Dispute Everything.

Today was the James S. Rickards High School Preseason Invitational.
We all got there at about 8:00am. I arrived at the bottom of the school (because it was built on a big hill) and saw Mr. F walking nearby. We waited until he and an older kid walked back with a few boxes of Krispy Kremes, and walked up to the auditorium. Directions to get to the auditorium were something along these lines: " Walk up some stairs, and after a while, walk up some more stairs, and some more stairs, and when you get higher up, walk up some more stairs, and when you're finally at the top of the school, walk up a flight of stairs to walk up some stairs."
Yeah. I hate stairs now.
We arrived at the auditorium, and everyone for Algebra 2 kind of converged together as a group of people yelling at each other (like always :).
Shuyao kept trying to grab Diana's notebook because it had math notes from our practices, so Diana kept telling her it was her "Certamen" stuff. (Certamen is a Latin competition.)
Over half an hour later (or so it seemed), we finally got two hot pink pencils each to use for the scantron tests. I was handed two scantrons because I had to take the Theta Open test since I didn't get onto team 1. And there's only one team per school x.x
Everyone from Chiles walked out of the auditorium to a tiny area while Mr. F told us random useful information about the day.
THEN, it was off to the tests! Jack, June, and I walked towards the Theta Open rooms. There was an intricate wheelchair ramp next to a slightly-larger-than-normal flight of stairs. It basically went in a sort of zig-zag shape. They immmediately raced down it. I found that extremely odd.
Now, every time I see a ramp, I'll think of them running down that big, awkward one at Rickards. I walked down the stairs like a normal person.
When we arrived in a Theta Open classroom, for about 10 minutes, there were only Chiles people in the room, not including the proctors, of course.
Then, one Rickards kid and a whole group of Fairview Middle School kids (who will eventually be Rickards people) entered. We took the astonishingly difficult test, and left.
We arrived at the dispute room, and almost everyone disputed number one. This was because two line segments were given to be parallel, but one of the end points in one of the line segments didn't exist in the picture, so there wasn't enough information to determine the answer.
There were geometry problems because it was Theta Open- the test we all take since we're not on team.
About team- each school had one team, so you had to be in the top 4 to not take Theta Open. During that time was Theta Team.
After disputes, we marched right back to the 400 building to take the next test- Algebra II Individual. Individual was more difficult because this was the one that everyone took. So the team people did it too.
This test was a bit more difficult than the astonishingly impossible Theta Open test.
Then, we went back to the dispute room to dispute everything. Yes, that's my math motto: "Dispute Everything."
A sophomore at Chiles told me that she saw all these high schoolers who had a LOT of dispute forms and were bascially disputing everything. She thought it was Lincoln High School. I now have a sort of respect for them.
Right before Individual, this guy from the Lincoln team told me that they only scored 2 points. And Rickards got TWENTY-NINE points!!! Apparently, since Rickards wrote the tests... It wasn't too fair...
Chiles placed 3rd with 7 points. Yes, a measily 7. It wasn't their fault, though. There were all these types of unknown permutations that could never exist in a textbook and other odd things.
2nd place was Seminole High School with a few more than 7.
Diana told me that they got the distinct permutations question correct and that she said "Kejing taught me that!" when she saw it. I was incredibly happy that I actually kind of indirectly helped the Chiles team!
For lunch, the sophomore and her mom took Diana, Shuyao and me to Governor's Square Mall where we ordered food from Tropical Smoothie Cafe because it had the shortest line. Actually, when Shuyao and I got there, there was no line ^^.
When we got back, we walked back up the amazingly copious amount of stairs to go to the dreaded auditorium again. We sat there for... Let's see... What felt like an hour (and yes, literally an hour).
Diana kept saying, "OH NO!!! I DID HORRIBLY!", Shuyao wanted to kill herself, my stomach felt extremely nervous but I was actually just mad at myself for being so stupid so I don't know how it could've been nervous (no comment from you, Diana), Ryan just sat there, William tried to make Diana feel better (which didn't work, in case you're wondering), David came late and sat down, June told Diana to "shut up", and Jack was hungry. No suprise there.
FINALLY, some guy (probably principal of RHS) welcomed everyone. He mentioned something about "excellent math students". Diana, June, and William started coughing. :D It was pretty hilarious, but we couldn't really laugh out loud because we were supposed to be quiet and listening.
By then, everyone had a very basic idea of what they scored on the tests because after we had handed in the scantrons, we were given the answers so we could dispute (everything- lol). We all had an idea of how we compared to each other. Except me. I was so weird that I simply did not calculate my score. I also didn't circle all the questions I "bubbled in" on the scantron, so there was no way of calculating it even if I had all the answers on my Individual test.
First- Pre-algebra individual was announced. Then, team. Then, Open.
Next- Geometry. Same order.
And then, of course, Algebra II. Notice how individual is announced first. So, basically, the people who scored in the top ten for Algebra II Individual had to go onto the stage first.
Well, this is the scary part.
They called my name first.
I'm not even kidding.
I actually didn't get up until Diana was like, "KEJING! THEY CALLED YOUR NAME!!!"
I was in shock.
ME????? How could I place????
When I got back down, June said they (meaning our group of friends) did the wave. I didn't see them because I was in such great shock.
Even later after that, Diana said that the guy who has to do with the grenades *explosion* was one of the first people to stand up for me when they announced my name and gave me my trophy or something like that.
I got 6th place for Algebra II Individual. Five Rickards people beat me.
For team, William, Ryan, Diana, and Shuyao (in order of how they scored at school when we took the test to get into team) went up. They got the 3rd place trophy!!!! :D
Then, they announced Theta Open. Diana said, "You probably won that one."
I got 2nd place in that, much to the dismay of some people from Chiles because I heard "sad" noises coming from that direction of the mass of haleconia-colored t-shirts.
Again, a Rickards person beat me. She said "good job" as I walked past her to get off the stage, which was really nice of her =)
Next was Pre-calc. Carolyn got 2nd place, which was extremely shocking and sad and I felt really sorry for her because everyone says that she always wins.
Then, Calculus. No suprise there. I don't know how the class of 2010 is going to live up to them.
I didn't rememember there being Stats. I just don't remember.
For Sweepstakes (highest average score, or t-score which is more accurate, for each school). I think Chiles got 3rd. As the president and vice-president went up, Jack also stood up until June whispered (loudly), "SIT DOWN!"
After the awards ceremony, Mr. F called us towards him so he could tell us that we have to beat Buschholz (#1 in the state or something) when we go to Gainseville in December. I think it was December. I'm pretty sure... I think.
Then, a group picture was taken of all the CHILES MAO people.
We talked for a while until Mr. F pulled out the list for Algebra II Individual. I was looking at with, standing behind Diana because she's pretty short. My dad suddenly appeared out of no where, so Mr. F talked to him for about 10 seconds. Then, I left, walking down the "infinite staircase" to go back to the parking lot and go home.
My mom and brother were in the car, waiting for me. They were quite suprised.
The first thing my brother said to me when he saw my trophies was, "Can I have one?"

The Downfall of Relish-fil-A

The story below is based on a short story I heard in 8th grade. I rewrote it, making it better and more difficult to read. And yes, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Gator-fil-A.
As CEO of Gator-fil-A, I decided to create relish because it was the most random condiment we could think of. One day, after the 10th anniversary of the founding of my company, I visited my most faithful customer's house.He had a jar of Relish-fil-A. I asked him why the jar was so big. He decided to tell me a story...Once, there was a guy who had a wife. Oh wow. How interesting. Okay, I'll start the story.One day, the wife mysteriously disappeared. A lot of neighbors thought she had run off with someone else, but no one was sure. There was no evidence of this, so the evil police officers decided to acuse the man of murder.They needed proof.So, they spied on the guy for six months. Yeah, real law-abiding, huh?Every day, he would come out of his house to his garden to chop his trees down. Chop, chop, chop, hack, hack, hack. Every day, one more tree would fall down.Then, he took all of the wood into his house. The wood never came back out.During he second month, he chopped down two trees per day. Chop, chop, chop, hack, hack, hack, chop, chop, chop, hack, hack, hack.During the third month, he chopped down three trees per day. Chop, chop, chop, hack, hack hack, chop, chop, whack, hack, hack, hack. That is all they heard.The police thought this was quite odd. Again, the wood never came back out. Smoke would always rise from his chimney.Sometimes, the guy would leave his property to go and buy vegetables including broccoli, lettuce, and cauliflower. Oh yeah- and relish. My Relish-fil-A was very popular back then, but not any more.Yeah, that was random.So, um. Let's see... What happened next? Oh yeah. He died some time during the end of six months. How did they know? Because one morning, as he was walking outside to chop 6 trees for the day, he collapsed, shivered for a few minutes, and they watched as he screeched, yelling three words.So since he was dead, the police all marched right to his house, entered excitedly(remember, they didn't have a warrant because they had no proof), and found something weird in the chimney.Was it hair? No, the guy didn't have brown hair. He was blonde. Huh. *sarcasm:* Well that was an interesting story.This is when my wonderful Gator-fil-A customer looked at me funny. I guess this was the end of the story. He said, "Do you want to know what those three words were? You know, the police never heard exactly what they were. They were busy eating breakfast. But I did. I was there, passing by."Me: Hey, don't look at me like that! You're pretty creppy-looking.I found out what those three words were.He had said, "I killed her."That's why Relish-fil-A lost it's popularity.

let's clear things up...

I AM NOT SMART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To Susan: Diana is a Chinese girl(out of a total of four Chinese girls including me) at my school. She bet me 50 million dollars that she wouldn't become valedictorian. I bet her 50 million dollars that she would. Then, since she is SO INCREDIBLY nice, she changed her bet to thinking that I will become valedictorian. This demonstrates how deliriously nice she is.

YYRYYRRRR

The pattern for a Chinese flag on a standard 3x3 Rubik's cube from left to right and top to bottom ^^.

I'm going to fail the SATs so much...

50th Post!

I know I'm weird. At least I'm Asian.

Everyone needs to convince Diana that she is smarter than me.
U kin doo dths leeving uh commynt and say sow.

Standard materials for a grenade:
-iron pipe with threaded ends, 1.5-3" diameter and 3-8" inches long
-two iron pipe caps
-explosive or propellant (special fertilizer?)
-non-electric commercial or military blasting cap
-fuse cord
-hand drill
-pliers

Um... All I have so far is the hand drill and pliers. I guess I could just improvise with other materials, but testing it to make it the most effective would take more than two days. I need one on Wednesday.

you're schizo and you know it

I never had the time to measure the volume of my backpack.
Diana has a humongous backpack, though. She could fit many more grenades.
To answer your questions, the reason I'm talking about explosive devices is because people just need to be (hypothetically but not really) blown up these days. *sigh*
I wish Mr. F would allow me to be team captain. Then I wouldn't need to find SOMEONE'S allergies...

Remember the nursery rhyme?
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of Albert.

Speaking of UF, it's interesting how the layout of the page where you write a post is blue and orange. Google needs to rethink their design. Or Jack could get a blog and call it "fate".

FSU vs. UF

Well, for some reason, I published this, but no words showed up.
Okay. About FSU vs. UF. It is the oddest rivalry I've every seen, considering how it's WITHIN a state. People need to decide already. For now, we can continue sticking "Gator-fil-A" stickers on the proctors' back when we visit Gainesville for MAO or Certamen competitions. Certamen is a Latin competition so I won't be there, but the future valedictorian of CHS, class of 2010 *cough* DIANA *COUGH* can do that for me.

By the way, I estimate that you could fit about 50 hand grenades in a backpack. I plan to actually find out the exact number today.

MAO test

I mentioned a 5 million dollars that Diana owes me in a recent post.
This means that she doesn't have to pay me all at once, since she also owes me an additional $5 for when we get back our Algebra II MAO practice tests at she gets a higher score! :D
Grand total: $50,000,005.00

mysterious envelope 6/2006

Stolen from Connie at 8th-grade-end-of-the-year field trip at Governor Dodge State Park. Google "Neal Wu" if you're interested.

I will be rich! Very rich.

Most Chinese people realize that four is a very bad number. This is because if you change the tone from 4 to 3, it turns into "die." I will now quickly add another post so Gmail doesn't tell me to "die^2" when I log into blogger. ^^ I'm weird.

I finished To Kill a Mockingbird yesterday. I don't know how I managed to get through it all.
Tomorrow, the CHS Algebra II people will be taking a "practice" test so the teacher can get an idea of who'll be on the team. Diana, you probably don't want to bet against your highly proficient skill in math because you need all the money you can save for when you give me $5,000,000 when you become valedictorian.

Yesterday, my dad said I could buy a car (because we were passing by a car junkyard) with my money (about $100). Then, my mom said I could probably only buy some tires. I clarified this by saying that I could buy about one and a half tires. So by senior year, I'll be able to buy 75,001.5 tires. Yes, I know, I'm already thinking about how I could possibly spend all the money. Diana, if you want, you could just give me 70,000 tires if you don't have $5,000,000 to spare.

Here is the picture I was talking about. It makes me so sad because it's so happy, but see, the lighting makes it "in the past" like you're looking back at it (well obviously). I can't explain it. And it took an incredible amount of time to load on to Blogger.