6 Minutes

6 minutes before I leave the computer to the world of elsewhere. In 6 minutes, I will type a blog article. In 6 minutes, I could have drawn a very quick sketch. In 6 minutes, I could have read one tenth of an hour long read or watched two 3-minute long music videos.

A minute has passed, and I am now in 5 minutes left to write. It is in five minutes that I can type my thoughts regarding life, love, passions, and the number 42. 5 minutes is enough time to do alot, but then it becomes 4 minutes.

And it is at the strike of 4 minutes left, counting down so very quickly, I look at what I have written and pause for a moment. I consider my next few words for the time is short.

In my pause, in my thoughts, another minute passed by and went. At three minutes left, I have more to say and do not know how I wish to say it. I want to stop and think, but the time is late. I realize that I could have, from the start, spent two minutes to organize my thoughts then the other four to write and refine my means of communicating them.

And thus begins the time when I have only two minutes left. I have wasted much time looking at the clock. I realize it is ticking, ticking, and every moment of my life may pass such that I will never forget the time I spent.

It has been said that the only thing you cannot recycle is wasted time. I cannot say I have wasted my time up until now, but I am left with one minute left. One final minute for words, and I realize that perhaps, if I spent all my little moments proficiently as I have not, I may find truer the worth of each minute.

6:00PM. The time is gone.

September 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm | Lifepost | No comments

Spanish and Life Passions

Yesterday evening, I signed up for Rosetta Stone’s site Shared Talk. Ever since, I can only say that my life is now complete. Ever since, I can only say my Spanish knowledge has been incomplete. Ever since, I have foreseen that I would write an article about my experiences on the site.

I was seeking to truly personalize the language Spanish in my life. The nature of my academic career leans towards that I would cease to learn Spanish in my second year, after taking Spanish II. Since I have found myself genuinely passionate about the two foreign language classes I had taken in the past, Spanish I and Latin I, I had, upon realizing I probably would not continue the high school Spanish track, believed I could only overcompensate for my lack of classes.

Thus, I found the Shared Talk while searching for a way to find Spanish pen pals, native speakers who I could learn from. Seeing Shared Talk, I was surprised but truly ecstatic to have found an apparently omnipotent solution to my dilemma. Shared Talk was everything I was looking for; a facility beaming with lifefulls of native speakers of all languages and all the tools we’d need to teach each other… Chat, mail, and voice chat.

I had started off finding a few native speakers of Spanish on the site to mail, but while waiting for replies, I tried out the voice chat. I quickly met a nice man who was an engineer seeking to learn English, but I was all too easily intimidated. Though I never for once assumed that passing one year of Spanish with flying colors would equip me with all that I needed to hold a conversation with a native speaker, I was all too quickly struck full-blown with the force of my incompetence. And I was inspired.

It was then that I arranged for myself a fair schedule of learning. I would start off sending mails to native speakers of Spanish. In writing letters, I could take my time and look up the vocabulary required for me to write what I wanted to write. As I saw that I started writing letters more proficiently and knew the vocabulary needed for me to express myself properly, I would move onto real-time chatting, where I would be required to respond and read quickly.

All through this, I would softly read the Spanish I type and receive to myself out loud so that one day, I may voice chat in a foreign language without guilt of my awkward nonresponsiveness.

And at the end of the day, I can rest assured with myself that Spanish was not just a class; it was the start of a life passion.

September 12, 2009 at 8:31 pm | Lifepost | No comments

Backspace

Internet chatting is not the same as face to face conversation.

This is a truth which all newbies, to either world(though help come to those for whom internet chatting is the first), learn quickly.

Backspace is a convenient key.

Those who strive to guard themselves from regret learn quickly that passiveness is its truest precedent.

I had typed more words in this article, but I backspaced them out.

Now, empty, I ponder and wonder.

If those lost words were truly worth the extra keystrokes.

September 7, 2009 at 8:12 pm | Reflections | No comments

Physics Homework

A time when I was traversing down the truly, most definitely clear road of a teenage high school student who is most certainly NOT experiencing the identification stage of life(See Erik Erikson, the man with an awesome name), I realized that I had forgotten the preposition starting the first sentence of an article I was forming in my head to be written at a future time.

Disorganized was for the word my thoughts. Disarrayed was the word my thoughts for. Disastrous spelt it all.

Thinking, then, I remembered I was working on my physics homework. For the past few moments, a random passerby would have caught me with my eyes glazed over had not they been blockaded by the computer screen. Yes, computer-assigned homework is truly a marvel in its eye blockading abilities(to random passersby even!), but the content of the homework would, by all modus operandi, hold true to its mind-arresting aptitude.

Yes, I, for a moment, was blank-minded, suspended in the endless suspension of dumbfounded-ness at a single physics problem. I, with my eyes glazed over, ceased to continue any but that single physics problem. I, who ignored my own approach.

I, in a time before the writing of this article, thought. And, I, in an instant, learned the virtue of patience.

A computer accomplishes more than hide the eyes of its user from the view of someone staring upon the machine’s back. Despite my most reliably cited popular belief, the computer is more than a mere black or white or gray or beige or rainbow box obscuring the world. It is a call to convenience.

And at that moment, as I mused on computers, a thing(calculations) which eluded my difficulties in the past, was the impetus to my absentmindedness. I lost all focus. I lost it the minute I sat in that chair–No, the minute I turned on that power button the minute before I sat in that chair.

I remembered a past life of lesser laziness when calculators and notebook paper were instinct. And here I was, seeing an assignment on the computer, predisposed to venture the mental crunching of numbers in my mind. My finitely reserving mind! It was scarce a wonder that the solution eludes those who forget the value of circumspection!

And so I pretended to undust my pencil as if the time between now and the end of school, when I had last writ with that gratifying lead, were a lifetime of neglect. So quickly had I forgotten the treasure of written aid.

In a few short moments, I scribed that which was to be scribed so fancifully and cheerfully as I would choose to scribe the word scribe rather I write the word write. In a few short moments more, all became clear for the discord and chaos that was the disarray, disaster, and disorganization of my determinate critical thinking capacity was now bound and formed upon the indeterminate bulk of all the world’s paper.

In a few short moments later, I finished my physics homework.

September 7, 2009 at 7:05 pm | Lifepost, Reflections | No comments

Plans

The minute I get home, I
Will change.

The minute I get home, I
Will start.

This minute,
before I get home,
I prepare.

Oh, so much
to do in the now
to do in the then.

But
the minute I get home, I
Will.
Still.

September 5, 2009 at 10:20 pm | Poetry | No comments