the journey of writing
soul log is the writing playground of thirteen year old Brandon Wang, a student and self-crowned web designer, living in the Houston, Texas area. He has been writing soul log for over four years. This is his journey.
Category Archives: True Life
Matumaini [Hope]
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 [...]
Posted in True Life 3 Comments
Why the Mid-East Wars Never Should Have Happened
Note: This writing is experimental and not of my normal writing nature. It discusses a controversial topic.
President Barack Obama recently announced he was increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan, adding more than 30,000 troops in order to “stabilize” the situation in Afghanistan. Shortly after, Obama’s rating dipped below fifty percent, according to CNN.
Perhaps it [...]
A Man Dead and a Lesson Learned
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 [...]
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My Path to Self-Sufficiency
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” [...]
Posted in True Life 3 Comments
My Shirt Billows [Revised]
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 [...]
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Revenge of the Chips
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 [...]
Posted in True Life 5 Comments
Caught in a War Zone
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. [...]
Loving Love
Recently my mother left for a business trip in China. She flew away one evening and that was when I found my dad and I were alone. Suddenly, instead of coming home each day from school with my mom grinning at me through the glass, I found myself fumbling for the keys.
The house was hot [...]
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The Wrinkles were Gone
What I do when I arrive from school is almost scheduled: I get home, I put my bike into its place in the garage, I come upstairs, and then I settle down and begin checking email, reading random things, and (finally) doing homework.
Yet one very special Thursday, I found that this was not what had [...]
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The Grandest of Them All
“Don’t get any closer,” my dad warned me as I peered over a rock. Underneath, the ground seemed like it was giving away. The trees at the very bottom of this huge crack in the world seemed so far away from me, as if they had to be viewed under a microscope.
A few rocks [...]
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Trials at Marketing: The Lessons Learned