My Name´s Diego...

High School Drama #1: A trash-talker

It has been almost 10 months since I graduated High School (December 2015), and although I have been attending High School again, now that I am living in Japan for a year, being the shy exchange student that struggles with the language every single day, well… it’s a complete different experience. And I miss High School sometimes, after all, a lot of my greatest memories with my friends take place there. But, having this new experience, I also realize that there are thing that I don’t miss at all, and one of those things is the “drama” that sometimes took place there. Even when I attended an all-boys catholic school, sometimes the things that happened there could make “Mean Girls” look like a children`s cartoon (kind of… maybe I`m exaggerating). So I wanted to talk about that for this entry (and maybe some future ones); my experiences with drama at High School, and some reflections now that I have left High School.

Disclaimer: First of all, I want to apologize for the delay on this entry. Last week, I had to deal with some tests… and right now, I`m feeling pretty sick (flu… the weather is not precisely right now). I couldn’t come up with anything for Tumblr until 1 day before I was planning (1 entry per week promise) to post-it. I promise you I`m trying to get back on track after a couple of tough weeks.

Also… regarding this post, I wanted to write this as a little way to help some people that might be dealing with a similar case at school. This has no intend to be a step-by-step guide though, mainly because my approach to drama wasn’t precisely the best for each specific situation. Still, I think this is “a little grain of sand” for someone… and that is enough. High School was one of my favorite parts of my life (my, 17 year old life, at least), and if you can have a good time there too, that`s awesome ^^. As always, I hope you enjoy.

First, let me give you some sort of context.

Although I have always referred to my school as “High School” the truth is that, that concept is pretty much inexistent in Peru. My school building went from 1st, all the way 11th grade. There were some sort of divisions between the buildings to separate Elementary, Middle, and High School students, those were completely meaningless (the cafeteria was on the High School area, the Library on the Middle School, etc.). Anyways, that meant that when transitioning from Middle to High School for example, there was no actual “change”; you would still know everybody, and everybody would know you, ergo, there was no “fresh start”. You carried quite a reputation since Elementary School (which in my case… was pretty bad), and also you probably had a settled group of friends by then, so it was difficult to “make new friends” too. Those were some great ingredients for drama.

I arrived to my first year of High School with a small group of friends, which due to my shy personality was enough. I also had a group of classmates I played videogames with after school (we basically play 1 or 2 games before doing homework). It was in this group of guys, where I got my first taste of High School Drama…

It all started when, due to an old disagreement (I mean, something that happened in Middle School), one of the guys in the group (we`ll call him, Bubblegum, I can`t think of a single reason), developed some sort of “dislike” for me. I noticed that he was trying to make our games, as unpleasant as possible for me. He tried to trash-talk me as much as he could, and although it was a common occurrence between us, making fun of each other while playing… let`s just say he was taking to the next level (direct insults). I could tell he had some bad intentions, because it wasn’t the first time he had treated someone like that, but the other guys didn’t care much about it, so I guessed the best thing to do was to let it pass. And that was my first big mistake…

His insults were pretty normal at first, they were forced, but it didn’t bother me too much at first as I said, but with time, it started getting worse and worse. He was actually trying to hurt me as much as he could, and he was being successful at it. I told him to stop, obviously, but every time I did that, his response, was exactly what you would expect from these people:

“It`s just a joke, calm down”

“Stop being so dramatic, OMG”        

It came to the point when he was using racist slang against me while we played. I remember he downloaded a program that let him played songs on Skype, just to play a racist song anytime I did something. It is while writing this, that I realize how much of an s**t person he was.

At some moment I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. I still wanted to play with the other guys though, so my solution at the moment was muting my mic every time he logged in, to avoid any interaction (it may have been childish, I know…). Then, one time he didn’t notice I was online, I realized he was also doing, what we Peruvians call “rajar”, a.k.a. talking behind my back. He started to tell the worst stuff about me to my friends, mostly lies, or things I did in elementary school (which was a pretty tough era for me). That`s when the drama started… I had to deal with a shit-talker.

Bubblegum still tried to keep me around at school though. From the group of guys who we played with, only 2 of us were on the IB Program with him (and the other guy didn’t took different classes). I was doing pretty well in class during the first year of IB, while he wasn’t (he actually had trouble with many teachers). As a result, he kept asking me for “help” on his homework and assignments. Me… being the shy kid, who wanted to avoid fights with anybody, I “helped” him. This didn’t mean that he stopped being an idiot via Skype.

As you can see, both of us were kind of stupid (each for our own reasons). I was dealing with a 2-faced guy, the ones I think every single High School has. To this day, I`m not completely sure what made him act like that with me, but my best friend had a conversation with him (that… I think it`s better not to show), that implies that he might have been a little jealous for some reason. For example, although most of the other guys in the group wanted to play with him (he was way better than me), away from the screen, they chose to hang out with me, because I could keep a conversation that didn’t revolve around the videogame). So… he wanted to bring me down, and this is the case with most (if not all trash-talkers), because there is no other way they can reach you. But, obviously, they will only do so, either behind your back, or behind a computer screen.

I wish I could say that dealing with this guy was easy, because it could have been. But… me, being the shy guys who didn’t want to be mad with anybody, I tried to win his favor even when being aware of this whole incident of him talking to my friends “stuff” about me. Take this as an example of what “not to do”, when dealing with this type of people… because I could have avoided so many problems. Instead, I decided to “help” him with his homework, I played along with the racist insults in the game, and I always asked my friends what he was saying about me. You may get that I did some pretty stupid things before my last year of High School (if not, ask my best friend).

Also… the situation didn’t get any better, he was still treating me like cheat, mic on or muted, it didn’t matter. My decision was probably the worst possible, because never should I have ever tried to gain the favor of one of these people, it was never going to happen. Let me tell you, it is practically impossible to solve your differences with these people, because they want you to change (and not for good)… It took me a whole summer break to realize that.

My 2nd year of High School (at first, I wanted to divide this entry in 2 parts)

My school`s IB Program wasn’t exactly the best, as the teachers didn’t help us at all unless we came crying to them during one of their breaks. As a result, I took advantage of those 3 months to get as much work done as I could. Bubblegum on the other hand, didn’t know or care about how much work the program was requiring from him… Luckily, things started going my way, as soon as I started focusing more into school; my game sessions (if I had the chance to play) were much shorter, I made study groups, and also late night study moments. I tried to become a better students… and my personality sort of changed too… but that didn’t mean Bubblegum was happy about that. Trash-talkers don’t like that you are feeling good with yourself…

Getting more into school, also meant that I stopped trying to win himself as a friend (because he didn’t need me during the break, his insults became worse). He started getting mad at me, as you could expect, and it ended up with him breaking into a rant against me, because I refused to give him my whole E.E. so he could get “inspiration”… Yup…He snapped, and from that point on, things started going completely downhill for him. Apart from trying to bring me down in front of my friends, he started ignoring me at school. Just, plain “ice-rule”… *sigh*.

Because of the schoolwork and the IB program, most of “our” friends, started hanging with me a lot more, because I had better notes, I built a small study group, etc. He became “obsessed” with us, and that was pretty annoying, because an obsessed person is the last one you would like to have around you during the IB. Because I somehow got hang of one of Bubblegum`s secrets (this will come to play later, as it was some pretty dark stuff)… I tried to avoid him at all costs, because I knew if he got me mad enough (apart from ignoring, he also tried to make me uncomfortable), I was going to yell it as loud as I could…

I did not, luckily… Even though that might probably have ended some of my problems with him at the moment. I thought that the worst way of ending the drama he was trying to create with me, was by answering with more trash-talk. Also… it was good to know, that if I did that, I would have probably put a lot of my effort I was putting into studying, into bringing him down instead… Never do that, never… that guy wanted drama… and I avoided him because I didn’t want to lower myself to his level.

…

Anyways… I think this entry might be turning into something a little boring, so let`s fast forward a little bit. How did I dealt with Bubblegum instead? I… kind of didn’t, he ended up playing himself due to his obsession.

I told you there was this one guy that played videogames with us, that also took the IB Program. He had a scary resemblance to Regina George (2 “Mean Girls” references in 1 entry, I`m on fire). So one day we were on the computer lab, working on our Extended Essays, when his USB stopped working for some reason, so he asked me for help.

At that moment, Bubblegum came from 2 rows behind, offering himself, because “I didn’t know how to repair USBs” (I didn’t… but that was uncalled for). My friend gave him his USB, and told him that he needed it for the end of the week because he was going to work with a teacher, if I remember correctly. Obviously, he responded by telling him that he had no problem with that and while standing between both of us (kind… just kind of uncomfortable). And you know what happened at the end of the week? Bubblegum lost the USB… the one with his whole Essay… with less than a month left to the deadline.

THINGS. WENT. DOWN.

Long story short… my friend basically made Bubblegum the most miserable person on the IB Program, and in our game group. Nobody talked with him anymore… His secret went around in our group (not because of me, he also knew about it), and he became a total loner. I remember he had to sit next to us on lunch time just to make sure we weren’t talking about him (we didn’t… but it was kind of sad coming from him). Even worse, he tried to get back at me for that… so he locked himself in a classroom with my laptop so he could get my FB password and stuff… which ended pretty badly for him because all of my friends saw him doing that.

After that drama kind of ended for me…

I think (and this is totally my opinion, based on what happened), the best think you could possibly do when dealing with this type of people… is just, be yourself. That is what I realized that s**t-talkers hate the most. You do you… and everything will be fine… if those people keep hating on you, you are probably doing good, so don’t worry, the last thing they will do is actually confront you. And… quoting a Studyblr post that I read some time ago: “Drama doesn’t get you scores, books do”. Don`t waste your time in dealing with High School Drama, I wish I had been like that during the whole program…

I believe in you.

Well… this entry ended up being a little bit longer than I expected, and I`m not totally convinced on how it turned out. I`m kind of frustrated, but at least I managed to finish it, considering it was hard to write this without sounding either pretentious, or sounding like a victim. Again… I wrote this to hopefully help someone who deals with something similar… and maybe reflect on my own experience. It took me long to finish because of me editing every single word… So, yeah.

Thanks for reading, and I promise my next post will be a better, and on time…

See ya,

The Language Tag

So… apart from handwriting and lettering, one of the things I`m most obsessed about is learning new languages. I grew up in a family where both of my parents spoke 2 languages (Spanish and English), and I was put into a school that taught me English from a very young age, reason why I can say that I`m pretty fluent in that language by now. Also, my older sister shared that passion for languages too, actually, she was probably the one that got me into it… She started learning Italian while in High School, and years after managed to go live in Italy for 6 months, and came back as a trilingual So… it didn’t took long before I wanted to learn a language too.

Languages are really fun to be honest, and they open so many new opportunities too. It`s probably one of my main goals when I get to college, to keep practicing, and become proficient in more than 2 languages. And well… because I was recently looking down my dashboard, trying to find a post I saw long time ago for a tag, and instead found this set of questions about learning Languages, I decided to make this tag, to share with you some of the things I like about this topic, and hopefully inspire some of you to go and learn a new language yourselves. Let`s go!

Disclaimer: Even though this post is a Tag, and my style when answering these, is writing a simple answer, and then maybe a paragraph of “explanation”, in this case it may be a little different. Some of these questions don’t have much room for me to explain, and as a result this Tag might end up being short in comparison to the other ones. But anyways, I hope you like it as much as I did.

What is your first language? Spanish

OK, so for those who don’t know pretty much anything about me, I`m Peruvian, and I was born in the capital, Lima, so I speak Spanish as my first language. If you wanted to be more specific you could call it Latin-American Spanish, but the truth is that I hate that term, and the only differences we have with the “original” Spanish, is our accent, and maybe the lack or addition of a few words.. So yeah… been speaking Spanish for 17 years now.

Did you grew up bilingual? Yes

See? This is what happens when you don’t read the whole Tag before starting to write about it… I shall be more careful from now on. But yes, I grew up bilingual. My father was especially eager on the idea of me learning a second language as soon as possible (which now I appreciate). I also went to a bilingual school, and I have been studying English for 11 years and actually most of my last year English classes were basically IB ones, we focused on literature and “real-world” problems, not grammar. So by now, I think I have achieved fluency… and I can say I grew up bilingual, thanks to my parents and school.

Is there more than 1 official language in your country? Yes

Peru actually has 3 official languages: Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. The first one being brought by people from Spain, and the other 2, being languages native from this country. The thing is…. On the practice, pretty much all of the country (an extremely big percentage) speaks Spanish, and the amount of people who only (emphasis on “only”) speak either Quechua or Aymara is very small. In my whole life I haven’t met anyone who only spoke one of these 2 languages.

Because of that, most laws that are made to protect people with “original languages” get quickly turned down, which means that many other dialects that existed here, may already be dead. Many people only want us to have as an official language; Spanish. There are a ton of arguments around the topic, and I would be lying if I`d tell you I knew enough about it to make a sole entry with my opinion….

And, I think I went a little bit of topic. Yes, there is 2 more official languages here in Peru, and I would love to meet any native speaker of either one of those.

What other languages do you speak? Spanish… and very little French and Japanese

So I write my blog in English because it serves as practice, and I`m Peruvian so my native tongue is Spanish. But apart from that I think I can say, that I can communicate up to some point in French and Japanese too. Although I`m nowhere near fluency, and I would probably still need to use English from time to time to communicate in their respective countries.

Around the time my sister went to Italy, I wanted to learn a third language too. So I got into French classes, and I went every Saturday for almost 3 years, to the “Alliance Francaise” near my house, to study. But most people were there for making “cool” friends that also wanted to become trilingual (and I was no different), so I didn’t learn as much as I could. I can read in French without much trouble (I would need to look up some words in a dictionary though), but at the moment of speaking it…. Hmm…

And well, I have been living in Japan for around 5 months now, and before that I studied for 2 more months, every day. When living in a country with a totally new languages, and go to a school that doesn’t teach much English, you need to learn their language. That is why I have grown a little more confident at the moment of speaking with my friends and classmates here. I guess I could say I`m around N4 level (which is extremely low), but well, at least I can communicate better than when I came here, and my friends understand me, so that is nice.

Are you fluent in any language other than your first? English

I started learning English when I was about 5 – 6, and didn’t stop taking English classes until 1 year ago, when I graduated High School. My school was pretty good at teaching English to be honest, and by grade 8 we were completely finished with learning grammar, so after that it was just literature and practice for the IB Exams. By now, some native people that I have talked with, have told me that my English is good (every time I hear that, it’s a great boost for the rest of the day), so I could consider myself fluent.

If you want to go all the way into official exams…. Well, I`m taking the TOEFL as soon as I go back to Peru, as it is a requisite of most colleges I`m applying to.

When did you start learning new languages?

Well, as I said, I started learning English when I got into Elementary/Primary School, which was 11 years ago. With French, I started learning it when my sister went to Italy, and that was about 4 years ago I think, but I only studied French for 3 years, before I had to quit, because I wanted to focus completely on the IB Program (and also, I didn’t want to wake up at 8:00 am on Saturdays). Finally, I only started learning Japanese half a year ago.

Yeah… it was a pretty straight forward answer here, and I already explained why I started learning each language. So, I don’t think I have much to talk about for this question… Sorry L

Do you have a favorite language? French

Stylish, classy, and overall elegant, French has to be my favorite language. I might have some sort of bias towards Latin languages (native language being Spanish), and from them all, French is my favorite. It just sounds so… cool, and that is probably the reason I chose it as the 3rd language I wanted to learn at its moment. Also, the French accent when speaking other languages is also pretty nice (at least, compared to the Spanish one), and even though learning French won’t give me that accent, it is still one of my reasons for it being my favorite language.

I wish that as soon as I come back from Japan, I can go back to studying French again, even if it is from the basics, I really want to be proficient at it.

Which language do you want to learn next? Portuguese or Italian

So, if I get to achieve proficiency in both Japanese and French (which you could say are the languages that I`m in the process of learning), I would like to go to something a little bit easier after Japanese, like another Latin language. I have not decided which one yet, I think it is a little bit early to do so. So let`s just fantasize for a moment…

Italian at one side, my sister already knows how to speak it… so I guess it would be easier for me to learn it with her help. Also, Italy seems as a beautiful place to go (even though that is the main reason I learn every language). Portuguese may be a little bit more useful though (actually, I`m not really sure about the difference between the Portuguese of each country), but I don’t know… I`m still unsure, but I will have time to think.

I guess I`ll choose a language based on the next country I plan to visit… but at the moment it is completely unclear.

What is your favorite word in your mother tongue? “Pensamiento”

“Thought” in English, as you may have guessed. This was really difficult to answer, and probably if I really sat down to think about it, my answer might change, but overall, I find “thought” to be a pretty cool world in Spanish. Phonetically is pretty nice, and that might have been the main reason for this choice, but I guess that its meaning is also very deep…

Really, it is difficult to come up with these things. How often do you stop, lay on your bed, and start thinking in which is your favorite word in any language….

Either that or “gomita”, which literally means “gummy”.

What is your favorite word in any other language? Ethereal – English

My favorite language in terms of how it sounds is French, yes, but my favorite word (that I know) belongs to English, and is ethereal (get it? The word itself is ethereal… no? No…). In this case, not only I like the word because of how it sounds, but its meaning is pretty nice too.

“Very delicate light/not of this world”

I always felt some sort of curiosity for that theme (things that are not physical, I mean), so I guess this word fits me perfectly. The only problem is that I don’t find many cases in which I can use it (I must write an entry on paranormal activities). But I guess the uncommon factor makes it more special.

A short note to all your followers in your mother tongue: Spanish

Bueno… a pesar de que ya lo he dicho antes, creo que no me cansare de repetirlo: “Un agradecimiento enorme a todos mis seguidores, y a la gente que ha leído mi blog en algún momento”. Cuando empecé a escribir este blog, nunca pensé que tendría seguidores (veía  todos los blogs con 1000+ seguidores, y no entendía como lo habían logrado), sobre todo porque mis post son un poco… largos, pero ahora ya supere la pequeña marca de 10 seguidores, y aunque no sea tanto, en verdad me hace feliz. Tumblr es uno de mis proyectos personales que más me gustan… así que ha seguir escribiendo…. Ojala pueda seguir creciendo.

Por cierto… esto fue completamente improvisado, quizá se escuche un poco tonto… No soy muy bueno con esto.

A short note to all your followers in other language that isn’t your first: English

This is the translation of the previous note, for anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish.

Well, even though I have said it before, I don’t think I will ever get tired of saying: “Thank you so much to all of my followers, and anyone who read my blog at any given moment”. When I started writing this blog, I never thought I would have followers (I saw all these blogs with 1000+ followers, and I didn’t understand how did they manage to accomplish that), especially because my posts tend to be a little… long. But now, I managed to break the mark of 10 followers, and although it isn’t that much, it really makes me happy. Tumblr is one of my favorite personal projects… so I will keep writing, and I hope I can keep growing.

By the way, this was completely improvised, so it may sound a little dumb…. I`m not good at this.

(Some things may not be literally translated)

…

And that`s it, I did it. As I said, learning new languages is one of my main passions, so I really enjoyed making this post. When you really like something that much… words just flow (and also because a Tag, it might be a little easier)…

Lately I have had some ideas of opening a YouTube channel, but it is still in progress, and actually the language I`m going to be using is a decision I have not taken. But it is still just an idea, if something happens, don’t worry, I will make sure to update you…

Exam week is starting here, so I might have a little trouble with getting the next post in time… But I`ll try my hardest, I promise.

See ya,

Hello everybody!

As always, I hope that you are having an awesome day… In my case, I have had a couple of tough days this week (living in Japan is sometimes a little difficult, the language barrier is harsh…), but I guess I`m pulling through.

But anyways, I wanted to write this very little post, because I am excited to announce that finally, finally my “about me” page is up, along with a question/AMA box, as I promised!

Hurray.

It honestly took me a little more than I expected, I wanted my “about me”, not to look like an information table, but neither a barrage of long paragraphs. So, I think I will need to make some tweaks in the future (I don’t want it to be boring to read, so tell me if you want to have something added)., but for now, it`s already up!

Also, I made a question box because I love answering random questions, they are fun from time to time.

And that is about it…

I wanted to thank my followers so much <3, now that I know my posts are actually popping in someone`s dashboard, at least for a couple of seconds, I`m really motivated to write, and it is also much more fun! So big thanks to

@aph-superlock

@browncooky

@nashspebbles

@the-teacup-timelord

@studysheet

@topshopwhxre

@hannahbananastudies

You are so great!

With that said, I guess I will go back to writing a more “usual” blog so I can get something out by the end of this week or so.

See…

Oh, by the way, I also change my icon/profile picture, to a more recent photo of me, longer hair, glasses, a little bit dumber, etc. Yep…

See ya,

A Little Story 2: My High School Internal Competition

In my endless quest to achieve productivity and consistency regarding my content creation for Tumblr (I really hope that sentence makes sense), I decided to take one of the series I started on this blog, and sort of “revive it”, with a new entry. In this case, I chose my “A Little Story” series (as you may have guessed from the title), in which I take a random event from my life that I find mildly interesting, or that I just wanted to share with somebody, and transform it into a little story for all of you to enjoy.

As I`m only 17, and I only graduated High School on December of 2015, it is quite natural that most of my stories take place in said school, as I have lived a lot there. Don’t worry though, I also have some other ideas apart from school experiences. But for now, I wanted to tell you about my High School`s Internal Competition, during my Senior year.

Disclaimer: My “A Little Story” series, is something you might find a little bit boring (Especially if you are new to my blog). This post might have a lot of “backstory”, and exposition…? (I`m not really familiar with writing terms). The only purpose I have with this is to share a little piece of my life with you (so you can read it if you are bored). Also, it helps me develop my writing skills in English (which was one of the initial purposes of my blog), so yeah. I hope you like it. By the way, this is my first post that I wrote on my notebook first, so it might feel a little different.

I mentioned in my previous post of this series, that my school had an internal competition to promote sports and teamwork between all students, (or something like that). From the moment you entered Elementary School, you were assigned a color (the color of your team), which you kept during your whole school life. Every month or so (I think with time it became less frequent), we had this sort of “sports” day, where the 4 teams (red, green, yellow, and blue), “played” against each other for precious points. At the end of the year, the team with the most points across the whole school was declared as the winner for that year, and they received free candy and a soda (yay…?). That is, in a very general way, the tournament our school had every year.

Personally, I did not like this competition at all, and there where many reasons for it (not including that the red team, was considered one of the worst); there were a ton of rumors about it being rigged each year (so every team had a chance to raise the cup, you get me?), because there was no feedback to the students about the points (just one every 4 months or so). In each grade there was a team that was indisputably stronger than the others (and because they always won, it was not fun). Also, the tournament had this academic part that was completely pointless to be honest (no actual influence on the outcome of the tournament because of the few winners and few points given to them), etc. Basically, at one point during my school life, the “sports” day meant going to a random empty class, or the library with my friends, and play with our phones there until the day was over.

With that enthusiasm, I was actually quite surprised when I was chosen as the captain of the read team for my senior year at school (yeah, seniors were the captains). And as captain… I was supposed to give a motivational speech to my whole team (from first to eleventh grade), organize our activities and meetings, etc. I had to carry my team into victory (tons of quotation marks…), their first victory in 8 years actually, because we only won when I was on third grade. If we didn’t win, I would be blamed for our defeat (although school ended the next week). So, with that said, here is the story of how I was possibly the worst captain the red team could have had in a really long time…

My “reign” began 1 day before the actual inauguration of the tournament, when, along 3 other seniors from the red team, had to give the great speech to “start the season”. While a couple of my classmates were trying to control the smaller children (one actually got punched on the face), us 4 were discussing who was going to stand up in front of everyone for the speech. It went something like this.

Senior A: (steps in front of everyone) …yeah… I`m not doing this (steps down and everyone starts messing around again).

Senior B: (steps up) SHUT UP! …f**k… (Steps down) L. (my last name) you`re up.

Me: No, I`m not going

Senior A: Yeah Diego, they are going to listen now.

Me: I have the softest voice of us 4, they are not going to, Senior D, you go!

Senior D: No

Senior B: For f**ks sake, go!

Me: But my speech is going to be really bad though….

Senior B: Stop being so “gay” and go!!!

Me: I`m not… (sigh) (Steps up).

And yeah, my speech was as horrible as it could be, nobody clapped or cheered at all (not even the teachers that were there to support you). While most captains talk about how they are going to be the winners this year, because they are, and will always be the best team around, interact with the kids, etc. Mine… was a little different (or “real”, however you want to call it). I told the kids how I have been in the school for 11 years (longer than some of them have been alive), and I had only seen my team win, once. I said that I felt that our team was the worst in school by this point (with the exception of the time we won, we would always end up fourth or third at best), and that unless we changed something that year, we would end up losing (again…). The kids (especially the younger ones…), didn’t pay much attention, and were later motivated by a short speech by Senior B, so I guess I didn’t cause much harm (luckily…). Actually one teacher congratulated me because I finally said “the truth”.

The next day the inauguration parade took place… and it was pretty bad for us. There was a little controversy/drama revolving around me because I didn’t make  the “judgment” all captains do at the start of the competition (I remember there was something really offensive about it that I wasn’t comfortable accepting, so I just stood there while the other captains made their promise. It wasn’t serious enough to get me relegated as captain, but our parade received the least points from the judges, and I was “responsible” for it. I really didn’t care to be honest…

…

Just kidding, I did care, but I guess I couldn’t actually do anything about it.

So… the rest of the competition was quite uneventful (except for the part I already talked about in my previous “A Little Story” entry). As I said, I skipped most of the sports events so I could work on my IB projects at the time (got to get those sweet points, and I never got in trouble because it was the IB). In my grade, the green team always won all of the events (except for volleyball, but that year it was ditched because it was a “girls” sport). Even in swimming, we placed last, and by a landslide (most of the other swimming team members were on the green team). The only thing I remember us winning, was the tug-o-war event.

Anyways, I didn’t keep track of the other grades achievements (as I was supposed to…), because I thought they were doing as bad as us. With that said, lets skip to the last day of competition, shall we?

On the last day there are not many events for the senior, actually the only thing for us that day was the cross country (but I will get to that in a minute). In the morning there was this rumor going around of someone getting to see the scores, and they saw how the red and green teams where so ahead, so basically that day was about those 2.. I totally dismissed it (even the kids did), that rumor went around every year, and it was always false, so I didn’t get my hopes to high by the end of the day.

The cross country event didn’t turned out to be that great to be honest, we (well, the majority of the grade), got in trouble actually…

It was a tradition between senior year students to finish the cross country race together, leaving only one of us in front of everybody, so he could be the only winner. That kid used to be the slow-runner, or someone hat was chosen by everyone (although that didn’t mean they were “popular” or something), so it was a nice gesture… I guess… I wasn’t going to win anyways so I participated. Well, it all went to crap when this one guy (he was an idiot all year long, and pretty much nobody liked him (arrogant)), didn’t get the memo of the tradition, or just didn’t care about it. He took a big lead as soon as the race started (we didn’t care at the moment because we had to act “normal”, at the start of the race, so no teacher would notice), and basically kept that lead during the whole race, even though some guys tried to stop him,..

He was the only winner of the race, and after receiving his medal he just, disappeared for the rest of the day. As far as I know a group of guys beat him up for ruining the tradition… *sigh*

Disclaimer (again): So, quick little side note. I know that this doesn’t have pretty much anything to do with my experience as a captain to be honest, but I decided to include it because it was the only notorious thing that occurred during the last day of competition. Also, I did not support in anyway the group of guys that beat up the winner of the race. I did not agreed with the guy`s decision of ignoring the tradition (because he was aware of it…), but that doesn’t mean he deserved violence in response. Yeah, he was an arrogant and a pretty annoying guy all-yearlong… but violence… I really didn’t get it.

At the end of the day came the event everybody was waiting for (not really…). The whole school gathered in the main field, divided by colors/teams, each with their respective captains in front. Many kids were asking me and my classmates if we were going to win that year (remember the rumor…), to which my response every single time was: “maybe…?” Because at that point, even though I disliked the competition overall, I wanted to win (not to prove anything… just to leave school with a victory?). The final standings came along and they went like this.

·         4. Yellow: *BOOM* confetti and horns went around… I forgot to mention that along with us, yellow was considered overall the worst team, by far. My friends told they were prepared for losing that year, so at least they went off with a bang. Even the younger kids were celebrating placing last, everybody found it funny but the teachers. I`m pretty sure if they weren’t seniors with 1 week left, they would have gotten into trouble. But honestly, they expected them to be sad over candy?

·         3 Blue: Yep, I guess the rumor was true after all, to my surprise honestly. Blue was the team with the most cups (and still is, I haven’t checked out my school`s Facebook, to be sure), and they never placed below second. I got kind of excited at that moment… we might actually win that year…

·         2. Green

We did it. We won.

I didn’t knew how to react honestly… I guess after 8 years you forget what to do. Kids were jumping around, the teachers were congratulating them, and the principal was giving a speech nobody listened to. I just, put on a little smile, hugged my closest teammate (Senior D, in the story), and said “we won…”. Then all the red team seniors (and one of the green team that somehow got a red t-shirt) shared a celebration hug (aw….). We took a picture with the principal and another teacher (Which is this entry`s banner, just, blurred out… because…. Privacy? And also I look like a mess). And I went home with one of my friends and some candy in a bag.

So what is the moral of all this… nothing really (yay). We might have won the competition, yes, but I don’t think my “captain abilities” had any sort of impact on the outcome of the competition. But anyways, I guess I could say that sticking up to what you think is correct at the moment (my speech, and the judgment drama), can be what leads you to something positive at the end of things? Or maybe not (you are totally free to disagree with me, I`m not really sure of what I`m saying by now), but it can at least make a fun story for later.

:)

*sigh* (I`m so tired right now). Thanks for reading that! Again, I think these series might not be that “appealing” and it may have been uninteresting even. It`s OK, I promise I will get back to some more “regular” post soon. Now, I need to get to work on the couple of projects I have in mind ^^. This week is going to be a little slower for me because of a festival that is going on, on my school, but I guess everything is going to work out, I just need the right mindset.

I also need some free time to study Japanese, and maybe play some Pokemon on my 3DS (finally…)

See ya (next week)

Some Random Thoughts and Updates

Hello…

Right from the start, I wanted to say that I hope that you are having a great day (*have a hug from me*). Anyways, in my last post I mentioned that because of the great response my blog has received lately, I wanted to dedicate a little bit more of my free time to it, and Tumblr in general. I wanted (and still want), to make my blog to look as good as possible, and be appealing for everyone; changing some aesthetics here and there, creating an “about” page, a question box, etc. But sadly, if you have checked my blog lately, you may have noticed that pretty much nothing has changed in here, and I`m so sorry about that.

I am not precisely proud about my recent absence, and lack of content in my blog. Especially because I am aware that know there are people that follow me, and I don’t want to drift apart from them. I don’t want to be just this blog in their “following” list, that posts every year or so (exaggerating… or maybe not), I want to be more consistent, I have said it before. The last time I “took a rest” from Tumblr, I had this feeling of guilt because I felt that I was letting people down (although, at that time I didn’t had a single follower, just a couple of notes in my blogs). “Why I`m not creating content myself?” was the question that popped consistently in my mind..

Maybe I was overeating, and it would not be the first time I`m doing so. Either way, I wanted to write this little blog to apologize (and explain my lack of content), and also talk about some of the ideas I have for the future of this blog.

Disclaimer: So… these are still only some random thoughts I had recently, that I think maybe fitting to the overall theme and purpose of my blog (which is sharing a little bit of my life with all of you, and also learning from everybody here). You can expect some of these to become real in the near future (I promise I will start working on them as soon as possible), while some may take a little bit more time to be “implemented” in here.

If you have any ideas of what else could I do to make this blog better, feel free to tell me… I appreciate feedback a lot, and I will read all of it. So thank you, you are all great (*have another hug*).

First, let me tell you what happened since my last post/blog (I still have trouble figuring out how I should call them), and why I “disappeared” since then. Well, as I try to be consistent with my content creation, every time I finish posting something on my Tumblr, I start to write something else immediately, no matter how random or dumb the theme may be. It is only after I get a couple of paragraphs done, when I decide to keep writing, leave it for later, or scrap the project all-together. I actually have a lot of documents sitting there in my computer waiting to be finished one day (one day…). However, after my last post things were a little different.

I was sick… and despite it not being nothing serious (just the normal flu we always get from time to time), it was enough to keep me away from my laptop. I only checked Tumblr through my phone from time to time… but despite it being a great source of inspiration (probably my biggest source currently), I couldn’t get myself out of bed and onto my bureau to get something done. In retrospective, I`m so sad that I didn’t, because now I`m back into classes and I probably won´t have enough time to get all the things I want, done. I`m sorry, is what I want to say, even though my first post was already half a year ago, I only have posted 9 blogs since then, and as always: I still have a lot to learn.

Enough sad/deep stuff.

Even though I was in bed trying to recover myself so I could enjoy the last days of vacation I still had, I did have the change to stumble upon many new blogs that inspired me to change some things about mine. Here are some of my favorite ideas, and things that I want to make with my blog during the following days/weeks.

My “about” page: This is on top of my priorities right now, as I have seen how almost every single blog has one, and also the impact it can have on someone that is visiting your blog for the first time. I`m still not completely sure what I want to say here, because there are a lot of things I´m still a little confused about regarding my blog, and even myself up to some point. I`m reading as many articles and tips on how to make a good about page for your blog, and I`m taking into account a lot of things. Trust me, as soon as this post is up, I`ll start working on this.

A question box: I`ve also seen a lot of popular blogs (mostly Studyblr) that include one of these on the top of their blogs. People ask them questions about their opinions, or sometimes help regarding a situation going up with their life. I would also like to have the same type of interaction with my readers, it would be fun. I`m always willing to answer random questions (like, giving out my opinions and stuff). The only “problem” would be that I`m still extremely small of a blog, so I don`t think that “feature” would get used… so I guess it is more an idea for the future after all.

Change my “theme”: One thing I have noticed my favorite Tumblr blogs having in common, is their own original theme. Their entries, fonts, etc. are arranged in certain ways that make everything look extremely neat. Honestly, it makes me kind of jealous… I`m still using the default Tumblr theme, the only thing I have changed is the font of the “title”, and some colors (it took me a couple of days to figure out how to change my profile picture). I want to have my own style too… however I don’t really know how all of that works yet, so it may take me a little bit of time to get it done.

Hmm… While writing this, I have noticed that I didn’t have many concrete ideas after all (maybe I was a little sicker than I thought). Those 3 were basically the only things that I consider to be on my priority list for Tumblr…

So, yeah, because I don’t want to stop this post here, and also because I want to have a little bit of fun and “conversation” with you… There are 2 more random things I would like to tell you, I have been doing recently in my attempts to make this blog as enjoyable as possible, so here they are:

First, I wanted to work a little bit more on the amount of entries I write (10 in half a year isn’t really something I`m proud of), and content creation in general (not necessarily for Tumblr). I know that if I actually got in front of my laptop, and forced myself to actually work, I could probably finish a project in the span of a weekend (considering I don’t have any homework…). As a result of that realization, is that now I`m challenging myself to get a new post done once per week, without losing what I consider to be my “essence”, or making really unpolished posts that I regret afterwards. I`m aware of how ambitious this might be, especially to me, but I will try to make it (*cue epic music*).

Second, but really related to the previous point I made… I now have what I would like to call; a “Tumblr notebook”. Basically, now that I`m back to classes (I forgot to mention that before), I have less free time, which means I can`t use my laptop as often (probably just 1 hour every couple of days). So, I went to a Home Center, where they sell stationary too, and bought the cheapest notebook I could find (because after a visit to the Pokestore here in Japan, I “lost” all of my money), and now, during my free time at school I can write some ideas for the blog. It`s working out pretty well for now… I might show a picture of it later, although my handwriting isn’t the best when writing in it, and it isn’t very neat either… But hey! It works.

Maybe one day… I`ll be as productive as I want.

Anyways, thanks for reading this random entry I decided to start a couple days ago (it actually took me a little more to complete than expected). Once again, I wanted to apologize for my recent absence on Tumblr. But even though I wasn’t writing anything, that didn’t meant that I wasn’t reading your posts every single day, trust me, you`re such great inspirations.

Now I think I`m off to start working in some of the projects I mentioned before (and this time… it is for real). So, I`ll come back with an actual post in a week (or maybe even less, we will see…). But until then…

See ya,

The Studyblr Ask #1

At the moment of writing this I`m extremely surprised… A few days ago I wrote a little essay-styled blog where I talked about the Studyblr world in general, and how excited I am for joining this community one day. I am so used to my post getting 1 or 2 notes at maximum from random people (at least that means that somebody somewhere is reading them). But my last post surpassed the 10 note mark (still pretty low, but it`s a little accomplishment), and I even got replies from some of my favorite Studyblr out there. I`m so happy, I still can`t believe it, trust me. So, for the sake of it, I decided to write a 2nd post on this topic.

At first, this seemed as a substantially more difficult task than it was writing my previous post. I have not started a Studyblr yet… and I`m not precisely the perfect student (I scored a 33 on my IB for example), so again, there is not much I can bring to the table at the moment (maybe kanji memorizing techniques…?). So, instead, I found this list of questions that you could ask to any Studyblr, in a similar fashion to a tag, and decided to answer it. Why? Really enjoy doing tags from time to time… and although I`m not a Studyblr (yet), I am a student, and a learner every day of my life. So, let’s go.

Disclaimer: Some of these answers are very influenced by my personal opinion and experience. That doesn’t mean that because I prefer something, it is instantly the best choice for you too… I`m not the perfect student (again), but here are some things that have helped me throughout my school life.

Planner or Bullet Journal: Bullet Journal

Right from the start we can see how much of these will be going to be influenced by personal experience (and now that I think about it, it is kind of obvious).

I`m way more comfortable using Bullet Journals than planners. This might be in some way or another, thanks to the rules my school had. At the start of each year, they gave us these little planners where we were supposed to write all of our homework, and your parents were supposed to sign said planner every single day. Also, if you misbehaved, the teacher would write a note to your parents in the planner, which they were supposed to sign too. It was such a horrible system that during my last years (during IB), the school stopped caring about it.

I think those memories are the reason now I`m really bad when working with planners, so I stick with bullet journals instead. Although I`m still aware of how much more efficient I could be if I learned how to use a planner properly, and as soon as I get to college, I`ll probably go back to planners again.

Random story, in the last year of High School, I stole one of my friend`s planners, and didn’t give it back to him until the end of the year. Basically because I completely forgot about it the next day. I think his parents weren’t too happy about him missing his planner on the first days of school.

Do you rewrite your notes? Yes

Although I have not much experience doing so, as I only started doing this on my Japanese lessons before I came to this country. I found out that it was much better not caring too much about presentation in the class, and then taking care of that once I got home. Also, it is a great way of memorizing stuff (I heard this somewhere else, and I`m not sure of the reasons why though). So during class I usually write everything using a mechanical pencil, without putting too much care in presentation. And then, when I get home, I take out the good stationary (which we all love), and redo most of my notes the way I like.

The funny thing is, this would have probably been a big problem in High School. Most of my teachers were pretty serious with how much you worked in class, so I don’t think they would have been too happy with the idea of not paying attention to how my notes looked in class. Anyways, that is in the past, so once I get into college (or after this exchange, in other words), I`ll keep up with this technique. I actually recommend it to everyone who wants to have better notes; rewrite them after class.

What is your favorite class? During High School, History

In my last 2 years of High School, I was always excited for History Class (except when we had an exam). It was one of those classes where I never got bored, and also the class where I had my schoolwork organized the most. Occasionally we were also allowed to use laptops (only during senior year) to take notes, so that was pretty cool. Although some classmates (and me, from time to time) used theirs to play, because our senior year teacher wasn’t really “strict”. Either was the reason, it was one of those classes I looked forward every day.

The only thing that I could remark about said class, could be our second year teacher. For some reason our first year one left, and my school was forced to find a substitute for the following years. The thing was, as I said, this substitute wasn’t really strict, and had constant problems when facing some students. I kind of felt bad for him sometimes, but our previous teacher was clearly better. I think that was the reason I only managed to score a 5 on History (my internal assignment was a complete mess), but oh well… at least it was a fun class.

What is your least favorite class? P.E.

Get this, before I got into the IB program, I enjoyed P.E. quite a bit, it was a nice distraction from the regular stress that other classes meant. Sadly during my last years of school, for some reason, P.E. class became nothing but doing athletics every single time. Although running can be fun from time to time, I really missed doing sports like soccer or handball, etc. That was my favorite part of the class after all. So when they took it off, just at the same time I was entering the IB program, P.E. became hell for me.

Not only I`m a pretty slow runner (my school was all about sprints), but overall I didn’t have a good relationship with most of the teachers. The reason for that was because P.E. was taught by the different sport teams` coaches, with the exception of the swimming team. They all had their favorites (the ones who played on their respective teams), and I found that quite annoying to be honest.

Finally, during my the last months of IB, before the exams, everyone was extremely busy finishing their Internal Assignments, and just studying in general. So, every single time I went to P.E. class I thought how I could be doing something better at that moment. I eventually stopped going to class by making appointments with different teachers at P.E. hours (that almost got me in trouble once…). However, by being on the swimming team I was able to keep getting good grades at that class. Not that getting a high score in P.E. is an accomplishment or something (especially in my school).

Do you always do your homework on time? Yes…

Well, kind of, at least during High School and IB years I did, I already talked about how I was doing at school before that (my Introspective #1 post). My school wasn’t that horrible in terms of workload, and aside from a few big assignments every couple of week, I was able to dedicate 1 or 2 hours every day to homework, and be able to complete everything. In the case I had to work in something bigger, from time to time I paired up with some friends to do it together. So it was easy for me to be on time for every homework.

The big exception for this could be Math during my last year. As you may guess, Math homework is basically just doing some random exercises (that often came from previous IB tests) on your notebook. For some reason that I don’t remember, I wasn’t able to finish all exercises 90% of the time, so I did at school with the help of my friends. The teacher didn’t like that by the way, he thought we were copying each other (and that is wrong kids)…

So… I`m 5 questions into this and I have already written quite a lot. Even though I have a couple of those that are way longer than this one, I think it is a good idea to leave it here for a while. I don`t want to shelve this blog, because apart from a tag, it is a way of thanking all the people that followed me after my last post. So thanks to my new 5 followers (that is an achievement, right?). And especially thanks to:

·         @hannahbananastudies

·         @pens-n-things

For re-blogging me and actually taking time to answer to my previous post. You 2 are the best. Have a happy face from me :)

Also, before going, I`m planning on dedicating a little bit more of my free time to Tumblr, now that there are people that actually follow me, I don’t want to lose them. So expect to see a couple of improvements to my blog (especially on my about). Maybe creating an “Ask me”, but I think there is too little people for that yet.

See ya,

My Thoughts on Opening a Study-Tumblr

I have said it many times before, and if you read my first post ever on this blog you may be aware of the fact that I am completely obsessed with handwriting. As a result, one of the things I enjoy doing most is taking notes. And… as a result of that too, I really enjoy learning and studying in general

I don’t spend that much time on Tumblr to be honest. Frequently, I have big periods of time where I forget completely about my blog existing, and that I should write something for it. The only people I follow on Tumblr are study-based blogs, or “Studyblr” as they are more popularly known. Mainly because as I said, I like studying in general, and these blogs are very interesting and inspirational. Also, most of them give really good tips for studying, having neat notes, etc. I don`t know why… but it has some sort of ASMR effect on me (by the way… I`m not a great fan of ASMR, probably because it gives me a lot of chills), the fact that their handwriting is so perfect, and how dedicated they are, it just… kind of inspires you to get better yourself when studying.

Because of this, I have had a couple of moments where I have thought about opening a Studyblr myself… But there are some things I`m not completely convinced about. And that is why I wanted to write a blog about my personal thoughts on this project.

Disclaimer: Um… yeah, just, don’t expect me to open a Study Tumblr soon. I promise that I will open one, but  there are a lot of things going on right now, so I don’t think I`ll be able to do so in the near future. This disclaimer is more of a TL; DR, so… if you want to continue reading about the specific reasons why, and other random stuff. Go ahead, I hope you like it.

So, the first time I got into contact with the concept of “Studyblr”, was some months ago (before I ever had created myself a Tumblr at all). I remember checking the “IB Life” hashtag on Twitter, to see how other students from around the world were doing with their assignments and that kind of stuff (it really makes you feel better looking at other people working as hard as you). I remember seeing this picture of a girl taking really neat notes on her flashcards, and saying she was inspired by a popular Studyblr, and how helpful where her tips (I`ll shout-out to everyone at the end of this post, I prefer not mentioning actual names yet). From there, I actually checked a lot of similar images related to this blog on Tumblr.

At the time Tumblr seemed as this mysterious place with a really weird looking interface were I didn’t thought I would fit (I still have some problems, to be honest). So I just checked some photos from there that people uploaded to Twitter, and basically cried because of how jealous I was from these people skills. Really, I was amazed by their neat handwriting, and how good their stationary was, etc. it kind of makes you doubt about your own abilities (just a little). Anyways, at the time, I really wasn’t interested on uploading my notes to Twitter (I found it kind of uninteresting to be honest, and there is not much you can explain in 140 characters…), so I just kept those pictures as a source of inspiration, I didn’t want to “copy” them… I guess?

It all changed when I High School was finally over. By that time, it was already confirmed that I was going to live in Japan for a whole year, so I wanted to make the 3 months I had left in Peru, worth it. The thing was that my circle of friendships was kind of small, and most of them were already focusing on University stuff, so it was impossible to do something with them each day… I wanted to have a personal project

That was how my Tumblr was born…

When I finally got a Tumblr, I started to look up all these people whose names I have saw before on my Twitter. I was so happy when I saw like this whole community of people who enjoyed keeping track of their studies and homework, and posting it on Tumblr for other people to see. I couldn’t believe I was missing this whole world during my whole High School life (how much better it could have been). It didn’t took long before I started following a good amount of people which I thought, were great inspiration for my Japanese studies.

Eventually I wanted form part of this community too, maybe open a Studyblr myself. But there were a lot of things that went through my head, which made me reconsider that… maybe having this second project, apart from my normal, random-stuff based blog, would not be the best idea at this moment. It took me a while to come up with a decision about this… and it was important for me, so I decided to talk about it here. I came up with this:

Right now I don`t think I`m in a comfortable enough position to open a Study Tumblr… also, I still have a lot to learn.

As I mentioned before, at the moment of writing this blog, I`m living in Japan as an exchange student. Although it is probably one of the best experiences of my whole life, it is a great challenge too, mainly because I came here with almost no knowledge of Japanese, and completely unaware of the culture shock I would be facing. I`m not particularly a bad student (probably just one of the bunch), as I have seen most of the stuff they are teaching here, at my school in Peru. But along with the regular schoolwork I have to put up with, I also spend a lot of my time studying Japanese on my own so I can actually communicate with my friends and teachers properly. This might seem as a situation with a lot of potential to open a Study Tumblr… but the truth is… it kind of isn’t.

Due to the high amount of work (most people that are in college may actually laugh at this) I have, and how little actual time I have to do so… I would be lying if I said that I put 100% of my effort into each single page that I write. That is why most of my school work, is just a great mess of unreadable kanjis, and some graphics that I don’t even understand once the class is over. I`m not particularly proud of it, and it is by no means something I would like to put online for everybody to see as “my work”. Obviously, I try every day to be a little bit more clean and neat on my work… but it is a slow progress due to how complicated kanjis can be.

That leaves me only with my Japanese personal notebook as the only source of content in the case I open a Studyblr. The picture on this blog might actually be on top of it so you can see how my notes look when I actually understand what I’m doing. I think… that if every piece of work I did at school, looked exactly as my personal notes, it would be a little easier to open a new blog, I would have so many things to show. Sadly… I`m only able to work on my Japanese on my free time, so I haven`t got much done on paper since I arrived (many of my conversational skills didn’t require me to actually study). But, as soon as I get more things done, I could make a post on my notes in general, but I don`t think it is enough for opening a Studyblr yet.

Finally… and the most important reason I`m not going to open a Studyblr in the near future, is because I have so much to learn before I do so. I have seen what some people here are able to do with their notes, and how many factors they take into account at the moment of studying. Those things, I completely overlooked when I was in High School in Peru (I wish I didn’t), and still do know. There are so many things that make me believe I have nothing on them apart from my handwriting. I think I could still develop some skills on my own, so I can contribute with my own things, when I finally create my own Studyblr and join its community.

I might be wrong in a lot of things here… and you may think I`m a little stupid for not opening a new blog, because at the end, a Study Tumblr is for learning together. That is true, but at the same time, there are some things I want to get ready on my own before doing so. I promise that as soon as I get a little bit more free time, and get better at some aspects of my study techniques, I will open a Studyblr. I still have many things in front of me, and although I enjoy challenges, I want to pursue this new project, when I know I can dedicate enough time to it to be proud of.

I am so excited to form part of such beautiful community… when the time says so.

So… to finish this little “essay” I tried to make… I want to give a little shout-out to all the people who inspired me to get better at studying, and also my main sources of inspiration once I open a Studyblr myself.

Anyways, thanks to:

@hannahbananastudies

@briellestudies

@pens-n-things

@haleystudies

@nehrdist

All this people are awesome… and if you are reading this and feel like you need some inspiration to get work done, I totally recommend checking out these people`s Tumblr. Even though right now it`s a little difficult for me to follow all their tips, I`m definitely trying, and I hope someday I can be as good as them at… well… studying.

See ya,

The Have you ever Challenge / Tag

I think that by this point I’m kind of running out of ideas for my blog. Every time I finish a new post (that, to be honest isn’t that often either), I try to search in any place I can for new ideas for a blog post. From time to time, I find some post or concept that I like, and try to adapt it so it fits me and my writing style. But with challenges… well, that is not the case, at all. If I try to adapt a challenge it is very possible that I`ll end up messing it up, or that the challenge itself loses its essence. That`s why when I find a challenge or tag for Tumblr, I try to complete without changing any question, even when there are some that are a little bit more difficult to answer than others. That is what basically happened with this Tag. So even though, some parts of this tag may seem a little dull to you… I guess it is still something worth putting on my blog.

Disclaimer: Just paraphrasing what I have said before. There might be some parts of this Tag that don`t feel as natural as others. That is mostly because I might not be completely comfortable answering the question itself, or I just can`t find a way to do so... From the start, this blog has been to develop my writing skills… so I guess this is part of the progress.

So let`s start… Have I ever:

Failed a Test: Yes.

I mean… who hasn’t failed a test even once in his life, right? Although I consider myself a pretty good student, I would be lying if I said that I haven’t ever failed a test. Even in my last years of school, during the preparation for the International Baccalaureate exams, it didn’t matter how confident I was before the exam, I didn’t pass 100% of the time. Nobody on my class did, because we`re not perfect I guess… I would be quite surprised (and a little sceptic) if someone told me that they hadn’t failed a test ever in their life.

But even when I have failed a good couple of tests during High School, I wasn’t the type of guy who fails with 0. If that ever happened was probably because I literally had no idea what was going on, on the test, or because I didn’t study at all (because I didn’t know there was going to be a test or whatever…). When I failed, it was usually with scores just below the passing mark. Mostly because I always remembered at least a basic thing about the exam itself… or well, because I was fairly decent at SB my way through exams (in History and Language classes).

So yeah… I have failed a test, obviously… but I`m not very fond of it (it feels pretty bad, you know?).

Ate or drank something weird: No…?        

I`m not really sure what to answer here… I`m very picky when it comes to food, so I don’t even eat pretty common stuff on a daily basis. Because of that it is a little difficult to think of a single moment in my life were I had the possibility to eat something weird (like, having something weird served at me at a restaurant), and even more difficult to remember a time where I actually ate it.

The only moment that comes to mind actually was when my school went on a study trip to the Peruvian jungle, and when we visited a small town, there was this guy who was offering us to it insects (I don’t remember what kind, just, they were insects). But I was not in the mood to take the challenge (actually, few of my classmates did). So… I`m going with no on this question. I don’t think I`ll do so in a long happy (I`m scared of the consequences…).

Did something unusual/bad to my best friend: Yes…

You see… this are the type of questions that I`m not completely comfortable answering. Probably because my best friend actually reads this blog (or at least, I tell him to do so from time to time…). So… I`m literally sitting here on my chair, staring blank into my screen thinking about the last time we fought or something like that.

I`m actually going to write this on 2nd person: “Do you remember that time we fought on history class…?”

That was probably the last time we did something “bad” to each other and it was like freaking 4 or 5 years ago. So we were kind of children at the time still. If I remember correctly we were discussing about some dumb thing (I can`t think of anything important enough that we could be discussing about at that time). I think he threw something at me, I threw his things to the floor… and we got kicked out of class.

We didn’t get in trouble or anything, and we were actually cool with each other even before the teacher came out of the classroom to scold us. But yeah… I guess that is the last time I did something “bad” to my best friend (or at least bad enough to count for this blog).

Got into trouble: Yes

This happened when I was in 6th grade. During that time I had a very bad temper and as a result… I really didn’t have that many friends. Also, I constantly had fights with teachers, and occasionally, with classmates too. So, after a PE class, I got in a fight with another guy (well, we didn’t even hit each other to be honest…), and obviously the teacher wanted us to apologize to each other… The other guy was perfectly OK with it, the thing was… I was not.

Literally the last 15 minutes of the day (PE class was the last class of the day), the teacher kept telling me to go and apologize, while I continuously refused (what a lovely child I was). So after the day was over, the teacher told me that I was in trouble, they called my parents, and I was suspended from the school during the rest of the week (2 days).

Actually being suspended wasn’t that bad at all, I was supposed to do homework (that I never handed in…), but that took about 30 minutes. I spent the rest of the day playing videogames and watching TV. And as far as I know most kids that got suspended during school did just that (how efficient was my school at punishing students).

First things I bought with my savings: iPod / Wii Game / 3DS Game

This question is quite different from the others, and at first I wasn’t too sure about including it on the actual challenge. Also, I don’t really remember the first 3 things I actually bought with my savings (probably candy when I was very young). So I just the first 3 things I recalled buying with my savings. So just let`s go through them really quick:

1.        IPod: I don’t remember during what school year this happened. But I remember that my parents told me they would give me S/. 5 (which is about 1.50 dollars), every week, and an extra bonus for every good grade I got (and also another bonus if it was an exam or something like that). So, during the whole year I was saving up money (that they never actually physically gave me), that at the end of the year I spent on an iPod Touch as a Christmas gift for myself. I was pretty proud at the moment (although probably my parents still helped me with some extra cash so I could buy the iPod).

2.        Wii Game: So, many years ago my sister went to the United States and got us a Nintendo Wii. As she spent pretty much all her savings on the trip and console itself, I was supposed to buy all the games for it. I was pretty small at the time, so buying a Nintendo Wii game looked like a great challenge at the moment. So it took me a couple of months of saving and self-control to be able to buy a Wii Game for my birthday (or it was my sister`s… I don’t really remember).

3.        3DS Game: This is probably the most recent thing that I bought only using my savings (I`m still 17, and in my country you are not allowed to work until 18, so most of the things I buy have in some way or another, my parents money in it), was Animal Crossing New Leaf, for my Nintendo 3DS. And yeah… Actually it has been a long time since I played for the last time (my poor city).

Drink Alcohol: Yes

Also, these are the questions that may change the perception you have from me… Yeah I`ve tried alcohol… and I`m not exactly a fan of it. Where I live it is pretty common for “kids” to drink before the age of 18, but myself, I was not the guy that drank every single weekend (mainly because I went nowhere on weekends). The only occasions on which you could see me drinking where on the “prom” reunions we had every couple of months.

Even then, I didn’t drink that much on those meetings, probably a glass or 2. This is because I don’t really enjoy the flavor of alcohol (and when your friends don’t know how to mix drinks, well… you can guess what happens). So, I have never gotten drunk, and I don’t have any plans to do so on the near future…

And just as a side note, my parents were completely aware of me trying alcohol from time to time. They were really open minded about it, they didn’t encourage it by any means, but they sure told me what to and what not to do.

Heavy Drinking: No

I didn’t saw this question when answering the previous, so I think I have already answered this. No, I have not ever heavy drank in my life, and again, I don’t plan on doing so anytime soon. I don’t like the taste of alcohol enough to get drunk… And the only downside I see to never heavy drinking in my life, is that I don’t know how much actual tolerance I have to alcohol (which might be a problem… I guess).

So yeah… I have nothing more to say, I have not ever heavy “drank” (I`m not exactly sure about this conjugation guys…).

Kiss: HA… no.

No I have not kissed anybody at the moment of writing this blog. My school was an all-male catholic school… So, I was pretty brain-washed about what “love” meant, as well as demonstrations of love. I remember that they told us once: “If you wouldn’t want someone doing this to your future wife, don’t do it yourself”. Obviously most guys at the school by that point complete ignored this (and so did I… but, I didn’t have somebody to break that rule with…).

Also, I didn’t exactly get along with the girls from our sister school. Most of them were… pretty annoying actually. And although I also had friends in my swimming club, during that time I really didn’t care about that stuff. So, I have never had the chance to kiss somebody. It isn’t because I don’t want to… but I guess, the time will come (not by itself, but it will come eventually).

Had a crush: Yes

I think everybody at my age has already had at least 1 crush during his/her life. I`m… not an exception to this… I might or might not fall in love quite easily. Don’t get me wrong, I`m not the type of guy, that every time someone is nice to me, I fall in love with them. But from time to time I`ve had a crush on somebody… Who? Well, that is something that I prefer to keep to myself.

See… this is why it is a little difficult to do this kind of challenges. So, before I quit and shelve this blog (as I have done many times before), let’s go to the last question.

Had a Boyfriend/Girlfriend: No

I already have told you how much my school actually tried to brain-wash us with all the relationship stuff when we were just getting into High School. And before that… I wasn’t really interested in relationships at all (during that time swimming and school were the only things that mattered, I really didn’t thought about having an SO, at the time). Also… I`m extremely shy (I won`t run if you approach me, but it is quite hard for me to keep up a conversation with someone that I`ve just met), so approaching someone that I like can be a little hard for me.

But it is not like I`m dying to be in a relationship, I`m actually pretty comfortable being single at the moment. And because I`m studying abroad at the moment, I think it could be quite hard to keep a long-distance relationship (especially because I`m completely unexperienced in that type of stuff). So yeah… I guess the answer would be no.

And… that is about it. This is also probably the most personal blog that I`ve made up to this date (yeah, the Introspective I made was a little personal too, but it wasn’t hard to write at all). But I think doing this type of stuff actually helps you taking some things off your chest, while also helping you get better and writing. So I feel quite accomplished with this one (…so happy).

See ya,

Introspective 1: The time I was really upset

Occasionally, I have tried to find inspiration in deep questions people ask on the Internet. I know that my blog by this point is extremely casual in many ways, and I don’t think I´ve had a single deep post before. This time it might not be different… but here is the thing. While looking for new tags to make for the blog, I stumbled into a list of questions that everyone should make to themselves. It was a part of an introspective challenge, and although I don’t really like to talk about deep things about myself (mostly because I don’t think anybody cares about that), I think in this case it´s different.

Remember that time you were extremely upset 5+ years ago? Does it even matter know?

For some reason, I had the feeling that I should answer that question. From time to time, thinking about these things really help you think how much you have changed and grown as a person, and that things that you think are so important at the moment, will not matter in the short or long future. Whoa… I don’t know what I´m talking about actually, I think I just wanted to sound deep for a moment (hehe…). But jokes aside, I really wanted to answer this question, and you´ll probably (just probably) know why at the end. So let’s do this.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer this time. This post might be a little serious compared to the rest you can see on this blog.

I´ve said before that I swam competitively for quite a long time. My parents put me on swimming classes when I was in first or second grade because I didn’t know how to swim (which was a little sad…), and after being in that club for quite a while, I started to train with the kids team, and eventually (because this took many years, and I don’t think I need to explain my process of climbing), I made the club team. That meant, that after school, I had to go training at the club for 3 hours each day.

So basically, my everyday life consisted on getting to my house after school (which was around 4 PM), training from 5 until 8 (1 hour was for training at the gym, the next 2, or 1 and a half, were for actual swimming). I had to get to the club early (because I like getting to places early, and I still do). So there wasn’t much that I could do at home before I had to go train. And in a similar fashion… because I reached my home at around 8:30 or so… and I was extremely tired because of the exercise, it pretty much meant only taking a shower, eating, and then going to sleep. No time for games, homework, etc.

Get this, since I started school, I always aimed to be a straight “A” student (or well straight “20”, because that is how we mark in Peru), and during my first years I had no trouble doing so (well, it was elementary school anyways…). But when I started competing seriously, I also started to slowly stop caring about my grades, which went down pretty quick through the years. During primary education, you don´t get anything for being the best, but a diploma, so I guess it wasn’t really important to be the best in class. But there is a great difference between being decent (not good, but not mediocre either), and being a complete mess at school.

I wasn’t presenting any homework, I was not paying attention in class… and because of my attitude, I didn’t have many friends (and some teacher didn’t like me either). The only thing I had going for me was swimming, and I wanted to become the best at it. Sadly enough, I wasn’t the best at it, not even close to that… and every time I didn’t win a medal, or made a good time at training, I became extremely frustrated. I eventually started developing a rebellious attitude both in school and at my swimming club. It was in the latter where I also started having problems with my friends and trainer (BTW… this was way after my best competition that I mentioned on my previous post…). I began to hate swimming, as well as school, but I was encouraged to keep going every single day to the club for training.

I started trying many techniques so I could free myself from that… First, I stopped going on Saturdays to training, well, because it was Saturday, and I didn’t like waking up early on a weekend to do something I didn’t like. My trainer scolded me for that, obviously. Then I started to fake feeling bad on trainings every couple of days so I could leave early. By that time the good relationship I used to have with my trainer was completely destroyed, as he hated my attitude (and so do present me). I remember him kicking me out of training a couple of times (which in retrospective, I totally deserved). Finally, everything went down the drain when on a Friday, I think he heard me telling my teammates how I was faking feeling bad to leave training sessions. On Saturday, he yelled at me for thinking that I could have fooled him, that I took swimming as a joke (by that point, I totally did).

Neither my relationship with my friends or him was the same afterwards. Some of my teammates started to ignore me completely, and the trainer treated me like shit (yeah… I deserved that I guess). I remember my 2 lowest points being one Saturday getting in a fight with my trainer, and when my mom took me back to the club to apologize, I told her in front of him, “I have nothing to apologize for”. And the 2nd one when I asked him what are we going to do today (like, what was our swimming “routine”), and he told me that he wasn’t going to answer me because he was “done with my questions” (I guess he said “questions”).

After that, training just became a chore that I hated to do day after day, until the end of 6th grade came by, which meant getting into secondary (that was huge for everyone at the time). By that time I was already one of the worst students in the grade (teachers knew that I was intelligent, and I didn’t do that bad in tests, but I didn’t present a single homework for a long time). Because of that, with just half a semester left, I was absolutely failing English (which eventually became my best subject), and was doing pretty bad at Spanish (yeah… I didn’t knew how to speak… get it? Ok no…). It was when I saw my report card with 2 “C” and 1 “B” on English (my school qualified us on a scale of C up to A+ or AD during primary), when I was absolutely done. I was DONE with swimming. I went home holding back the tears, I called my mom, and told her that I wouldn’t ever go training again. She was pretty sure that I was making a big deal out of it, until she got home. That was when I was upset, it happened 6 years ago, and I still remember it as one of my worst moments ever.

I went one last time swimming (and I fought with my trainer, funnily enough), left the club, and never came back (well, only for school competitions). I managed to save English by approving 5 exams in a row (6 weeks before finals, they took an exam per week, if you approved 5, you didn’t have to take the final exam). I was about to fail Spanish, but managed to save it on an extraordinary test that was taken one day after school was over… I did it…

Life didn’t became instantly easier after that. I still had a lot of trouble at school, especially with my classmates. But my grades got better, and eventually, I got a group of friends that I kept during the rest of school (after that, some things happened… but I kept the ones who are worth it). I only swam when I felt like it. I know that this wasn’t completely responsible when you are on the school team, but really nobody cared that much about the swimming team (we only had 1 or 2 competitions per year). And I ended school in the Top 5 averages… which because of a lousy first year on secondary, was a bit hard at first.

Afterwards, from whay I heard at least, many people also quitted swimming shortly after I did (I´m not saying that I started it). Right now, I think only one of my friends, remains in the same club, and he is actually doing pretty well on national championships, congratulations to him. As far as I know, my trainer is now working on the water-polo scene, and going to tournaments all over Latin-America (or well, at least that is what I can see through his FB statuses), which is pretty cool. If he somehow manages to read this (which he obviously wont), best wishes to him! I know I was a bit of an idiot (a little tiny bit). But now I`m completely different (I guess…).

So finally, I just want to say that this have been one of my favorite posts to write. I noticed how much my life has changed during the course of only a few years. 5-6 years ago I felt as my life was crumbling apart, I hated both the biggest parts of my life; school and swimming. I was extremely upset, so I had to take the decision, of sacrificing one completely… And I have never regretted that decision. Right now… I´m living in another country for a whole year, a country where I never thought I would be able to travel to. I`m trying my hardest to go to University outside of Peru, and I think I`m going to be able to do so. I have a great group of friends… and have kept in touch with 1 or 2 from swimming (the ones who I really talked to…). I`m extremely happy.

Thanks,

See ya,

A Top 5: Songs that make me Nostalgic

It`s pretty funny that even when I`ve said that my musical tastes are extremely bad, and that I know pretty much nothing about music, it is going to be the first theme that I talk about twice (unless this gets shelved, you`ll know if it did). This was actually suggested by one of my best friends… well, kind of… he encouraged me to talk about this when I suggested it as a joke. Let me explain…

A weird fact about me (that I forgot to include into the 10 Facts about me post), is that before any important event, like for example, a finals week, or a swimming competition (many years ago…), I usually hear a song an excessive amount of times until I actually memorize it. Apart from being a really good memorizing technique (usually for exams), sometimes I end up singing the song to myself while I write, or wait, or those “actions” (yeah, I really didn’t know what word I could`ve used here), that doesn’t require me to be actually thinking (I usually know the idea I`m writing about, so words just flow, and I don’t think too much, it`s really difficult to explain). I try not to repeat songs… so eventually, those songs remember me of specific moments of my life (…or in other words, make me feel nostalgic), and that is what this post is about. Without nothing else to say, let`s get to my Top 5 of those songs.

Disclaimer: None of this songs are featured on my 20 Songs Tag, mostly because I don’t want to repeat them, and also because if I actually include them, I wouldn`t know what new I could say about them. Also, some of this songs might be from anime and cartoons I watched at the time (what can I say, those are easy to remember)… so this post might be a little cheesy (or not, who knows). But I wanted to talk about it, so it`s OK.

Honorable mention: Still Alive – Ellen McLain

This is an honorable mention for one simple reason; it is listed as my favorite song on my 20 Songs Tag that I did some time ago, so it shouldn’t count for the top. If it wasn’t for that, this song could easily be top 2 here. Why? It became my favorite song during my 2nd year of IB, and I listened to it a couple (hundred…) times. Even its lyrics make a little sense regarding to the IB if you analyze them carefully, but I don’t want to go too deep on that…

So anyways, even though this wasn’t the song that I sang to myself (how weird does that sound now that I think about it) during the IB Exams, it was certainly the one that I listened to while I was working on my extended essay, TOK presentation, and the other couple hundred pages of work this beautiful program makes you do. That`s also one of the reasons I consider this song my favorite (and I didn’t mention this on the 20 Songs Tag), and it`s because it reminds me of all the memories the IB brought to me (not one in particular, as it is with the rest of the songs on this list). So, even though it`s against the “rules” (which I made and I could change, but I won’t), for it to be on this list, I think I still should include it as an honorable mention.

5. Party Tonight – Regular Show

Regular Show is one my current favorite cartoons. It is also one of the few right now that I consider good overall (although lately there has been an impressive amount of good cartoons out there). But from all of those good cartoons, Regular Show has by far the best soundtrack (in my opinion, please don’t kill me), with all those old school songs. Funny enough, Party Tonight is one of the few original songs this program has, and the first time I heard it (which was during an exam week), I “fell in love” with it.

As a result, this one was probably one of the first songs I “memorized” to sing (or at least in my mind, because I can`t sing, at all) during exams. I decided to put this song on the last position of the top, because it is the one that brings me the least amount of memories. Probably because most of said memories are from random exams, that were not important (or well, they were important, just not THAT important) at all. Still, it`s a great song (probably the best one from the list, objectively speaking), and because it was one of the first one that I remember singing during exams, it makes it into the list.

4. Turn all the Lights on – T-Pain

Oh this song… I hate it now by the way (the auto-tune is strong). This song almost made my 20 Songs Tag (as a song which reminds me of a specific moment), but because the event itself wasn`t that “fun”, or “good” by any means, I decided to not include it (but now I can include it here, yay). But anyways, I first heard this song, I think on a League of Legends stream (at the time, I used to watch streams to get new songs for my (s***ty) playlist), and at the moment I liked it (bad music tastes strike again), so I downloaded just before a school trip to the jungle of Peru (scary…).

Because it was the only song that I managed to download before the trip, it was also the only one I listened to on the whole trip (yeah I had more songs, but you know when you sync a new song, you listen to it a thousand times before listening to the old ones). Although the trip itself wasn’t particularly fun (mostly because of my own fault, but also our school made us work during night time at the hotel, when everybody was tired), I will say it was “memorable”. You may already guess why this song is here… Not all memories have to be good (I think the “nostalgic” in the title doesn’t fit that well now), and this song certainly brings up a lot of memories.

Also, as a hint of how bad said trip was, I`m going to tell you a little story. One day I woke up a little late, and got to the buses late too. Our principal (who for some reason went on the trip with us), literally gave permission to my classmates, to punch me (And a guy who was also late) for being late… yeah, they didn’t beat me at the end, but holy s*** that was a horrible trip.

3. Sweet Victory – David Glen Eisley

This song is so epic (I just wanted to say that). I think most of you first listened to this song on the episode of SpongeBob “Band Geeks” (which BTW, is one of my favorite episodes of the whole cartoon). I liked it so much the first time, that shortly after, I googled the song so I could listen to it completely, and the lyrics were pretty inspiring, especially because at the time I was try-harding at my swimming club (at the moment I wanted to be a professional swimmer).

I started singing this song to myself in each swimming competition I went to, as a way of motivating myself. It worked… sometimes… (At that time there were a lot of friends who were way better than me, so I didn’t win any medals, except on relays). Even when competitive swimming wasn’t full of good memories for me, this song still sticks with me as the one who made me improve a lot during that part of my life, so I think it`s worth mentioning on this top. I still had it in my mind some months ago when I went to compete for the last time, representing my school (I`m going to miss those competitions).

2. This Dream/Intro Song – Pokemon Advanced Challenge (English Version)

My Honorable Mention was the song that I listened to the most during the whole IB Program, but as I said, it wasn’t the one I listened to for the actual exams. “This Dream” or better known as the Opening Song for the Advance Challenge season of Pokemon. Now that I think about it, there was no reason in particular for it, apart from it being my favorite Pokemon intro, and because I love the 3rd generation of Pokemon (but I guess I can talk about that another time).

I managed to get the IB Diploma, and as far as I know, I did pretty well on my exams, so I guess I can thank this song for some reason or another. Studying for the finals with my friends, and finally getting the news that I managed to make it through, are some of my best experiences in my (short) life. Because of that, “This Dream” gets the 2nd place on my list… and also because even though the IB holds some of my favorite memories, there is one that makes me feel even more nostalgic…

1. Intro Song – Digimon Frontier (Latin America Version)

Back to my competitive swimming stories… One of my favorite moments while I was swimming with my club, was going to my first national competition, which was held on one of the most exclusive clubs of the city. I was pretty nervous to say the least, and I remember during the call for my first series, one of my friends was singing the intro to Digimon Frontier (the Latin American version, because that`s the one they aired in Peru), I don’t know if it was the lyrics (most anime intros I know have really motivating lyrics), but it motivated me so much to do my best during the whole competition.

And that competition was freaking awesome, even though I didn’t like to go to competitions because I was always nervous, this time was different, I had a great time with my friends. I still remember that competition as the peak of my time as a swimmer (after that I went back to hating competitions and my relationship with my trainer went down the drain). And to this day, whenever I listen to that song (which is not very often, because well… it`s a relatively old anime song), I remember my best moments swimming, and in particular this competition. That is why this song owns the first place on this list.

Well… that was fun to write, at least for the most part of it (there are some memories I`m better off without), I´ll try to make my next post a little bit longer.

See ya,

10 Facts about Me

Long Disclaimer:

Even though I tried my hardest to be consistent with Tumblr, and tried to get a new “blog” out per week, it really didn’t work out. After my “Little Story” post #1, I instantly got started on doing the 2nd (even though I usually try to avoid making 2 blogs with the same “theme” in a row)… but in a similar fashion to my “A week without Internet” blog, I wasn’t convinced with how it was coming up, and I decided to stop writing altogether.

After that I sort of got in a “writers block” situation, where I didn’t know what to talk about next. I wanted to write a fictional story. But, if I already have trouble writing this type of “normal” blogs, I guess any story I try to write will come up horrible, and also, I don’t think it will fit with the rest of the posts I already have on Tumblr. So I decided to keep story-writing to myself (at least, until I genuinely think I`m ready to post them on Tumblr.)

Eventually… I became so frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t able to post anything new, that I started looking for inspiration in other people`s blogs. Somehow, I stumbled upon this “30daychallengearchive”, and started browsing their catalog, and there were some really cool ideas there.

Off the bat, I want to say that (sadly), there is no way I could do a 30 day Tumblr challenge. I don’t think I could even tweet for 30 days straight. Maybe another time I will try to do so (and probably fail…), but right now, doing that would take a lot of my time (which I already don’t have), and I would end up posting some really below-par posts, with even more grammatical errors than my current ones, extremely short, etc.

One of the ideas I liked the most was doing a 10 Facts about yourself “blog”, explaining each one of them. So, without anything else to say, and this Disclaimer already being extremely long, let’s get to it!

Fact #1: I`m extremely perfectionist when it comes to taking notes.

If you follow me on Twitter (or you had read my first post on Tumblr), you may now that I`m completely obsessed with handwriting. It took me many years to develop my current style, and I still change some things from time to time, so it looks as perfect as possible. Because of that, I enjoyed a lot taking notes at school (except in math… I don’t like how my numbers look), and I was extremely careful when taking them so my notebook looked clean and in order.

But I was so obsessed with that… that around 6th grade or so, I started ripping pages off my notebook, just because I didn’t like how the title looked (and I didn’t want to use corrector). Sometimes, in the middle of classwork, I threw my paper into the trash and asked for a new one, because I wrote something wrong (*sigh*). I actually got in trouble for that once or twice.

The time passed and I think I grew out of the destroying my work kind of habit, although I still do it from time to time (but only with homework). Now, usually in class I tend to write my notes using a mechanical pencil, and them I re-write them in pen when I get home. It helps keeping my notebooks as I like, and also it helps for remembering stuff (yay).

Fact #2: I actually participated in a water-polo tournament while I was swimming competitively

So, during this period of my life (that sounded deep), the trainer of our team was actually an ex-water-polo player, and tried to get us me and some of my friends into the sport (I think he actually wanted us to leave the switch to water-polo, I don’t know…). One time, he told us to train with the water-polo team of our club, we did, and when we finished he was like: “…OK, so next weekend there is a tournament, and we want to have 2 teams participating… want to join?”

The thing was, the water-polo team of our club had too much players to participate as only 1 team in the tournament, but not enough to have a “B team”, so we had to make up for the missing players for the “B-team”. We accepted because well, I guess we didn’t want to say no. The tournament only lasted for 1 day (or at least, for us it did)… we played 2 games, and lost both of them.

I went to 2 more water-polo train sessions, but I guess it wasn’t for me (I think there is too much contact for a water sport)… Fast-forward a few years, I started having some conflict with my trainer, and eventually retired.

Fact #3: I am really bad at explaining stuff to people

I have very little patience, and when I was in school, that worked against me in more than one occasion. Especially, in Physics class, I had a lot of trouble with this. Our school had the idea to mix up IB students with non-IB students during the first year of said program… and when the 2nd year came by, the level of the class was extremely messed up. The teacher, as a way to solve the problem, assigned each student that was ahead on the subject, someone who was behind to help him get us on the same level.

The problem is… I`m not really that good at understanding Physics, the only reason I was ahead on the subject was because I was good at solving the math problems that the course presented… and when you can`t understand something perfectly, it`s even harder to explain it to somebody else. And I became so frustrated when someone didn’t understand something the first time I explained it to them. But it wasn’t them… some classmates tried to explain the same stuff, and they actually succeeded.

I might sound like an asshole, but that was the reason I always tried to avoid explaining stuff to anybody (especially in Math-related subjects). Because I knew that in the end, I would end up frustrated, and they would be angry at me because of my inability to help them.

Fact #4: I “kind of” work well in group projects

This is actually sort of a continuation from the previous fact. So, because our school decided to mix IB and non-IB classes during our first year (I forgot to say, that this was because students were supposed to decide, if they were going to take the exams, only 8 months before the actual exams). In consequence, sometimes I got matched up with people who really didn’t care about the subject because they were not going to take it at an IB level (so the things that we were getting taught, were completely useless to them).  Although the teacher would still grade us in an IB standard (my school really didn’t know how to manage the program).

In the same fashion I was obsessed with my handwriting, I was obsessed with my grades, and I didn’t want to fail because my classmates refused to help. Funny thing was that, sometimes even when the work was in groups, the grading was individual. In both cases, when I was paired up with people who didn’t want to work… I would practically do the whole job if necessary, and hand them out their parts some days before. I managed to pass many works this way.

That was why some classmates liked to be paired with me, because they knew that I would do either part or their whole job, so we could all pass (there was a feeling of guiltiness when someone failed and we were on the same group). I remember one time one friend gave me “Spirit Guard Udyr” (25$ skin in League of Legends), just to do a small Spanish PPT.

Also… when I actually got paired with my friends, we would always get a high mark, because we really knew how to work together.

Fact #5: I can get taken advantage of easily (sad…)

Unless someone was really mean to me in High School (which did happen from time to time), I would always try to help them (except when it was explaining something related to math, in that case, I usually would just let them copy my homework). I guess it was because I didn’t want them to get mad at me (even though they weren’t close friends or something like that). And although that nature get me some good things from time to time (like a 25$ dollar skin in a videogame), it also caused me a lot of trouble.

Sometimes I forgave a person too many times, even though I knew I shouldn’t (I won’t go deeper on this)… I almost got suspended from school after I let one classmate copy my homework (I had to lie saying I didn’t let him borrow it), and a large list of etc. that I would prefer not talking about because they make me feel a little sad. So… I guess I will finish this fact saying that, I have a kind nature in general… but sometimes that is a disadvantage.

Fact #6: I have the worst musical tastes

You may have guessed this when you read my 20 Songs Tag. Most of the songs I listed there had no relation between them (and now that I re-read them, I have no idea why I listed “The E.N.D.” as my favorite album). I pretty much listen to whatever I like… I don’t really care that much about the artists, albums, etc. As a result of that, if you check out my music library, you will find probably no albums (just singles), some really embarrassing songs (stupid hits from many years ago), and no more than 5 songs of a single artist.

Apart from a fact, this is also something that I want to change about myself. What I mean, is that I want to have a little bit more of musical culture (in any particular genre, it doesn’t matter). Recently I bought an Apple Music subscription (also because Spotify isn’t working in Japan), so I hope that helps with something.

Fact #7: I like keyboards, they are my favorite part in a computer

I used to be a console fan, for a long time all the computers that I had were all-in-ones that I could only use for school work, and maybe play in emulators (so still, console fan). It was when a cousin stayed at my house for a whole summer, that I started liking PC gaming a lot more. Some years later, I managed to build a gaming PC (without much knowledge about components, I feel that it wasn’t the best, but oh well…), but I kept using a regular keyboard.

It was thanks to a Spanish Youtuber (which I prefer not to mention), that I got interested in mechanical keyboards, and since then, I have been trying to learn as much as I can about them. Currently I have a CM QuickFire Ultimate (Red), but when I come back to Peru, I’m planning to get a new one. I still don’t know which one, but I`m pretty sure it`s going to have blue switches.

In general, keyboards are cool… there are so many designs, and so many possibilities with them, and they are used for typing (big discovery), which is something that I enjoy a lot (that is why some of my Tumblr posts, are so long).

Fact #8: I don’t know how to draw… at all

Although I have relatively good handwriting (some things that I saw on Twitter from time to time, make me reconsider that statement), I have 0 talent for drawing. I`m really good at copying things I see (for example, if you give me a picture of an anime, with enough time, I`d be able to recreate it), but, when it comes to drawing from my own imagination… I`m pretty much screwed. I took art in school for a really long time, but it really didn’t work for me. Usually the works I presented contained more letters than images (I cheated…).

I follow a lot of artists (well, animators, I consider them artists) in YouTube (Domics, JaidenAnimations, itsBirdy (actual artist), etc.)… And I know that they say that the best way to get better at drawing is by constant practice. But every time I try to draw, I get frustrated because things don’t turn out as how I expected them to be, and I don’t draw for a really long time after that. But some day I would like to be good at drawing, so I will keep working on that (someday…)

Fact #9: One thing that I would love to learn how to do, is Break Dance (BBoying), or Tricking

For some reason, I`ve always been interested in Break Dance. I remember sawing it for the first time in (which is my favorite (or 2nd favorite) reality show) Americas Best Dance Crew. I always supported the teams that did tricks or break dance in general. I think it looks cool overall, and it would be an interesting ability to have. However, I know that doing some of the stuff I`ve seen requires a lot of strength, and I don’t know if I would be able to do it (not right now at least).

For similar reasons is that I`m also interested in tricking… There is not much to say about this really. Some day or another (when I have a lot of free time), I will try to get started in one of these things. The only problems that I see right now are lack of physical strength (I`m weak, weak and sad)… and also that I don’t know where to start.

And finally…

Fact #10: I`m able to speak 2 languages fluently, and kind of communicate in 2 more

I`m on my road to becoming a polyglot (although I hate that word, it doesn’t sound right). I`m from Peru, so Spanish is my mother tongue, and obviously, the one which I am most fluent at. But I started learning English when I was in kinder-garden (part of the school curriculum), so after 12 years, I basically have no trouble speaking with a native speaker (which I basically had to do during the first days of my exchange).

Many people master both their mother tongue, and English, so it didn’t took much time before my parents told me that I should learn a 3rd language. My sister already knew how to speak Italian at the time, and I didn’t want to learn the same language as her. Also, there is a French institute very close to where I live, so I took French for a couple of years during weekends. Even though most people were at those classes to socialize (I wasn’t any different), I still learnt a lot, and you could say that I can “speak” French, at least a little bit (I wouldn’t die if you left me at France, completely alone).

And, because of this exchange, I`m learning Japanese pretty fast. It is by far the hardest language I had to learn (because of kanjis, and the grammar is completely different). But, I also have the chance to practice every single day, which is great when you want to learn a new language, so I`m expecting to be kind of fluent at it when I came back… and then continuing to study French.

And… I`m done. It took me a whole day (which I should have spent studying because I have a test tomorrow) to write this… but it was kind of fun. When you are talking about yourself words aren’t a problem, you don’t really need to overthink what you are typing, and that is great. So I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing this “long” post.

See ya,

The Gamer Tag

As soon as I was over with my last Tumblr post, I thought I should start writing another one just so I could be a little bit more consistent, and get better at writing (which may take longer than 2 posts to do so). I wanted to write a post about videogames since 2015. I actually started to write a similar post to this one back then, but eventually I shelved it because it was taking too long to complete and I wasn´t enjoying it (writing should not feel like a chore). But this time I think I can manage to do it better and actually complete: The Gamer Tag.

Disclaimer: this tag was not create it by myself and it is actually based on a tag made by a user named Leminz on Deviant Art. Also, I dislike the term “gamer” quite a lot, but because this was the name used by the user which this post is being based on, I will use it for the title, although I might avoid it completely during the rest of this post. Enjoy.

Favorite all-time videogame: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness

This might result as a really weird choice for most of you... at least I think so. Every time I see people talking about their favorite videogame, they usually say the usual masterpieces like; The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, etc. and even though I consider all of them really good games, they are nowhere close to be my favorite.

PMD – Explorers of Darkness, was probably the last game I bought for my Nintendo DS back in the day, and I remember how long it took me to actually reach the end. Even though the game required me to do a lot of grinding and it wasn´t anything ne in terms of gameplay for me, the story captivated me and I truly found myself relating to each one of the characters. The ending was also pretty emotional (I will not spoil anything), and I loved it.

It is also the game I spend the most time on, and those are basically my reasons for it to be my favorite (by the way… I actually lost the cartridge, so I probably will not play it again, without ROMs).

Current favorite videogame: Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Well, actually I don’t have a favorite videogame at the moment, because I´m not able to play many games here in Japan, so I will have to go with the game that was my favorite before coming here. I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf, every single day since New Year 2015 (well, with some exceptions), and I didn’t feel bored at any moment.

I love the concept of the game and again, I felt that I actually bonded with some of the characters on my city. At the start most people will not get the hang of it, and that is fine. I get this game is not for everyone. But the freedom that this games gives you makes you feel not pressured at any point (or well, maybe when you are funding something in-game). Every single thing you do correctly feels like a little accomplishment that keeps you going, and you become addicted to that feeling really fast.

Favorite videogame genre: (Life) Simulators

This was a hard choice between RPGs and Life Simulators. I finally went with the second one because I find myself playing “sim-style” games quite often, while RPGs require a lot more attention from me, and I am not usually in the mood for playing them.

As I said before when talking about Animal Crossing, simulators (or well, Life Simulators) give you a lot of freedom so you can do whatever you want. I love having little to no boundaries, so I think these type of games are ideal for me. Resource management and some stressful events can still happen in some of them (and I am not really used to that)… but overall, if I want to relax and have fun, any simulation game is my way to go.

Time since I started playing videogames: 11 years

This is a very straightforward answer. I remember getting my first handheld console (a red Gameboy Pocket) from my sister just before entering 1st grade at school (also… videogames were forbidden at my school so I couldn’t presume it at all). So… considering I am now 17 years old (my birthday was a couple of weeks ago), and I started school when I was 6 (that is a little young, at least in my country)… I have been playing videogames for about 11 years. I can’t say that I regret it.

First game you’ve ever played: Donkey Kong Land III

Well, when I received my Gameboy Pocket, I received it with a game inside, and it was this one. I had tons of fun with it, and it is actually the game that I have replayed the most number of times. The funny thing is, before I actually got the hang of game mechanics (which took me more than it should, trust me), I had to ask my sister to beat every boss fight for me (I was always amazed how easily she could do that).

My personal opinion about the game… well, it is pretty fun. I was very young when I first got it so I don’t remember much of it. But considering I beat every single level (Except for boss battles) with some ease, I don’t think it was that hard, at all. My Gameboy passed away many years ago so I can´t play the game again to give an honest review, so I will leave it like that.

Game that you have spent the most time into: League of Legends

Yes… I play League of Legends, and I have been playing for quite some time too. I remember seeing the game for the first time after I went to play DotA with my cousin (some years ago… years that I don’t like to remember), and one guy was playing LoL instead. The cartoonish graphics captivated me and I started playing the game on my old Lenovo computer that couldn’t run it at more than 10 fps.

Basically I have played LoL since season I or II probably (we are now in season 6), and I have played over than 1000 games (this surprises even myself). It is kind of sad that I am not really good at the game either. In 4 years I have only managed to reach Gold division (well, I started playing ranked at the end of Season 4). I am living in Japan at the moment, so I don’t have as much time to play, but I still like to play sometimes (my account here is only level 20). If you want to add me… my SN: ShyMudkip

Longest gaming session: 12 hours?

So… back when I swam competitively, there was this tournament in a small city a couple of hours away from where I lived. I was assigned to be roommates with one of my best friends at the time (we kind of stopped seeing each other after I left/got kicked out of the team)… and we both had DS. We had this Age of Empires game which was turned based… and we started playing at bedtime (11 PM, since the tournament started about 12 AM, but was kind of far away from the hotel, plus breakfast and stuff)

Well, one single game… 2 vs 2 (against to AI), took us 12 hours to win. 12 hours staring at our DS screen, planning every single move… We eventually won just before breakfast, and were kind of proud we managed to stay the whole night up playing. I personally did pretty bad on that tournament (don’t know about him)… and I deserved it. But to this day this sticks as the longest game session I have ever had.

Favorite game developer: Game freak

I am big fan of Pokemon. I am not one of those guys that think every game is the same (I can understand them though, everyone has their own opinion in the topic I guess…). So basically I get excited when I hear news about a new Pokemon game (which Game freak develops…). And I think that is enough to consider them my favorite game developer.

There is no other company that has had me so interested in their updates as Gamefreak (Re-logic did that for some time, but eventually I drifted out)… and that is a big merit (in my opinion) from a developer. Much people don’t take them in consideration because most of us relate Pokemon only with Nintendo… but I guess Gamefreak deserves their fair share of attention.

Favorite hero from a game: Kirby

I am a great supporter of cute characters, especially if they are the good guys (which is 99% of the time), and Kirby is my favorite of them all. Even though I don’t play his games as much as I should to properly consider it my favorite hero, the cuteness overload, along with his childish attitude sometimes, make up for it.

Kirby is not the most complicated hero to understand, and most people may consider him to simple both in design and background… but I don’t care, he is so charming that it doesn’t even matter. Well, OK, maybe I’m too biased on this one, and I have to admit that there are much better heroes out there, but for now I will stick with my pink ball of cuteness.

Favorite Villain: Darkrai – Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness

From my favorite game of all time, also comes my favorite villain of all time (Meta Knight is a really close second… but I can´t consider him completely as a villain, and I already placed Kirby as my favorite hero). Even though I´m not that much of a fan of the Pokemon itself, his story in PMD is exceptional (in my opinion).

Compared to the recurring villains in PMD: Red/Blue Rescue Team; Team Meanies, Darkrai is by far better. He doesn´t feel… annoying, although the dungeon to find him took me many tries to complete. The final battle against him is pretty epic… and so is the ending afterwards (no more spoilers), and I think that is enough to consider him my favorite villain.

Most hated character: Shaco – League of Legends

I spent more time than I should thinking about this one. I really didn’t remember a single character that made me go “ugh” when seeing him/her on screen… so this choice may not be completely valid. Shaco is probably one of the most annoying characters in the whole game. Most people that play LoL may get why… but not only his mechanics are annoying, the personality of the character itself makes me mad.

I don’t like clowns that much… and I don´t like pretentious people… and Shaco is a mixture of both. Even though his backstory isn´t that deep, it´s certain that this guy is a total a**hole… I don´t know how to explain actually… So I will finish this part of the tag off, saying that I hate this character so much, that I have even developed a hatred for people who use him in game (I don´t know why… I relate them so much to the champion itself).

By the way… I know this explanation was horrible. I´m sorry.

Gaming systems that I own: Gameboy Pocket (R.I.P.), Gameboy Color, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Wii. PC?

Yes, as you may have noticed, I´m a complete Nintendo fanboy, and I blame my sister for that. She gave me my first console, and she bought the Nintendo Wii that we own, so basically I grew up playing Nintendo games. I don´t really like PlayStation or Xbox that much, even though I know why they are so popular. I must say, that even though I own all this consoles (they are actually not that many), as one of my friends always reminds me, I almost never use them.

I also have a PC, but now that I´m away from home I can´t use it… and I miss her so much (emotional moment). I play most of my games on PC (aside from Nintendo exclusives)… so I decided to consider it as a Gaming system (I already do… but I mean for the purposes of this tag).

First game system: Gameboy Pocket

I already mentioned this… my sister gave me her Gameboy Pocket many years ago and it was my first game system. It only had one game when I got it (which I mentioned too…), and I didn´t bought another game (a second-hand Pokemon Yellow), until 1 or 2 years later. I loved that Gameboy and even though most of my friends already had Gameboy Advanced by that time… I didn’t care… that much.

I don’t know where that Gameboy is now. I remember that during my first visit to the United States (which was also the time I got my Nintendo DS), it stopped working all of a sudden. I wasn´t as sad as I should have because I knew that it was very old, and that I would be getting a DS soon… but still, I would like to have it again.

Favorite gaming system: Nintendo DS

This one was another hard choice to make, because I don’t use my DS anymore (if I want to play DS games, I would rather just use my 3DS), but I think at the time, this handheld gave me the most fun of all other consoles. It was the one I spent the most time onto, and also the one which I remember having the most memories with (playing with 7 other friends in Mario Kart…good times).

Even though like my 3DS a lot, it´s not even close to surpass my DS in hours of gameplay (that will take many more years)… when that happens… well I guess I could say the 3DS is my favorite “gaming system”.

Also, even though I love my PC, I decided to leave it out of this category because I don’t think it fits as well.

Guy characters or Girl characters: Guy characters

Well, usually I select the guy option on most RPGs and simulators because… well, I´m a guy. There is not much to say about the design of male protagonists and girl protagonists in some games… I really don’t pay that much attention into it.

Also, I usually main male characters in videogames. To put 2 easy examples… Toon Link in SSB (call me scrub or whatever… I don’t really follow the tier system, techs, etc.), and Ezreal on LoL (I also main Kindred, but I wouldn’t consider it as a female character, per se). So yeah, guy characters for me I guess. If I see a really cool girl character design, I would definitely pick her.

Walkthroughs or figuring things by myself: Figuring things by myself

Some time ago, I was all about walkthroughs, I was always with an open complete guide about the game while I played. But when I finished my first game without one (a Code Lyoko game for the Nintendo DS) the sensation of accomplishment was so much better than when using a guide. So since then I completely avoid using walkthroughs (in some simulators I might use wikis in some unique cases).

I totally recommend people to not use guides when playing videogames, it takes a great chunk of the fun away. Trust me on this one...

Times I have gone to a gaming convention: 1

There are not really many gaming conventions where I live… and if there are, you have to be really informed so you can assist to them. So I went to one with a friend 1 year ago or so… (I remember being around the time Watchdogs got announced). It wasn´t as fun as I expected and there was nothing special for me. Also, the BYOC zone was extremely expensive and totally not worth it (and also most people play DotA… and I played LoL).

As an experience… I guess it was fun, but I don’t think it is my thing. I will try to go to another one the next year (I was kind of young when I went to this convention, and that might have been a factor). I will give it another chance, maybe things are different this time.

Game I´m most excited for: Pokemon Sun & Moon

I really didn’t want to answer this question, because after 2016, these games will already be out, and at least for me, it would feel weird (because that game is already out… get it? Yeah… it´s probably just me). But I´m truly excited for these games (I always am with each new Pokemon game, I think is the only franchise I really follow), and with the recent news about the starters and gameplay, the hype has grown… a lot.

I will surely buy the games (sadly not the Japanese version, as my 3DS is from NA), and probably not play them for a long amount of time (I literally haven’t got past the 2nd gym of Pokemon Y, and it has been already 1 year since I bought it). For some reason I tend to collect my games more than I play them… but that doesn’t take off the fact that I am really excited for these games.

Also… after 2016, you can change this answer to Pokemon (insert name of next game here).

Best memory of a videogame: Playing with my friends during Summer School

When I was young, one of the ways my parents avoided me spending all of the day in front of the television or PC during vacation, was sending me to summer school. Summer school, at least were I leave, meant doing sports or other activities for 3 to 4 hours every day (except Friday). It was fun at first, but after the first 2 weeks it got extremely boring. The only fun part was that after 4 hours of sports, we had free time at the swimming pool.

So, I and my small group of friends started taking our DS to summer school and playing them were we knew no one would find us… near the parking lot. I remember trading Pokemon, playing Mario, and kicking a little kid who was bothering me (well… maybe not that last one). But really, in general, I think those years are the best in terms of gaming related memories.

Worst memory of a videogame: Countless fights while playing League of Legends

Even though I am the one who has played the game the longest between all my friends, I´m also probably the one who takes it less seriously. That, and some off-meta picks, ranked games, etc. caused so many fights between me and people who played with me… Even though things calm down a little after the game, there has been some cases where it didn’t happen that way.

I remember one guy never talking to us again after we lost a semi-competitive match. One tip that I would like to give to anyone who reads this and sometimes gets a little bit too mad when playing… Well, unless you are actually playing it professionally… it is just a game, and you don’t have to be mad… Please…

Videogame Character I see myself as, or would like to be: Boo

Ha, for this last “question” I will actually have a hard time explaining my choice. Well, let’s start by saying that I’m extremely shy, and guess who is the character that covers his face and becomes transparent when you look at him. Also, when that person looks away, I´m like… “Please talk to me (well, not really, I don’t know how to explain it as I said)”, just like Boo smiles and follows Mario. Basically… I feel like that is the closest characteristic that I share with Boo.

Also… in my opinion, Boo is one of the most charming characters out there… at least in the 3D games (in 2D, let’s be honest, he can be really annoying)… He is probably my favorite “enemy” (not villain) character, and also, it´s unkillable most of the time. So, if I could be any character in a videogame, I would definitely choose Boo.

Well, that´s about it. I did it, I really did it. The first time I tried to write this back in 2015, I couldn’t finish the tag, even after 3 weeks, and I managed to write this on my free time, in just 3 days (got to say, I´m a little proud of myself). Maybe one of the reasons for this is that I like videogames, a lot, although I´m trying to avoid them because I have to learn a language as soon as possible…

I might talk about videogames again in the future, but not in a “tag” format… probably just talking about my personal opinion with some situations I see when playing… but I don’t want to fill my Tumblr with many posts about the same topic, so I will wait a little before writing about that.

I really hope you guys enjoyed reading this “Gamer Tag”.

See ya.

A Little Story #1: The time I cheated in sports…

I´ve been away from Tumblr for a really long time… I know. But that doesn´t mean that I forgot it existed… and I was actually planning to drop this project all together. The reason for this is that there are so many things going on with my life now that I´m living in Japan for a year. It is already hard to keep up with Twitter. Dealing with school, a huge language barrier, and 3 hours of exercise almost every day, I haven´t found enough time to write something elaborate enough to upload in my Tumblr.

Actually, I had a little post in mind since January, but for many reasons it won’t see the light… So sad. In replacement for that… I decided to make this other little post about a funny story that happened a couple of years back (that is basically why the title seems so unoriginal…).

Disclaimer: This post might be a little different from my usual posts, and also my style of writing might not be the same as the one I had in 2015… But I guess trying new things isn´t bad at all. This is just a fun story I wanted to share with you… because I don´t think I can share it anywhere else.

So back in my High School, football (or well… soccer, where I live we used to call it football) was a pretty big deal. Our school team was actually pretty good and it was the one that got the most attention from the principal and other students. Myself, I was on the swimming team, and we only had 1 big competition per year. Meanwhile, the football team missed class at least 1 time per month to go training (I´m not saying this as if I was mad because of this, I actually didn´t mind that much, and I supported the team). So because of how important football was in school, it was also one of the few sports that we always played during our internal school competition.

So this competition basically was one of the ways the school made students compete between each other. Since you were in 1st year Elementary School, you were assigned one of 4 colors (red, blue, yellow, or green). It was completely random, unless you had a brother on school which meant you would be getting the same color as his. But even though it was random… for some reason in our grade both the green and yellow color had substantially better football teams (blue and red were good at other sports or… stuff). I was on the red team, and we had some really good players (I wasn´t one of them), but in the 11 years we played, not a single time I think, we won the football tournament (I remember placing second 2 or 3 times maybe).

When you get older, these tournaments became more serious for some reason (I´m not talking about the whole school competition, nobody cared about that). So when I was in 10th or 11th grade (I really don’t remember) the event was pretty important.

So… to decide the football champion we had to play each other color (basically a group stage format). And as I said before, the only color that meant a threat to green that year, was yellow. During the course of 3 weeks, we played each other during the P.E. class, and even though I don’t remember exactly the results… I´m pretty sure it went something like this:

Week 1:

·         Y 1-1 G

·         R 3-2 B

·         We actually managed to pull off a victory against the Blue team (mostly because one of their best players wasn´t playing during the first half of the match (we actually started winning 3-0). Meanwhile, the 2 biggest teams tied, which meant their results against us would decide who the champion was for that year.

Week 2:

·         G 4-1 B

·         R 1-2 Y

·         So… our match against the yellow team was actually pretty close, I don’t remember exactly the result as I said, but I do remember that Green won by a far bigger difference over the Blue team (which left them “out” of the tournament that year). At that point we were demoralized because (especially me… I was the goalkeeper, and I thought everything was my fault).

Week 3:

·         Y 1-0 B

Basically the Yellow team managed to beat Blue by only 1 goal. As there wasn´t enough time to play a tie-breaker if the Green team pulled off against us (both teams would have had 7 points). The champion would be decided by goal difference (as it should be…).  That was fair, but it also meant that the Green team needed just an easy victory against us to be champions (again… they were the team that has won the most championships).

As far as I remember never before we have won a game against them… and I never perform well under pressure. I remember one of my friends, even missing school that day because he didn’t want to play against them. So the morale was pretty low, and everybody was counting on Green to be football champions yet again.

Even the Green team was counting on that… and on the early part of the match, I remember them missing so many easy goals because of them messing around with the ball, knowing they could score any time they wanted. This continued for the first half of the game. We were pretty impressed that we were able to keep a 0-0 score for this long (no other team had done that this tournament).

But in the second half Green team was serious about winning, so they started attacking a lot more (we did too, but it wasn´t working out). I managed to stop some of the shots, but as time passed I was starting to mess up, and a couple of times I was saved by my teammates. They knew I was messing up (because that was what happened on the other game), so they took me out of the goal, and made play as a defender. We had to make one of our best players be goalkeeper instead. I can´t play defender for s*** (the only reason I played goalkeeper was because it was the only position I found fun) so every time I got the ball, it meant kicking it as hard as I could to stop their attack.

By that point, the game was already ending, and we stopped attacking altogether. The yellow team had already finished their game, and were realizing that they might be champions this time. Some of them even cheered for us. It all went down to the last minute of the game (just like in sports movies…), when after an offensive play from the Green team, they had the chance to score in a corner kick.

And… all this backstory I have given comes up to here. A player from their time received the ball after the corner, and shot it straight at our goal (I´m trying to narrate this the best way possible without sounding like an idiot). The ball was going to enter just at the side of our post. That was when I (me… the man), took the ball away from the goal with my hand (something that the referee didn’t notice).

What happened afterwards was a little weird. My team started to hug me and cheer for me, while most of the Green team players couldn´t care less about me cheating and continued with the game trying to score in the last seconds. But I remember one of them in particular (the one who kicked the ball) came to me really angry and told me that he knew that I cheated… but because I didn´t want to get me and my team in trouble at that point, I just laughed it off.

The final whistle blew, and against all forecasts, we managed to finish the game with a 0-0 score, meaning that the Yellow team would be football champions for that year. I felt kind of important that day to be honest… I’m not the guy who is usually on the spotlights on soccer matches, so that was a pleasant difference from every other year.

And that is basically it… It wasn’t really a big story, but it is one of those things you want to talk about but never get the chance to do so. So I figured out that because I need to get back to my Tumblr, and also want to write something different… well here is this messy story (I really need to get more into the habit of writing). I hope you guys find it… amusing… I guess.

Little Bonus: This was not the first time I have done something like this. Some years before, I had a Luis Suarez kind of moment went I saved a ball from going into our goal at the last minute of the match… with my hand. I was kicked, but the guy missed the penalty, meaning we won… It wasn’t worth of a whole post as it was only a friendly match between our classes, and there is not as much background compared to this story.

Well, that’s it for my comeback into Tumblr. I hope to be more consistent from now on.

See ya,

Content Creation and Me

So… after making my first Tag, I had the feeling of my next post being something more personal, again. I had the idea of writing this at 2 AM, some days ago (I guess my best ideas come to me when I can´t sleep). I´ve been so obsessed about content creation lately because, since I finished school a couple of weeks ago, I´ve had a lot of free time, and I´ve tried to use most of it as opportunities for me creating things I enjoy to look at (read, listen to, it really doesn´t matter)  afterwards.

I really enjoy spending some of my time on content creation, mostly because I feel like I´m being productive (something that is kind of hard when you have no homework, or projects, or EEs). But even when I enjoy it, most of the time, it is hard for me to get out of my computer, and start doing something. And that is what I wanted to write about today; me during this vacation time, my trials and errors of being productive, and some of my plans for the future.

Well, first of all, as I said, the hardest part in my “quest” for content creation is starting in the first place. Being on vacation right now, I spend most of my free time playing videogames (so fun…), or either reading or listening to music. Anyways, making a stop from doing that is can be really hard for me. I can´t remember how many times I´ve said to myself; “OMG, just one more game, one last run, etc…” (Extra points if you are able to guess which 2 games I´m talking about).

But one way or another I get myself to stop playing. I think the thing that most motivates me to write is having something that is like “mine” on the web. I don´t know why, but I enjoy reading my old Tumblr posts over and over again. Also, just knowing that someone else may read my blogs sometime brings some joy to me :).  And that is how I start; I grab my laptop, open Word, and start typing some random stuff into the keyboard…

The topic comes one way or another to my mind, but seriously, I don´t think it is as important as a matter. I just pick something that I´ve found interesting lately (Typography, for example), or just do something fun (like my 20 Songs Tag). I know that I´ve picked a good topic, when writing about it is easy and I don´t have to force myself to do so (like now…).

Finally, when I´m done with writing, I need one last thing so I can have that awesome feeling of accomplishment I love (this may sound a little narcissistic). I like giving things my personal touch, and that is why I make every post of mine as a photo. I´m not sure when or why it became some sort of signature but the phrase:

“My name is Diego... and”

Written in different colored pens, is my way of saying “I created this, and I´m proud of it” (again, kind of a signature)

So… that´s about it, I really thought this was going to be a really long post, and it ended up shorter than the other ones, but I guess it´s OK. I just have one more thing to talk about, and it is the plan (or plans I have for the future) I have for the future.

Well, I just got a good video camera (Merry Christmas), and I guess I could open a YouTube channel. It may be one way to create more content (the whole point of this hobby), for people to watch and enjoy along me. This project may become hard as I´m travelling in just a couple of months, and I don´t think I´ll be able to keep updating the channel (it really makes me sad…). Anyways, I´ve liked Tumblr so far, and it has helped me a lot on the quest of being productive during vacation time… So I think I may stay here for a long time, and eventually YouTube may become a hobby of mine too (yay…)

Right now it is 3 AM in the morning, I started this on Monday and today it´s Christmas Eve (haven´t been really efficient lately, and I really thing this isn´t my best blog), so I better head to sleep (or don´t). Anyways, I hope all of you have the best Christmas ever!!! I will try to update once more before the end of the year, but until that happens… Happy Holidays!

My 20 Songs Tag

Why I love Typography...

Disclaimer: I really don´t know how Tumblr works at all, neither do I have any experience on writing blogs… So this “post” may not be the best. I´m here to improve, and to talk about the things I like the most, I´m not an expert on typography for that matter. Being said that… I hope you enjoy.

My history with handwriting (which at some point elaborated itself into Typography), starts when I was in Elementary School (or Primary, in my country). I really didn´t care about my handwriting until my class reached 2nd or 3rd grade. Before that my handwriting was pretty awful to be honest, I hated to write (Numbers were always more appealing to me than letters), and my handwriting clearly expressed that. My parents weren´t happy about it but I didn´t care, I was still getting good grades.

Anyway, in our 2nd (or maybe 3rd) year of school we had this new class called “Calligraphy”, which consisted on making us learn to write in cursive “the appropriate way” (how fun). I wasn´t particularly interested in the class at first, also, It just lasted for 1 scholar hour (40 minutes) every week, so I thought it wasn´t important at all (how wrong was I). On our first class we were told about how cursive was the most important way of writing (false) and why should we learn to “draw” it at such a young age… We also had homework, which consisted on writing every week, 1 or 2 letters from the alphabet, in both lower case and capital letters throughout a whole page. That was boring as f***, and some letters weren´t easy to do at all. However, as we were marked for that, I was supposed to do my best on every page, and so I did. I was getting 16 to 18 (8/10 to 9/10) scores for every letter. However there was this letter (I think it was “R”), where I put so much effort on, and I finally got a 20 (10/10). The feeling of accomplishment I had was great, and I started trying even harder for the next letters. On the following year, “Calligraphy” developed into one of my favorite classes (we were told to write more elaborated phrases now), and I became pretty decent at it. However, I also became very slow at writing, and that made me fall behind in some other classes, when we were told to copy what the teacher wrote on the board. In 4th grade I started writing in “Print”, mostly because it helped me write faster (I know that for some people it happens the other way around). It was also at that age that everyone starts developing their own style of writing. Well, for some reason, I didn´t like my style and I was always looking up to one of my friends way of writing. I tried to learn from them, and I always borrowed their notebooks and tried to copy their handwriting. From there, the following 5 years were times of change for my handwriting, I went back to cursive for a while, I tried to use a font pen (which I finally left, because it made me extremely slow at writing, yet again), etc. Finally I reached a handwriting style, which is the one that I continue to use today. It allowed to write fast, and looked pretty clean, so I stood with it. Since then it has only seen minor changes (the way I write the “a”, for example), but I think I have reached my own style which I´m comfortable with. On 10th grade I entered the IB Program, which almost forced me to keep my notebooks clean and neat, if I wanted to pass (it made studying much easier). My handwriting made that so much easier; to the point some of my friends started borrowing my notebook to study, even though they had their own. I never asked why (I just thought it was because of my grades). However, this changed when one of my friends told me, while I was writing: “LoL, you are a freaking printer”, and I was like “wut”, “Your letter (handwriting), it doesn´t change from page to page, it is so perfect”. That made me so happy (^-^), I forgot to said before, that during the time my handwriting varied, it was because I hated it so much (I´m a perfectionist on that matter). But in 10th grade, I finally found one style that I truly liked. My interest for computers and art, led me to learn about Graphic Design, and after that “Typography”. The importance of using letters in a way that a viewer find appealing, and all the technical processes that develop from there, was just so interesting for me. I used my last 2 weeks of school (which were like 1 week ago), to research about it, and learnt as much as I could (2 or 3 basic things). It was enough time to realize that I loved this subject. I made my last art project at school, a compilation of many fonts saying the word “Vaio” (my Laptop´s brand) arranged in different ways. The thing was, that I copied each font by hand, which helped me a lot with my handwriting, and I never got bored. Understanding every part of the letter I was writing, made me feel so good (and a little weird to be honest). At that point I realized: “I love Typography” OK, I´m finishing my coffee by now, and my Microsoft Word, has already stopped working once. There is not much more to say, I left school the past week, and I´m planning to study Graphic Design sometime soon, and I know which subject I´m going to like the most is. That´s about it, I think I´ve wrote enough (this took me about an hour and a half (most of the time was just picking a font I was comfortable with)). I´ll try to make my next posts much smaller. I plan to talk more about typography in the future, but I need to research more first. . See ya,