5. Ravoli 2025

  Image by GettyImages “7 times 4, 7 times 4, 7 times 4,” I repeated over and over in my mind like a mantra. It was second grade, and the class was reciting multiplication tables, one by one. The voices marched closer, and finally, it was my turn. I stood up with a confidence that only a seven-year-old could have, opened my mouth, and proudly blurted out “7 times 4 is equal to 24.” The whole class erupted in laughter as I shrank back into my seat, wishing I could disappear. I wanted to rewind time and make sure that everyone, including me, forgot that this ever happened.  Throughout my life, I have had my fair share of embarrassing moments. Some louder than others, like the time I announced the wrong answer in front of my whole class, and others more private but still humiliating nonetheless. But just because they were uncomfortable, are they worth forgetting? Embarrassing memories, as awful as they may feel in the moment, has a strange way of teaching us lessons that we wou...

Songs are like a time capsule. Image Credit Every time I play music from my phone or computer, I close my eyes for a few seconds, and, just like that, I’m taken back to memories from the last time I was listening to the song. It just happens . . . Whenever I randomly hear “ Cheap Thrills ” playing as the hold music for customer service or in the grocery stores or even in an auditorium, I’m transported back to moments in the car with my family from back when I was in elementary school. Every Saturday and Sunday, the song would be blasting from the radio as my mom, dad, sister, and I drove down Paseo Padre on our way back home from Coyote Hills after a tiresome yet refreshing hike. When “ Dhan Te Nan ” plays on the Indian channel on Saturday mornings, I’m reminded of how it used to be THE song that would be playing from my oldest cousin’s laptop or our old television each night in apartment 131, where we lived with my aunt’s family for a few months when I was 4. Each night, when the son...

My cousins and I on a side quest during our journey to Cartlandia. When I think of summer in Oregon, I think of the wavy reflections above the asphalt ( the road separating my dad's childhood home from our dear next-door neighbors ),  going out onto the Columbia River to boat across the coldest water I have ever dived into, and biking miles to Cartlandia to eat to our hearts' content. When I think of fall in Oregon, I think of wet evenings spent indoors as my family prepares what might be the most American meals we consume all year for Thanksgiving, the dewy “Portland” (Gresham, really) air hanging above us all no matter the time of day, even as we go walk the dogs every dark evening. Oregon brings with it bright yellow-greens and the blues that span across the sky, memories of sparklers and driving a pick-up truck across The Bumpy Road while my unnies and I splay across the back, (probably) ignoring basic safety protocols. The trees look different here, much more plentiful an...

Downtown San Diego In November of last year, I went to San Diego with my dad to tour a few universities. I had never been before, so I was really excited to check the area out. The day we got there, we started exploring the city. Our hotel was right in the center of downtown, so it made walking to each district and neighborhood really easy. We first made our way to Little Italy, which neither me nor my dad knew existed. The only Little Italy locations we knew of were in San Francisco and San Jose, but we had never visited either one. So, we of course had to check it out in San Diego. The second we stepped into the neighborhood, we were hit with a wave of bustling crowds and cultural richness. In every direction were restaurants and bakeries, all selling a wide variety of delicious food and drinks, each being unique with its own recipes for classic Italian cuisine. The next day we visited two of the nursing schools in the area, SDSU (of course) and PLNU . Both had their own distinctive...

When the world is too much to bear, or frankly just a bit too mundane, I have always been able to escape by immersing myself in nostalgia. I have a small collection of memories which are a delight to rummage through on a lazy afternoon, full of warm, gleaming scents and snapshots which I treasure as much as any of my childhood hoards of seashell, if not more. Yes, many of these memories are from the beach—I spent most of my childhood in SoCal, and if you know anything about “down south” or whatever moniker there is for that area, you know the coast is gorgeous. But it's not the mere image of the ocean’s beauty which I truly value. After all, prettier pictures can be found on edited desktop wallpapers .  Sometimes, I miss my old mind. Never again will I be able to face the ocean as a stupid child. I say “stupid” with love (and to be honest I'm not too intelligent now either). Yes, I believed in unicorns and fairies when I was seven. I believed in more than myths and fairytales,...

  The magic of childhood is captured within our memories. Do you ever remember waking up on a Saturday and watching the television? Or sitting on that infamous rainbow rug listening to your teacher talk about rhyming words. These innocent snapshots of our life represent the whole of our childhood.  That segways into my blog for this week: Nostalgia. As the year closes and the end of my High School journey is drawing near I have been feeling nostalgic. I remember a time when I used to dream of becoming older and earning independence. However, recently I have found myself really missing being a little kid. This got me thinking. Does stepping into adulthood mean perpetually looking back into the past?  As a kid, I remember never thinking back into the past. I only saw the future and lived in the present. Partly because of nativity and partly because the future seemed bright and fun. Now as a young adult, the future truthfully looks tiring and stressful. As a result of this ...

We find ourselves relying on our memory for, well, almost everything. But how reliable is it? I, for one have a LOT of experience with the art of * forgetting*. “My name’s ____.” One hour later I’m trying to call out to him and my mind is just loading and coming up with a blank. Another time: “Remember to bring in the package!” “Did you bring the package?” “What package?” Human memory really isn’t as reliable as people may think. So then why do we trust it so much? After all, we use the memory of one or a few people in court as tangible evidence. Sometimes, just the words of a single person are enough to convict somebody. For some reason, people hold beliefs that reinforce many myths about memory. An academic review written in 2014 discusses a few of these myths and what people think of them: As seen in the above chart, the majority of people believe in myths that human memory is “like a video camera,” that “hypnosis is useful” in criminal trials, and a good percent believe that memo...

My precious camera that my friends bought me for my birthday. Some people pack maps, keys, or wallets neatly into their suitcases. I carry a small blue Kodak that remembers better than I do. It’s not the fanciest camera, but it’s still one of my most prized possessions. It comes with me to every birthday party, school rally, or dance. Every time I turn it on, it plays a little tune, and the lens slides open, ready to capture the moment.  I’ve always had this desire to hold on to things, from small things such as the way a place smells to powerful, important memories. It’s not that I’m scared of forgetting, I just don’t want certain moments to just fade away without leaving a trace. So I try to find ways to remember everything. Not just through pictures, but through saved movie or play tickets, folded up half-legible notes, and little trinkets that have seemingly no value to anyone but me. At the moment we don’t realize what we’re keeping when we tuck these away but several months o...

Math Olympiad. My first trauma.  There was a day in third or fourth grade, I believe, where my dad had challenged me to yet another math problem. This one I remember clearly(-ish):  The average of the class after 6 students took a test was 90%. When Tommy took a test, the test average went down to 75%. What was his score? This problem was scribbled on the singular whiteboard we had in our house and then propped up on my couch by my very excited father. He wouldn’t let me play until I solved the problem. Spoiler!! I did not. My very dejected father quite begrudgingly told me Tommy’s score (-15%, yikes). Here is how it was solved, for those who remain as confused as I was--am.  No, I’m kidding, but I swear these little problems haunted my life in elementary school. I’ve heard it said that it is a canon event to be scolded by an impatient father as you attempt to do math. I’ve had that experience a thousand times over.  I think there is a difference in being clueless a...

  Have you ever thought back to when you were in elementary or middle school, coming home from school everyday to play games and have fun without any worries?  Oftentimes on weekends I find myself thinking back to 2015, one of my favorite years. I was in third grade. Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer had just come out, new Pokemon cards were being released, and I had just gotten the new Lego Ninjago sets I wanted. After school me and my friends walked from Oliveira to Thornton to get some McDonalds, and I’d get 20 chicken nuggets and bring them home. I’d open my computer and watch Youtube as I ate my nuggets.  No AP Tests, no GPA, no ECs, no college apps, just enjoying life.  This phenomenon is called nostalgia . It’s a powerful feeling which can evoke a sense of longing or loss for what we perceive as better days. However sometime later in the future I think we’ll look back on our high school years and yearn for them again. Then we’ll have real world responsibi...

Bukchon Hanok Village ( dreamyjosie ). In Anyang, it was a habit of everyday life to stop by the tteokbokki lady selling five long rice cakes coated in the spicy orange sauce, speckled with greens. By the similarly orange-and-green play structure, the tteokbokki stall always stood, offering these hot skewers with contrastingly cold Icees. It was natural in Korea for kids even as young as me to be granted the freedom to roam around, so every day, I would stop by with a few blue bills in hand, ready for my after-school snack. In Anyang, I walked myself to and from school, even as a kindergartener. Compared to sunny California, the area was smaller, and the community tighter—physically, as well as socially. When I moved to the U.S., the lands were so vast locations could only be accessed through vehicle. With this expansion of territory came the loss of my traveling autonomy, confined to the limitations of my neighborhood, and maybe the neighborhood a block over, too, if I were so lucky....

Today, I would like to share with you all a really vivid memory of a dream I had about four years ago.  I would like to preface by saying that this isn’t a nightmare. Nor is it my most absurd dream on any scale whatsoever. I just seem to remember it for no reason at all. This dream I am talking about was set in the middle of the woods, and it featured me, my sister, and our parents, which is unusual since my dreams typically star random people whom I’ve only met a few times in my life. The location wasn’t any forest, though; the scenery was distorted and somewhat cartoon-like.  The objects around me were not real objects but polygons that formed shapes of those objects: trees were green triangles with a brown rectangle supporting each one’s base, and the sky looked like the blue inside of a hollow sphere. And as for the ground, it was a trampoline—a real one that was bouncy and everything. I remember that it was a happy dream, full of exhilaration and without a hint of fear or...

Almost all car enthusiasts around our generation started liking cars because of one of three things: a talking red car, three British idiots, or a bald guy with family. For me, it was all three (though the talking red car was definitely the first). I barely even remember the first time I watched Cars, and my only real proof of my young age when I first watched and loved it was a small toddler-sized plastic bed that was Lightning McQueen themed. So, I tend to place my estimate at 3-4 years old for the start of my love of cars. I’ve found it quite interesting that for things you really love, you tend to have much more vivid memories—and more memories. I have quite a few of them that have to do with cars. One of them was when I was ~7, and my dad got a rental Infiniti Q50 for a few days through his company (It has a 3.7L turbo). An Infiniti Q50 ( Fastestlaps.com ) Now, a turbocharger allows for an engine to output much more rapid acceleration than normal, even if it’s average size, like ...

This is the exact baby blanket . SwaddleDesigns. Stroller Blanket. My brother, when he was born, was given this green baby blanket. Smooth on one side, roughly soft, like fleece, on the other, it was green with mod brown circles patterned across it, the same-brown ribbon lining its edges. I loved this blanket. The way it clung to the scent of the detergent, creating a homey (not homely–that's a different thing) comfort as I snuggled my nose in to take in the smell. In fact, I loved it so much my mother bought me one too. There were three colors: light pink, baby blue, and powdery green. I wanted the same green. From my move from Anyang to Santa Clara, from Santa Clara to Fremont, the blanket stayed folded on my bed, unwrapped to the lighter green side every night for me to run my palm through. The texture left my hands tingling as I rubbed my palms across it back and forth. The blanket is still with me to this day, and so is my brother’s with him. There is sort of a comfort that co...

“ഞാൻ വീട്ടിലേക്ക് പോകുന്നു,” he yelled to his friends--his father did not like him staying out quite so late and he found himself flipping through valid reasons to tell his friends today. He landed on something simple enough: “I have to go home!” The light barely hits the horizon and the leaves burn a bit brighter. In the damp Kerala air, he hopes that he won’t have to buy yet another pair of chappals to survive this monsoon. It feels a bit colder than the last.  He relies on a sense of wit, or maybe fear to get through a wary routine. Waking early in the morning, helping out with the farm a couple of kilometers from home, wearing the same stained white on the walk to school. He thinks in his mother-tongue, a trait I envy. At the age of thirteen, his hair is growing out and he’s gained a couple of inches. Maybe now his Amma can stop telling him how thin he looks. A faint look in his direction, a smile and a soft laugh, almost inaudible, as she ruffles her fingers through his hair...

A favorite childhood show of mine was Peter Rabbit . Along with the novels Wind in the Willows and Watership Down , this show was one of my favorite cozy woodland narratives centered around plucky anthropomorphic critters. Peter Rabbit and his friends spend each episode getting into awesome mischief that usually involves vegetal theft. They spend the rest of the episode running away from the fox trying to eat them, or the gardener trying to eat them, or the owl trying to eat them, or—you get the idea. But each time, no matter how grim the situation seems, the rabbits always come up with some ingenious solution to avoid the crockpot. They hide in the gardener's flower pots, or tickle the evil fox with a feather to distract him. Peter Rabbit's motto is: "A good rabbit never gives up!" I promise this relates to my life. One time, my dad and I were caught in rain that would be poorly described as a shower but more accurately as a spewing faucet. My dad and I sought shelt...

Last week I had a physics quiz and during the flex session right before I took the quiz I quickly memorized all the equations that had to do with momentum. A few weeks ago I had a history test and spent the entire night before rereading my unit notes. As students we are all too familiar with cramming the night before a quiz or test. Given how common this practice is, it probably actually works well for most of us. Now, AP exams. AP exams are not quizzes. They are not comparable to unit tests. In fact, AP exams are the equivalent of not one, but TWO semester finals jammed into one test session.  My goal isn’t to scare anyone but AP exams are coming up in May which means you have a month to study for your (one, or two, or three, or four… possibly five? Maybe six?) AP exams. The reality is that my conventional method of cramming probably isn’t going to work with five tests that accumulate to five years worth of curriculum.  First, cramming doesn’t give you the time to digest the...

Photos of me judging someone There a series of photos I took of myself nearly a decade ago that I’ve recently discovered on my phone, and I have no memory of taking them, though I wish I did. They could capture anyone’s attention, intriguing them into thinking “what was going through this kid’s mind?” I’ve tried to analyze the photos the way we do in APENG, looking at all the little details to see what’s going on. I’m judging someone, clearly. This makes sense, I was a very judgmental kid. I’m at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse , but considering the table I’m at, I could only be judging the people I’m sitting with. This leaves only my parents and maybe my siblings as the victims of this nasty side-eye. Ok, good. I’m getting closer to figuring out what’s going on here. But it’s at this point that EVERYTHING becomes speculation. Unfortunately, no one in my family remembers these photos. Of course they wouldn’t, to them this night was probably just another night out. I feel like this partic...

            All of us have been here— in bed with the alarm blaring on a bright Monday morning, and instead of getting up like any other responsible human, we tell ourselves the biggest lie ever: “Just five more minutes.”           At first it seems reasonable. There are a hundred reasons why you deserve these five more minutes of rest. Five minutes is nothing, right? However, five minutes turn into fifteen, then thirty, and before you know it you are getting up at the latest possible time. The “five more minutes” lie extends far beyond just waking up. It is part of many aspects of life. Example #1: Laundry “I’ll put the clothes in the dryer in five minutes.” (You did not do it for the next hour) Example #2: At the gym “I’ll get off the treadmill in five minutes.” (You got off in less than 30 seconds) Example #3: Starting homework ”I’ll scroll for five more minutes before I start this assignment.” (You didn't star...