5. Tortellini 2025

  https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/top-solitaire-card-games-412483 For six and a half long years, from kindergarten to sixth grade, until COVID-19 hit, I’d survive seven grueling hours of school, dreaming of collapsing in my own comfortable bed, only to have those dreams brutally shattered by the soul-crushing reality of having to attend Chinese afterschool. After periods and periods of learning math, English, history, and science, I found myself having to learn more math and Chinese with other students in the Fremont district. I absolutely hated going to this afterschool, as I did not want to constantly write Chinese characters, recite passages from our textbooks, learn additional advanced math, or just do anything more than the assigned homework. The head teacher was practically a tiger mom , as she forbade anyone from using electronic devices during the designated class time, highly emphasized academics, strictly enforced rules, and expected each student to behave properly. But d...

             (https://medium.com/permanent-nerd-network/undertale-healing-items-and-love-f5f8964a7913)   Video games have been an integral part of my life—since I was younger to now. Which is funny, because I don’t even really play video games. However, like many children, I was given unsupervised internet access where I was able to peruse the vastness of Youtube and such as I liked. This lead me to find interest in youtubers known as “Let’s Players,” who make a living on playing video games in front of a camera. Beyond watching grown adults crash out over being unable to beat a level on a silly game, this discovery changed my life. I spent all my free time watching these videos, discovering new games as my interest in storytelling grew.  As a child, I loved reading. Not that I don’t anymore, but I used to actually have time to read books. I loved writing too, exploring the craft of putting together words to form a beautiful story and ...

When my sister left home to go study at UT Austin, I was devastated. I would have to survive the next 4 years—the 4 years of high school—without her. As soon as she was gone, I wanted her back. After spending every moment of the previous 14 years together, I couldn't believe she would be leaving me for the four most crucial years of my life. I begged my parents for the entirety of my freshman year to let me visit my sister in Texas, but they refused saying that I was too young. Finally, after months of pleasing and beseeching my parents, they finally gave me a condition in October of my sophomore year: I can fly to Texas alone IF I can find cheap enough tickets. Two weeks later, I hit the jackpot. After days of refreshing all the travel websites and calling my sister for hours to discuss the possibilities, I found extremely cheap tickets and let my parents know immediately. Even though the flight itself was on a low quality airline, I didn't mind as long as I got to travel to A...

There is a little sound that never fails to make me smile, it's my little sister's laughter. It's a high pitched silly sometimes squeaky and all this pure with a little bit of cranky. The way it drinks through the house  When she is either chasing my guinea pigs or playing in the garden it reminds me that memory doesn't always look like a photograph sometimes it looks like home.  One recent afternoon she came up to me holding a tiny flower from the backyard and said this is for you because you help me with spelling words in my homework. It was such a small movement but her tone of her voice was so proud and so grateful which hit me really hard like I never thought that it would take me to a point where I almost emotionally start crying. That voice would be one of those memories I carry into adulthood.  The giggles the whispers the random knock knock jokes that make no sense but still make us laughed these tiny sounds stay with me throughout my mind even after the movem...

I’ve always had unlimited access to the internet; there was no point in my life when I had to sneak online or ration screen time. I had the entire world at fingertips and for some reason I never used it for anything bad. I never clicked on any suspicious links or secret (illegal) downloads. Just CookieSwirlC, DanTDM, and a bunch of other nostalgic names I’m sure you all recognize. They were the first people from the internet I connected with and their videos sparked a lifelong obsession with video games, Harmless YouTube videos snowballed into an actual addiction. The kind of addiction where I’ve had to stop myself from opening any of my previous haunts for the sake of getting any work done at all, especially after covid hit. In January of 2021, I used up almost all of my family’s sixty gigabytes of internet usage per month and for the last few days of the month we were all forbidden from using the internet for anything other than necessity. Me and my sister weren’t even allowed to att...

I have a problem.  I can never seem to remember anything remotely important. It’s always the stupid things that have no sort of meaning or significance that I can remember. If you asked me about what I learned at school today, I would probably not be able to answer on most days. However, if you asked me about any sort of random brain rot that’s popular right now, then I would be able to answer in a heartbeat. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a super mainstream one like Tralalero Tralala or a more obscure one like La Vaca Saturno Saturnita; chances are, I’d still recognize it. These memes make no sense at all and yet they still manage to be more memorable than most things I encounter on a day to day basis. I’m not alone on this problem either, as almost a lot of people that I know have been plagued by the same issue. If you asked my friends who Tralalero Tralala was, they’d be able to answer without any hesitation, but the moment you ask them what a noun is, they’d be stumped. Okay, ...

 One of my favorite traditions is to write letters to my future self at certain times in the year. If you haven’t heard of futureme.com, it is a website that does just this. Write whatever you wish, choose a delivery date, and the platform hides the letter from you until the specified date, when you will receive an email containing the letter. I am aware that many choose to do this with old-fashioned pen and paper, but I do not have the self control to stop myself from reading what I have written prior to the specified date, so the online platform it is. There are three points at which I write these letters: At the beginning of each school year, I like to write to myself at the end of the school year. These letters usually involve me describing my worries about whatever I believe makes that school year particularly frightening and telling my future self that she deserves to celebrate herself. In turn, at the end of each school year, I like to write to myself at the beginning of the...