Hey guys!

Happy Monday!
So, today (after a very productive day doing a million things, I assure you) I joined my mom in watching Still Alice, a movie I’m fairly sure I’m very late in watching being that it was rent-able on Redbox. However, I had heard of this movie before and had watched Julianne Moore accept the prestigious Academy Award for Best Actress back in February.

So, it had to be sorta good, right?

Well, yes. And no.

I mean, to be fair, these types of melodramatic gray-background-melancholy-music-tear-inducing movies (that I’m surprised Bradley Cooper didn’t cop a starring role in) don’t typically draw me in. My mom, on the other hand, loves these types of movies (especially when Bradley Cooper is involved. I mean really, who doesn’t?) But I decided to watch it anyway, for the sake of family bonding and because I was wondering what on earth Adam Maitland (sorry, Alec...

Is ourselves.

Image source: writemyessayonline.com

Hey guys!

So today I wanted to talk about the one thing that keeps, and has kept, thousands of writers and bloggers alike from doing what it is they’re good at: write.

Despite their long-held beliefs, they are most definitely not out of good writing ideas. They do in fact have an audience (who they may simply not know about yet) that eagerly wants to hear what they have to say. And that exact thing they have to say does have validity, because it’s their blog, it’s their words, and that means it’s anyone’s chance to express themselves.

This fallibility is what has kept me from being able to consistently keep up with a blog or make it to the end of writing a novel. It’s called persistence. Persistence and determination and a whole lot of self-confidence. You can’t possibly let self-doubt creep on into your shoulder and start...

Hey guys!

Almost done with the week, can you believe it?

So today I accompanied my mom, brother, and three little cousins on a trip downtown to visit the Houston Children’s Museum, and while technically I was a little out of the age range, I have to say I really enjoyed the experience.

And actually, it was a very interesting place in which to observe a few social experiments in action. But more on that later.

Sorry, please excuse the crude Snapchat quality of this picture. It was all I had I swear.

This trip also brought back a lot of memories, (though according to my memory, the museum was a whole lot bigger and a whole less crowded) as the last time I walked those halls, I was exactly 11 years younger. So, five years old, or my youngest cousin’s age. And I didn’t speak a word of English (although today I noticed that they vastly increased the number of translated signs for both...

HEY guys!

So being that I just found out that today is, in fact, National Orca Day, where we take a moment to appreciate the grand beauty of those absolutely terrifying underwater pandas cutely nicknamed “killer whales”, I thought it was high time (sorry in my head I thought that would translate as a “high tide” pun. My apologies) that I dedicate an entire post on these fascinating creatures. So, here goes five facts about Orcas you probably had no clue about, and probably don’t care either way about. Just go with the flow okay? (pun 100% intended)

Image copyright Rob Lott/WDC - orca 997 in Iceland, February 2013

1. Orca males are very much like the pizza-box-hoarding-basement-living-gamers of today’s world. Meaning, they never leave their mothers. Even when they are very politely cut off from funding, and discretely have their own online dating profile created, they STILL stick...

Hey guys.

So, for those of you who a) are ignorant heathens or b) Mole People sheltered from society for their entire childhoods and therefore do not know what a Magnum is…well.

Let’s just say it’s true happiness in the form of a bronze-coloured wrapper that opens to the delight that is a heart of double caramel layers wrapped in a silken blanket of rich, dark chocolate. Feast your eyes kids, feast your eyes.

Essentially, the Magnum was the apple of every child’s eye on hot summer nights after playing a game of Sardines in the cul-de-sac with the rest of the neighbourhood children. And now, as a teenager on the cusp of adulthood (okay, a couple of years from adulthood), not much has changed.

The Magnum has now become the epitome of a guilty pleasure, much like the guilty pleasure shared by thousands of Americans (and I’m sure many abroad) alike.

According to an Oregon State...

Hey guys, happy Friday!

So, today I decided I would talk about a topic that I’ve been pretty passionate about for some time. And that’s: education. Not just education, but equal educational opportunities for all, despite race, gender, or disabilities.

And this week, Malala Yousafzai (who if you didn’t know, is the brave girl from Swat, Pakistan who got shot in the head by the Taliban on her way to the school her father founded for girls and who then became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner at 15 years old) is celebrating her 18th birthday in a new way. The young activist called for worldwide action at the Oslo Summit on Education for Development to stand up to global leaders and insist they spend on education, rather than the military. According to Yousafzai, “if the whole world stopped spending money on the military for just 8 days, we could have the $39 billion still needed to...

Hi there. Okay, so I just want to start by saying that a large portion of my 16 years of life have been spent struggling with myself to start and continue (yes, CONTINUE) a good blog. This of course has led to many a blog floating around the internet crying for its creator to keep adding content to it (seriously, I think I have like 5 failed blogs by now). I swear, it’s not like I consciously stop writing on it, I just slowly start letting doubts get to my head and then my perfectionist nature gets in the way of even starting a potentially good blog post…“and so on” as my good friend Kurt Vonnegut would say (whatever, good friend sounds better than favourite author, okay?) So anyways, excuses aside, I guess I just have never made the time to do what I love to do: write. But as the summer months quickly flit by like pesky swallows escaping the clutches of every student dreading the...

i.

The Emergency Conference of Creators took place on a mundane day not unlike any other. The room was buzzing with a discordance that only comes when too many bodies with too strong opinions are put in not enough space with no breathing room.
“Silence” a voice boomed, bouncing off the hexagonal walls and returning to the throat of Chief Creator of All Thinking Operations. “A decision has been made regarding the problems at hand,” he surveyed the room, now stagnant with bated anticipation, “time is running out and funds are running low. Our trial is near completion and preliminary results are as expected. There is no need to keep the Subjects around any longer.”
The room immediately erupted again; loud noises of anger and protest were thrown at the Chief’s proclamation.
“But sir-“
“No. I know we have grown attached to them in the last few millennia, but we have our findings and...

This is a poem I wrote for a National Bullying Prevention Month contest. Even though I have never experienced bullying myself, I know how disparaging its effects can be, and I hope someday it can be a thing of the past.

Crouched in the corner, cowering from fear,

The words hit me like spitfire; the scoffs and the leers,

There was no escape, no safe home or haven,

No place to run to when the light starts fading,

As I look up, preparing to look my bullet in the eye,

A red streak in the corner, swooping through the sky,

My mind flies with him; the robin ruby as the sun,

As the first fist hits me, I realize my bully has not won,

Blood oozes from my face, but I’m joyous with the realization,

Red plumage may adorn me, but he’s in a much worse situation,

My fear dissolves to pity, and I show him with a smile,

This armoured covering will show soft flesh, it might just take a...

She was the sunrise.
A fragile film of pink glass, forgotten in shreds of smoky blue.
Her eyes like the edge of the earth.

An invisible storm had the power to flee away with the last of her world.
But the emptiness left a single resolve
to follow the stranger,
wherever he took her,
let him give her life.

Her body, a bluish fog of a deadlier blue, had gone unconscious.
With only the muscles of her arms and legs fighting.
She was rising and she wondered when her breath
would fail.

The first sun ray flashed like a burst of white fire,
penetrating the clouds of white froth;
sending wings.