(Don't you love the partially naked plumeria? This is without, by the way. You'll understand as you read this through.)

Gasoline fumes and weird glass cleaner smells are currently residing in my household. Hooray! T_T My dad was mowing the lawn, then cleaning the patio table, and since there are windows galore, my house gets the brunt of everything. But that's not what this blog is about, unfortunately.

So I went outside this morning and the sun started hitting my eyes. I just woke up, and even small quantities of light made my eyes water, so you can imagine the amount of squinting and walking around with my eyes closed. (I know it became cloudy all of a sudden; stupid nature hating on me...) Instead of running blindly through my backyard and probably killing myself on the stereotypical Filipino flowers (the ones with the super spiky stems), I went back inside, took a random pair of sunglasses, and went outside. It wasn't a super significant difference, but it helped.
How so? Well, the sun emits waves in all sorts of planes (which is possible since we're not in Flatland). The sunglasses have small slits that only let waves of a certain plane in, and keep all others out. In this way, just a small portion of the overall light gets transmitted to the eyes, blocking unnecessary brightness. Unfortunately, they weren't polarized to my liking, so instead of having everything super dark, everything just seemed just a little darker (it doesn't show it on here, though...). That's what you get for cheap athletic sunglasses...Oh, well.

One more week til hell, guys. Keep studying! I'm such a hypocrite, but I'm hoping my mind will finally realize the importance of not failing...Hopefully...

Yay for last week of small kine freedom! Boo for APs coming up...NEXT WEEK?!??

All I have to show from this weekend is an increase of fat

So I've been lazy and not using a camera this week, so this pic is created from my handy-dandy webcam. This weekend has been completely exhausting, in a good way. Fair, Pearl Harbor, pool party; all good. Pearl Harbor was interesting and claustrophobic, especially in the submarine. Those people that get assigned to submarines must have a great mental stability, because even the thought of sleeping on the bunks except for the top sent me into a small rush of fear. At the fair, I spent less of my scrip playing games like I used to do, and more to sample the food there, especially the ones at Le Gourmet. Nice to know that my parents' money is going to me stuffing my face for the winter...-_- Anyway...

What did any of that rant have to do with physics? First off, at Pearl Harbor, there was a giant film of oil by the Arizona Memorial, from a mix of the ferry oil and the oil stuck within the warship that could never be fully removed. This created a thin film of interference, which in turn made for a colorful refraction-like surface on the low-tide water. During my malasada shift, speed could never stay constant due to the slow cooking-time and the lack-of-ready-dough. Even when there was enough dough and four fryers, demand greatly exceeded the current supply, causing a negative acceleration of us whipping out malasadas. Thin-film intereference was present in the bubbles used at the party, as was pressure in the water guns and the sound waves emanating from the speakers which were on for the entire time.

Sorry if my blogs have been lacking lately. I have no real excuse other than that of pure exhaustion from the course of the last few weeks. Just a couple more before a little of my stresses can be relieved, but until then, life won't be that happy. Let's see how we're doing next week...

Yay for three-day weekends! Boo for not enough recovery time! Yay for friends hanging out with me for more time than what we spend at school!

"...No one would care at all. " That's how I feel about my blogs...

AP exams are getting closer, guys, and there's nothing we can do to stop it...*sigh* It's only been a couple weeks into the quarter, but it feels like it's been months. Good thing it hasn't, because a lot of my grades are circling the drain right now. Ugh. Anyway...

So to relieve some stress, I listen to music. Mainly from Youtube, but sometimes I bust out my small collection of CDs and listen to songs I used to love so much. I still like them, but it's interesting to see how my taste in music changed over the years. It's also interesting that one year I'm listening to Beyonce, and the next I'm OBSESSED with My Chemical Romance and AFI. Too bad I don't have any CDs of my newer obsessions, or my wall would be COVERED in Korean and Japanese stuff. Hehe, I guess that'll wait for college life.

Here's the front of one of my AFI CDs (Crash Love). I really love their song, "Beautiful Thieves" from this album, although lots of people hate how the band changed for this CD. It's slightly reflective due to the smooth nature of both the paint job and the disc itself.Here's the more Physics-relevant back. We studied slits last section, and how the fringe pattern still remains even with many slits. The CD is showing my reflection rather than the other side because the CD on the other side is covered with the design. It also makes it easier to notice when scratches form, which would disrupt the slits and (when left too long to become deeper) make the data inscribed unreadable. The slits also cause prism effect on parts of the CD because the light would be refracted differently depending on where the light hit. That's basically how players can read the info on the CD.

This week is Family Fair! Four real days, guys. Unless you count Pearl Harbor as one, too. T_T One last test for Phys, too, so get studying!

Yay for the malasadas soon to be in my mouth! Boo for heavily weighted scores!

I put sunscreen, but I tan a lot anyway...useless...

Why is it that one friend always bleaches, one always burns, and one doesn't tan at all? I guess we all respond to sun differently even though we all live on this Vitamin D-enriched rock in the middle of nowhere.

Enjoy this picture of me and Steph displaying our Shaka riding skills and lung capacity~

So to celebrate a friend's birthday, going to the beach was in order. Unfortunately, nobody (but me) likes the feeling of sand between their foot and their slipper, so the water park served as a chlorine-filled alternative. Within that short 5 hours, we managed to ride all the rides. A few rides multiple times. I still feel the effects of swinging back and forth on the Tornado and the Ragin' River (which is a great substitute for the now-dead Cliffhanger). I guess I rode a bit too much...

Anyway, what does this have to do with physics? SO MUCH. Going down slides brings in gravity, so if there wasn't any twists and turns to decelerate us, many many rides would cause us to go down screamingly fast and fall out onto the unforgiving cement. At the same time, the water on the slides provides low friction so that we can actually start moving with it. Unfortunately, there was no way to have still water at any point so I couldn't test out any refraction or double slit properties. Wavelengths were obviously there, being the water and all that.

Good Friday was great. Saturday (as many Juniors and Physics students observed) was not. Hopefully it'll get better...

Yay for the waterpark! Boo for broken servers and English in general!