my bed, mentally doing happy dances while relishing in the fact that I have the CD with me, forever.

From the time I had spent on finding a way to buy the album online, I would say the only way to get an album of a French singer not really well-known in Taiwan is to resort to Amazon.com. It took me a great deal of time pondering, whether to buy the album even if the shipping fee was more expensive than the album itself, but now I knew that I won’t regret the choice.

J'aime.

Braces Off!

From the straightforward title, you can tell what this entry is about.

After four inexplicably long years, I finally had my braces taken off! I have to state that it wasn’t my idea to go through this treatment in the first place, despite my full acknowledgment on how crooked and unruly my teeth were. I didn’t know the procedure was so long as it reaches back four years; I thought it was just two and a half years or so. The first week wearing the braces, though, is something that was ingrained deep to my long-term memory. I was throwing a tantrum for I constantly felt the iron-grip metal clasps clung to my teeth as if there was instant glue attached (wait, it WAS some sort of instant glue, I think) and it was the last thing I would describe comfortable, with it pushing and urging my teeth to stand upright and stay in line. There was a meal, with the hotdog bread and clam chowder we bought from Costco. I cut the bread into morsels able to fit in my mouth, which, by the way, was plagued with dull, throbbing pain that was apparently not caused by cavities. The bread was dipped into the chowder soup, all softer than tofu at the point, but my teeth still gave in, reiterating their protests when they surrendered to the meal that was mostly fluids at the point. It was frustrating. Dinner that day took place at my Grandma’s, with plates that are filled with some of my favorite Grandma’s signature dishes. It was the day I learned what an actual tantalization meant: It’s right in front of you, the things you wanted most at the moment, but no, sorry, sir, you just can’t have them.

I am glad that they are now off, as now I can lick at my teeth as much as I want to, and it wouldn’t be met with any scraping or pointy metal pieces that could easily cut into my tongue. Still, it was still a bit disconcerting and made me unaccustomed to my teeth now, because now I can lick at my teeth as much as I want to, and it wouldn’t be met with any scraping or metal pieces that could easily cut into my tongue. As liberating as it is, I still need some time to get used to this “new set” of teeth I was bestowed upon.

This toothy adventure is not yet over, though!

Next Monday, I have another appointment with a dentist for two things: I have several minor cavities to fix, and I have to go fetch my retainers. The latter said item spells another year of awkward encounters with people. I will have to keep the retainers on for 24/7 for a whole year (except meal time) until I can reduce the time needed to bedtimes. I’ll decide if it’s also a torture after I have them on.

Mom’s Birthday

This Thursday was my mother’s birthday, though a dinner celebrating the day was the day before that. As the whole universe should be well-informed, we students are less than a hundred days before our GSAT, so I really didn’t have much time to plan for Mom’s day of birth. I wound up calling the power of my friends for help. Being an absolute idiot on any sort of handicraft, I asked Allison for help with the card itself. I printed some pictures of my mom, eating melted chocolate off a sheet of a baking sheet (DON’T TELL HER I WROTE THIS DOWN IN MY BLOG. SHE MOST DEFINITELY WILL KILL ME,) and there was also a picture of her knitting, another one featured her trying on the shawl she just finished knitting.

 I cut them out, now without the usual background, and I pasted the pictures onto the card Allison promptly made and then wrote some silly texts next to them. It was a three-paged card, and I asked Angela, Selena, and Melody to write something on it. They all have seen my mom for a time or two, and they were willing to offer some greetings and congratulations.

Mom.

I asked William to draw something for my mom, and he decided to draw one of her. The outcome was… Well, he wasn’t trying to ruin it or anything, but it was just… not like her, and whether to give it to her or not made me numb of anything else for at least an hour.

My mother could easily rise up to the top hundred mothers in the world, while she is and will always be my #1 mom in the world because she is my mom and she loves me and I her.

She had quite a severe cold these days, and I really wished she would have to go through all that. The tears I saw streaking down her face when she also read the words from Melody and Angela, accompanied by Selena’s ‘Happy Birthday’ and a sketch was priceless. She then looked at the portrait of her by William, choked and went into a peal of laughter which was followed by several coughs and even more laughter. The worried scowl on my face melted into relief and joined in the laughter. I was just worried that she might react badly when she saw it.

I was just being paranoid, as it turned out.

End

This is it for this week. I need to go now, go back into the sessions of studies, however reluctantly.

Extra: CPR lessons at school. Modeling: Candy and Cathy

Cracking the hard nut of geography today.

Had a luscious and beautiful sesame cake to compensate for the loss of brain cells.

Sincerely,

Hugo

Year Three, Almost Free 7: Midterm and Personal Means of Stress-Relief

Hello, Tim!

Our midterm is over, and right after that, we have to plunge ourselves into other numerous sessions of studies, for our GSAT is around a hundred days away. 

We have an alternate weather these days. It can be blazing-sun hot this day and biting-winds cold on the next. Rain is present throughout the week, so it would be wise for us if we have an umbrella in a hand’s distance and very unwise of us if we don’t. 

Semblance of Ragnarok 

I’m not sure if anyone here is familiar with the Ragnarok, but in short, it’s just the Norse version of the apocalypse. One notable difference is that the mythical beings in Norse mythology are said had spent their entire lives preparing for the eventual doom. Their concept of doom was, surprisingly, more creative than the other versions of the end of the world: Loki, the trickster god would launch an attack on the collective other gods, leading his own army of malicious intentions. The fire giant would burn the world as a sea serpent named Jömungandr would eat up the world from the bottoms of the sea. The warriors and the other gods that were fated to tackle the whole myriad of chaos, trained for the eventuality even though they knew that the world would have to be burnt down to the ash, taking along lives of both gods and warriors before a new world can rise. 

Well, one day it dawned on me that we are in some way similar to the warriors in the myths. We are faced with an imminent adversary (the GSAT), knowing it would bring down some of us while some remaining survivors. We bury our heads in the books, ‘training’ to stand out in the one-on-one combats (with the subjects,) but the whole of it just sounds a drastic step down to the heroic and epic-worthy striving for survival. 

A Book Bought is a Heap of Stress Relieved

Let’s wind up a bit and go back to two days before our midterm when I was at my desk studying history. For reasons, we had an inexplicable wide range needed to study. I felt like swimming through a sea of cotton with all the incidents, named, and wars, etc. swarming around in my head, and suddenly I felt a weird feeling that I was falling, like a pebble rolling off a cliff without the knowledge of how much longer it would take to reach the bottom. Despite the raging wind and incessant rain both visible and audible indoors, I grabbed a small paper pouch and an umbrella after a small contemplation of my destination. I hastily laid a thin layer of a vest on my shoulders and took off right after telling my parents I’m going out for a walk. 

It was only a little past seven, but the winds were already picking up; another hint winter dropped for us to notice his presence creeping near. The streets, dimly lit by the yellowish white lights coming from the street lamps, were more isolated than it normally is at the time of day, supposedly because of the rain and the gushes of wind that would very likely tear up the metallic joints of your feeble umbrella. I sauntered down the streets and took in the lonely streets as much as I could, with a view to soothe myself, probably on the margin of panic. I ended up at the doors of the nearest bookstore while content washed over me with the knowledge I get to look at books that are not textbooks for a change. There were no English novels that caught my eye in the particular bookstore, so determined as I was to bring at least one book home with me, I chose a Japanese novel translated into Chinese and bought it with the vouchers I kept in the said paper envelope. 

I chose the one on the left; I just cannot resist classy covers.

I am glad that I have my own mechanism of keeping my sanity intact when troubled by stress: When something feels off, leave and go buy a book. I felt substantially better afterward. 

End

This is the end of the week. It is quite brief, compared to the previous two letters, and while as much as I wanted to write another column about my book that I'm currently reading, I figured I should only have one entry for a book; that's fairer for the books.

Extra: Mom focusing on her knitting.

Sincerely, 

Hugo

Year Three Almost Free 6: Studying and Family Gathering

Hello Tim!

We all knew autumn was creeping nearer and nearer as days progress, the winds blow a little harder every day; the sun riser a bit later every day, and there hadn’t been a day that passed in which I hadn’t heard at least one of my classmates complaining about the cold weather (It’s mostly William. He can look tough, but he is, in fact, sensitive to temperature change.)

Writing Class

Throughout the two years of our high school lives, we have had a foreign teacher for company. He’s an Australian English teacher who teaches us different skills for English every year, and for this year, we have writing courses. If I were still the several-years-ago me, I would have cringed the instant I hear the phrase “writing courses,” but guess who has changed and was the only person bouncing and excited before the class starts? Me. It always feels nice to be able to write or type out a lengthy article of over several thousands of words and feel good about myself, but along the way, there could be some very horrible grammar mistakes, some inappropriate choice of words, or some atrocious sentence structures lurking in a dark corner. I would try doing a self-inspection but never could pick out many problems. Now we have a teacher who could spot over twenty places needed fixing, Ind i was very grateful. Writing stories by describing a four column comic, describing myself, and give a tour around my bedroom, etc. I put all my heart writing these articles and I would still be so surprised when I have come to love writing so much. Alex, our teacher taught us to avoid wordiness, as in to make every word in your paragraphs serve a purpose, among which avoiding hollow words like “very” and so on. I find that very helpf... no, I find that helpful. Avoid wordiness!

Ways to Keep Myself Focused

As I subtly mentioned last week, I am quite a cell phone addict. I have been looking for ways to reduce my time of using the little irresistible gadget, and I was presented with a solution just this week. With a new system adopted in my phone, I am now able to keep track of my screen time. This is where Matt comes into the game. When I find it hard to concentrate, I take a look at my diary which I had named Matthews. He has become the standard of my conscience, pushing me forward and watch me so that I don’t stray. With the time record on my phone, I can set a time limit for cell phone usage. When you give an object a name and a strict personality, you might find it easier to abide by the rules you set for yourself. I can see the bizarred looks on my classmates’ faces when I tell them about my naming a palm-sized notebook and treating it like it were a mentor, but I don’t care. As long as I get to concentrate on my studies for the remaining hundred days before the college entrance exam, I won’t care about the eccentricity.

Matthews and his rules for me to act upon

Family Gathering and a Sick and Cuddly Sophie

For some reasons, Sophie’s parents had invited half of the family members for dinner in a Taiwanese restaurant that serves traditional local cuisine. Arriving late at the table, I inquired them the whereabouts of Sophie and her mother. It turned out that they were both sick and lying in bed with a fever. Aiden was sitting next to my mother with his head hanging low, little thumbs swiping and tapping furiously as he was trying not to lose the game he was playing on his grandma’s cell phone. He was wearing a too formal for this occasion, though. A sky-blue suit with a miniature tie. His father told us that the five-year-old had picked the outfit on his own, mistakenly thinking that he was attending a wedding feast. 

Head up, Aiden. You'll break your neck.

Five minutes later, Aiden was requested to return the cell phone (Mom said he had only played on it for ten minutes), and without the games that had been occupying him, he became restless and twitchy, goofing around and poking the person sitting next to him — me.

He was basically sitting like this throughout dinner.

His antics could be very annoying, and I chose to ignore him as the dishes were served, hoping to bore him into behaving (which, ultimately, didn’t work at all.) With more than ten people around the roundtable, we still couldn’t finish all the dishes as they kept coming, each dish more exquisite than the next. I bet we all were looking at the plates with tantalization; we were too full to put more food in our stomachs but were silently considering if we should try.

I still had a lot of math equations to solve, and since they were due Sunday, I had to go back home soon to deal with them. I followed the family upstairs to Sophie’s house. She was awake. Awake with a burning forehead. She looked so weak; the smile was still there, and her eyes still shone with a mischievous glint, but her arms were lump and inactive. She got out of bed and walked around when she heard so many people filing into her house, and I just set her on the couch and just held onto her, feeling sorry for her little furnace of a child’s frame. Get well soon, Sophie!

I like kids. No, I LOVE kids. I can be very harsh and unrelenting with them, but at the same time, I can be almost everything they want me to be. I adore the idea of having kids in the future, but that was not technically possible for me… Maybe adoption?

End

The National Holiday of Taiwan is on Wednesday this year, and there will be a national day-off. For us high schoolers, though…

Out midterm takes place on the two consecutive days after the holiday, making the holiday a lot less it’s-holiday-let’s-spend-some-wonderful-quality-time-with-my-family but a lot more it’s-holiday-let-me-spend-more-time-burying-my-head-in-books-and-pray-that-I-don’t-flunk-my-geography-this-semester.

Extra: A sunny view from downstairs

Delightful.

Despite all, have a happy week, Tim!

Best of all wishes,

Hugo