Appreciation

Yesterday, the internet went down for approximately 2 hours.  I never thought i would be so greatly impacted by such a small occurrence, but I was.  It completely restricted what I could do. I had to e-mail a social studies project to one of my teachers and research for a essay in science.  Without the internet, I couldn't do any of this, not to mention chatting with my friends.

I never really thought about how important the internet was until yesterday.  Until then, I always took it for granted and thought it was a given to have.  I never gave a thought about how hard life would be without any internet.  Now I finally appreciate the luxury of having a personal internet connection in my house.  

Now you may be wondering why I talk about such a minor event.  Well, this led me to realize that I take many things for granted without a thought about what life would be without it.  I'm going to use my iPod as another example.  At a first thought, it may seem like an unneeded luxury to have an iPod touch.  It is somewhat unneeded; I survived perfectly well without it in fifth grade.  But naturally, I slowly began to take advantage of it. I now use it for many daily activities like planning, communications, and much more.  Without my iPod, I wouldn't know what time to go outside to meet my friend and walk to school, I might forget the dates of major events, I couldn't listen to music without opening my laptop.  

My theory, which I am naming the expansion theory of humans, says that we don't need many things that we think are important to life, but after we get a luxury, we slowly incorporate it into our daily life so much that we can't live without it.

Pointless fun

When I think about it, there are many things that I do in my life that are, when you think about it, very pointless, yet somehow entertaining.

Let's take the easy button for example.  It is Staples' signature item, but all it is is a huge red button that says "that was easy" when pressed.  Yet, this button is something many people want, or already have. Pointless? Definitely. Fun? Well, it isn't really "fun", but it is something that can be used over and over again.  Without fail, it can bring some laughs, some witty remarks, and some groans every time it is pressed.

The world is filled with these little items or habits that are a simple waste of time. At the time of doing these pointlessly fun things, it seems perfectly logical.  But after doing so, when you look back on it, it seems like a waste of time.

So the question is; should we continue doing this or not?  I suppose it really depends on the situation you are in at the moment.  If you are pressed for time, and will fail a class just because if you procrastinate a bit, then, by pure logic and common sense, you should not waste time with this pointless fun.  But if you are sitting on a couch with nothing to do, then go ahead! Nothing bad will come out of it, and you will be instantly entertained.

Facebook

Facebook, the almighty website that everyone who is someone uses.  What makes it so addicting? 

To know the answer to that question, we have to back up a little.  Mark Zuckerburg created Facebook as a social networking website to basically follow your friends around.  Facebook's users use it to update their every action, from baking a cake, to getting a girlfriend.  

My theory of why Facebook is addicting is that everyone wants to know what their friends are doing, follow around the person they like.  No one wants to be left behind on this informations and be clueless about present events.  Another possible reason Facebook is addicting is that people always want to respond to their messages, or a notifications on time so that people don't see them as a slow person.

The reason I check Facebook every 10 minutes is to see what people are doing, and respond to messages and/or notifications.  I also comment on a few statuses.

Facebook is such a simple site that would seem very boring, but is actually extremely addicting.

Rain

Today was one of the few rainy days in Southern California, and it sure was strange.  The day started with a constant drizzle, not enough to soak your clothes, but quite enough to make shoes squeak on the tiled floor of the classrooms.  The downfall of water was refreshing on my skin as I looked up and pondered the possibilities of a strong downpour.

The rain continued like this until about 12:00.  At this time, I was in science listening to the teacher talk about suspensions and colloids.  There was a boom and everyone shook with a start.  It felt like the sky ripped in half with earthquakes shaking the floor.  The teacher stood in awe of the power in that boom of thunder.  The classroom burst into chatter about the thunder.  After the class calmed down, the teacher stared teaching.  After a minute, the sky cried from the shock of the lightning, and let loose millions of its hard earned tears.  They hit the ground, splashing everywhere without a care for anything but reaching the ground.  The sound was like what would happen if the whole class started clicking their pens, only more thunderous.  The people of my class watched in awe, then realized that they needed to bring their backpacks in.  With permission from the teacher, waves of people from my class swarmed to save their backpacks from the wetting assault of rain.  Another few minutes after we brought our backpacks in, the rain stopped.  The clouds have recovered from the shock of lightning, all was well in the sky again.

The day went on, with intervals of sudden, violent downpours and sunny skies.  When the day ended and i finally reached home, the sky was sunny.  I finished my homework, and went downstairs to eat.  It was still sunny.  A few minutes after we started eating, a flash from outside lit up our dinner table, and then came the thunderous boom.  The cloud's life was yet again disturbed.  I thought the downpour was going to last thirty minutes at the most, but it lasted through dinner, and even more.  Our meal was disrupted by flashes and booms.  I finished my dinner, and went upstairs to carefully study the rain.  I looked outside, and saw our drainpipes over flooding, pouring excess water onto our roof and down into the sewers.  The droplets moved at an angle, because of the minor wind outside.  When a droplet hit the roof, it created a miniature splash, a dot to the human eye.  Together, it seemed as though our roof was decorated by a constantly changing polka dot pattern.

The sound of the rain is a natural phenomenon.  Each impact to the ground creates a tapping sound, muffled by the walls of my house.  Each drop that hits the roof sends out a louder sound, with the occasional big droplet of water that creates a click.  As a harmony, it creates music without tone, like the biggest orchestra in the world consisted only of percussion.

Listening, watching the rain is true bliss.  There is so much to see, so much to hear.  It is an induplicable experience.

Food

Food is a very basic necessity in peoples life, and not only to keep them alive.  


One way that food really benefits people of all shapes and sizes is that it it a classic part of quotidian culture.  Many people can identify where someone lives just by the types of foods he or she eats.  For example, if you eat dumplings daily, you are most likely chinese.  A person's personality can also be determined by his cooking, to some extent.  If someone cooks macaroni and cheese for important guests, you can infer that that person is lazy and disrespectful.  But if someone cooks some roast turkey for a neighbor, it is easy to tell that this person is hardworking and kind.  


Another BIG reason that food is extremely important to an average person's life is that food provides a lot of variety, and puts some new purpose into life.  It's really interesting to try all different kinds of foods, and see how they taste.  I can say that I like Japanese food, and then I can try all the different kinds, and I would find enjoyment in eating and trying all those different foods.  Imagine life with no food, a life that you never could eat. How boring would that be? There would be no excitement in choosing what to eat, less variety in life, less excuses to go to the mall with you friends.  Life without food would be like hot chocolate without sugar.

My fellow Asians love food.  It's almost customary for us to walk around, asking for extra food.  Some of my friends even say they can't live without rice.  Even today, on a weekend at home, one of my friends almost dedicated the entire day to watching the food channel.  At a world-wide scale, Chinese people made a whole new way of eating, using chopsticks, when they could have simply used a spoon and moved on with life.  What makes Asians love food so much? The world may never know.

Food is an amazing part of everyday life. No one could live without it. (literally and figuratively)

Happy Box?

One major hole of the happy box's legitimacy is how it makes you happy.

The way to make me happy is to fill my life with friends, family, love, reached goals, unanswered questions, and money.  Apparently, the happy box provides none of those, but it still makes me happy, somehow.  How does happiness get artificially produced?  I know that it is just a unreal thing that I should imagine, but I can not fathom how this provides quotidian happiness.  I can not imagine being happy any other way besides the way I become happy right now.  Just imagine sitting on a chair in a box grinning like a madman and feeling like you just won twenty gold medals in the Olympics.  Strange much?  I really can't understand how it works, so I can't begin to answer the question of whether or not I should go into a happy box.

Happy Box, with an even better understanding of what it is

So apparently the happy box actually gives you a lot more happiness than I thought it would.  That made me reconsider my thoughts.

So if I were asked to go into a happy box, I would definitely ponder it for a while.  At the moment, I really can't decide whether or not to go into the happy box.

It really wouldn't matter.  If you stayed out of the box and just lived your life, it would be fun, with downtimes and really fun times too.  There would be a lot of variety too, which makes life more interesting.  It would be your daily life.  Getting into the happy box would just be a monotone happiness, not much variety, but still really fun.

I didn't have much to write about this, so I'm going to write another post questioning the happy box.

Happy Box, different thoughts...

Okay, a bit of misunderstanding between me and Hans there, so here is the actual article he was asking for.

So, if someone asked me to step into a "happy box", I would not.

I am getting a little ahead of myself there.  A happy box is apparently a boxlike enclosure that you can go into, and it immediately makes you happy.  But being happy means only sitting there, having an artificial happiness overtake you.

I wouldn't step in the happy box because of a few reasons.  First of all, an artificial happiness never makes you as happy as happiness that is earned through hard work.  If you get a really good score on your math test because you studied really hard for it, you get a amount of happiness like no other.  If you get artificially happy inside a box, then you will be happy, staring at a wall.  Think about it, it is really strange and unsatisfying.  Another reason that I wouldn't step in to the happy box is that it would be really boring.  Boring and happy contradict each other, but if you think about it, it really does make sense.  If you are happy because you are forever dropping from the sky with the excitement like that of when you ride a roller coaster, then you will eventually get bored because it would feel normal falling from the sky, and you would yearn for hard ground under your feet.  It is the same for the happy box.  Eventually, you are going to get very bored sitting in a box,and will yearn for pain and suffering.  That brings me to yet another point.  There would be no pain an suffering inside the happy box.  That may sound strange, to actually want to be hurt and suffer, but it is true.  For example, when I was a small child, I always took leisure time and fun for granted.  But as I grew up and had more homework and less time to idle, I began to appreciate rest and playtime.  I wouldn't have that happiness if it wasn't for all the countless hours of working.

The happy box does have some benefits at first, but as you stay in there longer and longer, you will realize that it isn't as good as living life how it normally is.

Happy Box

If someone randomly came up to me and asked if I wanted to make my life happy and perfect, I would actually choose to go in.

Why?  Well what's bad about being not happy?  To me, being happy is being showered with love, money, yoyos and some friends.  What is really bad about that?  Being happy means having good friends, some love and support, and everything you ever wanted.  What can be better than that?  I can't find anything bad about walking into a "happy box".

Sorry for not blogging the last few days and making this post so short... life was pretty hectic.

If everyone in the world was the same

I think that some version of the book's world is not present in today's world.  Anyways, here's today's post.

While I was reading "Brave new world", I was thinking what would happen if everyone in the world was the same.

There would be many good parts of everyone being the same.  One is that everyone will understand each other and there will be no disputes about anything.  It would be a peaceful world with no one killing other people, and no hate.  Also, everything you make can be the same, because whatever you like, everyone else likes, so you don't have to make so many different kinds sell only sell a few.  Another great part about this is that everyone will be as smart as one another and everyone will earn the same salary, therefore no country will have economical problems and everyone will treat each other as equals.  

There will obviously be many problems with this too.  One of the most prominent problems of everyone being the same is that it is extremely difficult to identify people from one another.  People will be looking at people and identifying them by their name tags.  It will be pretty chaotic.  Also, since they all have the same interests, they will all be arguing about who should be what.  For example, everyone would want to be the CEO of a certain company, but no one will want to be part of any other company.  Everyone would be arguing using the same logic, then the world will get nowhere.  It would also really get boring because you already know what everyone's reply is going to be, and there is no variety in anything.

In the end, it probably won't be a good idea to make everyone in the world the same.