My Favorite Super Hero

               If someone asks me what my superhero is, I would have a hard time answering this question not because I have difficulty choosing one but because I barely know any of them. The only superhero movie I watched from beginning to end was the Fantastic 4. I just watched it because my friends forced me to watch it at a party. I only watched like the first thirty minutes of the first Spiderman movie of the Spiderman series and half of the first Wolverine movie that came out. I have only seen pictures of the rest, Batman, Superman, Captain America, and many more.

Since it’s almost impossible to choose my favorite super hero, I would write about the one I thought most interesting from the three I watched. In my opinion, Wolverine exceeded both Fantastic 4 and Spiderman, although I

didn’t finish until the end. Wolverine was my favorite because he was seeking for revenge. Revenge might be a theme very common in the movies, but I found the way Wolverine portrayed it interesting. There was something supernatural about him, and it actually helped him start his revenge.

At first, he seemed to be hiding his identity hiding from those trying to eliminate people with super powers like him. But soon enough, they found where he was. Because they realized that he was not going to show up by himself, they used his lover as bait which I think was a cruel but a very clever idea. Realizing that his lover had been killed, he felt rage but also guilt. If he was an ordinary man like others, his lover would not have faced this situation. One person comes to him and convinces him that they will give him the power to revenge to the killer. Deceived, he goes through the experiment. By the time he finds out that the people were just using him for the experiment, it was too late to stop it. After the procedure takes place, it seemed as if he dies unable to endure the pressure. However, he revives or wakes up and escapes the place with titanium injected to his entire body.

To seek for revenge, he starts looking for his former colleagues, who also own super powers. One of his friends, the one who can teleport, tells him a hint of where they might be. He insists that he is going to go by himself, but his friend tags along. This was up to where I watched, and I really found the movie interesting. I couldn’t finish the movie, because I watched it at a school party. But if I had the time, I would really love to finish at least the second half of the movie.

I only watched like an hour of the movie, but I learned a lesson. When person is blinded by anger, they lose their ability to think with sense. This was what I saw in Wolverine. After he found out that his lover had died, he enrages. Then he seems to lose control of himself. This is apparently shown in the fighting scene between the Wolverine and the killer. Although he was powerful, his power could not match the power of the killer. Because he was enraged, he could not use his power sufficiently. He lost balance and he could not aim properly. This eventually resulted in his defeat.

Avengers was one of the movie that my friends recommended me to watch. I was actually planning to watch it, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have any time. Even if I watched it, I don’t think I could have understood the movie because I knew nothing about them. But I still regret it because my friends told me it was the best one out of the superhero movies.

Seven Deadly Sins

The seven deadly sins are wrath, greed, sloth, pride, envy, lust, and gluttony. I probably am guilty of all of the following, but I think I’m most guilty of gluttony. When I think of gluttony, it gives me an image of a fat person greedily plunging for food. I’m not this extreme, but I think that I really eat over the amount that I should consume.

               When I go to a buffet, I first get excited by the smell of the delicious food and then the sight of them. My blood rushes through at the feeling of enjoyment, and my mouth starts to water. As I grab my first plate of food, my eyes start wandering looking for the food that would suit my taste. Most of the time, it’s my instinct. Just by reading its name or looking at it, my instinct would tell me if I would like the food or not. I don’t depend much on the food’s visual, but I cannot say that I do not look at it at all. I take little amount of various kinds of food for the first time. In the second time, I take the foods that I really enjoyed from the first plate. Then I shift from main dish to desserts. This is the part I am most guilty of gluttony. Usually I take three dishes full of dessert and divulge them as soon as I get them. Then I start to slow down my eating pace. Then I go to get my one last plate, or sometimes even tw

o, to finish my meal. When I go to a buffet, I tend to eat more than my stomach can hold. By the time I finish my first dish of desserts, I get full but I don’t stop here. Allured by the smell and sight of the desserts, I stuff two or more dishes of them into my stomach. Then I reach the point where I even feel uncomfortable standing up because I ate too much. I am a greedy for sure, but my greed over food is something I cannot control.

               This not only happens in buffets. Every day, I consume more than necessary. If there is something inside the refrigerator that I really want to eat even though I finish a meal right before or still feel full from the meal. This is a desire that I cannot control. My hands unconsciously reach towards the food and by the time I snap back into reality, the food is long gone already. This repeats every day. Even though there is no food that I can eat right at the moment the desire urges me, I would commit gluttony by substituting it with another food or actually spending time to make it. Sometimes, I would crave for bread (although it’s more like my every day craving) in the morning and actually wake up earlier than usual to bake muffins or cupcakes to satisfy my desire. But the thing is that I bake more than enough, and the important part of this is that I finish everything at one sitting. I just can’t stand foods being left over, and I think that this is one of the factors that really contributed to my gluttony.

               If only I could stop it by my own will. I tried to control it once. It was two weeks before prom, and my dress would not fit because I gained weight after I made alteration for my dress. I went on a diet and refused to eat any fatty food for the two weeks. I even refused to eat bread, something that I would eat anytime anywhere and I did succeed in losing enough weight in the end. But right after prom, I went back to my habits over over-consuming. Now, I realize that it’s something that I cannot suppress by my own will. I think the only way to stop from committing more of these would be just to avoid wherever there is food, and this is almost impossible because food is everywhere.

Favorite Trip

               Last summer I had the most amazing time of my life. I’ve got a chance to visit London for my first time, and this was more meaningful because it was during the Olympics. This wasn’t a personal trip but a band trip, although it would have been so much better if it was a personal one. As a member of Saipan Southern High School Manta Band, I participated in numerous fundraisers all year long. We, as a whole, were able to make about $250,000, which seemed like an amount we could never earn. Although it was arduous, it was worth it.

On July 23, 2012, we embarked on our journey to London and after two days of spending time inside the plane and in the airport, we finally arrived at the London Heathrow Airport. There were Olympic committees everywhere and this made me realize that this was really the reality. We headed straight to the temporary building built only for Olympics uses and received our Olympics accreditation. After the two-hour bus trip, we finally arrived at Max Rayne House, one of the dormitories of University of Camden, London. Tired and weary from 2-day plane ride, everyone just fell asleep instantly.

The next morning, we woke up at 7 o’ clock in the morning for breakfast. As soon as I got out of the building, I felt chilly. The cold was unbearable, so I ran to the cafeteria for breakfast. All the participants of the London Music Festival were there, and this made the dull façade of the cafeteria livelier. Afterwards, we headed to the Elizabeth Conference Hall, an antique building across the Westminster, for our adjudicated concert. This was the most important day of our trip. We have prepared for a year for this concert, and we were all excited about it. After a short rehearsal, we had time to roam around central London. It was just amazing to see the Parliament and the Westminster. The scene was just ineffable, but the food there tasted so horrible. We soon headed back for our adjudicated concert. There were several other teams competing against us, and actually most of them were also invited to come to London just like us. As our turn neared, everyone became tense. Even I could literally feel my heart palpitate. When I sat down and Mr. Dewitt, our band director, raised his baton, I felt a rush of adrenaline. We, as a whole, followed his conducting and played the music with our hearts, and we achieved what we came for. We played with our best abilities and actually won silver award. Even after our adjudicate

d concert, the warmth remained inside me despite the extreme cold weather.

The next morning, we prepared to play for the torch relay. The place was not far away from our place, so it only took us about 15 minutes to get there. There were already crowd of people gathered around the relay line, and everyone welcomed us as we sat down to start our show before the torch relay. Unlike the day before, everyone felt relaxed and really just enjoyed the music and that moment. Soon after our entertainment, the torch relay participants entered one by one. Everyone cheered and clapped, and as the actual torch came in, the noise increasingly became louder. Even after the torch passed by, I couldn’t believe that I was actually in London to enjoy and be part of the event that I never thought I would be part of, the Olympics.

Several days passed and we have played for the cycling venue and for the entertainment show inside the Olympic park. These experiences were new and exciting but not as much as the first two days. After five days of staying in London, we finally got used to London but it was time for us to leave. Although it was only five days out of 16 years of my life, it was more valuable, exciting, and inspiring than any other moments in my life.

Personal Experiences and Knowledge vs. Advice from Others

 All humans are imperfect. No one can know the solution to every question in their life, and in this case, help from others is necessary. Humans must cooperate with each other to fill in the gaps of the others, and getting and giving advices to others are one of the things requisite to make human more perfect beings.

               People give advice from what they have learned in their personal experiences.  Receiving this advice is like having a peek at their experiences. A peek does not give a full understanding of the situation, but it widens the mind of the viewer.  Before I entered high school, I was so worried about my high school life. I had never experienced it prior to this, so I had to get used to a new system of living. To gain more knowledge about high school life, I asked other high school students for advice. When I told them I was so anxious about it, they all laughed and assured that I would have no trouble getting used to high school life. They warned that it would be stressful because of all the works, but they all said their high school experiences were more enjoyable than those of junior high school. After they advised me on high school life, I knew what to expect and to prepare for. This might not seem really helpful, but it really helped diminish my anxiety.

               Stubborn people may insist on only relying on their knowledge and their experience. But once they realize the importance and benefits of other people’s advice, they would not be able to resist it and keep being adamant about it.  Other people’s knowledge and experiences may not be helpful as people’s own experiences, but it definitely is worth knowing. There are some advices that are vacuous, but even those will become helpful when many of them accumulate to form a real valuable advice. The more advice people receive, the better they will be in situations they never faced.

               Often teenagers like us, do not have enough experience or knowledge to find solution to a problem. Adults have more experiences or knowledge they can use, because they have lived way more than we have. They often know solutions to problems more than we do, so I really think that asking the adults for advice would help a lot in real life. When I need help whether it’s something related to academic or social, I always look for the nearest adult for advice. Most of the times, my parents are the ones I ask. They have gone through high school more than ten twenty years ago, but still. It’s better than nothing. Sometimes, their advices don’t give direct solution to problems, but using my personal experiences and knowledge together with it, I learned how to go through hardships in life.

               When my friends had trouble, I was always there for them. My friends appreciated my help as much as I appreciated their help. They would often tell me that they were stuck with certain problems because they didn’t know how to respond to it or how to solve it. Sometimes, I would give them advices even if I never experienced it myself. Last time, my friend had a fight with her boyfriend and she wanted me to give her an advice. As a person who never experienced it, I couldn’t give her specific advises. But, I could look at the situation more in an objective point of view, away from how people blinded by love would think. I think that this really helped her, and I felt really good about it too. After this, I really realized that advises are crucial to life. Even little advices can help people proceed from where they currently were.

What is Love?

Love is war. It’s a constant battle between mind and heart. This is what my friends always say, and I mean the ones who had girlfriends or boyfriends before. I never experienced it myself, so I don’t know if this is true. If I actually experienced it, I could have provided a much detailed description about this metaphor. But since I didn’t, I will base this post on the stories my friends told me.

               Not all of my friends’ parents approved their relationship, and this was the first battle they fought. Because their parents disapproved it, their minds told them to follow what their parents told them. Their heart was telling them the very opposite thing. The heart told them to follow your feelings and ignore what they say. In the end, everyone chose the same thing. The heart. No matter how forceful their parents were, all of my friends chose heart over their mind and continued on with their relationship. Later, their parents eventually gave up and approved their relationships. Many people are influenced by mind and other people around them when it comes to making decisions. However, I think that feeling overrules both of them when it comes to love just like how pathos, the emotional appeal, gives a greater impact on the readers in a book more than ethos, personal appeal, or logos, the logical appeal.

               Love does not only involve conflicts with your parents. The major conflicts happen between the people actually in the relationship. The first stage, as all of my friends say, is just the lovey dovey stage. They rarely fight with their girlfriends or boyfriends, and they say that this is a stage where they are blind about each other not noticing the faults of the others. The fighting starts as these faults start

to reveal themselves or rather as the blindness goes away. Some fight over little stuffs like how frequent they text each other. I’ve seen them go through many of these and every time their emotions take them over. When they make up with each other, they seem so happy as if nothing bad had happened to them.

 For me, the feeling love is a very familiar yet a very unpredictable one. I’ve received love from my families and friends, but my friends told me that the kind of love you experience in relationships are totally different.  From the stories I heard from them, I definitely think that they are different. But I wonder if they are totally different from each other. I think the fastest and the surest way to get an answer to this question is to actually experience it myself .But since I did not, I do not know the answer to this question just yet.

My friends say love is tiring, yet they continue to seek and sustain love. Why would anyone want to continue something that is tiring? I think this is because the feeling of love is so great that it overcomes the sense of tiredness. Even though love is something they really abhor at certain points, they are so attracted to this feeling that they can’t be away from this feeling. Maybe it’s a sense of familiarity. Maybe it’s because they are so used to this feeling that they feel empty if their lover is gone although they had numerous fights with them. I’ve seen many of my friends who break up with their girlfriends or boyfriends and say they are never going to be in relationship again go out with someone else. They are surely aware of the fact that fighting between them is inevitable but they still repeat the same process over and over again. Love makes me curious. How great is this love that it makes people want this although it’s painful? Why do people continuously go back to war just to seek love? This is definitely something I do not understand completely. But who knows? I might be in a war too.

About Myself

        Although I am a full-Korean, I spent about half of my lifetime in a remote island called Saipan. I moved to Saipan at the age of 8 and have never left Saipan since then. Because Saipan is limited, I did not have much thing to do. But I actually developed few hobbies in the past few years. Baking is one of my favorite hobbies. I started baking in junior high, and I just simply did it for fun. I have baked various kinds from simple things like cookies and cupcakes to cakes, and each time, my interest in baking grew as well. I think baking is one of the hobbies that actually keep me occupied for a long time, and I think this is the main reason I even bake occasionally even now. Shopping is actually my favorite thing to do, but it was not so long after my arrival that I found out Saipan was not the right place to go shopping. Since then, I shopped online most of the times.  Ice skating is also my favorite hobby, but it is really something that is impossible to do here in Saipan.

Ever since I was little, I always did something musical. When I was young, I learned how to play piano, which I nearly forgot how to play, and in junior high, I learned how to play the ukulele. I don’t play these instruments anymore, but there is one instrument that I still play. Clarinet. I started playing clarinet when I was in 4^th grade, and it has been like my musical companion until now. I have been part of Saipan Community School Concert Band until I graduated from junior high, and now I am currently a member of Saipan Southern High School Manta Ray Concert Band under the direction of Mr. William Dewitt.  For the past years, I have competed in London Music Festival and Tumon Bay Music Festival in Guam. I gained many experiences throughout my musical life, and I wish to continue on with it as I proceed to the end of my high school. Music has been my motivation, and it will continue to be my motivation.

I was never athletic in my whole life time. I was one of the slowest runners in elementary schools, and I don’t think I improved much. I can run for a long distance, but whenever it came to short distance runs, I was always part of the bottom half.  I also lack flexibility. I could reach down and touch my toes, but that is as far as I can go. No leg splits or any other hard yoga poses.

I don’t really have a favorite subject, but if I had to choose one, I would choose Social Studies. History is really fascinating, although it can be really tedious sometimes, and it’s like a long autobiography of humanity. There’s so much to learn from the past. By reading and understanding about history, you can learn how not to repeat the same mistakes made in the past. Also, you can be inspired by the historians, philosophers, mathematicians, politicians, pioneers, traders, settlers, and many others from the history. Because it’s basically a story about the past, I really think that it is also valuable.

My dream is to travel all around the world. I love learning about new cultures and experiencing how it is like to live in different countries. I also love traveling, because it involves eating and shopping, my two favorite things to do. I haven’t decided what exactly I want to be when I grow up, but I have a rough outline of it. I hope to make my vision clearer as I continue the rest of my high school career, and I hope my contribution to my high school career leads to my dream.

New Year's Resolutions

Master Rhapsody in Blue

I first met this piece in my sophomore year. I think “appalled” is the right word for my first expression. It was not the high notes that dared me. It was the key signature. Five sharps. Not only this, but the song vacillated whenever it wanted to changing key signatures here and there. When I first sight-read it, I could not catch up with the changing key signatures and difficult fingerings.  Even now, I still have trouble playing this song, although I think I improved much more than the first time. By the end of this school year, I really want to master this song to prove to myself that this song was actually doable.  I plan to spend at least three hours a week going over the fingerings I always miss and getting used to the key signature changes. I also plan to listen to the recorded version of Rhapsody in Blue to compare it with my playing and determine which parts I have to work more on.  Although it would be time-consuming, I think that it definitely would be worth it.

Lose weight

               This has been my New Year’s resolution every single year. I’m really tired of repeating this over and over again, but I think that this is necessary.  I try to lose weight for my own satisfaction. I get this feeling of satisfaction when I lose weight. I can’t fully explain where this feeling comes from because I, too, am not completely aware of it. First of all, I wanted to be in shape to play sports. Playing sports is not my thing, but I enjoy playing all kinds of them. Second, I want to wear the clothes that I like. I have a pile of clothes that I barely wore sitting in my closet. I feel like I wasted my money on them, and not to feel this way, I think that I should lose weight to actually start wearing them. The last reason is because I am the kind of person who strives to accomplish goals. When I achieve goals whether they are academic goals or other life related goals, I feel elated. Actually, I think that goals are my motivations. I have made various approaches to this goal, and I have not been successful most of the time. This time, I plan to exercise at least four times a week and keep a well-balanced meal throughout the whole school year. It’s going to be a long-term fight with my temptation to stop, but I am going to try my best to sustain my plan.

Visit Korea

               Korea is my birthplace, but I haven’t visited Korea that often after I came here in Saipan. It’s already been like three years since my last trip to Korea, and I really hope that I can visit Korea this year. I miss my families and friends in Korea, and I also don’t want to be stuck in this isolated place for my summer again. There’s really nothing to do here, and this drives me insane. I really hate the hot weather during the summer, although it’s always summer in here, and I hate the fact that there is nowhere to go. It’s very limited here unlike Korea in terms of both foods to eat and things to buy, and I’m a shopaholic and a food-lover. Sometimes I wonder why I came here, but Saipan definitely does have its own perks in a way. If I go to Korea, I think I’m going to head straight down to a shopping mall and spend like five hours in their just roaming around.