SemesterFinal

The first question that I am going to choose is number 2.
2. Choose one of your posts. (Your favorite? Your least favorite? The one that surprises you the most when you reread it? Any one you want to pick.) Analyze it in detail, with quotes etc. And link to it, of course!

My favorite blog(s) of all time during this year was Fanime Part One and Fanime Part Two. These two blogs are in a pair of two. I really like these two blog posts because it shows what I enjoy most and these blog posts also help give others some advice. So it's fun and helpful. On the first blog, Fanime Part One, it gives the main information on Fanime, and how it works. Part One also includes some information on cosplay and four advices that continue onto the next part of Fanime. In the next part, Fanime Part Two, the advice was continued starting at five, and I think it ended on five. Fanime Part Two also includes my first day there which was after school on Friday. It showed my new experiences and how I met people from AHS that Ihave never seen before. Rereading this blog post brings back a lot of memories about my past and also what new things I missed from not going to this current years Fanime 2010. Sigh. But that's okay I still have a lot more years to go. I can't wait for next year we're going have a lot of fun! I like a lot others of my blogs but those two bring back a lot of memories for me. They mean a lot to me since I have really bad memory about my past.

7. What have you learned from your struggles with writer's block? Why do you tend to get stuck? How do you tend to get unstuck? Notice any patterns?

Writer's block is part of life, you get stuck... you get unstuck, then get stuck again. The struggles from writer's block can be crazy and horrible, but besides of sitting there and do nothing for the longest time, might as well work on something else. Go do your math homework or something. Or maybe write another story. But don't let the horror of writer's block stop you from enjoying writing. I tend to get stuck because you don't know exactly how you're going to write about it or you don't have anything else to talk about. For example, right now I'm writing this semester final and I'm getting writer's block by writing about writer's block. Patterns in writer's block is one you start you won't be finishing the same night as you start it. That is the only pattern that I have noticed during my writer's block.
An example of writer's block is the time when I took creative writing and we wrote every single day we were in class. Even though it was a class for writing and people who had great imagination, a lot of people in that class had a lot of problems for stories, poem, etc. But that class helps you improve in your English and also your writing skills. In the beginning I was always stuck until my teacher showed us a secret which was, work on something else while you're on writer's block. It really did work but it also helps with the procrastination. That strategy lasted me for the rest of the year, but after summer, everything went crashing down like crazy. Sigh. I miss that class. But I will never take another creative writing class, because it's just too much writing for me. Writer's block is not a fun thing to experience but it's part of life.

8: How do you like having a blog? How has blogging changed the way you write, the way you think, or the way you think about writing?

I really like having a blog because I get to share my experiences and whatnot to people around the world, and they won't know who I am. I can show my feelings on the blog post and those people still won't know who I am. This blog keeps my image a secret and also my identity a secret. That is a good thing. The only people who knows who this blog post is from are my friends, the people I share it with, and my classmates who has Sutherland for English. Blogging changed my life dramatically, it helped me somewhat improve in writing, and also helped me be more social with people around me.
This blog has made me think differently about writing. Writing has changed me greatly and it also helped me understanding some people around me. For example, when I asked my friend Nathan Tieu to write about a friend and he chose me, I figured out that he didn't really know me except for a few concepts here are quotes from my blog and a few from his blog to me.

Nathan Tieu was born on January 9, 1994. His family consists of an older sister, an older brother, and, of course, his parents. Nathan HAD pets, but they only lasted for a couple of weeks. His pets were mostly goldfishes and miniature turtles. Nathan had three turtles but one passed away and the other two were saved by Petco. Tieu thinks that his older brother had a hamster, but unfortunately it ran away. Of all important diseases or illnesses, Nathan Tieu had never had the chicken pox. He's going to be in trouble when he gets it in the future.

And this is the basics that Nathan knows about me.

Well lets stop talking about how I met Annly, lets just talk all about her. So umm... well she likes anime A LOT and also badminton. She's a fierce competitor in badminton, so you better watch out, cause she will destroy you :D She love anime and Korean bands like the BigBang even making a blog about it(http://auncia94.blogspot.com/2009/11/bigbangparttwo.html). She likes to tell scary stories on her free time, mostly all gory and killing (cough cough). You can catch some of it on her blog which she put(hella long) and also gives you information about fanime which is pretty helpful.

I repeat just from these two blog posts I have learned a lot about my friend and they also learned about me.

Well this blogging strategy has been a really fun experience for all of us. Thank you Mr. Sutherland for introducing it to us students and giving us a chance to communicate to the world, sorta. And also the experience or chance to get messaged or commented back by an author. Even though I didn't get the chance, others have and a slight chance that my blog post would've been commented on. Oh well. Thanks again. And see you next year Sutherland! xD (If I get your class... and if I don't then I'll come visit if I get the chance.

MaximumRideMonthlyReview

Sigh. This is our last monthly review on our tenth grade year. So sad. To make this last monthly review special, I will put more personality into it or something else to make it special. I will try. As you can read from my blogger my regular literature circle letters introduced and guided you along some of the moments of this book. Now is the time for the final review for the last book.

5. Find out about the author. How did they end up writing this particular book? Is the author's true life reflected in the book in any way(s)?
To start this question off, I will introduce the author's background. According to Wikipedia, James Patterson retired his everyday job of advertising in 1996. He then devoted his time in writing novels and series like Maximum Ride and The Women's Murder Club. "He holds the New York Times bestsellers list record with 55 New York Times bestselling titles." was stated in Wikipedia's article. I will have to say that that is a good achievement in life. James Patterson is sixty-three old and yet he amazingly achieved that in a matter of time. "Alex Cross" is his main series, it was his most proud series and also his first. "Alex Cross" is known to be one of his greatest works on his writing year. I couldn't find anything about why he wrote this particular book, but I read about the movie in 2013 and why he would want it. "James Patterson has had an "online rally" which has led him to arrange to have a movie based on his best selling teen series; Maximum Ride. The movie will be based on the first three books, but it is unknown whether it will also be based on the recently published fourth installment and newly released fifth novel, MAX."

7. If you've read other books in this same genre, how does this one compare?
You could guess what book I'm going to compare it to, yes, you are correct it's none other than The Hunger Games and it's second book Catching Fire. Maximum Ride : The Angel Experiment is an exciting story about kids and teenagers on an adventure to save one of the youngest of them all. Maximum Ride is a thrilling, suspenseful fantasy book while The Hunger Games is a science fiction, thrilling, and suspenseful fiction book. As you can see, these two books are really similar but one is more of the fantasy side and the other you can relate to. In The Hunger Games, Katniss the main character doesn't have wings and is a full whole human. In Maximum Ride, Max is ninety-eight percent human and two percent bird. Katniss is more like us and we can compare our relationship with her, but with Max that's kind of hard to compare with. Both books are about survival of the fittest. The genre may be the same but the plots and characters are completely different.
But in my opinion, I enjoy The Hunger Games more. Yeah I enjoy fantasy and angels and vampires more but the entire story plot about survival amongst full humans in more interesting. I guess it does matter who the person is and what type of books they like to read. So to sum everything up. The Hunger Games Series < Maximum Ride : The Angel Experiment. But I shouldn't judge by reading Maximum Ride's first book, I should at least try the other books in the series before I make a judgment like that.

8. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters.
For this question I chose to write about Fang, one of the males in this book. Fang is fourteen years old in Maximum Ride : The Angel Experiment. He becomes older by one year in the next book, referring to Wikipedia. So he's six foot three. "He is 6' 3". He has olive skin, dark eyes and jet black hair that matches his jet black wings. His wing span is 14 feet across." Quote taken from Wikipedia. Describe by the book, Fang is the strongest member of the "flock" and he takes near fatal wounds from protecting his fellow members from danger. Some say that he has a small amount of Raven DNA in him, because of the black wings and also his size. Fang is a loner, in my opinion, he doesn't show his emotions and he is the quiet type, but one person can get through to him, Max. I wonder why. I wasn't suppose to spoil the entire series for myself but by reading Wikipedia's article about Fang, I spoiled the entire other books for myself. And now I'll spoil it for every else, this is a warning if you don't want a spoiler then keep scrolling until the end of this paragraph. Warning. Fang and Max get into many relationships with each other. And Angel proved their love and tastes to each other, and who couldn't trust Angel with her amazing reading minds power. Later on, Angel sees Fang future and she predicted his death, later on she was right Fang is the first "experiment" to die from the "flock." And here's a quote on what Fang enjoys and part of his personality "From School's Out Forever and so on, it is shown that Fang takes great pleasure in seeing Max getting jealous over him... Fang also gets easily jealous when seeing other guys hanging out with Max, shown in The Angel Experiment, School's Out Forever and Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel." Who would have known that quiet Fang was the jealous type?

Well that's the end of the third question, and also the end to our amazing journey of blog posting for book reviews. The final blog post I'll have to do for this class is the Final Post, which is also a Semester Final like the previous one a few months ago. Hope you enjoyed this book review.

MAXimumRideTheAngelExperimentLitCircleLetterPartThree

Okay so this is the final literature circle letter for my tenth grade year! xD Yay! After this one will be my final final blog post for assignments in Sutherland's class, which will be the monthly review. Well after this year, I might continue writing on this blog just for the hell of it, or forget about it completely. :] I'm pretty sure that I'll forget about it unless I have Sutherland next year for eleventh grade. Okay so here's the assignment.
So me and my group has finished reading the first book of the Maximum Ride series, I think everybody finished, and so far no one has posted their lit circle letter yet, so I'll be writing and quoting the last paragraph of the book!

The Voice came right back to me : Thats more than theree questions, Max. And sometimes whteher someone i syour friend or enemy is all in how you look at it. But if you must know, i consider myself your friend, a good friend who loves you very much. No one loves you more than I do, Maximum. Now listen. I ask the questions, not you. You're just here and the Voice actually chuckled, for the ride. For the incredible , indescribable Maximum Ride.

During this part of the book, there was a mysterious voice that came out of nowhere. But it helped Max to find the institution. Well do you think that voice is a friend or a foe or maybe some cyber net thing that is using Max to help it defeat some things? In my opinion, I think that voice is actually something that is using Max and the others to complete it's mission. Right now I wouldn't know what their motive is, but i think it's something bad, and we wouldn't know who... unless we read the next book in the series. Am I right? xD

Okay so this is the last book literature circle letter, I will type a little message. I don’t think I will be able to write another lit circle letter, so don’t be sad. I’m really sorry to those who have read this… yeah I don’t know who reads this… xD And hope you enjoyed my book reviews! Class of 2012! xD (Yes that was a really random and unnecessary line to say.) Oh yeah the picture above is the manga version of Fang, the second eldest in the book.

Deuces

Since Nathan Wong wanted to blog about deuces and this was our last blog post of the year, well that's what I heard so okays. Also if you noticed, we wrote about the same topic last week also. xD
There are two different kinds of deuces, Vietnamese version and Chinese version. There might be more but those are the two main versions. According to Wikipedia, the Vietnamese version has other names like Killer, Up the Hill, and Thirteen. I have heard of people who call it Thirteen or Deuces but never heard of someone calling it Killer or Up the Hill, but I can guess why they named the game those names. Killer because the two (deuces) can kill any card it wants and it's the main "boss" as for Up the Hill, it could have been named that for the rankings and level of each specific card. So in the Vietnamese version of deuces, the ranking from highest to lowest numbers or characters are 2 K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3. The shapes in order are heart ♥, diamonds ♦, clovers ♣, and then spades ♠ as the lowest valued card.
This game involves up to four people with each person holding thirteen cards, even if it’s three or two people there should be thirteen cards in their hand. As for people who just want to play for fun, they can have as many cards as they want but it must be equal among the players. Once a combination is played, the next player must beat it with a higher combination including ranks and levels. Different combinations are singles, pairs, triples, and a straight with at least three cards played and up to any level until the Aces. Other special combinations are chops which is a sequence of the same number consecutively, like 3 3 4 4 5 5, and it must be more than three pairs. Paired sequences can beat the “killer” or deuce in the game. This game also involves instant wins which are four deuces, six consecutive pairs, and three triples (which are rarer than six consecutive pairs).
In the beginning of the game, most people would make up their own rules and the others would have to agree with it. Most people use this game to gamble and others like people younger than the age of ten would just play for funs or pocket change. According to Wikipedia again, you can change or swap cards with another player, but it’s not really fun if you can switch cards. Without swapping cards, you can use your brain and knowledge to win with a horrible hand that didn’t require changing. And if you change cards, you would be giving other players the chance to win.
Wow, I never knew that Deuces would be so complicated and that the way we play was wrong based on Wikipedia’s version. Oh well, I guess you don’t have to play it right if you want to have fun. :]

RulesOfLove♥

In the 1800's, there was no such thing as a steady relationship. You could go out with anyone you wanted. Everybody showed their emotions and feelings without embarrassment. Now during this time of day, most people are shy and ask one male or female. And other people would cheat on one another and ask two or more people out. It just depends who it is, I guess. Love is a huge part of this world; it's one of those things that make this world go round.
Some rules for dating or love relationships between people:
1: Ask the person you really like, not just a crush but someone you would want to spend your entire life or at least love until you hate...
1A: Responding truthfully to the question someone asks you.
2: You shouldn't care about the other people's comments or opinion. Do what you want.
2A: If you’re happy, you real friends will be happy too. :]
3: When in a relationship, you have to sacrifice some things in order to keep your relationship steady.
4: But all relationships have a limit. Once that limit is reached, the relationship is over.
5: Age doesn’t matter, you just have to enjoy and love that person.
A good relationship depends on trust and faith with each other. And the people around you have to be happy no matter what, hating you just because of the person you’re dating are not a reason. Some relationships have limits and others don’t. Apparently I know or knew of a relationship with limits and sadly it reached the maximum level. The meter reached off limits that it exploded. And last but not least, age shouldn’t stop you from loving a special someone. It just means more to love, I guess. Love is everywhere no matter what the consequences are.

MAXimumRideTheAngelExperimentLitCircleLetterPartTwo

Hmm.. I have no idea how to start this lit circle letter, so I'll start it by talking about how I don't know how to and start from there. Okay, enough of the stalling and time for the actual lit circle letter. I have decided not to spoil what happened next so I shall skip to another part of the book!! Hahaha... sorry if you were expecting for a spoiler because you're too lazy to actually read the actual book!
For the first quote, I will use a quote of a question that came from the book and expand the answer.

School - What could be scarier than that?

Many students may know the reason. And the "flock" of 98% human and 2% bird will know also. After this section, they found out the horrors of school and what we suffer every weekday! Jk. But yes, school is that bad. I'm sorry if I'm using this lit circle letter to badmouth school. But this question did pop up in the book my group is currently reading.
Even though they're school is different and for them and only them, the experience may be completely different but it's still school. And school is really bad!

It was a mishmash of flashing images, drawings, maps, streams of code, silent film clips of people talking. It was exactly the stuff that had flooded my brain during my attack.

Flashback. During some serious fight, Max had a weird flash of images described in the quote above. And then later in the book, around the end of part two, someone showed him the images on his MAC. He literally flipped his MAC around to show her. And they were exactly the same. Hmm... another suspenseful moment for the characters. Will they be fine until I start reading part three? What will happen? How did the character find the images on his MAC? Some of us will never know and others will just pick this book up and read it. Chyeah! xD

Mahjong.

For this week's blog post, I will be writing about mahjong. Mahjong is a very famous game for four players that originated in China. Many people use this game as a form of gambling and others coughunderagedkidscough just play for fun and amusement. There's also a Korean varuation that allows for three players only. The Korean variation is just like Japan and Malaysia's. According to wikipedia, this game involves skill, strategy, and calculation and a degree of luck. But my own opinion, is that the game of mahjong requires every ounce of luck you have in you. If you don't have luck, don't play mahjong. But I guess you also need to think about each tile and try to ruin your opponent's plan or strategy.
To begin I will tell you about the basics of mahjong, there are exactly thirteen tiles in everybody's hand except for the first person who starts. The person who starts it off has to discard a tile and then the next person has to pick up a new tile and discard one and so on. This keeps going on until someone plays all pongs or kongs or straight and so on. Pong is three of a kind and kong is four of a kind. I'm still a beginner at this and still get confused but I'll get use to it.
Now time to tell you about the most recent game I had. It was on Sunday May 9th. It took place on Park Street in Alameda. We were just hanging around around and we all just ended up at Quickly's. The person who would usually carry a mini mahjong set was named Pat Pat Long or Hao Ming Long, everytime you see him he has a set on him. So Nathan Wong, Pat Pat, me, and some random asian guy grabbed a table and moved some chais and played mahjong.
I lost so many rounds and then suddenly I won a round and then another, two in a row! I'm so proud. Then during the last round, before I had to leave, I think Nathan Wong or Pat Pat won. I forgots.. hehehe. xP
Oh yeah, Nathan Wong's way to win is to keep most of the dragons to himself. In mahjong there are white dragons (the tile with the blue border), green dragon (green tile), and the red dragon (the tile with 5 red strokes). The first time that his plan became effective was when two other people waited for the a green dragon tile, and he had one or something. But I shouldn't be complaining or anything since he helped me win with that one tile, he helped me stall the other players until I got the tile I needed to win. Hehehe. He helped me without knowing xD. When he reads this post, he will know. (Some information in this blog post may be false because of my horrible memory but it's okay, I guess.
Oh yeah and we're going to play again tomorrow which is Wednesday May 12, 2010. xD Yay.