Tag: Humor

Can I relax now?

Published on by Yinglan2 Comments

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Well, this week has been fun. Not really. Monday was my first day off for my Winter Break and I mean real day off where I have the house to myself for a few hours. I thought I’d write a lot this week, perhaps work on story I noted on my other blog but unfortunately, my week was ruin by my project manager and her stupid concern email. After working for such a long period, my creativity meter’s level fell to zero.

Thankfully, I just finished my work, just a few minutes ago actually. Hmm, I wonder if I can finally let out a breath and enjoy my holidays. In the last 3 days, I have worked 20.5 hours and translated over 5000 words. I woke up at 4 am yesterday and 6 am today to complete this annoying and boring monthly deadline. Yesterday, I’ve check and found out next month, there’s more. The deadline? January 12, the first day of school. I do hope I can complete it.

Anyway, now that I’ve done this month’s work and ran out of “me” time, I think I’d spend the last measly hours today, aside from going to the orthodontist and do the impression for my retainer, I think I’m going to blast the music on my stereo and sing. Ha ha, maybe but I think I have some other matters to take care of first:

  1. My AAA card will expire, got to call and take my mother’s name off it and pay the bill.
  2. I received a gift card two months and I think there’s a problem with it, so got to call and wait and wait.

After that, I hope people would chill for a while and cool it with the deadlines.

Why A Simple Life…

Published on by Yinglan8 Comments

I was updating the About page and noticed it’s been about six months since I changed my blog name and I never bothered to introduce how it came to be A Simple Life. 

So since I’m done for the semester and have few short days alone by myself, I thought I’d take the chance and do this late introduction to my blog. Oh and you’ll notice I’m playing with colors here, that’s how bored I am. 😀

F.Y.I, the underlines are links to ancient ancient posts, I thought I’d let you re-live them as part of looking back this year.

My blog is call A Simple Life. I changed it recently from My Simple Life after realizing I don’t have a simple life anymore. So now, this is A Simple Life and it reads in the heading, Tales and Life of a Simple Girl.

That tells a lot, doesn’t it?  This blog is a tiny bit more stable now than a year ago. You see, this started out a nameless blog and then I went, “Oh, heck with it.” and named it The Random Blog. 

Then I forgot about it, from February to September. How do you forget you have a blog? Shrug. I don’t know.

How did I come back?

I got an email one day last September saying someone likes my post. It was this post like that somehow inspired me to come back. After I came back, I didn’t know what to write at first but then I working three jobs and my boss was driving me insane. Also I had no one to complain to. So I wrote this post and several others.

Quickly, I took out the in the title and this became just Random Blog. It didn’t attract a lot of attention though 😦 no matter how many post I published. Hmm, I wonder why.

I didn’t find out until about six months ago. I was tagging too happily. 🙂

I still didn’t like the name though because I thought it was too misleading, perhaps make the readers think maybe I just re-blog other people’s material or maybe just post some random stuff. Nah uh, that’s not me. I’m a storyteller.

So on that hot summer night, while I was lying on my warm bed, kept awake by the F-16s and the heat, out of nowhere, a name hit me, Diary of An Optimist. For that short month (June and July), this blog was known as the Diary of An Optimist. I thought I liked it but then I was like, “Nah, too thought provoking.” I’m not into that.

So I changed it again. I kept thinking and thinking. What to name this darn blog? You see, I’m terrible with naming things.

What is the thing that simply described me and what this blog entailed. Life! That’s one word to put it. It’s about real life, my life, full of ups and downs, happiness and sadness, troubles and chaos. That still doesn’t give me a name though.

Simple! My aunt and cousin were coming soon and once they arrived, I would have to cook for them, teach them, help them. Even the months before they came, it was becoming complicated, with me stuck at home daily waiting for the man to come everyday to work on the basement. Meanwhile, my mother’s temper flared every time she spoke of their arrival. Not to mention my life will no longer be two-some but four-some. I just wish that life could be as simple as what I have now.

That was it! Simple Life that’s the name for the blog!

A Simple Life is about my life as it is. I am a person who strive for simplicity in life. I’m sure I’m not the only one. As you can see, everything about the design of this blog promotes peace, tranquility, and simplicity.

I’ve always wanted to become a graphic or web designer, either one, no preference there. So making my desktop backgrounds look good as well as playing with web design is kind of like my second hobby aside from jigsaw puzzles.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this how my blog came to be post and I do hope that I will still make it a habit to blog everyday in 2015. That’ll be my goal and hopefully, I’ll have some juicy stories to share. Oh and please follow, follow, follow!

Gotta get back to work. So ciao for now. 😉

A Rebel and A Hero

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Unsung heroes, eh? I’m not sure I have any having known so few people in my life. My biggest hero at the current moment is my mother who wakes up and leaves for work at 4 am everyday. Then she’d come home at around 5, cook, browse the internet, sleep, and then do it all over again.

I admire that about her, hard working and willing to sacrifice. I mean I think I’m a hard worker too but I don’t think I will ever be as a hard worker as she is. I don’t think I’d have the courage to go through basic training at the age of 42 or be able to complete 2 miles in 15 minutes.

Also I don’t think I have the guts to rebel against my family whereas my mother went against her parents’ wish by going to school and get a higher education instead of going into the job force right out of high school like her siblings. At the moment, my mother’s the only one in her family with a college degree and just so happens be the least favorite person in not only my grandfather’s mind but everyone else’s mind. I guess that makes her the unsung hero in her family.

*****

I have exactly 20 hours to myself this week and I intend to cherish every bit of it. Yes, I’m the only one who’s off this week. My mother has work and aunt and cousin has school. So now, I need to eat, go to the gym, and work on rewriting the novel I’ve been working for the past year.

See you tomorrow. 🙂

Proving my Generosity

Published on by Yinglan6 Comments

I thought about doing the daily prompt today. Then again, I’m only in my early 20’s. And because of the wonderful doctors who somewhat cured me of my genetic disorder, okay, not cured specifically, more like prolonged my livelihood past my 30’s. My point, it’s a little too soon for me to have a bucket list let alone an anti-bucket list, if I even decide to have one.

Anyway, I got into a small argument with my mother on Friday because my aunt was whining her clothes got ruined from painting the rental home. My mom said it’s because I wouldn’t spare some of my clothes. Well, I’m sorry but I never said to buy this house, my aunt did and I’ve got plenty of clothes ruined from painting houses. Does it mean now that she doesn’t get to sacrifice some of her clothes?

I lost my temper and screamed at my mom because she kept calling me selfish. What made me lose my temper wasn’t what she called me but how she said it, in that mocking tone, like a tease. I don’t like to be teased or mocked.

I kept telling her I don’t have any clothes to spare. It’s not because I’m sentimental and selfish either, it’s because I really don’t have any. Most of my clothes are brand-new, purchased in the recent months, less than a year old. Besides, most of my clothes are short-sleeved and twice as big as what my aunt owned and my aunt’s like a Quaker, I’ve never seen her in anything less than a long-sleeves turtleneck, long pants, and childishly colorful socks.

So my aunt wore one of her turtlenecks and jeans that day and she and my mom spent the whole day Friday painting the rental home while I spent the day running around town on my own. Her turtleneck and jeans were slightly ruined (splattered by paint) but she was reluctant to throw it away unlike my mother. So it’s currently soaking in a large bucket of water downstairs in the laundry room.

It was completely wrong of my mom to call me selfish. I am not a selfish person, if anything, I’m unselfish. If I’m selfish, I would’ve kept all my food to myself instead of sharing it with everyone else. I wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to watch TV or use my internet.

So I spent the entire day yesterday proving to everybody I’m not selfish. We went out for dim sum and morning tea for the first time in months and I paid for it with my own money. I even threw in a generous 20% tip because we occupied the table for so long.

Then when we went to the Chinese supermarket and bought enough grocery to hopefully last more than a week this time, I once again paid for it out of my own money. I felt kind of gut-wrenching when I swiped that card because I’ve never spent more than $100 a day except when I get my course material for school and tuition payment due date. But it proved my point. I am not a selfish person. End of discussion.

Breathe, Relax, and Smile, Exams are over

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Breathe, relax, smile, exams are over!

To be honest, I didn’t want to write today but my mind kept telling me that today’s prompt’s easy and I should at least write something. Oh well, at least I’ll complete this in 10 minutes.

I woke this morning at 7-something by my mother barging into my room shaking me awake. Today was my last final exam of the semester and it’s the toughest, individual taxation, yikes. Right now, I feel like my brain’s fried and about to explode into a million pieces but I’ve missed my TV show. Oh well.

At 8 am, after I had two pieces of toast, I proceeded to my mother’s room where she went over every single note she’d written down for the course. You see, she took the same exam yesterday and had a few ideas of what I’ll encounter today.  As I sat there and listened to her talk, I felt like my brain was about to explode with new knowledge flowing from my ears and eyes to my brain every single second.

It went on for roughly two hours. After that, I went back to my room and studied everything all over again, twice three maybe five times (I lost count) before I ate lunch and drove to school, to my doom.

The exam was both what I expected and not what I expected. Some questions325420429_ManyQuestions_answer_2_xlarge jumped out while some, I felt lost like I haven’t a single clue what to do. I did alright, I guess, enough to secure me a “B” in this class, if the professor’s nice enough to give me the remaining 0.2% to get me a “B” instead of “B-“.

What I’m worrying the most about is yesterday’s exam. I just hope the professor is nice enough to give me a “B” in that class too. Then I won’t have to live with a “C” in my first semester of my graduate program. A “C” is not too bad though, at least it’s better than an “E”, now that’s devastating to my GPA.

But anyway, the semester’s finally over and I can finally take a breath, yay! 🙂

Everything I want…

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You’re given unlimited funds to plan one day full of any and all luxuries you normally can’t afford. Tell us about your extravagant day with as much detail as possible.

Oh boy, will these funds just magically disappear the next day? Because I’m not a spend it all now kind of person. I would stash some of the unlimited funds for later. But with unlimited fund for a day, I can buy and get a lot of the things I’ve been wanting but unable to get.

  1. I can buy myself a brand new car instead of keep using my mother’s. Oh, it’s not just any new car, a new hybrid car. Gas is still expensive and I like one that can get me a better mileage but at the same time, I don’t want a car that’s light as air. So a $50,000 hybrid, it is. 🙂
  2. My mother’s dream vacation home by the lake. I’m such a people pleaser.
    Wouldn’t it be nice to sit with a coffee and stare at that view?

    A few months ago, after my mother’s fallout from acquiring the piece of land she wanted, she went online and began searching for houses by Utah Lake. Our jaws fell at each of them. I mean the backyard is a freakin’ beach. Unfortunately they also come with a ridiculous price tag. Worry not, mother, for today only, I have unlimited fund and I will make you the owner of one of those beautiful houses.

  3. Update the kitchens and bathrooms of all three houses as well as fix whatever needs to be fixed. I am so darn tired of hearing my mother complain whenever something breaks or doesn’t work right in one of the three houses especially the one I’m living in now. Also, everything in all three houses just feel so ugly and out-dated. So, new floors, new counter-tops, new tubs, toilets, sinks, everything.
  4. I go shop for a piece of land for myself. That’s where the stash comes in. I would wait and build myself a cozy little house.
  5. The final thing is always the small thing. I would:
    1. get myself a brand-new wardrobe. New clothes, shoes, everything
    2. buy a 60-inch TV for my mother
    3. pay-off my student loan debt
    4. get myself new tablet? Maybe one of those Surface Pros. Oh and a really nice camera so I can finally take beautiful scenic pictures.

There are so much I can do that after five things, I can’t think of anymore I want to do but these would be the first. But let’s be real, the only way this day would come, it would be in my dreams.

Have to go study. See ya!

Pain in the Neck

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Today’s prompt is very odd and specific, Today, write a post about the topic of your choice — using only one-syllable words.

I don’t know why but my aunt has been a pain in the neck of late. I find her now and then to speak her thoughts out loud. Like how she comes up the stairs and says, “I need to pee.”

I’m like, I don’t need to know that. Just go!

Then each day, at ’round 2, she will ask me, “What will we eat?”

I’ll be like, “We just ate lunch and you want to know the next meal?” At least let me get some work done first, then I’ll think ’bout food.

That’s the laugh! Shoulders go up and down

The thing that drives me nuts is the way she laughs. I don’t know how to tell you. If you look to your left, it says a lot. It’s quite weird and now and then, I get mad ’cause come on, I have a lot of work here and what you do does not help me.

The third and last thing is that she speaks so darn loud. When I sit next to herand she turns to me to talk, I feel like she talks through a bull-horn. Now and then, I’d tell her, “please bring your voice down.” Still, she keeps her voice loud as a mic. Ugh, I feel like I will go deaf if she goes on this loud.

I took my first final exam to-day and got 100%. Yay! One down, three to go. 🙂

Something I learned about blogging…

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Today’s prompt says, What’s the most important (or interesting, or unexpected) thing about blogging you know today that you didn’t know a month ago?

This last month, I hardly been following up with blogs. The most I did was writing. Sometimes, if I had time, I would read a few but I spent most of my time doing homework and preparing tests. I probably did a little more yesterday.

Let’s see, I thought it was time for a change so I changed the background to a lovely winter sunrise for this blog. On my other blog, Hidden Stars, I did a complete theme change since I needed some relaxation after the exam yesterday and could only sit rigidly anyway. Apparently the nerves in my shoulder and neck is swollen and that’s why it hurt so much.

I have my four finals this week and then I’d be free!

A quick note to readers that are are also following Hidden Stars, you might have noticed I haven’t been posting the serial fiction in about two weeks. I’ve been procrastinating. I’ll be posting after finals.

So you see, I hardly learned anything new about blogging in the past month. I think if you compared it with the beginning of the year, there might be more to write about.

As you’ve read in my post, Longest Streak in Blogging, this blog was started last February. I didn’t know how to tag my posts then. Let’s just say, at the beginning, I was under-tagging and then I was excessively tagging, and then six months ago, I was finally getting it (15 or less tags per post).

Something important I learned in the recent months, in order to get more eyeballs and likes on your blog, you need to:

  • Write based on a prompt
  • Have lots and lots of loyal followers, or
  • You .need to publish something that everybody wants to read

Let’s just say after I participated in daily prompt on this blog as well as various flash-fiction challenges on Hidden Stars, I’ve seen my viewership double, maybe triple or quadruple in the past few months even if the new follower per post has decreased.

The increase in viewership was what kept me going this past year. That’s the most important thing I learned, the support from readers will keep me from saying goodbye to this blog in 2014. Bring it on, 2015!

Surviving in a Bad Neighborhood

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I cannot sleep. My entire right side is in a lot of pain. So here I am, sitting rigidly at my computer at 7 in the morning thinking about what kind of story I’ll share for today’s prompt.

Honestly, I have never heard of this famous song about New York but these lyrics sure take me back. During my first years in the U.S, I lived in a very bad neighborhood in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Of course, now this neighborhood is a little better. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. But still, I think if you can make it in this town, you can make it anywhere because anywhere will just seems heavenly. 

By now, you might have hear me talk about my middle school days as the happiest time of my life but those days were also filled with adventures and failures.

Like failure to catch the thieves that stole my pencils and erasers. Well, those are small things but what my wallet, stolen right out of my backpack on the school bus that afternoon. Or my keys, stolen from the depth of my backpack while I was walking home from school with my friend. No wait, that was one of those victorious times. Thank god my friend noticed it and saw who did it.

The moment I noticed my keys were missing and saw the bully dangled it not far ahead from me, I sprinted, faster and faster, like my life depended on it. Unfortunately she was quicker. I was never a fast runner.

So I ran to the next best thing, the vice-principal. I told him about my stolen keys and who had it. He didn’t even have to go back to the office to check for the bully’s address. He knew exactly where to go. I got in the back seat and he got in the front and we sped to the girl’s house like cops.

When we got there, the girl was actually standing outside dangling my keys as if she was waiting for us. The moment she saw the vice-principal get out of the car, her victorious grin faded.

“Hand over the keys, Daisy.” I heard him say and willingly, she surrendered the keys to the vice-principal.

That was easy, right? Unfortunately, like all stories, there’s a twist. The villain is never satisfy when they loses and when they’re unsatisfied, they seek vengeance .

Several weeks after the keys incident as well as the hair-touching incident (another time), both bullies sought revenge against me. My mother couldn’t come to pick me up from school one day and she didn’t want me walking home alone. So she told me to take the school bus.

I didn’t realize until I sat down that the two bullies were sitting behind me. I quickly wrapped my arms around my backpack and hugged it against my chest to prevent anymore thievery. Just before I got off, I made sure that every zipper was closed before I swung my backpack over my shoulder.

The next day at school, I searched my entire backpack for my library card. My wallet was missing and I knew exactly who had it. I went to vice-principal and reported my wallet went missing and told him my suspicion.

He brought the girl to his office and asked her but she denied. Case closed, just like that. On the way out, she smirked at me and to this day, I still think it was her who had stolen my wallet just like her best friend took my keys.

A Whole Lot of Apologies

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I feel like today’s prompt is very similar to one that I did a while back. But if inanimate objects have feelings and emotions, then I owe a lot of apologies. There are so many items that deserve my apology equally. So I’ll just bullet-list a few.

  • To my microwave for sometimes slamming the door and the food explosion. You’re simply too powerful.
  • To my mouse for getting mad at the computer’s functionality and taking it out on you. I know you’re not made of steel and I will be careful with you from now on.
  • To the recliner couch. Sorry for always putting weight on you.
  • To the TV remote for always dropping you on the floor. It’s lucky you’re still functioning.

Oh boy, that’ll be a big problem if everything has feelings and emotions. Luckily, in my mind, they already have feelings and this makes me to treat them as humanly as possible.

Five things to realize a great friend

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I woke up an hour ago and looked at the prompt for today. My initial reaction was What the heck? and then my brain basically went blank. Should I even participate?

But then I thought about what if I was the one that got stuck on a desert island, I bet I will only get a big lecture from my mother, no doubt. But my former best friend? Probably a sarcastic don’t know don’t care and telling me to walk it off. So if the situation was reversed, would I do the same? Heck yeah. Why should I care when you didn’t?

Of course, I can’t imagine my mother ever get stranded. She’s had basic training and a bunch monthly drills with the army during the past 6 years. I’m pretty sure she’ll find a clever way to survive. My friend, on the other hand, might be in trouble. She maybe tough but she’s also someone who would shriek if her perfectly manicured nails were ruined. I can imagine her become one of those kids in Lord of the Flies. 😀

Let’s say before her unfortunate journey, I send her off with five things. These things are:

  1. A burner phone that has enough minutes to make one possibly two phone calls. Let’s say, hypothetically, the desert island has cell signal and she uses the phone to call me as most people do when they need help. I pick up and do that evil laugh. Now is my turn to say, “I don’t know what to do either.” Walk it off.
  2. It isn’t all that bad

    A 10-day supply of freeze-dried food. Yep, the kind that astronaut eats. It’s not too bad but 🙂 I can imagine my friend’s face. Oh, and it’s a 10-day supply if you eat according to the servings.

  3. A filter for clean water. I can’t be that evil, can I. I need to at least provide a way for some clean filtered water. Otherwise, my best friend will die before I can tell her of all the horrible humiliating things she’s done to me.

    A water filter
  4. Clean tropical clothes. At least she’ll have some spare clothes to change into.
  5. The photo of us snapped outside my apartment. Before we fell apart, my mother snapped a picture of us just outside the apartment. My friend framed it in a frame that said best friends forever and she gave it to a short time later. I will give her this photo to remind her of the time I’ve been loyal to her and the times when we were friends.

I can’t imagine what the conclusion of this will be. Once my friend gets rescued, there’s a chance she’ll hate me forever or she wants to be friends again. I guess we’ll never find out.

The Soundtrack to My Life: The Movie

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Everyday and Everything will be Black and White
Everyday and Everything will be Black and White

I often imagined that if my life was a movie, it’d be full of drama and the soundtrack would be some classical music track along with some fun mellow pop rock mix in there for the moments like when I’m having fun on the beach or when I’m walking down the steps to shake hands with the faculties while smiling at the camera because I finally graduated.

Then an orchestra would back me up when I’m angry and frustrated with a fire-heating ensemble. And when I’m sad, a violin would come in and play something that makes every note feels like a teardrop.

However, my life isn’t like that kind of a movie. I don’t have drama happening at every turn. As the matter of fact, my life feels more like a black and white silent movie. It would be about a clumsy girl stumbling through life. Everyday’s the same, wake up, go to school, come home, sleep, and do it all over again except maybe add in an occasional fight or two.

I think it might be a dramedy especially everything tend to move quicker and weirder in silent movies with the cocky piano music that makes the audience’s heads cock left and right. Now that’s a hilarious thing to watch. 😀

What am I, invisible?

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Sometimes, when I am driving my old car, I wonder, do I become invisible the moment I step into this car? Continue reading “What am I, invisible?” →

Memories of the 21st Century

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Dear Buyer of the 23rd Century,

Great, you found my 21st century hard drive! This little disk was extremely valuable to me back in the days. I even refused to get rid of it. I don’t know how my friend actually convinced me to get rid of it though. Anyway, on this little guy are precious memories like pictures and stories I never got to finish. Oh, and all everything I learned from college are on here.

You will find plenty of cloud drives on there. Yes, they were popular back then and you can often tell a person’s insecurity by just how many cloud drives they have on their computers. Obviously, I am very insecure about my files.

Let me tell you a story. I wasn’t always like that. I used to only have one cloud drive. That was before my cousins came to visit me in 2012. They didn’t bring a computer of their own and my mother insisted that they use mine and not hers. So I let them.

I didn’t monitor their usage and who knows what they had used it for because about a week after we got back from Los Angeles, a part of my computer suddenly died. I was nervous, anxious and my hands shook for days before I had to do a big cleanup, place everything on flash drives or my portable hard drive. Then I did a big reset, wipe the drive clean and start over.

The transferring of the files back on my computer was a pain. It took me days, weeks, and even months to get my computer the way it was again. Then, I decided, I am never saving anything on the hard drive ever again. Everything will be on a cloud drive so I can go online and retrieve my files anytime and not have to fear of losing anything ever again. Oh, did I mention my portable hard drive failed once and I had to replace it? Yeah, I lost plenty of things there.

Good Luck,

Yinglan

Don’t Do That!!!

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Today’s Daily Prompt says, “It’s Halloween, and you just ran out of candy. If the neighborhood kids (or anyone else, really) were to truly scare you, what trick would they have to subject you to?”

Two days ago, while I was waiting for the instructor to come open the door to the classroom, I was thinking about the plot for the story I’m writing at the moment. My mind quickly left the building and flew to fantasy-land. I was about to have a breakthrough in the plot when something or someone collided into me and snapped me back to reality. I was sure I was going to fall but I steadied my footing. 

My friend, Yoon, laughed. “You scared me!” I whined. 

“You didn’t see me coming?” 

I shook my head, “I was thinking about something else.” My chest was pounding so hard at that moment like it was going to pop out of my chest.

Her friend appeared from around the corner. “What are you doing scaring people?” Her friend said. 

“It’s Halloween.” Yoon replied.

“Na uh, in two days.” I said and Yoon just rolled her eyes and then the instructor arrived and opened the door. 

I get scared easily, just catch me at a moment of absentmindedness and jump out at me, that’ll do. Don’t do one of those elaborate tricks, those will just give me nightmares for a long time as well as ruin Halloween for me or I’ll remember that moment and hate you forever. So for that, DON’T SCARE ME!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Casual and Simple

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Today’s Daily Prompt says, “We’re less than a week away from Halloween! If you had to design a costume that channeled your true, innermost self, what would that costume look like? Would you dare to wear it?”

I don’t celebrate Halloween. I haven’t celebrated Halloween ever since I was 12. What happened? Long story, there was a school dance and I wore a lame costume and everyone laughed. So that’s the end of Halloween.

If I have to design a costume that channels my true innermost self, it wouldn’t have any design whatsoever. It will probably be the most casual costume on the planet. It will probably just sweat pants and shirt. I’m into comfort and simplicity, p.s. that’s why I call my blog, My Simple Life. I am not into any elaborate things, that’s not me.

As a child, I wasn’t really into dress-up, okay maybe a little. Now, if you ask me to dress-up, NO WAY. And this is probably all thanks to a dress that I wore for a professional photo-shoot when I was five (I had to wear a white halter-top dress that made me look like a ribbon tree) and my Halloween costume when I was 11 (I was Cinderella). Hard to imagine me in those now. Anyway, they were both itchy and tight. I could barely breathe and I kept feeling like if I did, somewhere would rip.

So, anything comfortable and breathable, that’s my costume and I will be dared enough to wear it. 😀

Have to get ready, big test today. Ugh, I hate taking tests on Saturdays. 😦

A Little Life Update: So So Busy

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Do you know a horrible way to cook hot dogs? I didn’t realize it until this morning when my cousin did it. Microwaving it without water. The whole house smelled like exploding hot dogs. I can even smell it now in class! It’s horrible! Continue reading “A Little Life Update: So So Busy” →

The Fun Route to College

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eDLHCtzRR0yfFtU0BQar_sylwiabartyzel_themapBefore I begin today’s daily prompt, I just like to say that where I live, there aren’t much detour that I know of. Although detours do exist here, they aren’t fun and they tend to get you to the destination in almost the same amount of time as the regular route, sometimes, faster. So enjoy the following dialogue where I tell a stranger (may be my smart-mouth cousin) about the fun route to the only community college in town.

“Good morning, Stranger.” I say. 

“Good morning, do you know the way to the community college?” 

Hmm, the way to the community college, should I give him the fastest route? Then again, the fastest route might involve traffic and that would become the slowest route. Nah, I’ll give the scenic detour. 

“Take I-15 and exit Legacy. Be careful on the Legacy. It’s 55 mph and cops are always hiding beneath the bridges catching people doing 60 or 65. Then take the 4700 S. exit.”

“But ma’am, I don’t have a car. I live down the block and I just walked here. I was hoping you’d give me direction that would involve public transit.”

Public transit, huh. “Alright, you go across the road to the mall and take the 640 bus to the train station. Then take the train to the central station where you will then hop on the trax train to 4500 S. and then take bus route 47 to the college where you will then walk 15 minutes to the heart of the campus where the buildings will be.” 

The stranger’s eyes bulges wide open and his jaw drops. He shakes his head. “I hope that was clear direction, sir.” I say. 

“Yes, ma’am, that was clear. Thank you.” He walks away.

“Have a good day!” I grin and close the door. 

One, Two, or Three?

Published on by YinglanLeave a comment

unsplash-bonusToday’s Daily Prompt states:  “A lively group discussion, an intimate tête-à-tête, an inner monologue — in your view, when it comes to a good conversation, what’s the ideal number of people?”

It all depends on the conversation but I’d say two or three is the ideal number of people. In some conversations, three’s a crowd while in some conversations, even two’s considered a crowd. Well, those conversations you just have to have it to yourself then.

Sorry, my brain’s a bit fuzzy this morning trying to come up with a situation.

Ah, yes, there is no more awkward conversation than when you’re saying horrible things about someone and they are just thirty feet away from you. This happens so often in my home, especially now. I would be sitting right next to mom and in the middle of our conversation, she would start babbling on about how my aunt and cousin did this and how they did that while they are just downstairs within our earshot. I think those are the conversation that should be done alone and no one’s listening.

A conversation that should be done with two or three people is as states in the prompt, a lively group discussion. One of my classes at the moment have something we do almost every other week called “Small group assignment” where the instructor gives us a worksheet and we have to do it on our own in class. When the entire class is finished, we get into groups. The instructor would often asks, “How many makes a group?”

The class will then answer, “Three.”

I agree, three makes a group and it is needed when it comes to discussion assignments and other assignments, three is the ideal number because an extra opinion will be needed to confirm the correct answer or the correct method to get the answer. Four or five, at least for me, is a bit excessive, that is, if you want to start an argument.

Now is your turn, what is the ideal number of people to have a conversation?

A Family of Snobs

Published on by Yinglan1 Comment

I don’t know if I wrote this before but I am a highly doubtful person. I don’t know when I became that person but I am very doubtful. I have trouble trusting my gut instinct on everything. Therefore I cannot claim to be an expert in any sort of subject or fields. Continue reading “A Family of Snobs” →

Back in Time

Published on by Yinglan6 Comments

tEREUy1vSfuSu8LzTop3_IMG_2538Last night, I have finally finish all my work and have a moment to breathe. Actually, it’s a few hours to breathe before I have to jump back to work or worse, prepare for my upcoming test.

To fulfill my fun today, I decide to take a whack at the Daily Prompt, which is interesting, it says, “Congrats! You’re the owner of a new time machine. The catch? It comes in two models, each traveling one way only: the past OR the future. Which do you choose, and why?”

If I have a new time machine, I would choose to go to the past. That being said, I assume I won’t get stuck in time (I can come back to the present) or anything catastrophic (like out of fuel or that the fuel is something ridiculous like Plutonium) that happens in movies like Back to the Future. I am most likely to go back in time to learn about American History.

You’re such a geek! Why do you need to go back in time to learn about history when this is what history books are for?!

The thing is, I think history textbook is kind of bland, it’s all about the important figures. What about the help? There’s never anything about them. So I want to go back in time to learn some of the real stories about the unimportant people instead of reading one of those made-up fiction, although I am not saying they are all made-up but I’d like to confirm.

Oh, and not to mention all those TV shows and movies about the conspiracy theories surrounding the Founding Fathers. I like to know if it’s true. The only thing to find that out, go back in time to the 17th and 18th Century.

After I learn about that, I’d then like to travel to early 20th century. A lot to learn there too. I know this sounds like a waste of time for some of you but I’ve been fascinated with American History ever since I began learning it in 7th grade. There are a lot of things that happened in the past 200 or 300 hundred years and I like to know more and why not get the knowledge the fun and adventurous way. I get to learn about the mechanics of a time machine and get to travel back in time! Woohoo!

By the way, what’s up with the daily post page?

Welcome to Boring Suburbia Life

Published on by Yinglan3 Comments

Aside from the mall across the road, this is basically where everything is

I live in a suburban town about 30 minutes or 25 miles from the outskirts of Salt Lake City. I wouldn’t call it a town, really. It’s got 60,000 people and it’s busy and noisy as heck and the traffic can drive a person crazy especially on the weekend and everyone’s trying to get into the mall and we’re trying to get on the freeway. Yup, that’s right, we live right across the street from the mall.

We don’t go there though, at least my mom and I don’t. The clothes there are expensive and the sizes doesn’t really fit us. So on weekends, if we need to get onto the freeway, we take the longer route instead of waiting 20 minutes in traffic to get from our home to the freeway which is about 1.5 miles.

We used to live in Salt Lake County. I don’t say Salt Lake City because a lot of my Californian friends used to get confuse when I tell them I live in Holladay. Wait, I thought you live in Salt Lake City as I would often get in response.

No, I’d tell them, Salt Lake City is actually very small.

A lot of people visiting Utah for the first time, even my relatives, thought Salt Lake City is a large city but if you’ve lived here long enough, you will know that the city itself is quite small and it’s the county that’s large.

The train that used to get me part-way to school and home

Well, by my standards, anyway. The county is actually small compare to the other 28 counties in the state but it is surely the highest populated county in the state, about 1/2 of the state population is gathered there. Anyway, I don’t live in Salt Lake County, I used to, but I live in Davis County which is even smaller than Salt Lake County.

When I did my undergraduate at the University of Utah, whenever people asked me where I live, I’d tell them, Layton. They would be like, huh, where’s that? I was a little confused myself of why people don’t know where Layton was. So after a while, I started telling people I live about 30 minutes from the school but by train and bus, it’s about 1 hour. They were like, wow, you must be getting up early to get here everyday. I’d nod and say, yup.

I live in Utah for about 7 years now and I never really discover any strange quirks up until about 2 months ago when mom mention that she noticed the people here don’t pronounce the “t” sound except when they say “Utah”. I never noticed that and now I hear it everywhere. For example, I hear people call the city I live in “Lay on” when it’s supposed to pronounce “Layton” with the “t” sound. And when you need braces, people say you need to “straigh en” your teeth. Weird, right?

It’s okay, I guess, living here in the suburbs, though I find life a bit boring and annoying sometimes. There’s hardly anywhere to go and the only place I seem to know to shop is Hill Air Force Base. Now, with my ID card cut off, age restriction, I can no longer have access to the base and without a car, life has just become 100% times more boring. It’s almost like constantly being grounded. I can’t even go with mom to buy groceries now because I have to watch my cousin at home.

F.Y.I, mom nor I want to take my cousin to the market because he has a reputation, even at 17, to throw a tantrum if we don’t get him what he wants and frankly, I am terrified.

Give me Ten Minutes – A Little Life Update

Published on by Yinglan6 Comments

I haven’t been feeling well this week. 😦 The temperature fluctuations tend to do this to me. Over the weekend, it went from the 80’s to the 50’s. The temperature difference in the classrooms doesn’t help either. So I have chills, headache, and my dizziness.

Yet I don’t tell anyone. No one will believe me plus I don’t have insurance. I don’t even bother talking to mom anymore because her temper had been at its worst ever since my aunt and cousin came to town. Yesterday, after enduring 2 hours of exam and not eating lunch, I went home straight to fighting. Frankly, my throat is coarse and tired.

What did we fought about? Two days ago, she had asked my aunt to re-park her new car and my aunt backed the car into the pole that held the basketball basket. She did what my boss did last November to my car. She turned the wheel in the wrong direction. So naturally, she blamed me for not stopping my aunt. Can you believe that? If I’d known that, I would have re-parked the damn car myself.

Then last night, after she found out how I did on my exam (I stupidly blurted out), she wouldn’t leave me alone and the fight went on for 90 minutes (storming into my room and interrupting me doing homework and all that). It’s so freaking annoying. I feel like the fights are going to go on and on probably until one of us dies or move out.

The other thing that is annoying me at the moment is ever since my aunt and cousin moved in, they’ve been eating, eating, and more eating. It feels like that’s all my cousin think about is food. In less than a month, they have eaten the amount of food that would normally take me and my mom two months to eat. I’m serious and I mean just my aunt and cousin. It doesn’t include me and my mom.

My cousin eats like there’s no tomorrow, like everything is free. Well, nothing is free. There’s no free lunch. He cooks three dishes for lunch and eat most of it himself and then 30 minutes later, snack and then 2 hours later, three or four dishes again, dinner and the cycle continues. Okay, I am at awe here because I have never seen a 17-year-old with such a large appetite. And the thing is, he doesn’t gain weight. Okay, now there’s something wrong with that kid.

Okay, my 10-minutes is up. I don’t really need prompt today but they are part of the fun for my day.

I’ve been super busy with school this week. If you leave a comment, I may not reply right away. Be patient, I will try to get to you as soon as I can find the time to sit.