Where was I?

Short answer: I've been studying.

Over the last 2 weeks or so, I've been able to prove empirically( not mathematically yet!) that I am indeed able to sit down, and study for more than 2 hours. Not only weren't I mentally handicapped, I am able to accelerate in my race of knowledge. I finished half of Physics, Chemistry and Biology as well as almost all of Calculus.

What can I say? I masted the life as a nerd.

Limit as X approaches infinity

"Even mathematically, we can model a number that only approaches infinity. This simply proves that there is something beyond our grasp; something irrational in our effort to try to rationalize everything in the meta-physical world. "

You probably had seen this quote bouncing around your facebook news feed for the last few days. This is probably one of the highlight quotes coming from Chapter 1 of Infinity, and perhaps even the whole book. If you have a little knowledge in calculus, you should know what I'm talking about here. I'll leave the rest of the interpretation to you guys( which is actually my intention here).

Speaking of calculus, AP calculus next year will be a super nerd-fest. I was slightly disappointed when comp-sci was no longer in conflict with AP calculus. It means that the nerdiest of the nerds(think about it: AP MATH and COMPSCI!!! ...not to mention AP Physics) will be sharing a class with me at least 1/4 of the time next year. They say that the more you spend time with a certain group of people, you are more likely to be influenced by them. Let's just hope I won't get indulged in "Lan Parties" as my main form of entertainment by these future Waterloo students.

Yes, it seems like I'm contridicting myself here. I've been calling myself a nerd for the last couple of posts. And now, I am seemingly refering to them as these "other people" with a negative connotation. WHAT THE HELL I'M TALKING ABOUT?????

Honestly, I don't know either. It's not just me who is sending mixed messages about this word. In fact, almost everyone I know seemed to refer this term with 2 different meanings constantly. So err, take it easy on this 17 year old kid okay?

Physics is Phun

My transformation into a nerd continues...

It started off with actually doing homework and studying in summer school data, and continued as I started my "self studying" sessions for grade 12, and now, I am actually finding physics pretty interesting!

While physics was my lowest mark last year, I know it is absolutely crucial for me to pick up the slack this summer and next year for me personally. My prospective major in university is basically, lo and behold, math and physics! The fact that I don't really mind doing all these "phun" problems is just an added bonus. I really need to get the "Albert Einstein" in me going.

Yesterday, I worked the "William Shakespeare" in me to the extreme. I spent hours plotting the novel in my head, even including "inceptioning" myself during my dreams. I'm pretty satisfied with the current big idea right now.

Clue for today? Well, since I'm such a big math and physics fan, plus the fact that this novel's title is "infinity", it is only appropriate that the symbol below have a huge role in the plot of my novel.



Also to note, for the shear creativity purpose. I would include a poem at the beginning of every chapter of this novel. I'm sure this is a pretty unique idea among writers everywhere. Hopefully, I can make this idea stick.

Summer? What summer?

As I reached the halfway point of the summer between the grade of dissapointment and probably a turning point of my life. I'm wondering to myself, what kind of summer did I really have?

Summer school data did go pretty well in July, and now I'm doing some prep work for grade 12 in August. Just as I type out this blog entry, I am actually "procrastinating" on my studying of circular motion. Though I might be having the nerdiest summer of all time, it is definitely not without some interesting moments.

Plan for writing? I actually got quite a bit.

If you payed attention to my rumblings on facebook, you'd realize that I've been kicking around the idea of my first novel. Yes, the title will change from "Adventureland" to "Infinity" and yes, I've slightly altered the plot( if you ever saw my facebook note about the original plot that is).

So why the change of name? What kind of twist did I pull? I'll give you a few subtle hints right now. They say that the beginning of the novel is an extremely important aspect, and this is percisely what I will give you right now:

Travis was running away. He did not what he was running away from, or where he was running to. However, at that present moment, running away never felt so refreshing, so darn good.

Yes, Travis is "running away" from something. What is he running away from? Where is he running to? You as the reader, will be just as confused as the main character himself and will uncover clues along with Travis throughout this novel.

Let me tell you right now: chapter 1, which I think would be written in a week or so, will raise way more questions than it will answer. It tells you nothing about the plot, or what is going to happen next. However, that is precisely my intention.

Enjoy August guys!

From procrastination to more procrastination

Welcome to the life of a teenage boy, where life is pretty damn tough. You got to deal with everything like a man... including procrastination. Yesterday, I have to work 10 hours straight on a bio project due today. You may ask me why in the world did I delay it for THIS long? Well, good question, I'm wondering the same!

Now today, I am up to that task yet again! Even I have a few math sheets to complete and a few summatives looming, I find myself unable to do anything school related. To make it worse I didn't do anything book related either. :/

Speaking of the book, I promise I'll get everything done by May 1st


...with procrastination???? I hope not!

an unfortunate realization

I just realized that I have no talent whatsoever. I can't draw, I don't play any musical instruments, I don't know how to use photoshop. It feels like my only artistic release is through my writing.

That just reminded me...can anyone good with photography please provide me some help? :(

Back on track

I gotta admit, I was kinda sidetracked the last week and a half on some... erm... stupid stuff. ( I don't think I need to get to that).

No, I did not run for anything this year even though I kinda wanted to. Too much drama, I don't like it and crappy SAC doesn't really mean much anyways. I need to focus my attention on more important things, and that thing is definitely my book!

after thinking for a while, I decide to only roll out two and a half new work in this book. It will still continue 20 pieces of short stories/poems(somehow ;D). I did some cutting and trimming on some other parts such as the intro and the stuff at the end. More details on these specifics I will tell you later but I want to tell you now the NEW stuff I want to ADD.

6 ARTISTIC DRAWINGS!

Yes, my new edition will be illustrated! NOT by me of course( it would be distorted stick figures if that was the case), but by a few of my friends. I haven't worked out the exact kinks on this yet, but I am sure these guys will not disappoint :P

Another long weekend for me, time to get more work done!

Wow, how amazing was that, I finished everything I was supposed to on time this Monday! I hope all of you already read the table of contents, authors note and dedications, if not, they can be found on facebook(it's open to everybody).

Technically, this is my second and last school day of the week for me. Tomorrow is literacy test for the 10s and Friday is a buffet for accounting conference. Btw, did I mention how much I despise accounting? Oh well, at least I get a day of free buffet from this course!

Me being free with very little homework needed to be finished means more writing time for moi. Whether I am going to spend the time wisely or not, really depend on how successful I am at fighting the lazy guy within me. However, after I spilled out the bs that happened to me during the fall to my friends, I feel alot more motivated to get this thing going again.

So it's back to pen and paper for me again, or more realistically, typing keyboards on the computer!

Throwing some schedule in

One thing I usually like to do is to make a schedule for myself. The problem is, I usually don't follow them! In order to put more pressure on myself as well as informing you guys. I will post here the official(tentative) schedule of "imagine a world" and even my novel "Chicklet"

April 5th- Official Table of Contents, Author's note and NEW dedications out

April 15th- Rough draft of new work done

April 30th- All primary editing done

May - I will be handing this over to my parents and go through a few adults and then contact UNICEF again.

June 20-30 My target for the second edition of "imagine a world" to be printed out

July and August - Fundraising! Publicizing! Making the noise as loud as possible.

September- October - Who knows what I would be doing in the school around this time, I really don't want to bother with those guys in the administration again.

September 2010- April 2011- SUPER BUSY.... marks... university aps, scholarship essays... oh Gawd!

May 2011 - September 2011- OFFICIAL commencement to my writing of the book "Chicklet"

June 2012 - My target date for the submission of the manuscript to publishing agents.

Time to fly

(well obviously not literally, or else certain individuals of authority will take that as a sign of mental disorder again *cough* *cough*.)

I've talked enough, I've battled with my self enough and just like a year ago, it is time to take action yet again. 5 new short stories/poems will be added to replace the "darker" ones in the old version. Some of the original ones will also be edited( or "censored" if you want to call it that). I've already have in mind what these stories will be about, some of them are already written and some of them are going to be done shortly. The overall tone of these newer additions will obviously be a lot brighter. They will include stories about mutual understanding, kids' aspirations as well as flowers and sunshine(yes, literally).

Now, some of you might wonder whether these stories are a little bit forced. Well, I'm not gonna lie, I still prefer the overall tone of this book to be slightly darker. Since I have to change that aspect of it, these short stories should still be able to fit right in and be interesting read with great themes.

This newer edition of "imagine a world" will be just as good as the old one, and for some people, this one might be better.

Zeroing in.

I admit it, it took alot more than some determination to decide to restart what was originally a flawless charity fundraiser. I haven't teared up this much in years in light of what happened last fall and I haven't teared up this much since the incident until now. If you know me personally, you know that I am generally this happy go lucky kid. It was not the case for last October, nor last night as a matter of fact.

My parents were just as shocked as I was when the incident happened and are just as traumatized as I am now they heard my thoughts about restarting this fundraiser. Last night was hell, not only because my parents were reluctant to allow me to do this again, but I have to get over my own self doubts as well. Flashbacks about last October was really a pain, but if I were to give up my goals now, those flashbacks will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I am willing to take that risk. I am willing to try my best to continue on what seemed like a perfect marathon; for myself, for my parents and for charity. "Imagine a world' charity fundraiser will restart again, this time, stronger than ever.

Fate's middle finger

Do I have superpowers? The power to predict the future? Bah, I'd rather not, but unfortunately, it looks like I predicted my own unfortunate fate in one of my short stories in the book!

Long story short: yesterday was indeed the worst day of my life to date, for the whole afternoon and evening. It really felt like I got my soul sucked out of me. I was utterly in disbelief, almost a mental breakdown on the event went on before school ended.

You are probably familiar with the story I told you about previously, and how confident and optimistic I was to come up with a plan to overcome that problem. It seemed like fate had given me the middle finger yesterday, and said in my face "Ha, let's see what you say about this!"

For a moment in time. I really thought my life is ruined. My book, my fundraiser plan, something I spent more time and put more heart onto than anything I've done so far, is completely crashed.

Okay, you don't need to hold your breath and worry about me. I am alright now that more than 24 hours had passed. My fundraiser? still in tact!

I will tell you this whole thing in 3 parts, just because this is ridiculously long. For today, I would just quote the whole part from the short story "Terryism" , and leave you hanging til Friday(leadership retreat!) because I am evil. It really is kinda frightening how I really seemed to had traveled into the future when I wrote this story.

“It was. Anyways, that was grandpa’s boldest attempt yet. I was planning to write a small book and sell it as a charity fundraiser. I worked so hard on this book in that summer and often I had no time to sleep. Since I had already gotten the approval from the charity organization, I had to finish the book and printed out the copies before the new school began.”

“What happened next?”

“Just when I was about to sell them, my idea got denied by my school principals. It was due to one story, Terryism, it was called.”

“Terryism?” the little girl chuckled. “That’s like your name with the letters i-s-m added to the end!”

“Yes, it was. That story was a humorous tale about me, creating my own mock religion. They said that the story was too offensive. And no matter how much I tried to explain myself, they won’t listen. I was so close, so close to do something exceptional…

Grandpa became very gloomy after that. I cried every single night for a while. My grades were affected, too. I was planning to get a very high average that year, but I was too indulged in my failure that I was unable to concentrate on my school work. That was something unlike grandpa, because he was rarely sad.

It took me a while before I was able to pick up that book I wrote again. It was the exact story by which they denied my book, which reminded me that this was not worth it. It reminded me of my own belief in life.”

“What is that story about?”

“Nobody understood the true meaning of that story. In that story, I was trying to reveal the moral of the entire book. Through the humour and the crude jokes I was trying to explain a point. I was trying to tell people to have a positive goal, and live life positively with that. I didn't like when people kept complaining about their life while there were many other people still fighting, even in a much worse situation. People were wasting their life away complaining when they could be enjoying their life and making a good contribution to society at the same time.”



Kinda get you guys thinking there huh?

Things are better than expected

What an awesome week this is! Nothing but positivity to report, other than getting a mark off in a biology lab :(

Anyway, let me get to the point. The last few days, I've consistently sold around five books in school a little over a week before the actual fundraiser started! Many of my classmates/friends are already too eager for me not to give them the book earlier. I've got another helper in grade 9. I'll leave Tony Cheng to organize the fundraiser in his grade with about 50 books!

So far, I am getting all positive feedbacks for my book except for one minor typo error. I doubt most people gotten to the point of this book yet, but it`s pretty awesome people already likes it :D

Thank you once again for everyone who is helping me! I guarantee our goal will be reached!

The official start to the unofficial start

Boxes of books are being piled at my home right now, I hope they can disappear as fast as possible!

26 books were sold the last few days mainly thanks to the effort of my mom. I didn`t really start selling books at my school yet except for a few eager friends who already given me money.

I was urged on by my classmates to show my book to my English teacher today(I didn`t plan to do that until next week). She made the whole class clap for me. Kind of awkward but awesome at the same time!

Guys, just pay attention to the sidebar on the progress of things. I don`t expect many books to be sold this week, if my mom can help me bring the total up to 100 by this Sunday, I am well overachieving. I will have a update on things every few days or so about the progress in detail and some interesting encounters.

That`s all for now!

Official Plan for Phase 1

Technically, I already started the business portion of this project a month ago. However, as I finally see that ever so welcoming "imagine a world" as well as the name of yours truly on a actual binded book today, it certainly feels like a big milestone. Let the selling begin!

As emphasized many times, the goal is 500 books sold for the phase one of the project. However, what I am revealing now is the true details on the exact what, where and when.

Alright lets go!

Agincourt CI

I am sure all of you knew the "problem" that happened my own school. Appropriate steps had been taken. There will be around 15-20 people that will be distributing this book around ACI. Due to the eminent leadership retreat(which I STILL don't know if I am going or not! frigging school admins), It will be better for me to delay the sales a bit and do a little more mouth to mouth advertising.

Monday Sept 28th to Friday Oct 1st - Presale
We will be starting to accept money for the books starting this moment. You can either give the money to me, Jessica, Yiwang or Anna at this point. You will not receive your book directly, but you will get it a week before most people(Next Monday Oct 4th).

Monday Oct 13th - Teacher Sale
I will probably bring 50-70 copies to school this day and most of them will go to the teachers.

Tuesday Oct 14th - Official Sale begins
I wont be able to bring 200 books directly at once, so I will bring them in in a three day period. I will first give distributors(those who are selling for us) the copies they are selling, but starting this point, you can buy it from the people on this list:

Terry Zhou
Jessica Yang
Yiwang Yuan
Matt Davooti

Anna Ma
Xuan Yao
George Wang
Michael Wang
Andy Luc
Ricky Shek
Ming Jiang
Sonia Zhang
Shuying Chen
Edward Zhang
Kumiko Motomura
James Chen
Brian Chu
Michael Poon

This list is the one I am looking at so far, it may still be on the increase as I am going to ask more people.

University of Toronto

Dave Liang at Scarborough Campus will be the main director in the university. He is planning to join the student union and come up with a official sales event with their approval. I will update on that later on. I will also have a number of other friends who will help me selling the books personally in the university.

Victoria Park CI

Leon Ni will be the director at this school. As far as I know, he will be selling this book through the book club(don't know the exact name). Ben Hu will also be helping out.

Dr.Norman Bethune CI

Shiping Shen will be the director here. I do not have the exact details on the plans yet. However, if you are also willing to help him out, just contact me or him.

Other Schools/Places

Contact me directly if you want to get this book in October! Unless you can meet with me or any of the people that is selling the book, I guess you have to wait until this fundraiser expands into the community late November.

Things starts to look brighter!

Guess what, I want to write again! I thought I would take so much longer to recover from the mental stress of writing the first book. However, it seems my mind is hyper again with fresh writing urges already! I will still wait a few more month to really start to get my imagination going. However, this is definitely good news for my upcoming book I want to finish in 2 years!

As you may notice, it seemed like I've already sold 12 books before the campaign started. How did that happen? Well, two of my friends already had given me the money before any plans made for the pre-sale. So I already put them up for buying the first two books. I myself will buy 10 copies of my own book (sounds weird, but that's actually what I'm doing). So far we have a grand total of 12 books sold with 25 dollars fundraised(hey it's only fair I give myself the four dollar price as well for working so hard!).

Things started to finalize on how exactly I'm I going to carry on the first phase of my fundraiser, details should be made tomorrow and posted Monday or Tuesday.

Everything is looking super special awesome. When life throws a huge boulder at you, you just have to go around it, that's all. Now that I almost went around, I could almost see that endless path again. Let's get going!

The payback

After the determination of countless trips to the main office and countless encounters with the staffs. All I got was that I can't do a charity fundraiser in the school because I am adding "competition". This is definitely not over.

Because of what happened on Monday(read below), I shall show my wrath! I will paint school walls with graffiti and initiate food fights in cafeteria.... nah!

This "revenge" I am going to embark on will be very subtle, I will simply "obey" her order and not sell the book officially at school. However, along with a large number of classmates, I will indeed sell the book in ACI through people.(yes, I am still allowed to do THAT).It is utterly ridiculous I have to take this step, but at the same time, this is really not quite far off in effectiveness.

Most of my classmates were outraged as well by the ridiculous rejection, many of them were willing to lend their hand in helping me with the distribution of the fundraiser. So far I am estimating 15-20 people who will also sell the books for me. A target of 300 books should definitely be achievable no matter

No Protest here from this charity organization, no more fancy announcements and good looking posters. If the school wants to add obstacles in the way of a charity fundraiser, I will just suck it up and bend another way(what else can you do in a dictatorship government). It will be rather ironic if we were to fundraise much more money than anything the school had "officially" done.

a little change of plans(at ACI)

It’s crazy, it’s ridiculous and it’s frustrating. Yes, there is a little change of plans here at ACI.

You see, Mr.P seemed like a nice guy. However, I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him before being stopped at the administration office.

A whole bundle of things happened today. First of all, we were supposed to do an announcement today(Approved by Mr.Carauna) to kick start our campaign. However, Mohit came in late, making us unable to do it this morning. That is when the hall monitor(forgot her name) stopped me. Saying that I cannot do an announcement because it is not through an official club. After explain what I was doing and handing her our mission statement, she “praised” me(its great, its fantastic blah blah), but I knew something a “but” is coming next.

She also pointed out that I cannot do an official book sale in ACI because writer’s block also sells books… Basically, she is saying that I am in competition with the Writer’s block.

Competition???? SERIOUSLY?

Um, first of all, I believe this is a free market economy. Only competition is able to make our society better with more motivation to do better things. However, in our school, it seemed like everything going on is just controlled by one staff member (not even the principal).

That is that even my point. But think about it. She is denying me of doing charitable work because there is competition? Competition for Charity? Are you kidding me???

No worries though, the book sale will still take place! I just won’t be doing any official sales inside ACI with at table set up with official promotions such as announcements, posters. But I still can sell them personally to you guys, the teacher etc. Sometime late September I will be going around in the school holding a bunch of books and an envelope along with the help my friends, doing the fundraiser. So, you can just pick up the book through us basically.

Since there won’t be an official sale, I need your help. Whether it is 5, 10 or 20 books that you are willing to help me fundraise, it will be awesome. You will also become part of our organization ;D. Contact us, and tell us about how are you gonna help, we will probably have a meeting at the cafe with all the people helping sometime early October, we will talk about that later.

Of course, this whole organization is more community oriented. Unable to hold an official sale at ACI is just a slight bother on my part and wont change the grand scheme of things. I think 300 books are still doable in our school with you guys’ help.

I will be discussing this whole thing with our principal eventually, but for now, here is the plan.

It’s really really ridiculous; After getting the support of Unicef, writing out the whole book and printed it out, I can’t even do a official sale of charity fundraiser at my OWN SCHOOL for a community orientated charity organization. But I guess I just have to cope with it.

Stay Tuned. And just contact me which ever way possible. I will appreciate any kind of support.

PS: to those who isn’t going to ACI, I’ll have more details about

Just around the corners!

I still remember how I got that tune "just around the corners", which came from a health video we watched in grade 7. That was awfully pedo, and something you probably don't want to know.

However, what you do want to know is that the first phrase of the fundraiser is indeed just around the corners!

The book is finally in print! After tedious amounts of checking, re-checking, designing and more designing, I am glad to say this part of the job is done! Yes, I've talked to the vice principal a few days ago, he proved the general idea. However, I still need a complete discussion about the specifics with the principal.

Currently, I am working on an official mission statement and sales plan which can be used not only for myself but for many people that I need to work with such as the principal, mall staff and the media.

I will be discussing some specific plans with the principal on Monday, as well as giving him the mission statement and sales plan. If all goes well, he would provide me even more help on this. Not so well? Things will still go according to plan!(Mostly).

Talking to the school principal tommorow

I will be talking with the principal tomorrow about my Unicef Write for charity. I can feel the nerves already.

My fundraiser will officially began after this. Wish me luck!

I'll keep you guys updated