www.JohanZhang.com

Yeah. You read the title correctly. Sure, it’s a bit fruity. But that is not the point.

The “power of friendship” is a great one, and it can propel us to do many great things.  I could use the entire month of November and write a 50,000-word novel on the topic (hahaha if you get this reference).

The overall supporting topic would have to be sports — if you’re good friends with the people on your team, you will generally excel. There is no doubt behind this theory in team sports.

For example, in gym class we’re playing volleyball. When friends are separated and have to play on teams with people they don’t know, their teamwork is flawed and they lose. On the other hand, when good friends play together, they’re able to have fun, work together and use impeccable teamwork.

Anyway, the reason why I bring this topic up is because today in tennis class I was pleasantly surprised. Not this morning I told people that going to tennis class had actually decreased my skill level, and I seriously doubted if there was any point in going to class. Luckily, a friend from school randomly came to my class for a makeup lesson. Because of this, I was pushed to play better than usual during the lesson. It’s not even like my friend pressured me — I just naturally played better. Yeah, we sort of fooled around, but I did pretty well.

So yes, friendship is power.

…!!

LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I AM BETTER THAN THIS PERSON NO MATTER WHAT THE COMMENTS SAY

Despite the fact that my older brother and mom both have near-perfect teeth, I have pretty much awful teeth. I’ve been cursed with teeth that grow in late, teeth that don’t seem to grow perfectly straight, and more recently, teeth that don’t fall out.

Well, it turns out that one of my baby teeth, if not pulled, will never fall out. It doesn’t have the tooth underneath it to push it out, so the only option is to pull it out. As such, afterschool today my mom picked me up to go to the dentist.

I don’t have quite too many good memories with the dentist. Pretty much every single baby tooth I had was pulled out instead of falling out naturally (save 4 or 5), and at times I had to get up to four teeth pulled at once. I recall the pain being pretty crazy and the bleeding was unbearable.

Naturally, I wasn’t thrilled to get my last tooth pulled out.

I arrived at the dentists office, and the dentist wasted no time getting me into a chair. First they took a needle filled with anesthetic, telling me I would feel a slight “pinch.” I felt the needle inject me twice (and it hurt slightly more than a “pinch”), but not 3 minutes later the entire right side of my mouth was numb. Afterwards, the dentist took a sort of wrench and simply yanked my tooth out. I barely felt it.

So here I am, writing this entry with a bunch of gauze stuffed into mouth. I mostly chose to write this because I can’t really say it with the gauze in my mouth. Either way, if you’ve never had to have a tooth pulled, consider this entry an easy, simplified way to learn what it’s like.

These past two weeks have been awful for me. It’s the end of the marking period, and teachers are cramming in last minute grades. While this means extra chances for students to get higher grades, it also means more work.

For example, 3 days ago I had a huge English project worth a million points to do by the next day. Also, since this was a partner project, I had to continuously consult my partner for his feedback. Even though I got home at around 3pm that day, I didn’t finish it until around 8:30 (I even had to skip fencing…! ). Also due the next day was a position paper for Model UN–research, citations and the actual writing took me another 3 hours. I ended up sleeping at around 12pm, and I slept for around 6 hours before being rudely awakened by my loud alarm clock.

With less than the recommended 8 hours of sleep per day, I tried to go through my day normally. Unfortunately, I started feeling the effects immediately. I had to take a short portion of a math test, and we were only given 15 minutes to do two problems. Due to my tired state, the anxiety of finishing these problems correctly took over and I made very stupid mistakes, causing me to redo a problem several times. As such, I had little to no time to complete the second problem.

During gym, I once again chose to play tennis in an attempt to release my frustration of possibly failing the test. I figured I could just shout and slam the ball a lot and make my opponent feel worse than I do now. Unfortunately, the sleep-deprivation caused problems in my coordination and timing as well. When I hit the ball, I usually hit it out wide due to my lack of timing, and sometimes I even missed the ball altogether. By this time I was ready to throw my racket across the court (too bad it was a school owned racket).

Afterschool at the Model UN meeting I was put on the spot to make a speech. Luckily, I wrote a short speech in under 5 minutes, detailing what I was going to say. Unluckily, when it came time to speak, I completely blanked out. I ended up pausing in the middle of a sentence for nearly 10 silent seconds before snapping myself back to reality. It’s a good thing people laughed though, otherwise I would have felt extremely awkward.

All in all, this experience has shown me that sleep is extremely important. I always knew that sleep deprivation could cause problems, but never really felt impacted by it until that day.

Hm, it seems like I finally have a moral for the story.

Get some sleep!

…You know it’s not an actual holiday, right?

I didn’t. I thought it was an official obscure holiday created by the interwebs. I thought that my friend had just read it somewhere in an article and told me that this week was it. Especially considering she first talked about it back in around August or something.

So today I was hit with the fact that I was in essence tricked into writing for every single day of the week. Luckily, I didn’t have much homework. Else I would probably be punching holes into the walls.

But rather than be mad at this person, I think she was trying to do good with this holiday. I mean, it DID cause me to update my blog 7 more times than usual. And I guess I proved to myself that I CAN pull off updating nearly everyday.

So to this person (no names because you know, that’s dangerous): Thanks!

I’ve always switched off between two different rackets when I play tennis: the Babolat Aero Drive and the Head Prestige. The first one is the one I’m the most comfortable with, and it’s generally an all around good racket. The Head Prestige is an older racket with great power and great control. The only downside?

It’s extremely heavy.

Maybe if you hit with it for like an hour you won’t be able to feel that much of a difference. However, serve a bunch of balls and hit a lot of ground strokes and you too will be sore in your wrist and shoulder.

I brought it to tennis practice today, and I actually direct all of my poor playing towards this one factor. Normally, I don’t even have to try and I can do pretty well. Today? I was probably the most tired person there.

Either way, the moral of this story is…

Well there actually is none. Fine, I admit I only wrote this to make up for the blog I couldn’t write yesterday. But it’s all good!

I’m pretty good with catching the bus, but this year that’s all gone out the window. I’m pretty sure I’ve missed the bus three times already, and I’ve only been saved because my dad was nice enough to drive me. To wake up, I’ve employed a couple of tactics.

The first one was my phone. Its alarm is a loud vibration, and as such it definitely wakes me up. It actually worked for a good period of time. One night I checked to see how much battery was left in my phone — it read full. I set it on the table (it was definitely on, not off), and I went to sleep.

Unfortunately the next morning I woke to not the loud vibrating, but rather, a loud rap on my door. My dad opened the door and told me the bus had just left and that he would drive me in 20 minutes. Just like that.

That’s when my mom decided my phone wasn’t reliable enough. She decided to dig up my older brother’s old iHome and my older brother’s old iPod Classic. I put a few of my songs on there, and set it as my alarm for the next day.

Perhaps heavy rock is not the most soothing way to start a day, but whatever. I caught the bus, didn’t I?

Seriously, what the heck? For the first time in a while, I’ve had absolutely no homework due the next day. I’m a little shocked.

Unfortunately, I can’t enjoy my day by simply sleeping it away — I have fencing practice at 8:30pm. Also, I should probably practice sax and do some homework due a while from now, right?

Yikes, looks like I don’t really have that much time at all!

And that’s the problem. Nowadays, there’s barely any time just to literally sit and have nothing to do. If you do sit around and do nothing, there’s probably something wrong.

I actually kind of miss the old days of eating popcorn and playing video games for around 10 hours straight (yes I’ve done that before… I know. Cool.). They’re much more relaxing than the books we have to read and the worksheets we have to fill out.

Hm… at least the weekend is almost here. Three day weekend this weekend!

I’ve always thought about this when riding my bike. I am one of those people who can ride their bike with yes, no handle bars. I don’t even have to look forward while I bike, and I have no problem turning left and right. My arms are free to do whatever — hold up a map, text, etc. And yes, I do it all withOUT a helmet (the horror).

Sometimes I’m actually quite bored, and I think about things I could do to make biking more fun. That’s when I came up with the idea of Ultimate Frisbee on Bikes. Think of it like Handball or Polo.

Yeah. Sick.

And it’s not like it’s going to be incredibly hard to learn how to play. I mean, I learned how to ride no-handed simply by biking over to a friend’s house almost everyday of the summer. I learned how to throw a frisbee by playing a few times. Therefore, it wouldn’t be difficult at all. Maybe eventually we could even have this sport on horses (although then I wouldn’t be able to play my own sport).

What’s that, old bean? You say there’d be a lot of injuries? Nonsense!

Wear a helmet!

(Disclaimer: I’ve never actually played this sport and I do not advise playing it. It’s extremely dangerous probably and I can not be held accountable for any injuries suffered while playing this sport.)

It’s a pretty well known fact that I used to (and still sort of) play a lot of video games. (I like to think that) it’s also a pretty well known fact that I am extremely good at a lot of video games. My big explanation for all this skill is that I (am extremely good at everything) played a lot of games when I was really young. I recall playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the SNES at my babysitters house.

I rocked.

Music is a part of everybody’s life. It’s believed that music sounds good to a person because it evokes a certain thought or memory that makes them feel good. I guess that’s why I’m a bit fond of video game music.

Now, it’s not like I have half of my MP3 player filled with Super Mario Bros. and Zelda (my MP3 player broke, you see).  But every now and then, I like to listen to some video game music while I do my homework.

Try it! It doesn’t have to be from video games — it can be from a movie, a tv show, anything! It might just grow on you.

I was told recently by a friend of mine that this week, October 4th to October 11th, was “Update Your Blog” week. Basically, I think the idea is to update your blog at least once every day for the entire week. This is probably a good excuse for me to start updating everyday (if only for a week).

Here, I’ll even set a challenge guideline for myself:

• You can’t break a single topic into two different posts for two different days (the second post does not count; you have to write another one now)
• They must exceed 150 words in length
• You actually have to spell check and revise each one with care

I think that’s good enough for now.

But actually, it’s not. Since I’m only at around 126 words. It’s really a shame how I’ll have to ramble on and on about NOTHING just to fulfill my own requirements. But it’s okay.

I promise this is the last time this’ll happen! (in this week!)