Kaohsiung es la ciudad capital de Taiwán, entonces es más popular. Tiene una población de casi tres millones. La vida en Kaohsiung es ocupada y ruidosa, especialmente en los mercados de la noche. La mayoría de las casas son apartamentos altos y grises o marrones, como la mía. El aire no es muy limpio, pero las calles tiene menas basuras. Siempre hay medios de transporte en la calle, porque muchas personas usan motocicletas, coches, o autobuses.
La ciudad también es un poco aburrido, pero hay muchos centros comerciales para ir, y la “Torre #85.” Puedes ir a la piscina, comprar en el centro comercial, o relajarte en el parque. Pero, yo prefiero la ciudad Vancouver, en Cánada.
I believe that results are more important than the effort put in. Before you jump down my throat, I do wish that trying hard was all that mattered, but the reality of the world is that people generally will not care or pay attention to the amount of effort you put into your work.
Yes, the effort is important, but only while you are doing it. Of course you should put effort into your work so that it’s your best. The thing is, once your paper gets graded or you make an investment, that’s that. No matter what grade you get or what the outcome of the investment, the effort you put does not mean anything to anyone but you. You still lose money, and your grades are what colleges see, not your effort. In society, failure equates to not trying hard enough. What’s that famous quote again? “If at first you don’t succeed, Try, try again”? Here you can see the goal is still to SUCCEED.
And besides, the result is the GOAL that you’re striving to achieve. It’s your milestone, your endgame, your whole reason for the effort in the first place. With no focus on the result, the effort does not exist, or is half-hearted at best.
What about the people who are naturally good at something, and hardly have to lift a finger to succeed? This may sound unfair, but they still triumph and get praise. I’m not saying if that is right or wrong — it is just the truth. My grades for Chinese class have always been mediocre, and the grades and scores are all that is written down or recorded. Even though I try hard on the worksheets, I still get things wrong. And looking back at them, even all I can see is the score, not the effort.
You could argue that effort is more important because it’s what you learn that matters. It’s true that learning is important, but if you don’t use that knowledge to get the desired result in the future, what was the point of the effort? Learn, then try again and get the result, or people will not care.
People could also say that some people do look at your effort, and not just results. But this isn’t always true, and you must admit that it will be hard to think someone tried hard if they failed at something.
Now for a real-life example. Thomas Edison certainly put a lot of effort into creating a working light bulb. But so did many other people. Yet Edison is the only person people know, because he was the one who actually succeeded. Some of the other scientists might have tried harder, but failed anyway. In the end, it is only the result that becomes known and helps you.
Reality is painful, so don’t settle for a participation award, alright? Go succeed at whatever you’re good at.
En los videos, yo veo que los modelos pueden cambiar mucho con computadoras y maquillaje. Los cambios son completamente antinatural. En la primer vídeo, las piernas y cuello se hacen más largos, los ojos y la nariz es más pequeños, y el piel es suave. Después de los dos videos, la modela son “bonitas.”
Creo que si tú quieres conocer a una persona, la apariencia no es más importante. Prince Royce dice que el corazón sin cara, y la exterior no es importante. Estoy de acuerdo con él. Una chica puede ser bonita y antipática, o bonita y simpática, o feo y simpática. Para mí, un corazón feo no hazme contenta.
Tu apariencia no dice tu personalidad, calidad, trabajo, o gustos. A veces, personas pretenden ser otras personas, porque muchas gentes basan sus decisiones en las apariencias y ignorar tu personalidad.
¿Por qué pensaría la gente este? Porque es difícil gustar una persona sucia o desordenado. También, personas están muy sesgados. Es la vida. Si tú llevas la ropa llamativa, parece que tú eres rico y antipático. Si llevas ropa negro, tú eres emo. Si llevas ropa extraño, tú eres extraño.
Pero, esto no siempre es cierto. En conclusión, personalidad y apariencia no está la misma. No juzga una persona por su exterior. Debes juzgar una persona después de conocerla.
A few months ago, I created a script and a storyboard for my own book trailer of Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer, by Rick Riordan. It was one of my favorite books I’d read this semester, and contained many fun and interesting scenes that wouldn’t be too difficult to act out. My storyboard and script were sent (with some technical difficulties) to the students of Ms. Lang in Ohio.
First let me say a few things about storyboards.
It’s a way for movie creators to organize the plot of a movie before it’s actually shot. Basically, how it works is you draw out every scene of the movie and lay it out to see the different angles and expressions . If you don’t like one scene, you can scrap it and draw a new one. If you start filming first—without any plan, organization, or thought—well, you’ll end up with a mile-long list of things you don’t like, and many things you’d want to reshoot.
Storyboardthat.com is a really good website to use for creating storyboards. I was able to match the scenery and characters (and even their expressions!) to the book as closely as I could without too much effort, and in just 12 simple boxes.
Ten seconds in I saw that the trailer was different from my script. 49 seconds later I saw that they were completely different.
But…I totally don’t mind.
This trailer was fabulous. It’s awesome how someone took the effort to use green screen to change the setting from an obvious school environment to some other place.
This is like…gah. I can’t. I’m fangirling again.
The music was also really really nice, and the acting was wonderful and also pretty adorable. The trailer still followed the book, which I was really relieved about. I don’t think my partner was really paying attention to this, but their clothes matched the book. The colors were definitely different, but at least they weren’t wearing basketball jerseys or something. Also, the trailer was put together really well. Something about it just flows smoothly, like it was made by actual directors.
There are three things I’d want to change. One is the font of the trailer. I don’t remember whether the font can be changed or not in iMovie, but all the same, it doesn’t look fantasy or action-y enough. It looks more like a movie about a kid growing up and learning about life. Another change would be to add some dialogue. I’d be even more blown away if there was talking in this. The last thing was probably the one that bothered me the most. It wasn’t be their fault, because I don’t know whether they’d read the novel or not, but the name of the book was written wrong. There’s only one “the.” That’s really it, the rest was very impressive. I was staring at the video in awe the entire time. Maybe I’m just brainwashed by the pretty backgrounds, but I genuinely like this trailer.
I liked writing the script and making the storyboard much more than I thought I would. Perhaps it’s because of my interest in reading. I suppose that if you’re both hard-working and passionate about something, you can truly create something incredible. It’s so great to see one of my favorite books come to life in a book trailer. I might even write some more scripts just for fun.
I just made this really depressing poem and I just wanted to share this depression with y’all 😉
— There Are No Stars by Claire
I strain my eyes against the smoke
I struggle against a woeful croak
Factories and cars are immense cigars
and that is why today there are no stars
Generations before spoke of a sparkling sky
But now the constellations are not nigh
The gift of Artemis has been blotted out by our faults
Only under the dim gray moon we can waltz
Soon there will be no moon
—
As you can see, I’d have a heart attack if you rip a clean sheet of paper in front of me. So don’t do that unless you want to be responsible for my seizure.
Before this project, I had no idea that filter bubbles existed. I didn’t know that technology had already advanced so much that they saved your history and altered your search results. At first, I thought that filter bubbles were actually good, because they filtered out the things that you didn’t care much about. Then I thought more on the subject, and realized that there are cons to filter bubbles. Kathleen made a good point on Padlet: “We might not be able to have access to some websites due to its filter based on regular search habits we make. Often times, we would search our assumptions and questions for a topic, making the results biased. The search engine would assume we’re on certain side, therefore, showing more information of that particular fraction.” This was building on the idea that everyone had, that we would miss important information because of the filter.
These are the screenshots. The first is mine, the second is my partners.
Although we searched the same keywords, I feel like the results were still not very different.
Nevertheless, I still think we should try preventing filter bubbles, because over time, the more we search, the more the results might change, so we should start now. I feel that there actually aren’t any ways to effectively eliminate filter bubbles. The best we can do is just learn to search properly and choose the best websites that we are given.
Felix clutched at his pendant resentfully. His grandmother had traveled to Egypt just to buy him a necklace.
So what if it was a so-called good luck charm? Boys don’t wear jewelry. He would get laughed at.
Felix tossed the gem up in the air and caught it, looking at it properly for the first time. It was a bright green emerald two centimeters across. It was raw, so it had many shades of green, but it looked nice nonetheless. Not like that made Felix like it.
It had a hole punctured in the top for a leather cord, which he had already thrown behind him as he strolled down his street. There had been a hurricane a week earlier, and browning leaves littered the ground. The trees swayed slightly, and chestnuts dropped around him.
Felix pondered whether he would be able to throw the lucky jewel into the neighbor’s trash bin from this far away.
Deciding he couldn’t, he jaywalked across the street, nearly stepping on a caterpillar as he did so.
He reached the sidewalk only to find a stray cat ambling out from the bushes and lying down for a lazy nap in the centre of the path. It looked like it had been in a fight. Felix decided that he shouldn’t press his luck and step over the feline. He sighed inwardly and crossed the street yet another time. A boy on a bicycle shot by the sidewalk Felix had left, his eyes glued to his cell phone. The stray had managed to scramble out of the way, but only just. In an effort to avoid the cat, Felix sidestepped too quickly and his foot scratched painfully against a bush.
Felix ignored his injury. His gaze was focused on the trash can. So focused, in fact, that he failed to notice the tree until it was already falling. Whoosh! Felix jumped back, and the tree came down inches in front of him.
Felix let out a breath, the sound of his beating heart resonating in his ears. He was lucky. So lucky.
A man’s head appeared at a nearby window. He started when he saw the downed tree, “Kid! Felix, is that you? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine!” Felix called back.
“You better get home, you lucky boy. Be careful.”
Felix nodded and turned around. Completely forgetting that the pendant was supposed to be good luck, he tossed it clear across the street, straight at a manhole. It bounced off the rim of a nearby recycling bin, did a short spin, and disappeared down into the sewers with a clatter.
At first, he felt triumphant, that was a one in a million shot. Nobody else would be able to chuck a gem into a hole that small on his or her first try. Then realization hit him. Hard.
“Well,” he mumbled to himself, “that doesn’t mean anything. I could have dodged that tree without the emerald.”
He steeled himself against looking down the sewer and made his way home.
I scrolled through his Flipboard and saw that he seems to really like Walking Dead and the Youtube Channel Good Mythical Morning. And I’m not sure if he accidentally clicked it or what, but he reflipped one of my Percy Jackson posts. This made me pump my fist because I don’t know a lot of people who have read that series, or saw the movies.
I also became a total stalker and found his Facebook account. He has this picture for his cover photo:
We were alike in some ways. I’ve never heard of that Youtube Channel he watches, but I do like funny Youtubers like Nigahiga or IISuperwomanII, and Good Mythical Morning are pretty entertaining to watch. We also like Percy Jackson. Personally, I’m not a fan of the Walking Dead. I’ve never even seen the show, but I do know the ratings are really good. Me, I prefer sitcoms and cartoons, so we’re both alike and different at the same time.
You do not need to write about something that’s really popular, like vampires or dystopian novels like the Hunger Games. Write about something that interests you, something that you would feel more passionate and give more into. I have always been very interested in fantasy, and have written a few fanfictions about Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. It’s good to challenge yourself and try something new, you don’t need to keep writing in the same style all the time.
Plan the plot
Don’t just plan the beginning or the ending of a story. What happens with a lot of people, is that they get really caught up with writing a fantastic ending, so they rush through the rest of the book. Either that or they give up halfway through because there’s too many chapters to write before the end, which is the part they actually want to write. You shouldn’t make the ending or the climax the only good parts of the book. Making a basic outline will also prevent you from getting stumped on how to continue the story.
Imagery and Characters
Imagery is one of the things you must have in your story. It helps your readers imagine the story better, and they might feel as if they are in the story themself. Try to use different words. Don’t always use “good,” “said,” or “pretty”. Use a thesaurus to find a better word, and if you’re describing something, make the description longer, not just one adjective. Characters need to be realistic. Meaning they have flaws. You might think that a character who makes no mistakes is the kind of person everyone would like, but that’s not true. If you make a character too perfect, nobody’s going to like them. This website teaches you how to create a character.
Revise and edit
There is always room for improvement and more possibilities. If you can’t think of how to improve, ask for feedback. Revising can change your entire plot and make it better than before. Revising is what makes books so hard to stop reading. Revising teaches you how to challenge something that you wrote, and you will have the skill to determine whether it’s good or bad. If you just write your final draft and that’s it, there could be a lot of mistakes. You might go back and read that work later, and not like what you had written. The best of stories is born from hard work, so put effort into your tale. Make your readers laugh, cry, and remember your story.
Don’t stress
You don’t need to finish a whole story or chapter in a few days. You can take a break and get away from your computer or notebook. This can also help you get ideas or be inspired. A few days ago I was thinking about what to write for this blog post, then a day later I was scrolling through Wattpad, and I thought of writing about this.
Write everything down
Whether you’re in bed, at lunch, or at the park, it an idea suddenly comes to you, you should write it down immediately. Otherwise, that idea would disappear from your memory. If you keep all your ideas together, when you have writer’s block, you will have a great deal of ideas to choose from.
