Ok, a certain individual has been pestering me continously to post on here, to "let people know what's going on about my life". Fine, I'll be obliging this time. But that's only because I have something to post about.

A Sample From My Life

I had just come home, and eaten a good couple of bowls of kimchee, which one of my math classmates says was "stolen" from the Koreans by the Japanese, and made "un-spicy". Whether or not that is true, I still ravenously consumed somewhere around four bowls of home-made kimchee, along with a few pearl onions, scallions, tomatoes, chocolates, and of course, the cabbage leaves in the kimchee.

Then I log onto the computer, into my Gmail account. There, I discover from one of my friends, that my science teacher has already posted the scores of a science test I took today on Thinkwave.com. I thank my friend for telling me, and hurry of to Thinkwave, in order to see my score. (Note: This is the first science test of the year, and our teacher was and is still rumored to be "evil", "hard", "the King of Tests", etcetera, you get the point.)

My grade was bad, in my terms. I sit staring at the computer for several minutes, then decided I might as well tell my parents now. So, I walk up to my mother, inform her of the recent news, and she says (Chinese translation here), "Then you have a big chance of not getting an A this quarter..." No, she did not yell this. She simply looked up from the pamphlet she was reading on composting. Yes, we have been looking into designing a gardening lately. Not me in particular, but I just want a nice piece of maybe around 3ftx5 ft land, where my California poppies can still grow without being disturbed. Which reminds me, I must clear out the dead leaves and stems soon, before the seeds are dispersed and get entangled in there.

I then walk to my desk, take out a piece of binder paper, and write in a three-inch height font size, "sci test= __". (Did you really think I'd give it out so plainly here, where everybody could see it?) Taking the notepaper captive with me, I march up the stairs, and shov- ahem, hand the paper to my dad, who at the time was on the phone with one of my uncles. The eyebrows his face owns spring up half an inch, then settle down to normalcy again.

After my father finishes up greeting, chatting, then bidding goodbye to my uncle, he walks downstairs, then with a concerned look on his face, ask me how I knew my science score. (He assumed that I wouldn't have that particular piece of knowledge until Monday, as today is Friday, the day I took my test.) I answer concisely, "Thinkwave." My father then takes a seat next to me, after removing one of the science textbooks I had been poring over from the chair, and proceeds to question me if I could've bubbled in the answers in the wrong slot, if I remembered any of the problems on the test, how much I slept last night, so forth.

In the end of this mini-interview, he concludes (again, Chinese translation), "It's ok, it doesn't matter, just figure out what you did wrong when you get the test back." At this I shout, "Doesn't matter? Doesn't matter? Are you kidding me? This is worth 15% of my quarter grade! Also, that's not what I'm most frustrated about. I'm frustrated thatI don't understand the material completely, which is what my grade shows to me. Not matter, indeed!" Yes, that was also Chinese translation. We are Chinese, as you have hopefully deducted already. Chinese people speak the Chinese language. We speak Chinese. Therefore, we are very much likely to be Chinese, as three of my family members have been heard to speak in Chinese by now.

So, you see, it is not my parents that "push" me, but my conscience. Grades are a reflection of my understanding of the material the teacher has provided with me. Final exams are an assessment of how much I have retained, of what I have read through in the year.

I suppose a large factor of this view on grades came from the feeling that I could have always done better than what I did, whenever I received a grade. Unless it was full points. The more points taken off on my grade, the more deeply I feel this emotion. I don't often get an OK (yeah, all correct) on tests, but then, I rarely get anything below a B+. Unless I spent my afternoon reading a novel. Or chatting through Gtalk. Or taking a nap. Or not packing my backpack properly.

Either way, that's a sample of my life. I think I mixed up past and present tenses again. And overdid the typing part. There has to be at least eight paragraphs here. I'll count after I publish this. Miss, I hope you're satisfied now. You do know who you are, I hope?