My Mother's Memorable Read

When my Mother was in her youthful age in Korea studying in Secondary school, she simply loved reading. She would go to the nearby town library to borrow books everyday according to her interest. One day, my mother, while browsing through the stacks of books, she came across a book with an illustration of a young, sad looking girl on the cover page. She said, when she was interviewed that the first impression of the book, which was the girl, grabbed her attention and aroused her curiosity. Hence, she borrowed it right away and took it home. The book was none other than "Jane Eyre", a classic still popular in the 21st century.

The novel, although my mother could not recall more than half of the content, was about a young orphan girl striving her best in life which eventually leads to mishaps and lucky moments. After reading the book, my mother was inspired by Jane's determination to live with a positive mind , and she vowed to be positive in her life too, no matter what happens to her. She was touched by the girl's sad events and happy events and the book was written so expressively that my mother too actually felt the sorrow and happiness in the novel. That was the main reason why this book remained etched in her mind even after so many years.

Now I understand why my mother always asked me to have a positive, not negative mind.

Confessions of a "Ball Loser"

I have always never been good at keeping things which I borrowed well. Maybe I am just very clumsy or do not have a "ball sense" which my friends used to call me when I lost their baseballs. Now, I reveal my actual account of my loss to the public.(Wishing that my friends don't read this)

Well, my co-curricular-activity is baseball, so it's basic common sense that I play using a baseball. However, I don't have a proper ball to train with at home, I use tennis balls to train at home, ridiculous, isn't it? So I decided to borrow a baseball from my friend for one month-again......

 

The day I got home after borrowing the ball, I was elated and in high spirits as I could finally train properly at home. I immediately rushed downstairs to try out "my" new ball. I smashed the ball against the tennis court's walls, enjoyingthe sound of the crunch. However, just at one moment when I did not flex my arms well, the ball flew out of the tennis court into nowhere. I was dazed for that moment and did not know what to do. My immediate instinct was to go  find the ball. I rushed out into the bushes outside the tennis court and begin my "rescue mission".

My rescue mission failed and I was well, depressed. I did not know what to tell my friend. In fact I had lost the previous ball he lent me and this was the second one. Oh man, why am I so clumsy? Well, I am still currently in the borrowing period and I only have about a week to return him the ball. Can anyone please offer advice to me how to handle this situation? Aw, I have a headache......

Apology to everyone...(Blog-Linguistic)

I sincerely regret bringing trouble to the school. I really do not know why I committed those foolish offences just for fun. No, it was not for patriotism for America, just foolishness.Yes everyone, I have a confession to make so please hear me out......
On that day, when I first broke the school rule by humming the "Star Spangled Banner", I believed I had my reasons. However, as I think through the incident now, I can now understand the real reason for me doing it. I love track. However, because of my poor English grades, I could not get into the Track team. I despised Miss Narwin just for that reason alone as I thought she intentionally gave me the bad grades. Hence, I planned to get kicked out of Miss Narwin's classes by humming the national anthem disrespectfully when it was actually my own attitude towards Literature that made this happen.
I also wanted to do extra work and earn Miss Narwin's favour but my Father told me to stand up for my own rights so I interpreted it wrongly and there I ended up. I really regret doing this to you, Miss Narwin, I should just have stayed put and studied hard for English but instead I did those foolish acts and make it backfire on me. I am also very sorry for ruining your teaching career, Miss Narwin, I hope I can make up to you somehow......
Now, as I leave Harrison High for good, I apologize to the whole school and will try to make up for my misdeeds in my new school. I hope you will forgive me .
With full apologies,
Philip Malloy
Comments
Narwin:
Dear philip,
Although I am somewhat still furious at you for making this mess, however, I do understand the situation you were in and would like to forgive you. Philip , you know your own mistakes and I am already contented with that and thus you are already making up to me. Do not put in mind too much your regret. Study hard! Live up to your own expectations and strive for the stars!
With Regards,
Miss Narwin
Gertrude Doane:
Dear philip,
I am glad that you finally acknowledged your mistakes. Also, please work hard in your new school and do not cause any more unneccessary trouble. As long as you follow these advice, you will be fine. I just hope that this nationwide dispute would come to a rest soon.
Take care,
Gertrude Doane
Coach Jamison:
Hi Phil. Heard you got no track there in your new school. You should'nt have caused so much trouble. You should have listened to my advice and apologize to Miss Narwin. Narwin is a good teacher. If you really are wanting more track in your life, you should someday come down to Harrison track to work out. I'm sure Palleni would allow that. You can meet up with your friends too. Anyway, I just hope that everything will work out the way you wanted it to be in your new school , Philip. Take care.
Jamison
Mr Lunser:
Hiya kiddo! How are you doing? Terrible? I hope not. Yo,you Philip, shouldn't have done that to Narwin . Anyway I hope you can stick up for patriotism in your new school! Bet' you'll terribly miss my "lame" jokes haha. Work hard and don't try to get another teacher fired! haha. Just don't fail English again.
Lunser

Reflection on blogging

Wow.
I have never come across anything related to blogging before I came to Hwa Chong Institution after having been introduced blogging by my LA teacher I am really amazed and impressed. I did not know that it was so easy to put something on the net just by blogging. It is very convenient. I am also impressed by its user-friendliness and its convenience as I thought you needed to learn HTML if you wanted to post something on the net. I like blogging a lot as it has multi purpose functions. You can treat it as your diary or even an assignment board! However, the one thing I dislike about blogging is that while you are blogging, you tend to make grammar or spelling mistakes and it is not corrected automatically like Microsoft Word. Generally, I give blogging my "5 star rating".This whole process can be improved if only there was a human- error- correcting-system .I think tieing in the reading habits and electronic bookshelf is a really good idea as it makes us more aware of our reading habits and the number of books we have read so far. I find that the electronic bookshelf is a very useful website as it really helps us to read more and improve on our literature. In overall , I really fancy blogging.

Reflection on Pictorial exercise

Today, in my Language Arts class, our teacher conducted a very interesting lesson-a pictorial exercise. Curious? Let me tell you more about it. Our teacher, two days before the exercise, wanted us to go home and take a simple test which tells you what is your preferred learning style. It was quite interesting. Here, have a look at mine......

As you can see, my top three learning styles are Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Logical. On the exercise day itself I was grouped into the Interpersonal team. In overall the exercise was extremely team work required and fun. However our group managed to complete the exercise fast. The exercise is matching lots of pictures in a sequence that will tell a story. I think that this exercise had helped me develop more on my visual skills and team work skills. It is a very useful exercise for anyone who wants to boost their visualisation skills. In think that our LA teacher made a good choice about letting us do this exercise. In the future, I hope that more pictorial exercises would be executed on us so that we can enhance our visual skills and thinking skills. I also learned that stories can be told not only through narratives or texts but through graphics only. In fact, I find that graphics books are more interesting to read and look at as I can get both visual information and the plot of the story itself.

Why did I do it?

I did not see this coming. All this is so unfair! However, after thinking thorugh the actions I have taken regarding the small "patriotism matter", I realised that I have brought this all upon myself. Why did I do it? WHY DID I DO IT!?

This new "Washington Academy" really stinks like my Grandmother's smelly laundry. There is no track, the sport which I love the most, and they even tried to please me by making me try out for the soccer team!, the sport I hate the most! As if I will fall for their "little trick"......

There is no such rule that prohibits students from singing the "Star Spangled Banner" and in fact I found that I was not really being patriotic by humming the anthem but just trying to create trouble and sabotage Miss Narwin. I do not even know the lyrics of my own country's anthem and I was in the center of the patriotic discussion. This morning, my homeroom teacher asked me to lead the school in singing the "Star Spangled Banner". I replied by muttering that I do not know the words. As a result, I was laughed at and even mistrusted by my homeroom teacher. I wish I could turn time back. If only I had just kept my mouth shut and respected the school rule and studied hard, I would not have gotten into this mess.
Why did I do it? I really wish I had a 'Time Machine' then I could go back in time and turn everything back to how they were......

My reading habits

Do you have any favourite authors and reading habits? Well I do. Now, let me evaluate more on that fact. I believe that reading is a way of learning too, like studying as by reading we can harvest all kinds of information and knowledge from reading. Therefore, it is important to inculcate a good reading habit at a young age, like now.(13 years old^-^')For me, probably like other pre-teens, I like to "run along with characters of the future","flying with dragons" sort of like all the fantasy stuff. However, occasionally, I do enjoy some romance sometimes.(very little!) Examples of books which I have read and think are the best books I have ever read are: The Artemis Fowl series, the Eragon trilogy,Harry Potter, and the Twilight quadrilogy which are all character-driven stories.Hence, I prefer to read character-driven stories.I usually read when I have finished all my homework and have spare time left.One of my favourite authors is Eoin Colfer. He has produced all kinds of masterpieces like "Supernaturalists", "Artemis Fowl" and other spectacular novels. These are my reading habits and favourite books/authors. I hope this blog entry has inspired you to start reading and inculcate a good reading habit, it is always not too late to make a differnce in your life!

Want to see some of the books I have read? Check out the link below.

http://weread.com/profile/Park/1E1A0196-6AB3-4288-98F8-BB6E61EF063C?con_sandbox=booksiread&container_type=booksiread