Note: This is my personal take on a popular culture situation. Some discretion advised.

Turn on the radio and tune into any top-50 hit music station in 2010, and you’ll discover a hip mix of rap, pop, and country. They’re the songs that make up the musical culture of today’s generation, with even kids listening to this music.

The mix of music is innocent – one shouldn’t comment on an individual’s musical preference. It’s when you listen to the lyrics and subliminal meanings these songs give that you realize what exactly music is putting into the heads of this generation. It’s my generation as well, so I am right to be worried:

A too-big portion of the top songs mention sex of some form as lyrics or subliminal meaning, whether it’s background music or just the lyrics, hidden in plain sight. Should we worry about these songs?

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When I was young, I was obsessed with some things that other children weren’t obsessed over. While the other first graders at my school constantly collected Pokemon trading cards, I was interested in other things: computers, technology, and more specifically – Bill Gates.

It’s kind of funny to look back, now that I’m thirteen, and see how absolutely hilarious my obsession was. But it was true – from kindergarten, I went in love with Bill Gates, because from a little child who wants to get rich, Bill Gates was the kind of guy to idolize.

At a very small age, my parents had familiarized me with him. He dropped out of college, started his own company, and now – as a result – he was rich. It was all I needed to know. I didn’t even know his English name, simply literally sounding out the Chinese “pronunciation” of the name, “Bero Getts.”

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I cannot fight a battle of which I do not understand – many problems exist out of my control, but short of donating to causes or volunteering my time and efforts, I can only watch from the sidelines. I do feel that I have the ability to change some realms however – problems I have a chance in solving.

Being a teenager has exposed me to the many problems public school systems have. I’ve noticed that schools have great difficulty communicating with families. More than just a problematic phone or email system, I feel it represents a need for a drastic reform of “communication”. It is one of my dreams to create a solution to these problems.

The truth is that schools haven’t adapted to the Internet and technology. They tend to be very afraid when it comes to these areas – afraid of problems, of glitches, of the uncontrollable events that tend to result, and of the possible lawsuits from overly protective parents worrying about their child’s privacy.

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“You must remember,” my mother told me yesterday before dinner, “that all sales begin with a no. Every single person on this planet doesn’t like being solicited for money. It’s your job to turn their no into a yes.”

Having experienced first-hand that day exactly what my mother was talking about, I could agree. Although I was raising money for a charity, it was nonetheless soliciting for money. Almost no one likes to give away money.

Perhaps it is my luck I have been gifted with the opportunity to attempt to find sponsors for a school-related project a team and I have been working on so feverishly. It is crucial that sponsors be found.

It is a terrific thing, I believe, to be able to experience failure. My father oft tells me that a man is not complete without failure. It takes a true man to be able to understand the faults of themselves, acknowledge them, and move on. Not recognizing them is fatal, and it is best to make mistakes young.

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Note: This is a submission I made to a writing contest. I publish it here.

A hundred ways to say no: I’m busy, I have someone to meet, I forgot my wallet – humankind seems to be able to create excuses on the fly. It’s easier to lie to someone when you know you’ll probably never see them again.

The Salvation Army worker stands in the cold. He holds a bell, ringing it slowly. His gloves do not alleviate the cold. Behind him, his sign hangs on a wooden post.

The collection can shakes in the wind, empty.

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This essay was published in December of 2009. I had read multiple articles regarding the state of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and I wrote about them in this post. Unfortunately, the post wasn’t very well researched.

Highly incorrect and mistaken in multiple parts, I preserve it here for historical purposes. I ask that you not take this too heavily in consideration. I keep it as a testament and reminder to myself, and also as a public way of acknowledging my mistake.

For more information, read the responses left by S and the reply by me.

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A trip to Cancun, and a SCUBA diving adventure there with the locals: who would have known a happy family vacation to Mexico would turn so wrong for my mom’s friend. And even now, his family and her friends are in confusion. Some refuse to accept the truth.

It all began a few weeks ago: it was a planned family vacation to Cancun, Mexico, where the couple would live in a resort and visit places in the daytime. After visiting the malls in Cancun, seeing the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, they decided to go scuba-diving with some of the local companies.

A few friends of theirs decided to come together to go scuba-diving one day. At the last moment, the wife decided she was not comfortable with diving and stayed behind.

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In my house, I’m required to do two things, and I get paid for one of them. I wash the laundry gratis and I mow the lawn for money. It’s not a bad arrangement, and I liked it just the way it is. But my dad, brilliant as always, decided I needed to “grow up” – in other words, I needed to start learning how to do new things.

He chose the dishes as a good “starting point” for the beginning of my path to self-sufficiency. Sitting me down one day in a chair, he pursed his lips together and told me I needed to be more independent, and for me to do the dishes.

Yippee.

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It is fall, but Mother Nature doesn’t care. The temperature climbs higher and higher. Meteorologists wince during their broadcasts, and I know they aren’t the only one wincing.

It feels like over a hundred degrees in Houston, the humid air simply adding to the deathly temperature. Everyone moans about the heat. Some comment on the chances of drowning with this humidity.

My mom regrets bringing the winter clothing out from the closet. Throughout in my classes, we all agree that air conditioning was the most amazing invention of all time. Not a jacket is seen anywhere.

But an answer to our prayers soon comes: a storm sweeps through, thunder cracking form outside; so strong, so violent, and from our seats in class, every single person turns around and looks out the window. We see lightning streak across the sky.

Seconds later, all is quiet. Nothing can be heard except for the pitter and patter of the rain. We turn back around, our heads low. The teacher takes a deep breath and tries to continue her lesson, but she seems to have lost her train of thought.

Everyone is deep in thought: what will the storm do? Will it take the heat away?

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It was three periods after lunch, and the last period of the school day, and it was math class. Lucky for me, I had to spend my last period of “captivity” listening to math problems… and the sound of crunching chips?

I turned to my side, looking for the source of the sound. It was not hard to find: sitting right next to me was a boy snacking on chips. His feet were propped up on the legs of the desk in front of him. He was laid back in a relaxed position. Even more unbelievably, he was eating a bag of chips easily bigger than a stack of laptops.

I turned to the teacher, expecting her to reprimand him on his shameful loud chewing and, even worse, his eating in class. Most of my teachers all had a “no food, no gum, no drink, yes water” policy. But my math teacher just smiled (although not too big), and said, “Jim, can you snack a bit… quieter, please?”

The damage was done already. Now everyone was aware of this kid with a giant bag of chips. But the real problem was that it was the last period, and during this period, it’s the furthest from lunch. Everyone’s hungry for something to chew on.

And since this bag of chips was so large, it wouldn’t hurt to share, would it?

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Houston has a rotten climate: it’s deathly hot in the summer, cold enough to keep me under the covers in the winter, and a completely random rainfall schedule. Sometimes we don’t get any rain for months and months.

And of course, sometimes it hits so hard it feels like a category five hurricane is going through. That was what happened yesterday at two o’clock in the morning.

I had been dreaming and sleeping comfortably when suddenly I was waken by an explosion. A second one quickly followed. It felt like I was caught in a war zone, with bombs exploding around me.

For a moment, I was tempted to run up to my window and brush away the curtain and blinds just to take a look and remind myself it wasn’t a war zone. But then the rhythm of the rainfall began, and I relaxed.

Bad idea.

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