VIDDING DISASTER

I'm relatively angry about a few of things. I was making a video and when the video was half completed I  tried publishing it to see if it looked okay. If It didn't look as good as I hoped,I'd continue fixing up the mistakes on Windows Movie Live Maker. Not so greatly,when I tried publishing it, it had reached 90 per cent into the saving but then Windows Movie Live Maker had it stop at that and alerted a message telling me to check to make sure the files I had used in the video were all still available and they were. I have tried everything I know of to fix this problem. The clips I'm using are the same format as the ones I used in the previous video's and besides, it's only three to four minutes long. I feel stressed out,I spent a lot of hours in making this video and now I feel like I wasted a lot of my time. Time in which I can never ever get back. I really want to upgrade to Sony Vegas 12. It has versatile features,visual effects and animations. I tried downloading it for free but it wouldn't save onto my computer and messed up my browser. I had to resort to Internet Explorer a week ago,and guess what,I'm still using Internet Explorer. I miss my Chrome. My siblings get temperamental about me downloading ,that's why I hadn't downloaded anything for a long time... until last week. To see the browser get damaged,made my siblings extra persistent. I apologized to them and promised not to download anything. There are shows in which I want to badly download,so I can make video's to show my appreciation and passion for them. And I so badly want to download Sony Vegas 12 to make my video's a tad bit more extraordinary. It doesn't even have to be Sony Vegas 12,it can be Sony Vegas 9. They're both great. I'm a fan of many shows and I only have one show on my laptop in which I can make video's based on. Yes,I have my school laptop but it doesn't allow me to download Sony Vegas 12 and blocks sites that involve downloading films and shows. I love video making and editing of the the things I enjoy but it's difficult with how things are going.

I wish to one day have all my favourite drama's and comedies saved on my laptop with the great Sony Vegas on the side. I'd sit on my comfy bed with a nice cool lemonade near of me on the wooden table beside my bed,or maybe on a winters day,a hot cocoa to make the moment cozy as I do one my beloved hobbies. But right now, I'm still trying to find a way to do all these precautions on my school laptop. Maybe my friends Nicole and Ricci might be able to help. Noticed how I said might. Nicole unblocked Facebook on her school laptop but it wasn't because she knew how to hack or anything like that,she used someone's Tafe password. Ricci knows how to submit Google Chrome onto her school laptop though,maybe she knows of more that can really help my situation.

CHRISTMAS IS LIKE SO NEXT MONTH...

Christmas is near. You know what that means! Preparations of gifts,cards,decorations and of course the feasting food.I'm not outlining on the feasts,I don't celebrate Christmas but I do take part in it;whether it's handing out long written cards with candy cane attached to them,at times participating in a Christmas event or two and just singing carols from the top of my head. The actual celebrating in which you put up the tree and decorate it,open the gifts that were garnered for you and eating the usual turkey or ham with delicious side dishes and desserts...I don't do all that. Not because I don't want to but in order for me to go into this celebration,my family must also be into it too.I can't just be the only one committed to do the decorating and cooking,Christmas is after all about Christ,hope and family; *coughs* family need to join in. The main reason I don't do all those things is because I'm Muslim,us Muslims already have a celebration and it's called Eid. I'm not strictly religious however and admire any celebration as long as it is peaceful.

If you have read my past posts,you would know that one of my resolutions was to hand out cards as much as I can. And indeed I am doing so. When I receive Christmas cards,ninety percent of them contain one sentence and that one sentence basically goes something like this ''Merry Christmas and a happy new year.''That part,they didn't even write themselves,it came neatly printed along with the card they bought. The only part they generally write is ''To Sabah'' and ''From (insert name).'' To be honest, I don't get bothered about this. I appreciate that they even gave me a card in the first place. But ever since I realized this phenomenon,I keep thinking that's somewhat the reason of why so many people don't enjoy reading their cards and tend to throw them away;not even thinking their cards of medium value. Maybe they're bored of the same one or couple of sentences being reused without any new lines surrounding it because when they read it, it's showing that the person who gave them the card didn't put much heart and thought into it.

Just so you know,I just finished writing out all my friends cards an hour ago,they will receive them in a couple of weeks. I'm thinking about giving them small gifts; something on my desk that is still in good condition but I don't need it nor want,something that is in wonderful quality but can be bought at a low price and something from the heart.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you guys. I hope and and wish you the best. Christmas is next month,who cares? This can be an early confidential. And don't forget,you're awesome.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

My English teacher Mrs Manny assigned us a reading task which is pretty easy if you love reading. The students in my class went ''What?' and ''Why?'' with sorrowed expressions on their faces while I smiled and murmured ''Why not?'' But enough of that,let's get to the diary. Sorry about not reviewing it earlier on, I was too busy doing comprehension sheets and booklets based on the titled book Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young girl to really have the committed time of reviewing it two weeks ago. But here I am now and I'm ready to represent my review of the book.

The book closures us the personality and atmosphere of Anne's life during the early 1940's. The Jewish are in danger 24/7 with Hitler's rules,laws and opinions. Before the Frank's even know it,they go into hiding. Otto Frank (Anne's father) has a few close friends at work who are willing to help the family with the hiding plan. The Frank's go into hiding within the so called Secret Annexe; a small attic of a work building,in which case Otto Frank worked in. In hiding,they're joined with another family who go by as the Van Daan's. A bit later on,Otto Frank invites Albert Dussel (a local dentist) to join them in hiding,Mr Dussel of course says yes. Anne Frank records everything in her diary,the object she got for her thirteenth birthday. In the diary, Anne talks about her old life of being spoiled,bratty,rich,smart-mouthed,rude and flirty. And also mentions the devastating isolation and depression she feels inside from being locked away from the world and held in the ''Secret Annexe.'' From 1942 to 1944 she changes majorly when it comes to her conscience,manners and perhaps writing style. She goes from a little girl into a young smart woman who hopes and hopes for good to happen and believes everyone is truly good at heart. She faces conflict with Mrs Van Daan a lot in the book and admires her dad as being a 'darling' while she doesn't feel so close to her mother. Anne and her sister grow close altogether. And that boy she disliked at the start (Peter Van Daan),they both end up in love in the end. During the last years of living in the ''Secret Annexe'' the two families feared of ever getting caught or felt burglars lurked.

The diary abruptly stops on Tuesday,1 August,1944. In the last page of her diary Anne talks about contradictions and how she hides the good inside of her while she displays the bad outside. When you read those last pages,you start to wonder what happened next. Thankfully the book contained an Afterward part to tell you all those things. Anne was separated from her father and mother,taken with her sister into concentration camps. She found her old friend Lies at the Belsan camp and cried.Unfortunate things happened after that for Anne.

It was a historical and intense experience to read this young girls diary. To witness the events she witnessed,to hear the things she heard and to feel the things she felt,all of this through words. When you read her diary,you see how she changes. From reading the first pages;you absolutely hate her,to reading the last pages; you absolutely love her. Anne Frank; a girl who wanted to be a better person,a girl who was strong and courageous throughout it all,a girl who felt a huge gulp of guilt from her past,a girl that let the bad of things change her into a good of a thing. She spoke for all Jews who suffered. Her diary gives you a deeper look of how it all was like,better than any old history book with boring facts you'd usually have to read.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son born first,is perfectly healthy,but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down Syndrome.For motives he tells himself are good,he makes a slit-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever.

This novel shows the perspectives of the main characters,displaying how they grow and change throughout the years. The story revolves around a secret that creates a distance between David Henry and his wife Norah Henry. When Phoebe,their biological daughter is born,David makes the decision to give her up by placing her in the hands of a nurse by the name of Caroline Gill,intending for Caroline to leave the baby at an institution he recommended. 

David lies to Norah and says the baby died due to unknown reasons. 

Caroline travels to the institution and realises how terrible the place is,so she simply takes the baby in her own care. She then falls in love with a guy named Albert Simpson. They eventually get married,living with their non-biological daughter Phoebe,causing the story to converge into two different families.It was pretty unexpected.At the start of the story it seemed the Henry family would lead a happier life and Caroline Gill would perhaps lead the opposite. It was more the other way around for them.

For more than two decades,the secret had been hidden from Norah and her son Paul. This secret kept loss and grief in the family. During the story,each main character goes through devastating issues. In the end,hope starts to appear. 

The Memory Keeper's Daughter was beautifully written and slowly thought through. It was heart-wrenching and caused a sense of the fact that people can get severely hurt in their life no matter how rich or poor they are,no matter how gorgeous or terrible their lifestyle may look-disaster is lurking in the corner ready to burst. It was an eye opener really. This novel may seem sad but there were many moments of happiness and appreciation.I couldn't put the book down,I just wanted to keep reading till the end because there was always something interesting happening in each chapter. A wonderful story,a must read. 

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by JOHN GREEN

Looking For Alaska is about young Miles Halter(Pudgy) who leaves home Florida for Alabama in order to attend Culver Creek Preparatory School,a place his dad had once went to when he was a teenager himself. At Culver Creek,Miles meets Chip Martin (Colonel),a roommate of his in the school. Miles then interacts with Alaska Young,a good friend of Chip's. Throughout the journey of his friendship with Chip and his friends,he discovers many things along the way.

The story has two parts to it,the Before and the After. The two parts indicate the times Miles had before Alaska Young had died and then the effects and outcomes of it all after she had lost her life.I find it really interesting in how John Green had continued the story majorly after Alaska's death. In most novels,the story ends just a little after an important living element of the story dies,telling the isolation or happiness it might of caused and then abruptly ends. But this story continued right on,with the Colonel,Takumi and Miles investigating reasons of her death; suicide? Accident?

Throughout the novel there is smoking,drinking,sex,hangovers,etc. When talking about such things in the book,it is realistically written.The authour doesn't try to put a cherry on top or express the reality of these things in a worse or better form,just putting it in its original truth.Even though we are looking into Miles story,we get a huge glimpse of others stories,when I say glimpse,I mean a huge glimpse.

The story looks deeply into struggles that young people can face.It teaches you that,in order to be happy,you need to be able to move on and forgive. Honestly,I think parents recommending this book to their kids would be a really smart choice.If you're young,knowledge could be gained from from this book.And no, I don't mean Historical or Math knowledge entirely,I mean 'life' knowledge. Here are just some words that might give you an idea of what the story consists of; searching,friendship,loss,last words,discovering,love,investigating,pranks.These are just some of the things that come straight across my mind when I am reminded of this novel.

A funny,compassionate and realistic book produced by a very talented authour.

Favourite quotes: 

“What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.” 

“I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.” 

“Alaska decided to go help Dolores with dinner. She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food.” 

RESOLUTION evolution...

I've come to notice a few things I haven't been doing for a while. Ever since last month,I stopped taking interest in reading,which is a very strange outcome for a person like me. I have the 'Premier's Reading Challenge' to complete and I'm not even half way. I've been trying so hard to stick by my resolutions,that I've lost sight of the fact- I even have a blog. You're probably thinking 'What is she going on about?' Well,I don't blog here daily,so I always assume to myself  that I don't have a blog or forget that I even have a blog at all,when indeed I do. Here's another example-If I had a home but I rarely even stayed there,instead just lived in hotels or motels-I'd then consider that 'home' of mine typically not my home at all. I hope you finally get my point of discussion. What I'm saying is that following my resolutions has kept me busy from doing the things I usually do.

Here's my 2012 resolution list: 

1. Do all your homework and assignments,returning them before their due date.

2. Take a walk to the local park once in a while.

3. Save up at least $200 or possibly more.

4. Get a Blogspot (Blogger) account. 

5. Study,study and study before the exams occur. 

6. Be more sensible in classes unless the teacher is a casual teacher. 

7. Give nice cards out as much as you can.

8. In the last few weeks of school,you can act as silly or rebellious as you want,since all the reports will be already done by then. (Technically not a resolution,but I put it in the list anyway).

For 1,I have completed all my assignments,homework and projects with effort. Instead of procrastinating till the last minute,something I would always do last year,I did each of the assigned tasks two weeks or maybe a week ahead of their due date,giving them all at the right time. However,I have this one project I have to do and I haven't even started. You see,when the year had first started,I chose both Drama and Commerce as my two selective subjects...But then Drama got cancelled because there weren't many students participating in it anymore. I then had to choose a different selective subject.I chose Cooking but the teachers had told me that there were too many people in it already. I ended up getting put in Music without much choice.I was put in quite late,so the other students had a head start of knowledge of their music category. The teacher had assigned us to do do a performance of some music sort as our assignment project. I chose to do mine solo and I didn't want to take the risk of singing and making a fool of myself,so I simply chose a piano performance for this week. I still haven't decided what song I'll be doing or even learnt to play (the-song-I-don't-know-I-will-be-playing) on piano.In other words,I haven't even practiced yet.I'll start doing that tomorrow but I can't be so guaranteed of sureness. 

The second resolution,I have only done it once so far. But hey,I wrote 'once in a while.' I'll probably take another walk to the park in about 3 months. The one I had this year wasn't quite a good experience. It didn't refresh my mind or keep me calm from the stress drowned in me. Nothing of what I expected. I went to my friends house and an hour later took a stroll to the local park in which was nearby of  my place. I came past this nursing home and saw a middle aged man staring at me. I started to walk at a past pace and took recognition of the middle aged man walking outside the nursing home area.I heard his foot steps behind me, pacing kind of slowly. I kept looking behind and I felt quite scared.There wasn't anyone else around. So I tried to look tough and confident. I went the short cut way to Lane St and once I got there,I ran as fast as I could. I looked behind again,he fortunately wasn't in sight. The funny thing is,the park was often full of people but it was the opposite this time.Next time I go there,I'm going with a friend or an adult,so a predator won't likely come to us having there being  two people who are able to battle one individual. Now that I think about it,I feel like I was being paranoid and feel that maybe the guy wasn't following me at all...But I couldn't take the risk of staying in the park,just in case is wasn't my paranoid mind speaking but commen sense speaking loudly. 

As for 3,I will start saving up in two weeks.Last year,I hadn't even made any resolutions and I found it completely easy to save up. This year however,has not committed the same ease but I'll do it in two weeks time and that I'm sure of. 

For 4,as you can really tell,I did make one.

Also 5,I have done so. Number 6 is the same answer too. Due to to school work and exams,I have completely forgotten about making cards to give out to those I love. I'm promising myself I'll do this activity as well. 

A Weight Has Been Lifted Off My Shoulders...Well Nearly Off

I haven't been online for a while. I had been focusing on doing my assignments and studying for the exams. Yesterday,was the last day of examinations. I'm glad it's finally over (for now). Even though I'm happy with the fact it's done with,I just wish I could go back in time and redo my History and Maths exams. I found it ridiculous that the History exam was only allowed to go for fourty-five minutes. There were tons of essays to write,30 multiple questions to answer and the task of deciding on true and false when it came to statements. It wasn't possible to finish it all in a minimum amount of time with such a large exam-unless I didn't read any of the questions,randomly wrote out of the blue one sentence answers and rushed without thinking.The History exam was severely easy for me,but sadly I couldn't complete it within the limited time period. However,for the Maths exam,I blame myself for not completing it. I came across this one difficult question and tried to understand it before I wrote my answer.It took me basically around four minutes to figure out the answer itself.

Because of this,I didn't get to complete the whole exam. When one of the teachers yelled out ''Pens down everyone!'' I freaked out and took a quick glimpse of the last few pages. In that instant I realised I knew how to every single thing and every single one of those questions situated on the last few pages but had no time to do any of  it. I tried to keep answering but some teacher snatched my exam paper off me. So,in simple words,I lost marks I could of gained if I had just finished both the History and Maths exam.
I get stressed,just thinking about it now.

Next week,I'll get to see my results. I'm not too fond of it at the moment. If it all goes good,I'll be jumping with joy. But if it initiates the opposite way,I will of course be quite disappointed.Although, I'll eventually sooth down-I mean,that was only the half yearly exams. I still have the full yearly exams left for this year. I can try to work better and faster on that one instead of fussing about the 'half yearly' I did this week.