This World and Me

A photo posted by Michael Zeng (@michaelzeng7) on May 14, 2016 at 8:11pm PDT

That surreal feeling when all of math you ever learned in school—from when you started counting on your fingers to when you integrated exponential functions—culminated in one final lecture and one beautiful proof. e iπ + 1 = 0

I admired this man's devotion to the Constitution of the United States and the passion with which he defended it. The candor and wit he brought to every proceeding have undoubtedly shaped the ways we interpret the law today. Rest in peace, Justice Antonin Scalia. The image at the top was originally taken in 2010 by Stephen Masker, who has made it freely available under the CC BY 2.0 Generic license . It was adapted by me, and the adapted version is available under the same license.

It started when I was 12. I was one third of the way through middle school, having just completed sixth grade. It was perhaps the last time I felt totally stress-free. College and high school felt eons away, and the childish play of elementary school had yet to wear off. The year was 2011, the same year my family bought its first "smart" mobile device: a 32 GB black Wi-Fi-only Apple iPad 2. Naturally, the decision to buy the device was lobbied mostly by me, and when the shiny new product made its way to my hands, I couldn't wait to try out the features that I had waited for in anticipation. The first app I opened was Photo Booth—the iPad 2 was the first of its kind to feature a camera. I was oblivious to most social issues of the world, and as a tween, I probably wouldn't have cared all that much anyway. School was out, vacation was here, life was good. The June of that same year, my family and I traveled to China to visit my extended family. The trip to China, let ...

In the past, I've written about what music means for me , but I haven't yet touched upon the actual kinds  of music I  personally like. I get asked fairly often while meeting new people, "What kind of music do you like?" I can usually answer with a one-sentence summary. If you asked me right now, I would probably say, "oh yeah I've recently started getting into some electronic dance music, and my favorite artist is Owl City." What? Owl City? Why do you like Owl City? Well, if you really want to understand my tastes, it would take a lot longer than a one-sentence summary--perhaps even more than what I can contain in the size of a blog post. But I'll try. In order to truly understand my musical tastes, I have to explain how music came into my life, and what my relationship with music is. I started my journey into music naïvely. Keep in mind that my parents immigrated to the United States from China just a few years before I was born. So, growing up i...