This is a short essay I wrote for Mr. Bontakoe’s English II class at KCVI.  It got good reviews so I decided to post it here.  Mr. Bontakoe, if you’re doing a plagiarism check, I did indeed write this

Just a few nights ago I was working at the till at Best Buy when I got a paper-cut as I grabbed a customer’s receipt coming out of the printer. A paper-cut! I could have died! The Best Buy – just like everywhere else in the world – is crawling with microbes and bacteria and if just a few of those slipped into that paper-cut I could have had a serious allergic reaction and ended up in the hospital.

The fact that the world is a dangerous place isn’t news to anyone: daily we are assaulted with “studies” and “research” done by “scientists” who basically surmise that because I ordered a large fry at McDonalds last night the whole world is going to seed. I’m sure my impulse purchase has killed innocent kittens somewhere, but I only see two choices: live it up or stop living.

For indeed, life is a dangerous business: with one wrong step on black ice you could end up in hospital eating through a straw for the rest of your life. It is particularly peculiar that this is perhaps the most safety-aware generation and (according to the “scientists”) the generation most likely to make sure it removes itself in its entirety from the gene pool due to (gasp!) the sterilizing effect of cell-phone usage. Yes, I just made that up, but there is certainly a study or some lab work or some tinfoil-hat wearer that persistently insist that your digital communication habits will leave you barren as the Liberal Party coffers after an election. Continue reading

See, apparently I need to take the Grade 10 Literacy Test.  The fact that I got a 2060 on my PSATs or was the top of last semester’s IB Higher Level English class doesn’t seem to make a difference.  I have to spend a morning on Thursday proving to the Province that I indeed know that a capital letter goes at the beginning of a sentence.

I understand that the Literacy Test is required, but I believe I should have had it waived:  I entered the Ontario school system in Grade 11 and the test is a Grade 10 test.  They waived Canadian History, Civics and Careers, and the like.  Why not the literacy test?  It’s a waste of time.

Then someone comes in during Period A today and asks me why I’ve been absent so much lately.  Namely, the week before March Break and Thursday and Friday last week.  All of these were excused.  March Break had a letter to the Attendance Office and I was an organizer for the Model UN which gave me a pass.  However, only one of my teachers marked me excused (Math teacher).  I told all of them about MUN and I had a pass for the cruise.  It’s just such a waste of time and it’ll end up on my transcript…

Anyways, that’s the end of my vent for today.

I just got named Deputy Director-General to the Security Council at KCVI’s Model UN.  This is a huge honour, and I can feel my head swelling (no, really!  You can feel it).  So I’m working on that now (it’s going to be alot of work)

However, I contacted the International School of Beijing to ask where they got their plastic nation placards for MUN and found out that the MUN director was a Queens alumnus and had friends who lived in Kingston and so on.  We also (hear this:) got invited to be on the waiting list to go to their yearly shindig, BEIMUN!  I LOVED BEIMUN last year and I’m really hoping we can take them up on the offer next year (it’s too late now)

But right now I am focused on getting those placards for the conference next month!

I also found out today that there is an Ontario Skills Competition in Web Development.  All I have to do is learn PHP and mySQL, both of which I can play with on my own site.  I have to make the site run in IE7 and Netscape 7x (?).  More news later

On the side, I’m going to try to do a little redesign on the site

So I am taking two exam subjects out of 4 (those being IB English and Physics 11, with my other subjects being Computer Science and IB Film Studies).  So unlike most of my friends, I only have two days of exams and then I’m done for another week.  No school.

Seeing as you can’t really study for English, I’m worried about Physics but not stressed.

What I am stressed about, however, is all the end-of-semester projects.  Today and tommorow I have my IB Film Exam Project due (A film, Statement of Intent, Storyboard, Script, and essay), my Computer Science project due (In two parts:  Python math script and Flash portal), and my Individual Oral Presentation for IB English.  This is the big elephant in the room right now seeing as I have to give it in 15 minutes and I’ve never been good at planning presentations… Continue reading

I probably should not be pontificating on deep matters at 11:30 at night, but whatever.  My Film exam is rendering.

So if you don’t know (and you don’t, because I haven’t told anyone), my exam film for IB Film Studies II is all about signifigance.  A brief overview of the story:  family sits down to dinner with a friend who is utterly boring, family battle begins behind the scenes, escalates in to war after about 5 minutes.

Now, this short has gone a long way since its inception.  I wanted to have a family of psycics having a friend over for dinner and whilst he’s talking they’re talking between eachother in their minds.  Obviously, this is kitchy.

Now, I filmed this short with that in mind, with a script that, although flimsy, supported it.  Because all of the consequential dialogue would be done with voiceover, I could change the script at will.

It didn’t fly.

But what happened was better.  I decided to take this idea of a family that is different and internalize it.  The almost-finished version of the film creates two distinct stages (the whole thing is one scene at a kitchen table), one in the ‘real’ world where their boring guest is going on quite like I’m probably going on right now (hey, it’s 11:30.  Give me a break) and the one that is more a mirror of their family struggles.  While the boring conversation is constant, the battle between the family members gets more intense as it progresses.

Which brings me to my point on signifigance. Continue reading

So today school in Canada reconvened… A bittersweet moment, seeing as I will be productive but no longer have the time to be so. First day of school was pretty laid back: I wore my wifi-detecting shirt which became the conversation piece of every room I walked in to. Film Studies is basically going to be prep time, Physics won’t even have a unit test, Computer Science is as computer science always has been (though I am now using that time to learn Python. Great language. Easy to learn) and in English we are watching Apocalypse Now (based on the ever-dreaded Heart of Darkness) and then working on our world lit papers due at the end of the week.
Unfortuneately, I’m only half-done my WL One paper, so we’ll see how that works.