luck favors the prepared.

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Okay. Let me be honest. I went to the concert because the teachers promised the students to give out extra credit. I went there to meet my friends. I went there to tell my mom I was involved in a school activity and use it as an excuse to come home late. It is just a concert, and how can a concert change the world? I thought. However, one man, Mr. Burell, did make a change. Yes, one concert inspired the entire school. Now I believe that this school and I are capable of changing the whole sphere.

PGC concert’s intention was to let people know how serious the problem of global warming is and to inspire the audience to participate in the approach to a change. The dark atmosphere of the club was fascinating. The bands were awesome, and the songs rocked. The concert was a great success, I would say. However, I modestly propose: the concert did not a good job in really emphasizing its intentional goal. Most of the audience, as they were high on music, gradually forgot about the main theme, global warming, and began to accept the event as a simple amusing, socializing opportunity.

Let’s focus. Let’s remember. Let’s realize. Let’s act. We were supposed to be there to be the part of the group that changes the world. Even though what first attracted me to the event was the charming luster of the extra credits, I soon realized how trivial they are. What good will 5 extra points for my English blog grades do? The planet where we all live on is slowly yet surely dying. Denying and forgetting about the issue will provide no solution.

We all tend to think one person is incapable of making an actual, noticeable change. However, you can save the earth, and so do I. We all can save the planet. Stand up, people. Take actions. Turn off your air conditioner. Walk. Stop wasting energy, and stop killing the earth. Let’s be part of this global cooling project.

i hear the clock ticking. i feel the night falling. i see smiling andrew in a photo. jeffrey is jumping in the scene. my i-movie. almost done. have a lot to show. ms. p, 10 minutes is too short. the selfish giant, quite adorable. 4 GB. that’s how big my movie is. editing is fun. i love it. should i become a movie editor? i guess it may work. well, no enough time to think about the far future. too busy handling the current issues. the near future? makes me crazy. i dearly hate mac. why does every teacher want an i-movie? i-movies are fun. but it just takes too long. too long. stacy and yura’s i-movie. i cannot wait to watch. they are the ones who began writing this type of post. i think it’s fun. this may seem pointless, yet, hey that’s how life is. meaningless and absurd, life is suffering. buddha said, according to college-board exam. life, oh life. cynicism, nihilism, epicurean-ism, romanticism–choose the one you like. series of choices, that is what life is. freedom of speech. natural rights. laissez faire. they all make adam smith happy. ap world history is over. but the history continues. ah, odd circle of life. i’m already sixteen. it is roger’s birthday today. i love roger. he’s so sweet. he said thanks for the gift. seventeen, he has become. wow he is old, and i’ll be old. we’ll all grow old. the old man and the sea. i read the book last saturday. i enjoy reading. but travesties. oh, travesties. that was a disaster. i love and hate dadaism. easy to create, hard to understand. let’s laugh at the audience. if you are reading this in a serious manner, i will laugh at you. don’t feel lost. although i am lost. lost. lost, my favorite tv show. the island is weird, but kate is gorgeous. sawyer is wildly sexy. i miss charlie, please bring him back to life. and i wonder why john locke has such name. i saw the name in my ap world history book, and now back to the painful school. finals are coming, assignments are waving, and i am drowning. i cry out. someone help me. someone save me. and now i know. no one’s coming. no one’s helping. let’s help myself, dabin. blogs are due, but i am ready. yes, i improved. a lot. let me fly. let me fly. ah, this was fun.

The man adores the woman; the woman feels safe in his arms. The old lady has a small wish. The friends care for each other. Sunshine and blossoms. Everything seems alright. Life seems happy. However, their walk toward the ultimate crash begins as the movie starts. Harry, Marion, Ty, and Sarah—all they want to grab is happiness; yet their pursuit of ephemeral pleasure leads them into the eternal darkness.
Harry smiles a lot. Unfortunately, his biggest smile comes on his face when he injects drugs inside his vein. Marion is confident and beautiful. Sadly, her skin loses its luster as she cannot control herself from snorting cocaine. Ty, the young and healthy man has a lot of wishes that he wants to accomplish. Yet he experiences the loss of hope as he becomes a drug addict. Sarah desires to be on television. However, the obsession for gorgeous appearance makes her undetachable from the diet pills. All the main characters of the movie suffer due to their drug-addiction problem; however drug-addiction is not the biggest problem. They are lost–they fail to realize their initial goals of life, and we often tend to forget about them as well.

Harry, Marion, Ty, and Sarah are searching for bliss, the reason of their existence on the sphere, and the goal of life. We, humans, always chase behind such things. We all wish to be happy, and that’s the nature of mankind. Nevertheless, the characters of the movie are searching the goal and the reason in a wrong place through a wrong way. The film itself demonstrates little variety of colors through the screen. Such colorless ambiance attempts to symbolize the dark atmosphere of life of the drug users. A series of short scenes in which the camera captures the bright and showy screen of the old lady’s television demonstrate the pretentious elements of life and human society. We sometimes let ourselves to be gullible and be deceived by the world and what it shows. We sometimes fall for the meaningless surface values such as outer beauty which is only skin-deep and temporal excitement that lasts extremely short.

The movie continues to expose its audience to a single, strong melody. Whenever the music flows, intensity and tension grow. The music with its powerful beat and pathetic tone pulls the audience into the movie. The power of music in this film is astonishing. The ultimate message of the movie is simple and strong. Don’t do drugs. Yes, drugs do kill you.

        I panicked. How can I not panic? It is four weeks before final exams; and I have 3 projects that must be done using i-movie. Let me get this straight. It was not me the one who killed my macbook. I will not mention the name (because blaming the person will not bring my computer back to life), but it wasn’t me. All the assignments and files that I have saved are still in there. Fortunately, the IT office safely rescued my hard-drive and all the data.

There are two types of people in this planet: people who create back-up drives and people who do not. I was a type of person who never bothered to create back-ups. Now, I sincerely warn you all–especially the ones who attend my high school where we use one-to-one laptop system. Buy a hard drive. Create an online account in which you can save your works. This computer crisis almost made me pass out. I thank God for my rescued files. However, this type of accident may take place again (although it should not). I have no room to freak out every time this happen. Additionally, I do not hope my friends to realize the importance of back-up files when computers are already destroyed. It is just too late.

Stream of Consciousness. It depicts a character’s mind flow. Everyone including you and I constantly think about things. Let’s suppose you are going to Greece. A thick volume of novel can be written covering less than 10 hours of your flight. The physical process of reaching Greece itself, in the case, is not the main focus of the novel. What’s important is what kind of thoughts hit your boundless brain. You may think about your grandmother who always has wanted to go to Greece. You may think about your previous trip to somewhere else. Writers who use the tactic of stream of consciousness include and write about the things that are sometimes somewhat random.

Everything begins in the brain: this literary technique starts inside a head of the main character or a narrator. Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Jane Eyre possess long plots full of happenings that become main composition of the novels. However, Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, only covers a single day of a woman. The book, although it is based on a normal day of a woman named Mrs. Dalloway, does not tell its audience about her day. It is all about what she thinks about during the day.

Some argues that stream of consciousness is illogical because it often leads to abrupt and random flow of writings. It does not emphasize the practical world as well. However, famous writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Earnest Hemingway considered such randomness and ignorance of the physical world represent the true realism, because people do have their own world revolving inside their head that is separated from the outside world.

Walking down the hallway, laughing out loud with my friends, I suddenly stopped my steps after a glance at an object hanging down from the ceiling: a candid camera. With its one eye, it was facing directly at me and my friends. Perceiving my actions, reading my lips–these were what the camera was doing. With a strong, abrupt uncomfortable feeling, I refused to act as myself. Yes, I stopped being Dabin, yet started to act as a machine that performs restricted actions forced by school.

In one science fiction movie (with a title that I cannot remember), one of the main characters reveals top government secret: the satellites will be soon used by the government to observe actions of each citizen. When I heard it, I gave a snort of laughter. Invasion of privacy, I would call it. Yet with candid cameras watching over me, my friends, everyone in school, I started to think of it as a quite reasonable theory. If international schools where the authorities claim to respect their students start to invade their privacy, it only proves that the authorities suppose human nature as evil and unworthy of trust.

Although the original purpose and intention of the cameras are to prevent certain misbehaviors of students, it still feels like being a prisoner in panopticon–a specially designed prison where everything can be seen by observers.

After confirming reservation and passing through a turnstile of Seoul Station, I was welcomed by a gorgeous train waiting on the railway platform. Entirely covered by purple, the train was veiled beneath an image of a wine bottle with a glass of wine. As I stepped inside the train with odd excitement, the ceiling and windows entwined with grapevine entered my vision.

“David Copperfield, the magician with worldwide fame, has visited Korea twice and was embarrassed in both visits. All of you’ve heard of those incidents, right? Foreigners usually wait for David to show them wonderful magic tricks with curiosity, but Koreans stare at the magician fiercely to find out how he deceive them. Now, that kind of attitude will ruin the mood of today’s wine-train.” The wine-train singer Sung Ho Lee began the recreation that would last for two and a half hour with directions for an enjoyable trip from Seoul Station to ‘Chateau Mani’ in Choong-buk Young-dong. He made his debut at a university song festival and published 3 albums; however reactions were not very positive. After working as a country singer in Misari for a while, he was marked out for the current job.

The wine-train operating by ‘Wine Korea’ has been running for 2 years. With the impact of increasing popularity of wine in Korea in last few years, the number of operation has increased from one per week to two per week. The trip heading to ‘Chateau Mani’ includes recreation, wine tasting, and lectures about wine. The train practically functions as the winery of ‘Wine Kroea’. Serving, preparing for appetizers, and lecturing are all done by staffs.

The staffs usually travel around the country during the weekdays and get on the wine-train on Tuesday and Saturday. The efficiency almost reaches perfection with staffs performing double to quadruple roles. ‘Wine Korea’ had been rejected several times by beverage buyers of department stores and big markets saying there first should be promised consumer pool looking for the product. Yet, as it was introduced through several television programs and gained popularity among people, its business condition improved incomparably. “All the phone in the company get paralyzed when the wine-train is introduced through TV programs such as ‘VJ Corps’ or ‘6 O’clock My Home’. Thankfully, it is now a lot easier for us to conduct business in big markets. There is a huge difference between the rate of orders in last year and that of this year. With upcoming Choosuk holiday, it is even hard to supply all the demands.”

Recently, the most threatening factor of the grape industry is climate. “20 years ago, apples of Taegu were considered most delicious, yet now, those of Choo-pung-ryung are known as the best ones. This shift is taking place in grape industry as well. As the temperature slowly rises, in order to produce grapes in good forms, we have to cultivate grapes in the higher elevation.” said Sun-Goo Lee, a farmer who has been cultivated grapes for 30 years, sighing with overripe grapes in his hands. He claimed that weather gives greater damages than the FTA does.

This year’s festival in September was a complete disaster attacked by rainfalls with the wrong timing. On the last day of the festival, I encountered a farmer rooting about in a box of grapes. “I am struggling here, but no one knows. We poor people have to cry all the time because of rain, money, government policies, and FTA. What did we do wrong? Apparently, I have neither time nor capacity for any interview.” He didn’t lift his head up, but focused in picking the grapes that became inedible.

There are 4200 families cultivating grapes in Young-dong. Only 5% of the total production is used for wine distilling. Yet, this 5% means a lot. If something goes wrong just as it did in this year, grapes in inferior quality can be utilized through wine manufacturing.

So.

I was surfing through the blogs of my friends, and I decided to imitate a post of Andrew. He has “published” his commitments on his blog for the upcoming AP World History exam that I am taking as well. However, unfortunately the exam is on this Thursday, so it is not a very appropriate time for me to come up with commitments for that event (it’s a little too late).

So, I have decided to create a list of ten commitments for the last few weeks of my sophomore year.

• Get rid of “Froot Loop” from the widget page of my macbook.
• Continue blogging (so that I won’t post everything on the last minute).
• Remember I have two more years to go (since it’s the end of the school year, it just feels like everything is over already).
• Write down homework for myself instead of instant messaging rest of the day to find out what the homework is.
• Go home after school.
• Start thinking (seriously) about my major.
• Sleep early. Wake up early.
• Balance (learn how to deal with both studying and hanging out).
• Remember that studying and grades are not everything. But realize that friends are not everything of my life as well.
• Try hard.

We always make commitments; and we always forget about them (it’s just a natural, inevitable pattern). I thought it would be helpful to “publish” them in front of a lot of people, because through the publication, more responsibilities follow.

This is a captured image of the world clock. Click the link if you want to view the real one.

We, human beings, are creatures that grow continuously and rapidly. Countless numbers of babies are born every instant; however this website not only proves how astonishing we are as a species that gives birth to new lives so quickly but also points out the fact that mankind kills and harms other organisms on this planet and maybe the planet itself as well. According to my observation, about 1,600,000 babies appeared on Earth while 330 species became extinct in one week. 7 days—in this short period of time, humans reproduce their own descendents without stopping; unfortunately, at the same time, we are the ones who are fully responsible for damaging this beautiful environment.

People cut down forests; they pump out oils using up uncontrollable amount of natural resources; cars never stop being produced causing pollution that will eventually make our planet a hotter (in terms of temperature) place to live in. It is amazing how fast our population grows. Approximately 600,000—only one third of number of births—died last week, showing apparent rise in the world population. Population growth itself is not a negative phenomenon; but what humans do as the population grows bigger engenders conflicts. Forests produce oxygen that we rely on. If we continue to cut forests down, then how will our grandchildren breathe fresh or any type of air at all? Global warming, although it seems like it’s not happening and some people deny its presence, surely takes place. There are lots of decimal points required to indicate temperature change, yet it is certainly going up.

Mankind not only harms other species but also kill each other under a tragic incident called war. People in Iraq are suffering; people all over the places are being injured by violence. People, standing on the same sphere as we are, commit suicides; and its rate seems like it will never drop. We need to stop damaging our gifted woods. We have to pay attention to those species being forever lost. We must put an end to ongoing cruelty within our species. Let’s realize what’s happening to the planet and to us. Earth has been a wonderful dwelling place for us to live on. Yet it will no loner serve as a peaceful, comfortable, and reliable home if we, human beings, continue to destroy it.