T2B8

Learning Outcome of the keyboarding fingers assignment: To learn which fingers type which keys and/or to review it

I realize it is not to regard as an art project, or as a spare-time activity, it's to help you learn/review the keyboarding fingers for when we do them in class. Therefore, I did put effort into it, but I did not overdo it.

T2B7

Learning outcome of field/track day: to have good sportsmanship and learn how to have fun without having to win

Well, then, I TOTALLY fulfilled this learning outcome, because our team came in dead last, but it didn't bother me at all!

Okay, maybe it did a little, but I had fun and I was getting a little sleepy by the end because both my events were really early but still, it was fun. Especially watching the wheelbarrow relay.

T2B6

Learning Outcome of Math Self-Assessment: To think about how we are doing and if we need to improve or continue what we are doing now

Um... that's pretty much all I have to say.

T2B5

I didn't get this at first...

One day Kerry celebrated her birthday. Two days later her older twin brother, Terry, celebrated his birthday. How come?

At the time she went into labor, the mother of the twins was travelling by boat. The older twin, Terry, was born first early on March 1st. The boat then crossed the International Date line (or any time zone line) and Kerry, the younger twin, was born on February the 28th. In a leap year the younger twin celebrates her birthday two days before her older brother. 

This was on the website so I guess I have to acknowledge this: "This puzzle was submitted to Games Magazine's 'How Come' competition in 1992 by Judy Dean. It won."

T2B4

This riddle is from the BrainDen forum, and there aren't even answers yet... But I haven't solved it myself, so I'll keep thinking about this. It's an interesting problem, but kind of vague...

Two bottle of pills must be taken to keep you alive. The two must be taken at the same time.  Forgetting a pill, taking one and not the other, or taking two of the same one will result in your death.  You open the two bottles and pour them both into your hand without thinking.  Three pills fall out on your hand.  Unfortunately the two pills look, feel, and weigh exactly the same.  How do you ensure that you don't take the wrong pill?  

Assume that these pills are super expensive and cannot be discarded.  So throwing the pills away and just picking one pill each is not a viable option.

T2B3

The answer, is that it contains no E's even though E is the most popular letter of the English language!

I stared at this one for AGES and I couldn't figure it out.

Also...

I've found a new riddle website! :)

Brainden.com is a really nice one, because the answer and riddles are corresponding, and it's neater so it's easy to find your way around.

I found this one on the Logic Puzzles page and it is kind of old but fun:

An Arab sheikh tells his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who will inherit his fortune. The one whose camel is slower wins. After wandering aimlessly for days, the brothers ask a wise man for guidance. Upon receiving the advice, they jump on the camels and race to the city as fast as they can.
What did the wise man say to them?

It's not too hard. The answer is that the wise man told them to switch camels.

T2B2

This is a really famous riddle, but it is so good but soooo hard (to me at least) so I'll post the answer tomorrow.

This is a most unusual paragraph - and so is its companion paragraph that follows. This writing may annoy you until you find out why it is so unusual, for you won't find a solution instantly. But don't go into a tailspin about it, for it isn't that difficult. But you will admit that it is most unusual. This writing looks so ordinary that you might think that nothing is worng with it. And, in fact, nothing is wrong with it. But it is unusual, and you must ask why. If you study and think about it, you may find out why, but you must do it without any coaching of any kind. No doubt if you work at it for long, it will dawn on you...who knows? So start to study it now, and try your skill at finding out what is so unusual about this writing. If you can do it in half an hour, you may claim an approach to wisdom, but if you can't do it in half an hour...find our solution.

T2B1

(This is so dang smart)

Word play: 

What is it that you ought to keep after you have given it to someone else?

Answer: A promise.

SO. DANG. SMART.

T1B74, 75, 76

I've forgotten to blog the past few days; I think I've forgotten so many things I know have this ridiculously long list of stuff to do from days ago.

Anyway, I learned that today, it is REALLY IMPORTANT to keep your old things. For example, I had a set of books that I thought I'd never read again, but I ended up needing to refer to it for a detail on our Socials project. I usually never throw anything away, but sometimes I will lose things, so this reminds me of how important it is to store my old work carefully so I can always access it later.

T171, 72, 73

(as me) I forgot to blog for the last three days.

(as mum) I think it's really enlightening that the students these days are learning about homelessness. It really teaches you to, for example, not waste food, be grateful for what you have. If you have old clothing, clean it and donate it, because it's getting really cold out there, there was expected snow today.  Also, I saw a short lecture on this today, and it was about money--we should donate to charity now, and help people while we can, because in a few years, maybe we won't have money to donate. Often rich people forget about other situations, he said, and forget to donate. Poor people, however, can remember situations, but may not be able to donate. Therefore, if you are able to donate, donate now, because you may not have it in a few years, and you may end up on the streets. I thought that he had a good point. It's like that saying that often, we don't appreciate something... until it's gone. We are lucky--think of the poor people in the Philippines.

T2B69 and 70

I forgot to blog yesterday.

I learned that sometimes, working with a bad topic but producing a good article might be better than scrambling to find or understand a good topic, but making a bad article. You aren't evaluated on how amazingly smart the topic is, you're evaluated on how well your article is written. If it's written terribly, even a amazingly smart topic will sound dumb.

T1B68

A riddle: 

How many times can you subtract the number 5 from 25?

It's really clever (and evil) wordplay.

The answer is once, because after that you would be subtracting 5 from 20.

It's like the riddle about candy: How many pieces of candy can I eat on an empty stomach? One, because after that your stomach's no longer empty!

T1B67

I woke up this morning, and the first thing I did was to pick my sister up from church. We had lunch at a taiwanese noodle restaurant. After that, we went to Richmond Centre, where we bumped into Michelle. At Richmond Centre, we went to a Wind service provider store, to get my sister's SIM card changed, then to the Apple Shop.

And then I went home and worked on my Socials group project and Science Multi-Genre Project.

T1B66

(as Cindy) I totally forgot to blog yesterday, I played piano from about 8 to 10, so I totally forgot to check my email for an email from Bryan after that... so it is totally my fault that I didn't blog yesterday. 

(as Bryan) In the morning, when I woke up, I set up my new iPhone 5s. I thought the fingerprint login was pretty cool. I chose to do my transit project with my parents today, and we went to Burnaby to Metrotown from our house. We wanted to see the 1:10 showing of Gravity, but we missed it, so we just went shopping. We had lunch at a Japanese ramen restaurant. We went home after that, and I played a bit of Injustice: Gods Among Us on my phone.

T1B65

Today in French class, Ishmam and I did a skit, where I wore a tutu and headband and pretended to be a girl. I think that it was very entertaining to the class, especially when I put on the tutu, and everyone started laughing their heads off. I think we chose our names well, and the pretend kissing bit at the end added humor, and our script wasn't too badly rehearsed either. (In French culture, girls greet each other by kissing on the cheeks, which is why we chose to do it, as an expression of realistic French conversation).

*Empathy Blog #5--Partner--Bryan

T1B64

During science, Ms. Smedley read us an interesting story about the Fraser River and its pollution. We had a model river in a fish tank, and we poured a variety of things into it to create a representation of pollution (according to the story) as the city grew. In English, we learned of a new contest, the A&E, where you write an essay about people who have changed the world in 2013 (one person).

T1B63

My Day 2 schedule starts with PE in the morning.

PE was fun--we finally got to play a full court game! The rules were change, with 6 players playing, and only one person within the key who could score.

Math was as usual; in this lesson particularly, we practiced multiplying and dividing powers/exponents. 

We were supposed to present out skit during French, but unfortunately we didn't get to. We rewatched the Mission Possible video another 2 times (we'd watched it two times last class as well) although this time we were completing the worksheet as well. It was not very interesting.

In Film, we finally got to start filming our scary movie! Yay!

T1B62

Today, we had our Socials World Map Exam. I found that it was quite easy. In science, we learned about living organisms/animals in various ecosystems and we also watched a video on that. In English, we went over the questions for Chapter 1 on Death Note. After school, I walked to Alliance Français and the class went as usual.

T2B61

Today is the first day of the empathy blogs.

Using email is not a very effective way of communication, because if someone doesn't have access to a computer, THEN WHAT?

I didn't call Bryan today because I didn't think I needed to, and we'd already said last week that we'd just chat online and then write our separate blog posts. But then, when I sent an email to Bryan, I think he was offline, and he hasn't replied back yet. I have to go play piano now, so I can't really wait any longer, but I'll come back and check after, but I NEVER want to do this again. I probably should call, because people sometimes aren't able to make it to a computer, because of some emergency ("GAAAHH, NO WIFI!" for example, that ALWAYS happens to me).

*EDIT*

Due to bad communication, Bryan actually did write mine and his blog and it was late, so he didn't send me his debrief. It is posted on his blog right now.

T1B60

Last night the garage was too smoky for me to sleep in, so I slept in the entrance hall, just beside the garage (well, the garage door, anyway). It was colder there because heat rises and our heat was turned off. The ground was really cold at first, but it heated up and it got better after a while. I tried not to roll around too much, but I'm not sure what I did when I slept, although I did know that I woke up three times and each time I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I really wanted to move around but every time I tried to whatever part of my body touched the floor, it froze, so I had to stay in that one position the whole time. In the morning, when I decided it was late enough (like 8ish), I just gave up and went back upstairs.

And also I caught a cold.

I think that homeless people would have a really hard time if they caught a cold. They (mostly) don't have warm chicken soup, emphasis on warm, because among other things, the steam is supposed to help clear your nose. Also, it feels really bad to be outside in cold weather if you have a cold, even though I know you can't catch a cold by being cold. Although I suppose it would be harder for homeless people to catch a cold, if they aren't in contact and aren't inside for most of the winter/flu season... Nevertheless, cold weather just makes it harder to get better if you (by the slightest chance) get infected.

I think that the most important thing for us to knit would be hats. In the wintertime, you lose heat from the top of your head most, because you wear heavy clothes, but you often neglect or don't have a hat. Most homeless people might not think of having a hat, which means that they will be losing heat more from their head. If we knit hats, then more places are protected, which means that the homeless people will be able to keep warm better.

T1B58 and T1B59

Either my computer needs a good bash on the side of the head or I do.

I forgot to publish this yesterday, so here it is:

I forgot to post yesterday, even though I had the whole post written out in my head.

Well anyway, yesterday I was thinking about how I'm always posting about the previous day's experience, so I realized I needed to catch up one day.

The day before yesterday, I slept on the carpet in my room, but my mother told me I would freeze if I slept in clothes that I wore, so I basically lay down on the carpet and she piled mounds and mounds of clothing on me.

It worked better than tying up the sleeves of my parka.

Then, yesterday, I didn't move to a different place because I was thinking about the Weeping Angels Doctor Who episode Mr. Sale showed us on Wednesday, and after a while I just got scared and went upstairs to sleep. Today I have not slept yet, but I can PLAN how I will sleep (Ha! so I can catch up!) I will TRY to sleep in the garage, but I need to air it out today because there are exhaust fumes in it and that will clog up my throat, but undoubtedly I will get scared again or cold or something and go upstairs again.

I've actually been taking it better than usual this time, normally I would end up pulling at least a week of all-nighters because I was scared to go to sleep. Heh. Heh. I was tired these few days so it didn't work. A few of my FRIENDS, however, were tired and sore because they were scared to go to sleep and the ground was hard. Obviously, that meant I got to gloat that for once I wasn't the most scared one. I get to say, HA, IN YOUR FACE, but obviously in a nice way, although I do have enough EBA deposits (I hope) that I get to tease my friends. :)

For food, my mother didn't want to cook, and I would have cooked except my mother was scared of my food not being edible, so we ate out. But I begged my aunt for money so she paid. (last night)

Two nights ago, I still ate canned soup because I was thinking (and so were some of my friends who were spectators to the homelessness project) that a. I would not know where food banks were and b. it would not be really right to take food from people who did need them, as Mr. Olson said. I think it would take a reasonably long time for donated food to actually reach homeless people, so I once again ate canned food (cold, because homeless people generally don't have the means to cook food... I think...)

My mom won't let me sleep with the windows open, not because I'll catch a cold, but because in my room, the window is right above my head, and if its open, it means I'll have cold air blasting my head all the time, which means in the morning I'll wake up with a headache.

Which obviously is bad for academic reasons, so my mom won't let me sleep with the window open.

This is a really long blog post but I have something else to say...

I really feel sorry for the homeless people in winter. Because they have to carry all their clothes around, and wear all they have when it gets cold during winter nights, and also they don't have hot food either, unless they go to a church or a homeless shelter. Even if they get food from the food bank, they have no way of cooking it, which means they must eat it cold. Often in the winter, I find that if you are really cold, entering into a hot building, putting on an extra layer of clothes, even drinking hot water from a thermos right after coming back from the snowy outside, really warms you up. However, homeless people don't have any of that, which means it's really hard for them to warm up. Often in the winter, I used to hate sleeping, because I wanted to read, but now, as I'm getting older, sometimes I am just so exhausted the only thing I want to do is flop on to my warm cushy bed and sleep it all away. Homeless people must feel like that every day, pulled out, tired, yet they don't have a warm cushy bed to collapse into. It must feel like one long grind of sticking it out, trying to beat the cold, waiting for something better to happen and constantly telling themselves, "It'll be over soon. Just stick out this one last day. Survive through the night, the day, the night, the day, waiting for..." What? What are they waiting for? For someone to help them? For a day when they will have a warm cushy bed again? This is why we must help homeless people. For them, their home is the streets. For them, the cold is warm. For them, we must create better situations, because no one deserves to be pushed all the time, pressured all the time. Everyone deserves a break in life. It's up to us to give that to homeless people.

At the beginning of the project, I felt like, what am I going to do? How am I going to get through this week? It was to tell myself that there was a reward at the end. All I had to do was stick it out until Sunday, and everything would go back to normal. But homeless people don't have that. They don't have the Sunday in their lives, the day where everything would go back to normal and they wouldn't have to be strung so tight. It's like the weekdays--when I feel overwhelmed with homework, I say, only x more days until the weekend. Keep going. But for homeless people, THERE IS NO WEEKEND. They have to keep going, day after day, suffering hardships just to STAY ALIVE. Do we want that life? What will happen if the day comes where we lose everything we have and we have to become homeless? Will we feel resentment toward those that walk by, day after day, and yet do nothing to help? Those who have thousands of dollars in income every year, and yet cringe to spare a penny on those who truly need it? Will it take that for us to realize what homeless people feel, how selfish we were when we had what the homeless need? Or can we take action now, to create a better society?