Searching for the one…

Though I’ve not blatantly expressed it on this particular blog, I am what some may call a tech junky, or at least leading up to one. I wouldn’t really consider my level of knowledge involving electronics to be very superior, but I would like to think that it was at least above the average civilian’s.

Anyway.

About a week and a half ago, I began talking to a very good friend of mine again. She had moved a state away so the frequency of our conversations was hindered to horrid, and obviously, our main method of communication has been limited to online chats and/or the occasional text message (we work weird shifts, so immediate responses are somewhat rare). Of course, we got onto the topic of school starting up again, and though we had a perfectly normal conversation about our own academic paths, we got off to a slight tangent about laptops when I remembered that she had the misfortune of having her laptop stolen a couple of months further back. She began telling me about how she had saved up quite a bit of money and was now looking for one, and it was becoming a priority for her to get one because school was starting up again.

I jokingly mentioned that perhaps I should just sell her my own. Mind you, though it was in a playful manner, it would not have been completely out there for me considering I have two laptops (three, if you count the one just collecting dust, though still functional) and one desktop, though I only use one for school, a small 11.6 inch one that’s rather light on the specs themselves, but also lightweight, perfect for lugging around on a college campus.

Funny thing was, even though she knew that I meant it in such a manner, she was not opposed to the idea, which sort of surprised me. In fact, it flattered me, and even more so when she mentioned that because she knew I took pristine care of my electronics, she would rather purchase one from me than from some random seller on eBay. Lo and behold, I gave her the price I was looking for, and she agreed, the final price being well below her budget.

But the thing is, I only agreed to this because I was getting ready to upgrade. That laptop that I was getting ready to sell to her, though being my dream laptop at the time, was getting rather dated for me. Quite honestly, I’m not too big on having the latest and greatest specs (nor do I really have the monetary power to acquire them), but I find that if a laptop can’t even play Netflix videos without heating up and lagging a bit, it’s a bit weak for me.

So before I packaged the laptop up for shipping (mind you, I had to factory reset it as well as install the proper Microsoft Office software for her to use beforehand), I literally spent four days scouring and constantly refreshing eBay pages for the perfect ultrabook. For those not really into the lingo, ultrabooks are those ultra thin, portable laptops, such as thee Macbook Air.

I actually had to switch my target and range a couple of times because I was being too optimistic, and not realistic enough. I mean, come on, I was looking at a laptop originally selling for $1650, and trying to find a used one in decent cosmetic and functional condition for around the $300 range. Talk about trying to find a deal. Not to mention, I was being extremely picky (and time for me to go into my geek mode for one second). The list below shows only a couple of my prerequisites for the laptop I wanted to buy. Well, at least after I got a bit more desperate (the list was much more intricate at the beginning).

1. 11”-14” screen size only, anything bigger or smaller was a waste.
2. Solid State or Solid State Hybrid drive, no more traditional hard drives.
   (Though really, ultrabooks are usually all SSD because of how thin they are)
3. At least 128gb of hard drive space, and at least 4gb of RAM.
4. Core i3, i5, or i7 processors specifically, at least 1.5 GHz clock speed, dual core.
5. Weigh less than 3.5 lbs.
6. The chassis around the keyboard (and palm rest) had to be coloured black.
7. The outer casing colour had to be neutral/sleek. (No pink, orange, or neon green…)
8. Responsive, one button touchpad with multifinger mouse gestures.
9. If the laptop had Windows 8/8.1 installed, it had to be a touchscreen.
10. Priced at no more than $400, shipping included.

Quite frankly, the first 9 criteria listed, though some just being picky, were quite easy to fulfill. It wasn’t until we got to my pitiful budget that things started to get rough.

At first, I was looking at the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus, which is a damn sexy lookin’ piece of machinery. The wedged design that is most apparent when viewing it from its side is probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, and it just works for this laptop, but of course, trying to find it for less than a fourth of its price, even through bidding, was hard to find (even with its older, Windows 7 models).

Next, I dropped my standards a bit (gee, this sounds like I’m some cocky, arrogant jock rating women as they pass me by). I began looking at the Dell XPS 13. Not as posh of a design, but still quite professional looking. And. I knew for a fact that by design, Dell had received great reviews for having the most comfortable keyboards to type on. I know, I know, right now, you’re probably like, “What the hell Karlo, just get a damn laptop and be done with it!” Yeah, well, you’d be surprised just how much of these subtle issues people have with electronics are taken into account when creating these things. For example, how all of the iPhones up to date still only have that narrow-width screen because it was designed so that your thumb can reach all the way across and so you wouldn’t have to have to use your other hand while operating it.

Anyway, that one didn’t last too long either, because though I thought it was a really nice machine, it original price was still well over $1000 (I think it was around $1300-1400, but I’m not too sure), even with the older models, and so, finding it at around $400 was pushing it.

Finally, I began looking at the older Lenovo Ideapad Yoga models. Yes, the Yoga, and not the Yoga 2 (which, obviously, the 2 means a newer, more updated model).

I was actually surprised as to why I never even looked at the Lenovos themselves in the first place. Honestly, I’d always had this sort of respect for Lenovo products. Though they tended to have a more square design (meaning, with slightly more angular corners and more shaped like perfect boxes), because of this, they tend to be much more durable, which they have a history for being reliable. Afterall, they were IBM. Perhaps it was because they tended to be sold at a higher price given the specs of each individual machine, but at the same time, I always looked at the most current, advertised models, and never the older ones that still worked perfectly fine.

So skipping forward a bit, I finally did manage to buy a laptop, though more by sheer luck than anything. I found this one listing for a price listed at much more than my budget, but I put in an offer for literally $50 less than that list price. (It must have seemed like a random price to the seller, but with the calculated shipping from eBay, it turned out to be $400 even). They miraculously agreed to the absurd price drop, but perhaps it was due to the fact that they were a new user trying to build up their positive rating (the user had absolutely no ratings whatsoever, not even as a buyer).

The laptop model I got was the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S (the S matters, because the 11 by itself is a much weaker model, but looks identical on the outside, and you have to read the specs to know which is which). At first, I wasn’t really into the whole 360 degree rotating of the screen, but I’ve found it nice every once in a while, though I don’t think I’d find myself using it all too much.

And finally, here’s how my desktop looked like a mere three hours since the laptop itself arrived on my doorstep.

Perhaps I just got a bit obsessive with personalising it with school that it’s completely ready for all the note-taking and email receiving as well as all the document editing that needs to be done for my classes. Now perhaps I can utilise this preparedness for some actual productivity. You know, like making sure all the work gets in on time, making sure the material is learnt properly, etc.

And perhaps I should actually sleep at past 2:00 am in the morning rather than typing out pointless, ridiculously lengthy blog posts.

Note: The wallpaper used in the screenshot was not created or edited by me whatsoever. I take no credit for it and all rights go to the original creator.

Re-piqued Interest, Lexicon

Admittedly, I would have probably been the first to admit that perhaps this online journal of mine was abandoned ages ago, yet for some reason, here I am, writing another post. You know, those rare, once in a blue moon posts that just happen to find themselves on here from time to time. In all honesty though, it’s more than likely that not many people will be reading this, but there’s this certain solace I find when writing as if I were talking to some unknown audience, just to have them listen (or in this case, read) without receiving an immediate response, whether it have been positive or negative.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that this was my form of venting, though I’m not even sure that would be the word to describe what I’m doing.

I digress.

As you can see (yes you, the random person I’m talking to who magically stumbled upon my page) I’ve finally managed to make my page look a little bit more formal. Frankly, I find it a bit overkill for a blog, but there’s just something about minimalistic/gradient-flowing/shaded designs that I find appealing. However, I will admit that I had turned lazy. Originally, my plan had been to reopen my long, dormant Photoshop and design my own layout, and then look up the countless tutorials to study the HTML/XML codes for blogger templates to fit my own needs, but lo and behold, it took up way too much time and effort for me to do so. I did in fact make a header image…a rather generic one that would be deemed more appropriate for some Photoshop resource site, but I never actually finished it. So that’s less than 50% of the work right there (I never even bothered to look at the coding for all the widgets involved and such).

And then life took most of my time again. I didn’t go on vacation this summer, opting to temporarily work full-time hours at my current job (yes, I have one of those now) to earn a little more spending cash in the case that I feel that I want (read: need) to spend it relentlessly when school starts up again. Now, a mere week before classes commence and that I’m finalising my off days with a more appropriate end note, I decided that it would be interesting to see what I’d written on here before.

Surprisingly though, I’m quite impressed with what I’d written before. Though this seems daft to mention, rereading my other posts, I can’t help but think that they’re just so…me.

Of course, I wrote them, so why wouldn’t they be, right?

But I can see the evolution of my own mannerisms and persona through the words alone. I was foolish back then (hell, I still am right now), but I’ve grown somewhat. It seemed as though I was creating a facade that I was this supposedly intellectual individual with highly admirable viewpoints on certain issues, not hesitating to back them up whatsoever. The truth is, it was honestly just me trying to find some subject to write about that would supposedly get others to talk to me, as minimal as those exchanges of words may have been. I used the internet as a cloak, a veil, and my own words as a weapon, to where I expressed an idea in such a manner that unless one honestly thought and pondered on it for more than a moment, they couldn’t help but automatically assume that this person had as least some brains within them.

What I mean to say is that I’m constantly in the stage of epiphany, even when it comes to my own identity. And all this discovery coming from rereading those words that came from myself a few months ago? Words are more powerful than I ever dreamed.

One of the posts (here) I reread was a ramble of me switching subjects almost every other paragraph, talking about friendship, language, self-expression, as well as an array of a few other subjects. It even started out with, what I thought was cool at the time, a lame intro sentence: “And as the threshold between yesterday and today is surpassed, here I am, once again, wondering what this next set of twenty-four hours will have to offer me.”

Sometimes, when you’re trying to sound more eloquent, you seem to completely disregard your own personal literary limits, and your words just sound stupid, but you don’t realise until much, much later. In this case, it’s taken me two and a half years to do so.

My point with that post is that (and I’m totally not stealing this from James Joyce or anything) it was definitely some rudimentary form of stream of consciousness writing from moi, and I didn’t even know what that was at the time. As primitive as it was, there was a certain flow to the words that only I seemed to familiarise with because they originally came from me, but how did I even see it?

And that’s when it finally came to me.

It didn’t matter that my writing was (and probably always will be) a bit random and childish at the time. Personal psychology makes up for it, we always try to make sense of something when it seems as though we can connect to it somehow, and how did I connect?

With words, and nothing but.

So that’s my final note, as well as my explanation as to why I finally changed the title of this blog. Before, I tried to make the title sound cool by adding some weird tagline that alluded to my username (or the one associated with this blog, at least: DarkHybridx). Aesthesia was a form of feeling, sensual, and sometimes eliciting certain emotions, and I tried to get that across.

Now, I’m reverting to the most primitive form of expression there is, disregarding the type of synaptic feedback that aesthetics give.

The words, and only the words themselves. Because as long as there are words, there is essence. 

Tiësto - Red Lights (Lyrics)

Blacked out,
Everything's faded on your love,
I'm already wasted.
So close that I can taste it now, now...

So let's break right out of these gilded cages,
We're gonna make it now.
Don't ever turn around.
Don't ever turn around.

Nobody else needs to know where we might go.
We can just run them red lights.
We can just run them red lights.

There ain't no reason to stay.
We'll be light years away.
We can just run them red lights.
We can just run them red lights.

We can just run them red lights...
We can just run them red lights...

White lights blur in the darkness.
This road leads where your heart is.
These signs, something we can't ignore, no...

We can't back down, we'll never let them change us.
We're gonna make it now.
What are we waiting for?
What are we waiting for?

Nobody else needs to know where we might go.
We can just run them red lights.
We can just run them red lights.

There ain't no reason to stay.
We'll be light years away.
We can just run them red lights.
We can just run them red lights.

We can just run them red lights...
We can just run them red lights...

---

Maybe I'm wrong, but my only reason for posting this was because of two words that all of the other lyrics submissions I seem to find were incorrect (at least to me).

"Gilded cages", not "guilty".
"White lights blur in the darkness", as opposed to "White lights, flirt..."

Anyway, perhaps all of those other submissions are correct, considering one of them is on the Tiesto blog, but meh.

To let it flow…

So it is more than obvious that I’d pretty much abandoned this blog without any prior announcement of doing so over a year ago, and perhaps it’s even more pathetic to now admit that I never even planned on coming back, but of course, we all have a relapse every now and then and manage to come back to something we enjoyed in a past repeatedly.

But now I’ve decided on a simple purpose of this blog.

My aim had always been too high. I wanted to make a couple of online friends, I wanted an active in-flow of commentary on my posts, and I tried to make at least a slight majority of my posts to somehow encourage that behaviour, but my lack of activity had always been my hindering factor.

So now what I really want to do is clarify. No longer am I striving for anyone to honestly read my posts, but more like, it’d be a pleasant surprise if that does indeed happen every once in a while.

I’ve always been more technologically inclined when it came to everything. Even now, I’m not the type of person that you would find having any type of paper with them. A very large majority of my notes and assignments are electronically stored. I take written notes with a stylus on my tablet in class, I type them up whenever I deem it easier to do so, and I don’t find the aesthetic appeal of needing to have a hard copy of everything.

Thus, this is why I came back here.

It was a simple and random, but still shockingly logical decision on my part. I was looking for a way to vent through writing, and though I love creative writing (particularly stories), I was way too much of a perfectionist to even bother posting anything that could have still been considered a draft. Not to mention, I’m too nit-picky with how I want things worded, and that becomes even more apparent when I’m writing a story. So a blog was the perfect way to vent, through all the bland posts and reflect. And, of course, because it was electronic, I was even more inclined to do so.

Basically, I’d come to the conclusion that blogging is the perfect way for me to vent, and knowing that there might be some random person reading this, I still try to maintain a bit of formality within my writing, and not just curse everything to their deaths as I tend to do more often than not…

I will not say that I will update this often, but I will say that I will use this blog as a way to let my own words flow as freely as I’d wanted them.

When is this threshold crossed?

I just want to say that I do not generally watch any type of television programming whilst here on my college campus for the channels are usually preset up to some type of sports channel that I don't find too terribly interesting. However, on this particular day, I found News9 broadcasting and decided to update myself with certain hot topics going on around the USA. This was when they broadcasted this:

Detroit High School Protest: Students Suspended After Demanding 'An Education'*
*this is linked to the original Huffington Post article which News9 linked to.

I will not bore anyone with just a huge synopsis of the article, so read if you wish to follow up with the next. And as the person I am, before voicing out my own personally biased views, I ended up reading some of the comments first before plotting out this obviously organised blog post.

I sort of shake my head in disapproval in some of these views that some people still hold, no matter how outdated/overrated/obnoxious they are (hey, three Os. Perhaps I should adopt 'triple O' for those three adjectives alone), but nonetheless, i could not completely say that any of those views was completely incorrect.

I should also probably mention that I am forming each of these opinions all on my own after reading the article solely. I have no personal experience with this type of situation and looking at the pictures on that post alone, so if my views seem more biased towards one side and does not take the other to full consideration, I apologise in advance.

Okay, so after having read a few portions of the article, I found myself questioning certain things from a possible philosophical perspective, the type of view point that seems to plague our system even more by making things much more complex than how we originally thought them to be.

I believe (whether in the comments, News9, or somewhere else) that I had read that they regarded the education they were receiving as sub-par. Here's the problem with this. Who defines what education is up to par? What is par in the first place?

I’m fortunate enough to have attended an International Baccalaureate (IB) programmed schooling in which, no matter how much I complained about all the workload and the daftness of some of the teacher’s styles of lecturing, am thankful for every second I spent there and admire how much they work for as little pay they get for doing their job. That is what I call dedication.

The point of mentioning that small aside is this. When one says par, it creates a threshold, a minimum in which everyone below or sub-par gives a negative connotation, and everything above just vice-versa. However, it depends on where par actually is until those assumptions can be made. I went to this IB school, and frankly, I regard that type of schooling in which nearly all my classes were honours, at or above the AP standard, as my par. It’s my biased view in which when I see another school in a less fortunate setting, I find it below par, even if that school was still a pretty good school as well. I ended up getting out of 22-course hours before even coming in as a freshman, and I felt that perhaps I could have gotten more. To me, my performance was sub-par. I don’t have that viewpoint in which I can mention for the rest of the country’s standards where par is on this educational scale, but then again, what person does? Not even going into international statistics, our education levels right here in the US change dramatically just moving from region to region, and par-level education is viewed differently in each. So while I may agree with the major view that this school is substantially enough below this par-level that we needn’t fuss too much about that aspect of it. The problem lies with what happens next. Were the school to actually improve just to attempt to match up to par-level education, it is then we must consider where par is.

The other problem that sort of stems from this is the fact that this current generation’s intellectual scale is so broad. Those that don’t want to learn will laze around as always, but those that find so many things fascinating have access to so much more information because of our technological advances. This becomes problematic when trying to set this par.

If we were to take a very oversimplified example, we can make a small model of a scale. Not to say that people back then were not intelligent or anything, but our generation is just so much more intelligent for their age (and certain studies have hinted that as a balance to this, they also stay in their adolescent stage for a significantly longer period of time, but I digress). Back then, we can label the genii (geniuses) as being rated 5 in intellect, 0 for those that do not wish to learn. If par were labelled as the average or midpoint in between the two, this would be 2.5. However, let’s say this generation’s mental capacity would be up to 10 for genii, and those that are academically apathetic still being at 0. That would mean our par would then be 5, and you can see that our par for standards has basically doubled. Perhaps this is the reason why some schools’ standards have changed and have risen to a slightly higher level, and it's becoming harder for those that have been labeled as sub-par to catch up.

Another thing that I want to mention would be my uneasiness with some of these actions taken.

Firstly, I want to also mention that though I may be analytically discouraging throughout this entire post, I do find this type of action done by these students to be rather admirable. However, perhaps actually marching out of the classroom to go through with this protest may not have been the best decision for that becomes a little bit contradictory on their part. To me, perhaps it was just how the article had phrased that gave me this impression, but, marching out of the school and ditching class in order to protest because of lacking education was not the most brilliant move. Maybe a more media-appealing one (since that seems to have been their goal), but not the brightest.

The suspension seems rather incorrectly justified. Sure, had the students been skipping too many classes and such, perhaps some merit would be given on their side, but if the suspension had been given solely because of the fact of the protest, then that seems like daftness overkill. Is this some form of academic misconduct that I’m unaware of? Why should the students have to pay for their lack of education when they’re really striving to learn? But of course, as I mentioned before, unless these kids have also been technologically deprived (and god forbid if they couldn’t find a nearby library), they could always learn by other means.

I do want to mention a rather daft ideology that most people have adopted, and I don’t know why it’s turned this way. A couple of years back, within the pre-2000 era, when a student wasn’t doing well, he would be scolded for his laziness and lack of effort. Now, it seems as though the teachers are being reprimanded more by the parents because of their children’s lack of knowledge. I don’t mean to back up those teachers mentioned within the article for 68 days of absence, and to such extents that large groups had to be formed to keep an eye on the students, is totally unacceptable. However, this ideology that the teacher is like an all-knowing being and that it must be the teachers fault isn’t learning anything is completely incorrect. If anything, I would say that if the child is not learning, it’s either that the child apathy level has risen to such a high extent, or the teacher fails to encourage the child to want to learn.

That’s honestly all there is to it. Unless the child has a serious learning disability, if the child has the desire to learn, they will learn. If they don’t, they won’t.

I do believe in the 50-50 split of efforts though. Obviously, it cannot be the student’s fault entirely, but it also works the other way. The teacher is only responsible for half of that responsibility to learn, you must meet them half way, but once again, where is this half way point in which you must meet? It’s become the same as how we define par.

Now it seems as though I’ve digressed into my own personal rant and not to much focus on the article itself, and perhaps that’s why I decided to write this post anyway. Perhaps the message I was trying to convey turned out to be rather useless after all, just restating the problem and never providing any solutions. I would like to say, however, that regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the possibility that this was another publicity stunt (though I highly doubt this), I do find it admirable that they would go to such extents for their own education.

And I’ll leave the rant about defining education (and what it means to be educated) for a later time.

Testing Faith - Foreword

I am Lee Jaehwan, and I am the last one left.

Trudging footsteps. Centimetre by centimetre, as if eternities would pass by, the man made his way down the infinitely stretching hallway, door aligning the vast space in between. Only armed with such pitiful weaponry of pen and paper, his scribbles began to resemble letters, then words.

I have yet to discern whether my lengthened lifespan had been granted as a gift or a curse. The times in between my worships are getting shorter.

Reluctant to move forward yet unwilling to move back, like a waning moon, his confidence began to be shadowed, faltering from full glow. Nonetheless, his hands moved in the same robotic movement, frequencies exceeding normal human behaviour.

There’s a room for everyone. There’s always a room for everyone.

Somehow he had reached the end of the hall, or perhaps it just shrank to such an extent that the other end was now right in front of him. A door, opening slightly before him, already unlocked. Already prepared to reveal its interior to this poor being...

You never know what’s going to be behind it until it’s opened, and then you realise that it couldn’t have been anything else.

A vision. Severed flesh. So real... Almost...tactile.

But...it all made sense now. I...

A translucent figure, eyes gouged from their sockets, knife in one hand, slowly making its way towards the young man.

I...am so happy. Happy that I am able to shine in his glory.

Unwavering, the man stood his ground. His complexion revealed nothing but a calm and relaxed expression as the corners of his lips moved upward, almost smiling as he closed his eyes.

He is the beacon which lights our way through this sea of darkness.

And as if time itself had slowed down to capture such a blissfully sorrowful moment, the translucent figure’s hand which held the piercing element descended upon the man’s chest, injecting death upon this mere mortal body, and relieving the soul from its miserable shell.

Praise him…praise him…and be relieved of thy fears…

---

So technically, this is the prologue/foreword to my fanfic titled "Testing Faith," a mixture of science fiction and suspense. It's a fanfic, but please don't let that word alone immediately deteriorate your hopes for this story, I've worked hard on it, and since it's set in an alternate universe (AU), the only thing that really pertains to fanfiction about it is the name of two characters, but that's it.

But then again, this solely relies on your interest in these types of stories as well, but I still hope you'd at least read until the first chapter (which I may or may not post in the near future) before you finalise your verdict on it.

If some of you did not notice, or perhaps just aren't informed in that area, the idea for this story was originally inspired by the 11th episode of the 6th season of the British science fiction series, Doctor Who. Some of the lines match up for I found them very well-suited for this type of science, as well as this entire foreword itself, but the rest of the story deviates from the original idea of it. I suggest you watch that episode to, more or less, find why I found this type of story so intriguing and enchanting.

That's all for now.

Are there no depths?

Are there no depths that still remain that make one want to ponder upon a subject for more than the briefest moment?

It is never extremely appropriate for one to consider themselves so much more superior than others, but honestly, as the days keep passing by, I cannot help but notice how...shallow and colloquial conversations seem to be, and it's just an endless string of them all woven together that form this society most refer to as college.

Today, before lunch, a friend and I were walking down the main walkway of our campus. Apparently today was the "perfect" day for all of the pro-life members to grace this major walkway with their presence as they hand out flyers for the public to support their views. The piece of paper that I received was presenting the comparison of abortion with slavery, and both are generally a touchy topic for anyone. My friend and I do not particularly share the same views, for she is atheist and I am the resident Catholic in our group of two (as most refer to as a duo, if you must know). However, we did share one thing in common pertaining to the entire scenario, and that is that we both found it completely daft and were rather irked by the imposing nature of those standing out there in the gusty wind. Not only that, but even though the paper presented some valid, debatable points, credibility is completely lost when one uses the word "effect" as a verb.

My friend and I go to eat lunch and discuss our opposing views upon the topic. We don't generally agree, but we respected each others' views and did not impose our own upon the other's and it turned out to be a rather lively and enjoyable conversation (which is actually rather difficult to do with such a touchy topic).

And because it is such a touchy topic, and although it irked me when I found the large amount of "advertisers" lining the boundaries of the walkway from earlier, it irked me even more to find many of the people accepting these flyers only to be throwing them on the ground a few feet from the source. Firstly, let us not litter. Our world is dirty enough and your contribution is honestly not needed. Secondly, are you that primitive that any type of subject that seems a little more complicated than what you're used to is just disregarded as soon as it is presented?

Are there no depths to thy mental complexes?

I hear more about sex, drugs, and alcohol more than I would ever want to on a daily basis, and though I've grown accustomed to it, it baffles me as to why I even had to adapt. I hear the largest strings of curses just listening to what my hallmates say in a two hour interval most evenings. I hear more about addictive iPhone apps and upcoming parties more than I do about actual education. It disturbs me to bits as to how shallow this generation has become.

Of course, there are not many who will take these thoughts very seriously for as of right now, I'm only on the verge of turning 19, but just because I take into account the fact that most would ignore my views, perhaps placing them right here in a small sanction of the vastness of the internet would attract even the smallest audience's attention.

Is it because of this horrifying degradation of our supposed intellect that those at a younger age are usually ignored? Or perhaps we lack the real-life experience that would justify many of our claims that make us so easily abused and pushed aside (and by us, I mean our generation in the overly generalised sense).

Do not misunderstand me when I say the degradation of our intellect for perhaps that's not the best way to phrase it either. Maybe I was aiming for more of the apathetic nature of things. Many individuals are generally smart, though it seems that they just won't use this "innate" intelligence of theirs for anything useful. It's as if we have a shallow sea with gorgeous, uninhabited trenches at the bottom. Most would prefer to swim in the open waters blessed with the glorious amount of sunlight that sheds any doubt. Only those willing to use a little more effort to learn more would muster the courage to travel deeper, into the true depths of these trenches, and find that perhaps it's not so bad. Treasures are never found in the open, it is only when we dig deeper that we are ultimately rewarded.

However, many things are right in front of our eyes, or are we blinded by such colloquial rhythms of everyday life that deviating pattern would cause more pain than not?

I, for one, would much prefer listening to the frustrated grunts of those trying their hardest to understand chemistry concepts they have yet to grasp than amiable laughs about how they thought that a girl was lousy in bed.

And with that, I leave you with a rather poetic end note, as well as a Chinese proverb.

To seek greater understanding, one must travel many miles.
No jewel polished without friction, not a man perfected without trials.