165

Rant begins.

Facebook messaging one another is not "getting along better." Ditching a person who waited a month for you is not "getting along better." Not calling me when you promised to come see me is not "getting along better." What galaxy are YOU living in? If this means "getting along better," then what is fighting? God, woman. Sometimes I can't stand you. In fact, now that I look back at all the times we spent together, I get why I always got annoyed at you. Because I'm not one to resist my annoyance when I feel it surfacing. I let it out when I need to, instead of bottling it inside. And now I get why others are annoyed at you for the same reasons. It's not always my fault, you know. You always made it sound like it was, maybe because you couldn't see what you did wrong. But just because you can't see it, doesn't mean I can't. And what I see is that you don't give a flying mackerel about me until I become angry at you for being so callous. Then you turn around and look, and suddenly, you care. I'm not asking for a declaration of love at any given time of the day, but show the world that you have a decent amount of consideration in your body to give it to another living human being besides your own self.

End rant.

143

Lately, life has been uncontrollable. I need to teach myself that being chronically sleep-deprived, sleeping at no earlier than three AM every night, and getting up at any time between 5:30 AM and 9:00 AM each morning, is not, unfortunately, a sign of strength, but a lack of time management. Life. My life is consumed by college activities, and it frightens me, how little I speak with my family, how I don't write back to my high school friends who send me letters, how I hardly see my extended family anymore, how much time I spend doing what and what, how I just ... can't do anything, except worry, except do all the things I think I want to do, except I can't always handle them all equally well. I am expected to do so much from so many different people, but only because I agreed to, in the beginning. I have no right to complain, but the pressure I receive from all directions is literally going to kill me one day. I can feel myself wearing so thin, I can't even see myself anymore. I don't even make sense. This post is not supposed to make sense.

141

too ashamed right now to do anything besides stare blankly at my lab textbook and the computer and my messy desk, then at the camera that I was supposed to put to good use today. why? how could I forget? why do I always do this? why.

122

On Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Like a Positive Idiot

While surfing Facebook, I saw a comment one of my former classmates made on another classmate's photo. Exact wording:

My calves could feed Africa...................but i love you:)

Omg they totally could NOT.... your crazzyyyy gf!

I don't know what exactly it was about these two posts that succeeded in ruining my mood and breaking my concentration for studying 細生; perhaps it was the blatantly ignorant and unforgivable generalization of the first comment, or the grammatical catastrophe of the second. I am positively peevish at the fact that "Africa" has become a large entity to write off starving, dying, and developing country inhabitants. Fallacies. Fallacies everywhere.

Next, it's "You're crazy." You're. You're, damn it, YOU'RE. The fact that even Taiwanese people get this right, and not seniors in your typical American public high school (English is your native language, I think I have permission to fling you across the river for another you're/your confusion) annoys me to no end. I will never understand how you went through eighteen years of schooling not knowing how to differentiate the two, and good Lord, this is something you learned in first grade. I will never understand your English deficiencies when you've grown up speaking it for the last eighteen years of your little life. It doesn't matter half as much on Facebook, but I've graded papers that show the same mistakes, over, and over, and over again. It's a waste of ink, a waste of brainpower, and a waste of my precious red pens. The five below literally make me writhe in pain when I have the misfortune of coming across them.

• You're/Your confusion.
  
• It's/Its confusion.
• Affect/Effect confusion.
  
• They're/Their/There confusion.
• ___ and I, not me and ___.

Another thing I don't understand is seeing things like this, written by American parents, who send their children to school as if they expect them to do any better:

Health Issues (Our major concern)
We concern about the high levels of variable
radio frequency emissions coming from this tower. Leland/Bret Harte buildings in which the children will spend 6-7 hours a day are all in close proximity to the proposed site and the unknown effects of this radiation causes us against the construction of the tower. Besides it will have impacts on the nearby residents’ health as well for sure.

Damage to Property Values
lower the value of our property.

Lack of Disclosure
There is much anger among residents as to the lack of communication from the school board. The public hearing notice was posted on Leland website which was available for the present high school families only. Other interested parties (parents with younger children who will go to Leland/Bret Harte in the future, and Leland High neighborhood residents) were not informed of the potential construction or public hearing. For a project with such an impact, there was no community meeting scheduled to address the residents' or parents' concerns.

Financial Impact
The installation of the tower would bring extra revenue to the
school district. This financial benefit to homeowners will be more than offset by the
decrease in home values of the residents. Additionally this benefit is only assuming the revenue generated from leasing the space. It does not include the potential legal fees that may be incurred. The residents could possibly file suit for damages resulting from property devaluation. Such a suit can reach class action status if hundreds of residents are affected. Also, who will assume the legal liability if any health or other problems are to arise. When considering the small revenue gain from leasing the tower to the huge potential legal liability it is quite clear that there is no financial justification for the construction of this tower.

In a conclusion, we are asking two questions and suggestions:
1> To be fair to all residents who are impacted, do you think they have right to get
their voice heard? Due to inconvenient of hearing time and short notice within
small percentage of people who are notified about this hearing, most of people
couldn’t attend hearing meeting. So we are asking for another hearing chance in
the evening time in Almaden Valley, either at Leland high school or Bret Harte

The presence of a cell tower in our neighborhood will

Middle School.
2> Are you looking at short-term benefit or long term damage to our health and our
wealth?

In a word, we are strongly against building Cell Tower at Leland High school.

If my mother wrote this, I would applaud her. But coming from a parent whose native tongue is English, my lord. The grammar. The capitalization. If I had to grade this last year, I'd just write a huge "NO" in big, red letters over the entire thing and return it to be rewritten. I did it a few times last year, and those people were only students. The abstract of a paper my roommate's mother, who was born and raised in Taiwan, wrote, was better than this.

I also cannot fathom the idea that the minute you become an English teacher, you cannot spell, capitalize, or write sentences with proper grammar. Perhaps I overstate, but the few I have had the misfortune of coming across in high school were no exceptions. Senior year of high school; English 7/8. Every time we received one of her assignment papers, the majority of our class could point out no less than five spelling and grammar errors in under a minute.

Suddenly, the way my chemistry teacher pronounced "quotient" as "kuo-tee-ent" becomes forgivable. What was the point in getting all defensive when one of my classmates, upon finding out I was from California, called Americans fat and stupid? Because to some extent, I don't see a satisfactory level of intelligence to be called otherwise.

116

受不了的國文課 幹嘛坐在教室 上台演講的人我一句都聽不見 就是超討人厭的同學在後面大笑聊天 都大學了沒想到還是有人有辦法如此的幼稚
老師責備大家 某個同學還安靜說
妳竟然敢用這種口氣對待我 我高中有老師對我們這樣說話會直接被砍！

哼！！ 你生氣個頭啊！！自己錯都不承認 在朋友面前就是如此得顯示酷的現象
我無法忍住 就 roll my eyes 希望沒人看到 但看到我不 care
害我兩堂課好 upset 出教室門超想罵髒話
每個禮拜都一樣
在漁房待到 6:00 抱怨抱怨我超不想去上國文啦～
在課堂坐三個小時 三個小時都在咬牙忍住
出來就可以呼吸了

一個禮拜六個小時真難熬
禮拜三我寧可請假跟男排練球 效率不但比你們多太多 沒有一個像你們那麼白目與幼稚
受不了的死孩子

076

rant

PO 大一女板的同學，你們鬧夠了沒？一天到晚只看到 1. 抱怨 2. 暴怒。你們有這麼閒嗎？如妳對任何同學的 “公德心” 或 “生活習慣” 有什麼意見，妳先好好反省妳自己的習慣。別覺得妳的是完美的，住宿舍會遇到各式各樣的同學，每個人都有個人生活習慣，妳介意別人的，說不定別人也介意你的。如果是提醒大家說洗衣籃要記得擺在洗衣機旁邊類似的，當然是合理的。但小事情妳都無法忍受，例如在走廊講電話太大聲等等，這可以好好講，一定要公佈到板上罵人嗎？有任何效率嗎？ 妳有任何意見，妳就好好有耐心講，要有禮貌：有禮貌什麼都可以講。但別覺得妳打兇兇的文章公佈給大家看人家就會聽妳的：妳只不過把妳暴怒顯示出來給全世界看，引起唯一的注意就是妳是個很愛把注意轉移到自己身上的人。PTT 不是妳的部落格。不要把妳自己的暴怒擺在一個公開板讓全世界知道妳有多麼的 !!!生氣!!! seriously, if you're going to be rude about it, no one cares. 妳爸媽是怎麼教妳的？妳想要什麼，周圍的人都應該停止配合妳嗎？簡直是嚴重公主病。

妳自己反省自己的習慣，再來介意別人的。如果周圍的人願意忍受妳的習慣，妳也該好好想一想，妳要不要回報人家的耐心？別的同學，除非有直接影響到妳，妳沒有全力管，而且也不夠格去批評她們。別人歡樂在房間可以輕輕敲個門請安靜。一樣，有禮貌什麼都可以說，我們也會很配合。但別覺得在你們最吵鬧的晚上我們不敲你們門代表我們不介意。我們願意忍受，不然去別的地方讀書類似的。妳願意嗎？想一想。

Nobody's perfect. And that includes you.

Also, to someone else:

Can you stop with the whole "You're always ignoring me!" business? I'm really tired of you tapping my shoulder out of nowhere and me looking up, seeing you, and about to say hello -- only to have you say "Why do you ignore me all the time? I know you saw me." What the heck is that supposed to mean? What if I didn't? Sometimes you catch me at a bad time when I'm talking with someone else or am busy with something or someone. I can't help but ignore you, not on purpose, to take care of what's at hand first. I'm not going to drop everything so I can speak to you unless you have something pressing to tell me. I apologized to you for this once, because both times you said hello to me both happened to be times when people were trying to get my attention for a pressing matter. I'd love to chat with you, if that's what you desire, but when I'm not caught in the middle of something. It's common courtesy, isn't it, to say hello, and I do, when I see you. What do you want, a profound, deep conversation every time I see you on a street corner? If this is going to happen every time, I really will ignore you next time, because it saves me a world of trouble to have you come up to me instead so I can end the conversation quickly. If you're joking, it's not funny. You ruined my morning with that comment in the hall today, I'm sick of accusations that are not mine. And honestly, I never have any conflict at anyone here; we get along so well. I don't want you to be the one I can't get along with. Can you stop? I'm quite annoyed with your behavior recently.