Month: September 2017

Almost every month in the area I live in, most schools have PA days or (Professional Activity days). These days are usually the day before or after the weekend when the students get to take the day off and have a long weekend when the teachers still have to go to the school. Nobody really thinks about what the teachers do during the PA days so most of the students just have fun and treat the PA day as an extra day to their weekend. When I was a little younger I always thought that the PA days just extended the weekends but now I realize that the PA days also shorten a number of days of school before or after the weekend.

Last Monday was the first PA day of the school year and my brother, mom and I did some things on Monday. Our mom already planned a few things for us to do a few days before so we didn’t really need to think about what we should do since we already knew what we were going to do. In the morning, I just woke up and stayed in bed for a few minutes and then my brother and I went to get our hair cut while our mom went grocery shopping. After we did that we went back home to drop off the groceries and then went to the Richmond Green Library to get our library cards. We just walked into the library and went to one of the desks that were located in the library and my mom gave the lady their some of our ID information and then we gave our phone number, email, and some other things to her. The lady at the desk then gave my brother and I each a card for us and our mom to sign. After that, she gave us all the details about our cards like how many books we can borrow at a time, where we can return our books, how long we can borrow the books until we needed to renew or return them, and things like that. After we got our library cards we went to a nearby Japanese place to eat lunch and then we went home and enjoyed the rest of our day.

That PA day was different to ones before which we had last year since last year we just went out to eat lunch and then my brother and I went home to play video games. This time was also pretty interesting though, but we probably won’t do too many things like this in the future.

Last weekend, my mom taught my brother and I how to use a pressure cooker to cook beef stew.

My mom has taught my brother and I how to cook things before like eggs, rice, vegetables, and she even taught my brother how to cook steak before. Instead, last weekend my mom taught us how to use a pressure cooker. First, she showed us the kind of meat we used which was beef belly. Next, she showed us how to season the meat with salt, pepper, garlic, ginger, etc. After seasoning, she showed us how to operate the pressure cooker which was somewhat complicated compared to a simple rice cooker. Apparently, there is a piece of metal on the top and depending on whether it is up or down determines whether or not the pot is pressured or not. We put in the ginger, garlic, and generally the excess ingredients at the bottom as a base for the beef and then locked the lid on top. Our pressure cooker has a bunch of buttons you can press and just wait a certain amount of time. Since we were making a stew, we just pressed the meat/stew button and then we could just leave it to cook. After around an hour, we checked on the pressure cooker and the piece of metal on the lid was up which meant that the lid can’t be opened since the pot is still pressurized. We waited a bit more until the metal piece went down, but then there was still this knob on the lid that we had to turn and a lot of steam came out for a while. After the steam was gone, we took out the beef and let it rest for a while before slicing it and putting it into the stew.

Overall I learned how to use the pressure cooker and I think if I needed to I could make beef stew using it. It was easy and also kind of fun so it was an interesting experience learning how to use it.

In the past week, Apple has released a few new products including two new iPhones and the next series of the Apple Watch. In this post, I will share my thoughts on these new products.

The two new phones that Apple released were the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X. The iPhone 8 is the new step up from the iPhone 7 and the iPhone X is supposed to mark the tenth anniversary of iPhones. This means that they would be skipping the iPhone 9 although since it is the tenth anniversary makes a little bit of sense since Microsoft Windows also went from Windows 8 to 9. The iPhone 8 is supposed to have a better camera and thicker glass than the iPhone 7 as well as being faster in terms of specs. The iPhone 8 didn’t bring back the 3.5mm headphone jack and still uses the same Touch ID that the iPhone 7 uses. It is supposed to support wireless charging as well which is different from the iPhone 7, but you can also still charge it using the normal lightning cable. The iPhone X is way different than previous iPhones since they have removed the home button, therefore, making the screen a bit bigger. Instead of Touch ID, the iPhone X uses a new Face ID which scans your face in three different ways. The iPhone X also has new Animojis which scan your face so that an emoji that you choose can match the movements of your face. Both of the new iPhones are supposed to support Augmented Reality with their new cameras and A11 chips. I think the new iPhones are pretty cool although the iPhone X will be released later than the iPhone 8s being shipped on September 22.

The new Apple Watch Series 3 comes in a few different versions like the Nike+, Hermès, the normal Apple Watch Series 3, and the Apple Watch Edition in ceramic. The Apple Watch Series 3 changes a few features, but the main feature is the introduction of cellular data for the watch itself and the new addition of Siri having audio on Apple Watch. I don’t think Siri having audio will make much of a difference to me if I do choose to get the Series 3, but the feature of having cellular data for the watch does seem interesting. Having data would help since you can use more of the watches features without your phone needing to be around.

I think that all of these new products are really interesting especially the new iPhone X, but unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever get to own any of these new products seeing as they’re all quite expensive for now.

This Tuesday was the first day of a new school year for me. This year I’m in a Grade 7/8 split class as a Grade Seven. When I arrived at school on Tuesday I met up with some of my friends and got in line to see which class we would be placed in. Everyone I knew was pretty surprised to find out that there were three 7/8 classes and only one straight Grade Seven class. Most of my friends in Grade 7 weren’t really happy about this since the Grade 8’s have a reputation for not being the best kids. Also, in all three of the 7/8 classes, there were only around seven to eight Grade Sevens so that means fewer people that we know and fewer friends. In my class, I don’t really have many good friends I only have two mutual friends that I didn’t really talk with too much over the summer.

The first week started off differently than last year since last year the school was encouraging a “Growth Mindset” but now they’re encouraging “Collaboration Techniques” where we do a bunch of different activities requiring teamwork. We started a few things to work on over the course of the first week for things like Math and Language. Half way through the first week of school I was already “uncomfortable” being in a 7/8 class since some of the people in the class did things like hitting my shoulder while passing me in lines while entering the classroom and some people are just annoying. Not everyone in the class is like that, but just some people. Since I don’t have too many friends in the class I can focus more on the actual school work, but sometimes it just feels lonely.

Later on in the week I just deal with the people that annoy me and just try to ignore them. For example, if they forget my name I just let them call me whatever they want unless someone else wants to correct them. If they stand on the chairs at lunch I just ignore them and eat my lunch and so on.

The first week of school was alright since this is also my first year with rotary so it’s taking some time to get used to the new classroom system. Although I’m not particularly enjoying this school year I’ll still go back to school since it’s not like I have a choice.