WONDERLAND trip

WONDERLAND

June 11, 2014

Today, I went to wonderland. It was tons of fun! Read on to find out about my adventures!!!

Before, we get started, let me give you a bit of a background. I play a clarinet, i am in the band program at my school. The reason I went to wonderland was to perform with my fellow band students.

All right, now the for the story. I woke up at 6:10, went back to sleep and woke up at 7:00. I took a shower, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and hurried downstairs for my breakfast(7:45am). I had an egg and some roti, plus a healthy glass of milk. Then after getting my umbrella and spraying on some sunscreen i took off with; $27.95, a extra T-shirt, a small towel, an umbrella, a wallet, a bag, my clarinet, my music, a good book and myself(7:58am).

By the time I got to school(8:04am) all the instrumentalists were lined my and ready to board the buses. It took about a hour and a quarter to get there, and we performed right then(10:00am).Soon we were finished and got to watch the strings play, unfortunately, there was only one other school and our own students to watch us perform. But then we got into our groups and headed off to explore(10:45am). 

Before we go any further let me introduce our group. Liam, Danny, Claude, Aric, Hardik(me), and Liam's father, Mr.Warks. Liam and Claude went on about five rides, because of "motion sickness" Mr.Warks had to stay with them. Danny and myself went on all the rides, and Aric went on about 60% of the time. 

Instead of talking about all the rides, I will just pick my five favorite rides instead. To make things easier for the both of us.

Boo blaster, leviathan, behemoth, shockwave, dragon fire.

5.  Boo Blaster

                                                                   

 So, Boo Blaster was one of those games where you have a laser gun and you have to shoot it at little blue lights that pop up everywhere. As usual, since my aim is like A+ i got 2,759 points. That was more than the rest of my group combined. And with some modesty, I am a master blaster(1200+ points) all my friends are either blaster wannabees(30-300) or beginner blasters(301-500).However, everyone is good in some areas and bad at others. The high score for the day was 3,2?? and the years high score was 5,3??. Yea, these guys are good. Awesome level 3

4. Dragon Fire

Dragon fire is your average, fast looping, and dangerous rollercoaster. It moves at 50 km per hour and has 2 loops, a corkscrew and a helix. Quick fact, it was one of the original 4 rollercoasters when the park opened in 1981.Awesome level 4

3. SHOCKWAVE

 

 Shockwave, is the first ride of its kind that I've ridden. It has 6 arms and 5 seats per arm. So 30 seats in total. Riders are lifted as high as 63 feet (19M) in the air and then spun and turned in all directions on the rotating ride spectacular. It feels like you're going to fall because the seat tilts forward and backwards while spinning around at a dizzying speed! Awesome level 5

1or2. Leviathan

 

The leviathan is the best(tied with behemoth of course)!!!!At 306 feet (93.27M) this is the tallest ride in the Park – towering 76 feet (23.2M) taller than Behemoth, and 5 feet (1.52M) taller than WindSeeker."It's still going up! It's still going up!!! Holy sh!t its still going up!!!!!!!" It has a major drop, unfortunately i only got to ride it once :(

Well..... gotta save something for next time. Awesome level 6_

1 or 2. Behemoth

The behemoth, the best rollercoaster in wonderland until the leviathan.The first drop towers at 230 feet (70.1M) – that’s the same height as Drop Tower! You can tell from the pictures that it isn't for all types of stomachs. I got to ride it 3 times!! And I even scored a second row seat! It was mostly: "The suns in my eye! Wait... why are we slowing down? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!Another hill, finally a bre-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Awesome level 7_

Before I end this post I would just like to share a souvenir I bought at one of 30+ gift shops. Its a quartz stone with a snake carving. It stands for wisdom and honesty.

Bye and thanks for reading.

Dead earth

The article :

http://tinyurl.com/m9ey7u9

My thoughts on the article:

My article answers

     This article was written by Safa motesharrei. I believe he wrote this article to inform the public that if we continue our life in the way we have been, it will only last a few more decades. He says this is not because of a certain group but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society.

     I believe that he was informing us, because he was giving lots of facts and examples. He wrote about how every major civilization in the past 5000 years has collapsed because of the same reasons. There are too many people in too many places; there is not enough food, and not enough resources to transport the food. The romans, Mayans, many of the medieval kingdoms. They all collapsed because of the same reasons. I agree with him because I can see this happening all around the world already. I mean take Africa for example, it has a very fast growing population and it cannot produce all the food it needs, and it definitely does not have the resources to transport the food and water it needs. Africa is obviously not faring as well as it wishes too. There are people starving, poor healthcare, and limited access to clean water. However, places with less people and better access to resources are faring better. As the article says, we have to lower our numbers or nature will do it for us.

     I agree with the article because of the evidence provided. The romans and the Mayan examples really convinced me. I mean, fear took part in the decision too, but if civilizations as great as the Romans and Mayans can be extinguished, we do not stand that better than they do. Yes, of course the obvious thing too says is that technology will save us, but like the article states, technology has only made it worse. We use the technology to make more and better ways to use and extract resources than we use it find ways too slow it down. In other words, the pros of technology are smaller than the cons of technology (how much the gains reinforce the existing, over-used system) making collapse even more likely. Even after thinking up positive outcomes, such as the world truly uniting, to stop world hunger, and start population decrease. Chances are that these great suggestions, unfortunately, almost certainly never be put into action.

                     

    I think that Safa has it right, “closely reflecting the reality of the world today ... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.”

                                               

More thoughts : 

                         My article, agree or disagree                                                   

My article is about our civilizations collapse, and how it will happen within the next few decades. I strongly agree with this article because of all the facts and evidence provided. Another factor that convinced me was that an applied mathematician, and a team of natural and social scientists wrote this. NASA even sponsored it!

    There are many reasons for me to agree to the article, I will only talk about a few though. The article’s main evidence is the societal collapses of all civilizations in the past 5000 years.  They mention how every societal collapse like the Romans and the Mayans; have involved the same five factors, population, climate, water, agriculture, and energy. Collapse requires the stretching of resources, and/or the hording of resources. This urged me to agree because I can see this around the world today! I mean take Africa for example, it has a very fast growing population, it cannot produce enough food, and it cannot deliver all the resources it wishes to deliver, because it simply cannot handle the strain.

    Another reason I agree with the article is that it states that technology is evil with a mask.  I used to think that technology would solve all our problems. However, after reading this article I see that technology has only pushed us deeper into the ditch. The benefits of technology gets outweighed by how much the gains reinforce the already existing over-burdened system. Coal mining for example has become far more efficient since the 1950’s however; it is much more hurtful to mother Earth because we take so much more in. Technology that uses coal and technology that mines it have gotten far better than how efficient we are.

  My final reason for agreeing to the article is because of simple fact.  We have been consuming more resources than the Earth can replace ever since 1970. We are headed down the road to collapse! Our population grows the strain for resources grow, earth starts to die, and we start to die. We probably will not lower our numbers so it will be up to nature to reduce it in a vicious way. “closely reflecting the reality of the world today … we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.”

Elemental-Book review and thoughts

9:14pm

07/05/2014

Elemental-by Anthony John

I read this book about a week ago, and I still remember every gripping detail. From Guardian Lora's death to Thomas doing Rose's hair. Here is a summary that covers some of the main points from the book. I recommend it to anyone who loves action, adventure, mystery and originality.

When many years ago the Plague spread across the globe, a small group of people had taken to the ocean in a desperate attempt to escape its deadly embrace. The small colony settled down on a remote island (Hatteras). The members of the colony - the Guardians and their Apprentices - all possess the ability to read and manipulate air, water, fire or earth. They use it to find food, summon fire and predict the violent storms that often hit the island. They do everything they need to do to keep themselves alive. Our lead character, 16-year-old Thomas, is the only one born without an element. 

When yet another storm is about to unleash its fury on Hatteras Island, the kids (accompanied by Guardian Lora) end up waiting in out on a neighboring island. Things quickly go South from there: Guardian Lora passes away during the storm, all the other Guardians disappear without a trace, and a band of pirates invades their island, burning their colony to the ground. And they are now after the kids. To survive, Thomas and his friends first need to learn the truth about the Plague, their colony and themselves. 

Elemental is - quite simply - a really, really awesome book. It's very  original and interesting. Full of secrets and mysteries, it really keeps you on your toes all the way to the end(at least it was that way for me). Basically, it's a great survival story, with a splash of romance and a sprinkle of paranormal, set against a beautifully described, magnetic backdrop. I absolutely loved it! Infact I'm looking for the sequel(Firebrand) online. It will probably be a while before I do a review on it though.

Bye, and thanks for reading ;)

My thoughts on: "Among the free" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

April,27,2014

    Hello, I know I haven't blogged in a while, but that's all over now!! I will write a post about every single book I read for the next couple of (days,weeks, maybe even months, who knows?). So today's post is going to be about Margaret Peterson Haddix's 'Among the Free'. The book is the conclusion to the shadow children series. First let's start with a little bit of background. The books follow third-born children who live in a restrictive society that only allows two children per family. Risking their lives they come out of hiding and fight against population police laws. That's pretty much it. The whole series can be summed up using just two lines. However let's dive in a little deeper. 'Among the Free' follows Luke Garner, a third-born that sets off a rebellion that results in the overthrow of the government (aka the P.P (population police :P)) In the book he has to work for the enemy, make a choice to resist direct orders to shoot a lady and face getting shot himself. He even has to go against himself when he decides to spy on the new government (the rebels/heroes who fought against the P.P). At the end of the book the people are finally free. However, who is in charge now? And will this new freedom be everything they hoped?

   Anyway, thanks for reading this post guys! You are amazing!!