soul log

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[Archivals] Why the Mid-East Wars Never Should Have Happened

By Brad | Published: December 8, 2009

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.

Posted in True Life | 5 Comments

A Man Dead and a Lesson Learned

By Brad | Published: November 28, 2009

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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My Path to Self-Sufficiency

By Brad | Published: November 5, 2009

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.

Posted in True Life | 3 Comments

My Shirt Billows [Revised]

By Brad | Published: October 13, 2009

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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Revenge of the Chips

By Brad | Published: October 6, 2009

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?

Posted in True Life | 5 Comments

Caught in a War Zone

By Brad | Published: October 3, 2009

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.

Posted in True Life | 1 Comment

Loving Love

By Brad | Published: September 27, 2009

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 and musty as if no one had lived in it for days. I would set down my things and get to work doing homework and all the other things that were important. My dad came home early each day to pick me up to swimming practice. He would pick me back up and we would eat dinner.

Each day seemed incredibly boring. I found myself almost nodding off into sleep in many times. I reminded myself that my mom was coming back soon, and I eagerly waited for that day.

The day my mother’s airplane landed was yesterday. I eagerly waited for this day, a reminder of all the happy things we had done together. I was furious when I discovered it was a late flight. Technically this counted as landing the next day, I told myself. Read More »

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The Wrinkles were Gone

By Brad | Published: September 20, 2009

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 happened on that fateful afternoon I set down my backpack, laid back into my chair, and pressed the power switch on my computer.

Because the thing was, up to that point, nothing had changed. I was expecting a normal day, another one with homework and schoolwork and at least one annoying chain mail message, and all that good stuff.

Instead, I got none of that. Because when I pressed the power switch on my computer, absolutely nothing happened.

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The Grandest of Them All

By Brad | Published: August 22, 2009

grandcanyon3

“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 tumbled down the steep slope, unstopped by the few small grasses growing on the sheer surface. Jagged cliffs jutted out at random angles and lumps of rock and dirt were thrust out in strange places.

Watching the rocks click and clack against each other before finally rolling over a small bump and flying into nothingness, I reminded myself that here at the Grand Canyon National Park, it wasn’t a place to mess around at. With an accident, I could fall more easily than those rocks.

I unzipped my camera bag, taking out my camera. The vivid sunset in the distance silhouetted the layers and layers of rock, each cascading below the other. Lifting my head, I looked up at the clouds, each one a fire red color, and the utterly flat horizon beyond it.

This morning, I had hiked the South Kaibab Trail, a trail on the eastern portion of the South Rim. It was a trail that many had recommended us to hike, and so, on the crisp Tuesday morning of our trip, we descended into the Grand Canyon.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

A Jet-ski Dilemma

By Brad | Published: August 16, 2009

LakePowell1

The water lapped at my feet. It was an amazing place to be: the sun was about to set, just hanging over the hills in the distance. A cool breeze blew past, a great ending to a very hot day.

Once I dove into the water, the outside world disappeared. It was just me and the waters of Lake Powell, Utah. Swimming around, I felt the crisp cold but not freezing water swish around my body. It was a splendid feeling, as if the weights and stresses of the world had vanished.

A motorboat drove past in the distance, casting a wake that disturbed the calm waters. The wake slowly peeled apart, spreading into the ends of the lake. When the wake had passed and the water calmed again, the reflection of the sun was once again revealed.

I dipped my head under the surface of the water, closing my eyes. The water drenched my hair, and as I stood up straight again, it started dripping in long thin lines down to the water. I lifted my head so it would dribble into my mouth.

“All right,” I said to my dad as I swallowed the water, so clean and pollution-free. “The water isn’t very cold,” I said, beckoning him in.

My dad slowly stepped into the water. He lathered the water over his body, and then dove in. Standing beside me, we watched as the vivid sunset reflected in the water.

A cool breeze rushed over the surface, and it rippled the surface as if someone had distorted a mirror. The almost-perfect reflections of the mountains broke into thousands of pieces.

As I swam around in our own corner of this large and stunning lake, I was reminded of what had happened in the afternoon: my quest to jet-ski on Lake Powell.

Posted in Travel | 5 Comments

The Beams From Heaven [revised]

By Brad | Published: August 8, 2009

Revised (again) on August 13, 2009.

“Hold on!” my dad yelled at me, grabbing me by the lapel just as the truck bounced upwards. I flew up, my head dangerously close to the metal support strut, and all I could do was hold onto my camera bag.

“I am holding on!” I roared back at my dad, and I fell down from where I had been floating just as the truck bounced into a small dip in the dirt road.

The seat caught me hard and I grabbed onto the railing on the side to keep from flying again. This railing held up a large blue tarp, and holding on, my teeth rattled with each jump.

At the beginning of this car ride, I thought the only purpose of the tarp was to protect from the sun. But now, the sun was nothing: it was such a small matter that I was confused that I had even worried about it.

This truck was heading on a dusty dirt road, descending into a small valley. Of course, to say it was a “road” would be a very sick joke. Nowhere would describe the unpaved place we were driving through much better.

“We gonna get there yet?” a man asked. I turned around, looking between the twelve people sitting with us.

“I dunno,” someone else answered.

On both sides, dirt rose up to around ten meters high. Trucks had driven on this path many times, and dips and humps had been made where cars had driven by in the past. No one had thought to build a road.

But this was the way it was to be, I thought, to experience nature. I squinted my eyes, trying to keep out the dust. Over twelve degrees warmer than the body temperature, I felt like I was sitting in a sauna.

The truck suddenly stopped, and I looked around. The valley had ended and the truck was surrounded on three sides by small walls of dirt and rock. Other trucks were parked nearby, the vehicles for other tours coming here.

How long we had to walk to get there, I did not know. I took a second look around, and that was when I saw it: a slim opening only a few feet wide had been revealed.

At that moment, I knew. It was the entrance to Antelope Canyon, Arizona.

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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.
Other blogs:
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