This World and Me

I grew up in a city called Dublin, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. If there is one remarkable thing about the topography of Ohio, it is precisely how unremarkable it is. I now live in the Pacific Northwest, and whenever I look out the window as I fly out from Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, I always stare for several minutes at the gorgeous diversity of geographic features, from the expansive Lake Washington to the countless inlets of the Puget Sound, from the Olympic Mountains to of course the towering peak of Mount Rainier. After dozing off for four hours, I arrive back in my home state of Ohio, look out the window and see... flatness. It is like the surface of a marble. No mountains, no lakes, no big forests. Just a seemingly endless array of alternating farmland and tiny woods, with the occasional town or village. If I am lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Columbus from 20,000 feet, I could probably count the number of tall skyscrapers on my hands. One unfortunate consequence of...

One chilly morning when I was in fifth grade, I found two of my best friends—let's call them G and W for the first letters of their first names—arguing with each other. The dispute concerned laptops—two laptops to be precise. My elementary school was fortunate enough to have a laptop cart with about twenty MacBooks, which teachers could book for their class to use, kind of like a mobile computer lab. Apparently, that day, two of the MacBooks in the cart stopped working, and either G or W was to blame. The question was who. The relevant facts are as follows. G and W's teacher had booked the laptop cart for her class that day, and G and W, along with one of their friends, a guy we'll call T, sat together for the class. Evidently, G, W, and T were not really paying attention to their class assignment that day and were instead just playing around on their laptops. At some point, G warned W and T that there is a keyboard shortcut in Mac OS X that you should never ever do: ...

Google Lively was a virtual world that existed for about half a year in 2008. At the time it was active, I was 10 years old. Anyone with a Google account could log in from a web broswer, create an avatar, then join public rooms. I distinctly remember there was a coffee shop and an underwater lounge, and you could design your own personal apartment, complete with your own furniture, decorations, and layout. You could then invite your friends to your virtual apartment and hang out. When you joined a room, your avatar would be placed in the center, and you could move it around and type messages that would appear as speech bubbles over your character. I remember you could make your character do certain actions that convey emotions, from positive actions like shaking hands, laughing, and clapping, to negative actions like crying. For some reason, I seem to recall it was possible to punch objects or perhaps even other avatars, if you so desired. Screenshot of the Google Lively interface It...

From sixth grade through my freshman year of high school, I played the alto saxophone. My school district required its students to participate in some form of performing art during this time. Some students chose choir, some chose orchestra, I chose band. For me, it was a toss-up between the alto sax and going to orchestra and playing the cello (I love the sound of the cello, and it was also my middle school orchestra director's instrument – he claimed the cello's range best represents the vocal pitch range of the human voice). The primary reason I chose band was because my dad had claimed the sax was a "cool" instrument. I trusted his judgment. I liked playing the sax. There were a few pieces our middle school concert band played that had saxophone solos, and I had the honor of playing one or two of them. I'll actually never forget the moment when I was finished with the concert, and the string orchestra director, who was also my cross country coach, came up to ...

In the summer of 2017, my family did a tour of the U.S. national parks. We had traveled out west first to Salt Lake City, where we rented out a small storage closet and placed our fencing bags there (more on that soon), then traveled south to visit Bryce Canyon National Park, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, and the Horseshoe Bend. These were absolutely stunning sights, to say the least. Words don't do them justice, and while it's possible for you to search up on Google an image of each location, in my view nothing beats actually going there and experiencing it for yourself. I think by looking at a picture of it, you create an expectation for how it will look when you go, and it may actually result in the views being less spectacular if the image was digitally touched up to make it look better. When it comes to national parks, it's best to go in cold. The natural formations are absolutely breathtaking. After spending a week touring the parks south ...

goodbye  · ɡo͝odˈbī ·  (1) exclam.  (also goodby or good-by ) used to express good wishes when parting or at the end of a conversation. (2) noun (plural goodbyes or goodbys ) an instance of saying “goodbye”; a parting. — The New Oxford American Dictionary On a warm July morning in Nuremberg, Germany, I was standing at an airport with my host family, waiting to meet the other American students who had been selected to travel to Germany for three weeks . It was the last day of the trip. One by one, the friends I had made in Germany trickled in with their host families. We smiled and excitedly chattered as we recalled the previous night, when we had thrown a huge party with just us kids. We assembled ourselves – Americans and our German host siblings – and took a massive group photograph. I assembled with my own host family and took a smaller photograph of just us together. Just a moment later, we had to say goodbye. I shook my host father's hand, hugged my...

Note: This post has many errors and omissions. See this 2024 post for an update. When I was a student at Scottish Corners Elementary School, we occasionally played a game in our weekly music class with Miss Bowman called Great Big House in New Orleans. In this game, all of the students in the class sat in a circle. One student – the student at position 1 – held a small stuffed pumpkin. While singing the following song, we passed the pumpkin around the circle. Great big house in New Orleans, Forty stories high, Every room that I've been in, Filled with pumpkin pie. The purpose of this exercise was to teach elementary school students about rhythm. As a rule, the pumpkin has to be passed to the next student on every beat of the song. A student can't ignore the rhythm of the song and pass the ball offbeat (i.e. too quickly or too slowly). The pumpkin has to be passed on the beat. Whoever has the pumpkin when the song reaches the word high  and the word pie  is out of the ...