I'm still staring at my ATM card lying quietly right next to my mac's touchpad as I type right now. The card has been looking pretty much the same with a bit of worn-offs here and there, but just a few hours ago I was still able to withdraw some money with it.

Now, I will never get to spend that money, and that's not the worst. It's not just my money. The account held the Stuco's profit from last year and an event's money to be used next week. But now it's all gone, zero, empty. Just a few hours ago, I received a phone call from the bank that issued my card, and by some deceitful words and threatening I was already on my way to an ATM. It was urgent, or at least according to that guy. He told me that there would be money wrongly deducted from my account because of some accounting problems emerged from a purchase, and I was needed to correct it. I did notice that it was kind of absurd, but I was worried. It wasn't my money, and it couldn't be taken away. So I followed his instructions and 20 minutes later all the money was just gone after a beep from the other side of the phone. 

I knew what happened at the moment, but it took me a while to believe it. I was petrified and my mind chaotic. I messed up, and it was big. With all the responsibilities I deemed myself capable of taking, I failed at the most simple task, to keep the money safe. In the next 10 minutes a repeating murmur ceaselessly reminded me of my stupid mistake, and then I was in a police station reporting the fraud. There wasn't much that could be done and I knew it, but I still begged for help.

I got home and gave myself a bit of time to calm myself down. It's time to face it. The money is gone, but I need it, and my parents are pissed. I knew that at the end of the day I will still need to take money from them. It's illogical to think that my parents will want me to pay them back since they've been paying for everything since I was born. But I knew I would feel even more guilty and worse and powerless if I don't return the money back to them. It's my fault, and I should be the one to deal with it. I should know how to do so, and I should achieve it within my power. I realized that I was more afraid of my inability to help the problem or to take the consequence than of the mess itself. I don't want my parents to take it for me. And although I know it will cost me time and sweat to make an equal amount of money, I will do it, and one day I will hand the money back to my parents and be responsible for the wrongs I made. 

Another form of writing

I often experience the feeling of not being able to write well. There have been so many days that I would just sit in from of my computer, staring at my essays and jotting down nothing that ended up on the drafts. Such inability of mine goes beyond writing. I have, from time to time, had difficulties expressing myself. People call me indifferent, ignorant, sometimes apathetic, but deep in myself I know it's not true. I feel that I just care about different things and that I have my own way of showing my interests. Sometimes I really want to say it out, but I don't know whom to talk to, or how to tell the stories. I'm also afraid of negligence, which I have done to a lot of people when they came to me.
For years I've been working on finding the best way, the standardized golden formula to talk to people and to express my thoughts in the 'right' way. I haven't found one so far, but technology has indeed helped me on approaching my goal. I have found it easier to approach people and to be connected in an online virtual setting. Oh okay I'm getting a bit busy now I will continue this next time buhbye.

Common App and stuff

During a short break, from my chemistry lab work today, which doesn't come very opften, I passed by a public computer and so I checked my gmail inbox with it. I received some emails from Pam and they were all about college application, one being the latest promtps in the common app. The Common App for year 2013-2014 came out just a day ago, and although nothing much besides that has realyl changed, the Common App somehow marks the start a new chapter of my high school life - the final chapter. Boy, I am going to college. Going to a college I like in America has been my ultimate dream and goal in the past few years, and most of the choices I made have to do with it. But it has never felt so real until now.

And then I thought of Stanford. Stanford was the first American University I visited, but it wasn't for admission or anything related. My aunt brought me there because she said she liked the unique vibe and the energy one could only find there (and also it was only 10 minutes away from her house). Needless to say, I liked it a lot as well, yet I didn't realyl know why. Maybe it was the Californian weather that had hipnotized us. I remember that back in those afteroons, she and I would just sit right outside of the Jamba Juice on the edge of the campus and watched people pass by, either on skateboards or bikes. There would be music mixing with people's chattering, and people would start gathering at the plaza, getting ready for the night. I liked to think that most of them would be going to San Francisco, for one it sounds really cool (any cities with a 4-syllable names are cool), and for two it was the only major city I knew, although I didn't really know that the city was like. I imgained the city of San Fran to be filled with people like those I saw at the plaza, but the seemingly boundariless land would be replaced by skyscrapers and electrical sparkles from the countless windows. It would have an urban pace, and the vibe my aunt found will be concentrated and magnified. However, after all these years, I've never visited San Francisco with my Aunt, and although I have been there on my own, it was already quite a few years after, and at that point of time my childhood memory could no longer manefist itself and reflect on the actual scene I witnessed. Now I pay attention to diferent things and care about different values. When I hear the name of a college,  its ranking and prestige would be the first that came into my mind. I realize that I don't really know what I am making myself go into, and that I start to care about things that didn't matter to be before. I have let other things define what I should pursue after, and I'm no longer able to just watch people pass by without thinking about all the names and titles they are associated with.

I dropped a jar of gold powder.

Okay it wasn't gold powder that's in the jar (people here call it a flask). It was some sort of expensive sugar with a fancy name - D-Mannosamine, but it didn't look much different from normal table sugar, both with crystalline structure and silvery reflection. What's different was that it was stored in an elegant cylindrical glass container with a size no larger than my thumb. I was told that it's worth 250 USD per gram, and so I guess it was important. I like the feeling of being assigned to an important job, and playing with some expensive sugar sounded important, so I was quite excited. I was also extra careful though because I really didn't want to mess it up. But when I tried to be careful my hands started to shake uncontrollably. I managed to keep myself calm and retain some control over my hands, but it was merely enough to keep things in my hands without any external influence. Nevertheless, it seemed promising in the beginning. I was familiar with all the procedures and I successfully carried them out. The plot twisted when I took it off from the vacuum and loaded it into a round bottom flask ready for chemical reaction. You know, most chemistry labs are filled with equipment and glassware ( and people ), and just when I was about to turn around to get back to my area, a new intern girl ran into me for some god-knows-why-but-probably-not-important reasons and swiped the flask out of my hand. The flask accelerated toward the ground inexorably, hit the target, and shattered so loudly that turned the entire lab into silence. Normally I don't stutter, but I blushed so hard and was basically petrified staring at the mess I'd just created. After a few minutes of awkward silence, my lab mentor told me to clean it up , and so I did. I hope it's all good now.

OMG I can't believe I just tossed away 50 dollars like that it felt like doing charity except that I wasn't helping anyone. Nononononnono.

1st organic reaction

It’s my first time to complete an organic reaction and obtain a satisfactory product, after two days of trials and errors. I never knew that it takes to many steps, each requiring stringent execution, to replace a simple amino group with a protecting group on glucose. The word ‘glucose’ has also been given a new definition. It is no longer only synonymous to sugar and sweets or energy-generating material. To be more precise, it’s more like a blank sheet of paper on which different colors can be added to give it different kind of meaning. What I did today was just making it hydrophobic for the benefit of my future experiment, yet it has already brought me so much excitement. I can wait to move on to the next step.

Procrastination

I've been having a hard time telling myself to carry out things listed on my schedule. And yes, I made the schedule. Yet I need a motive that's strong enough for all the time to push me forward, and I've realized that if I allow some time to digest an intense sensation, the feeling will abate and in the end I will just accept it. And that was the typical history of my motivation; it forms, and it gradually dies out. I guess it would have to be intense enough to go over certain threshold in order to be sustained. I also read from somewhere that we could spend only 20% of our time with best attention/focus to complete 80% of our daily work. Same logic applies, we could also spend 80% of our time not focused to complete only 20% of our daily work. I haven't checked the statistics of it, but it does leave a strong impression.

Ruling on DOMA

A few days ago the SCOTUS announced its ruling on Windsor v. United States. The following is excerpted from the Court's major opinion, "DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person pro- tected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution." "The liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause contains within it the prohibition against denying to any person the equal protection of the laws." However, if you carefully read through the entire opinion, you will see that the major opinion discusses a lot of aspects that we normally wouldn't even consider. The topics discussed range from minor facts or conventions derived from the country's tradition to the possible effect of the ruling to the current situation. The ruling itself is not simply based on the text of the constitution, but the history in which the constitution has been applied. Although we've gone through this concept in class, it's still amazing to be able to witness a major case like this to be decided in this manner.

SAT result

I just saw my June SAT result and I am in a really weird situation right now in which I don't know what I should feel about it. My score is within the range of my expectation, but I feel that it could have been better, especially because I got lucky on the writing section and still got an expected score. And then now I am wondering why I would care so much about this SAT score. I have been told that it would be a really important component of my college application, yet I also question the reason behind. Why would the colleges care about some minor differences in terms of the SAT scores among their applicants. I have heard that colleges would also value your extracurricular activities and weigh them almost as equal as your standardized test. Yet people around me have told me the otherwise. Now I am aware that I am worried about my college application partially because of a lack of direction. I do not know what I should do, or what I can do to most effectively use my time to help my credentials. And now I am also asking myself why a college acceptance would be able to affect me so much to a degree that almost all of my choices have to do with it.