An Ode To Dinner Leftovers

An Ode to Dinner Leftovers

Oh chicken leg, oh the sacred chicken leg

I would like to chant and beg

To put in the fridge next to the eggs

Long live the almighty spring rolls!

Please present thy strength like a colossal troll!

With the bacon and slices of cheddar cheese,

I would fill my breakfast plate with ease.

The omnipotent garam masala!

You’ll never lose the taste of India!

Along with the beef taco and cold slices of duck,

To the microwave, you’ll be the first to be chucked,

At the end, I would say you are my hunger protection,

A solemn prayer from a loyal minion

As I get heavier, and as you become lighter,

I preach to thee- can I have one more bite?

Creative Writing

           When an invitation form came from the Colorado high School Summer camp, I knew it was a bad idea. I called my friend and coincidently they were also invited and have applied for it. I later decided that spending 4 weeks with my two best friends in a high school is quite fun.

           The next day, Taco Bell, Maria and I packed all our baggage and took the bus to Colorado High School. The journey was moist and chilly, but otherwise it was an overall fun journey, as Maria would never stop her mouth. She was anxious about this entire summer school in the first place, and we laughed at her. However, if we knew how correct she was, we would immediately stop the bus, and go back to our town.

           Maybe she was right about the scenery, with the tall and grand tress, standing there like green-haired giants. The glistening stream that is crystal clear, with deers drinking from it. Nothing Maria mentioned has been exaggerated, so far so good. Two weeks passed like the cool wind of Colorado, with myself becoming the camp’s football team quarterback and captain, and I was especially happy when Taco Bell and Maria cheered for me when I made a touchdown in the first quarter of the game.

           It was Wednesday during third week, when I was playing a game with the blue team. I ran, with my eyes only staring at the end of the pitch, and that’s when everything went into a state of turmoil. I felt the momentum of a colossus trying to crush me down, and with nothing in my head, I collapsed.

           “He woke up.”

           “Don’t talk to him. He is still semi-conscious.”

           “I think he broke a bone!”

           “Someone go get Mr. Stephens!”

           My head was still unclear. What just happened? Why can’t I feel my legs?

           “Taco Bell?”, I questioned, hoping that he’s amongst the crowd staring at me with anxiety.

           “Yeah. Don’t talk, dude. Rick Murphy accidentally crushed your knees. You broke a leg or so. Maria went off to get Mr. Stephens. I’m glad you’re not panicking, buddy.”

           Fantastic. Broken legs. At least I didn’t break my skull. I felt a jolt of relief. However, Taco Bell looked more and more anxious.

           “Somebody call Maria! Why isn’t she here after 30 minutes?”

                      Utter silence.

                   “She doesn’t reply.” One replied nervously.

                    “How about Mr. Stephens?”

                    “Same.” His voice was so trembling it was like an omen. Anticipation we didn’t even want to imagine. A jolt of frost went through my spine.

                      “Somebody hold Raj. We’re going to the town hospital. Hopefully we’ll find Mr. Stephen and Maria later.” Taco bell ordered, who was the calmest of us all. Two other players held me up, putting each of my arms to their shoulders, my broken leg tied to one of their legs. We started stepping through the deep; pitch black forest, which didn’t even make a small wave of sound, a small movement of the shadows. We shuddered. Every step was getting heavier, and the strength was drained out of our bodies. My head was getting lighter and lighter, though it also felt as if it was a pandemonium of fear, pain, and utter confusion. That is when we heard the scream.

         From the wilderness, a dark figure appeared. It was not walking, or crawling. It… it moved like a slug. We stood in shock and fear. The mysterious figure was covered in dark mush of thick blood, and it constantly spat out moans filled with agony. The horrifying figure was Maria.

         “Run… escape…” She whispered, with a voice with air slicing her throat.

         No one dared to say a word. The figure soon collapsed, and didn’t make a sound.

         They ran. Throwing me away on the pale ground, they escaped without hesitation. Like a herd of frightened beasts, they sprinted; they crawled to seize their own life. Surprisingly, I didn’t a slight jolt of anger, nor I felt the eager to struggle to live. I just simply lied there, with everything left behind my conscious state of mind. I closed my eyes.

         A few minutes later, I woke up. The first thing I saw was a footprint. Millions of footprints, surrounding me like a bloodthirsty carnivore patrolling around its prey. Carnivore? I froze. The footprints were definitely of canine specie, but it was too enormous for any existing animal. I crawled slowly, to discover the source of these mysterious footprints that led Maria to death.

         At the end of the footprints, I saw the eyes of inferno. The emerald green, glowing eyes glistening with demons devouring the moonlight reflected on its retinas. The eyes, those eyes destroyed me. It demolished my urge of survival.  The massive beast wasn’t a wolf, and it wasn’t a mortal- a werewolf. The infamous beast who hunts innocent preys when the moon is full. The werewolf was ripping through a corpse, its demonic fangs slicing through the flesh. Then, slowly, it turned to me. The undead stared at me with the eyes of Kerberos, the fang drooling with blood, the claws reflecting the cursed moonlight, dancing around us. The cursed beast turned its body towards me, ready to rip me, to lacerate my soul and my body. I tried to move, but my body refused my demands. In my head, I didn't even bother preaching to any God I knew, nor I tried to beg for mercy. I acknowledged the fact that it was inevitable. 
         Swiftly, yet with a colossal momentum, it jumped. I closed my eyes. I hoped that it would just bite through my neck, to let me face a swift and less painful death. Yet, none of this happened. The massive beast collapsed on to the ground. Shock. Confusion. Relief. The werewolf didn't even rip a scar on my body. Is it trying to hunt me with the most barbaric way possible? I slowly moved, pushing myself. Then, suddenly, I had a jolt of realization. The silver necklace! The silver necklace shuddered that envoy of death, to retreat, to think out a way to avoid my final struggle. I knew what to do.  
         Almost as if we promised, both of us advanced swiftly as if it was a jousting match. I held my necklace on my hand, to finish the beast facing me. The werewolf's fangs were pointed at me, to devour my soul, to sacrifice me to the eternal darkness. The eyes of the werewolf was something beyond insane. The internal flame was trying to escape its eyes, to swallow me. However, I destroyed that flame. The sharp claws carved through my shoulders, but before the fangs reached its prey, I jabbed the necklace in to the left eye of the cursed beast. During that moment, all the strength and courage left on me was concentrated  on my arm, to inject it through its skull, to purify whatever was inside of that cursed brain. 
       The scream of the werewolf was a long, trembling yelp of agony. It fell on its knees, its arms dangling from its shoulders. However, after that scream, the undead didn't make a sound, and it collapsed to the ground, its cursed eyes losing its flame. I closed my eyes, this time in relief and exhaustion. Apparently, when Taco Bell and others came back to search me, I was praying, even though I was unconscious. 
         


              

Narrative Essay

‘Stay out of the kitchen!’  Mothers say that for a reason. To mothers, their children entrancing the kitchen are identical as unskilled conscripts jumping into a fierce battlefield. However, for a 10 years old child, everything seems so optimistic, so that is why, when I turned the stove on, I didn’t know what disaster was coming into fruition.

            It was a such a typical Sunday morning, when all the matters around the cosmos seemed so serene and in such gentle harmony, and I recall, that was why I had a primitive thought and confidence from an unknown source to make eggs and impress my parents. Everything seemed just perfect. I opened the fridge, took out a few, brown, adorable eggs, and a gallon of cooking oil from the cupboard. I was fully confident of my success-how difficult can it be to cook a few egg? So with a rather naïve confidence, I turned the stove on, and placed the frying pan on top, with firm movements as if a Zoroaster shaman in ancient Persia summoning the sacred fire. Ah, the warmth of kitchen fire! There was a reason why Hestia was one of the Greek Goddesses, and many great literatures described kitchen as the warmest place in the house. The warmth emitted from the stove was enough for me to stare at the pan for minutes even the pan was heating up so rapidly.

            However, even though the warmth was so hypnotizing, I went back to track. I poured a few heavy drops of cooking oil, patiently waiting for the timing to Para drop the my eggs into the no-man’s land of fizzing cooking oil, sparkling as liquid gold. The egg white flowed through the fan, and soon after the baptise of the silk- like, delicate egg white, the bright yolk soon followed its journey to the execution pit. Now, until here, everything went according to the plan.

            The ‘catastrophe’ started from here. Even though I acknowledged the fact that the ability of the stove, I didn’t know the peril of cooking with oil in a high temperature. After I picked up my first cooked egg in complete amazement, a drop of cooking oil fell on my forehead. People often say that when you’re in a state of panic, your mind goes black. They were wrong. The only colour in my vision was orange. The agony gets worse as the colour gets stronger. I screamed. As people know from experiences, it is a lot more painful to be brunt by oil, and for 10 years old, this pain was unbearable. I dropped everything from my hands, shouting, even though the agony turned into rather painful itches. I collapsed to the kitchen floor, acknowledged the fact that there are still are few more eggs, probably burnt, and still fizzing up at the pan.

            Seconds after that, I got myself back. I slowly stood up, walked to the sink, and slowly washed my face. The pain was still there, but I somehow managed to stand up straight and to look around. The kitchen was a mess. The bottle of cooking oil was at the floor, oil pouring through the floor. The eggs started to make sounds as if they were going to explode, pieces of deep-fried eggs flying across the kitchen, and I was just standing there, with a badly burnt forehead, with eyes that still are confused. I do not remember if I cried that day, but I clearly recall that I didn’t even bother the clean the mess, just standing there until my mother came out, totally shocked.

            I still remember, that breakfast, eating the leftovers of the disasters as a punishment, I was telling myself; this is the worst Sunday I ever had. The kitchen needed to be clean, which sacrificed my entire Sunday Morning, and the eggs were so chewy they were literally rubber, and not to mention the few minutes of shouting and other miscellaneous troubles I had to go through. To be honest, to this day, that sentence I mouthed to myself never changed, and I also realized that day why mothers always shout ‘Stay out of the kitchen!’ 

Argumentative essay

           TVs greatly affected many generations. It changed the Nixon-Kennedy election, and it was the best way to get information and to entertain ourselves for many decades. However, now, TVs are becoming a major controversial issue amongst our society, since TVs brought us many problems as well as the comfort and entertainment. For me, I think that TVs are overall harmful, and they are unsuitable for a healthy lifestyle.

           Firstly, TVs can severely demolish the social life of people, effective and immediately. As we all acknowledge, TVs can be very addictive, and the temptation is worse when your favorite TV show is on. Often, because of this urge you cannot control, people isolate themselves from the society by building a huge barricade with the outer world, locking themselves in a limited space called the living room, holding a remote control on their hands. This kind of self- entertainment can provide lethal damage for a much fulfilling and an interesting lifestyle in the society, when right now is a century when quick communication with the outer world and exchanging ideas with others is thought be the most important values. By blocking themselves from the outer world, you understand the world one beat later than others, when others are enjoying their social life and exchanging their own opinions with other people, not like TV addicts, when they only receive information, they do not exchange and express their own opinions with others, they are just constructing a gigantic barrier between themselves and the modern society, even though it might seem like a contradiction since they are facing one of the largest source of information. How can they actually continue their friendship or romance when all they do is sitting at their little universe of television?

          Secondly, TVs can trigger the demolition of your health. People are called ‘couch potatoes’ with a rational reason. When people are exposed to television, you usually consume high calories snacks like potato chips, and since the time you consume to watch television takes away your time to exercise, they are completely vulnerable to adult diseases like diabetes and various heart and muscle diseases like stroke and heart attack. For example, a family in the U.S sued a well-known television broadcasting company for letting their family suffer from health concerns. The children became very self-oriented and inactive due to the long term of television addiction, and the mother gained 50 pounds due to the continuous consummation of snacks and crisps when she was watching the television, and the father himself started to smoke and drink which he quit before, due to the advertisements and the stress he got by exposed to the television for a long time. Now I do acknowledge the fact that people argue that the TV is simply a trigger, but the momentum emitted from the TVs, like the numerous advertisements advocating and persuading unhealthy products, is threatening enough to be called the direct cause of unhealthy lifestyle responsible of a large, gullible segment of people, which are the majority of people in our society today.

           I admit. TVs do have many advantages. It is one of the fastest and ubiquitous source of worldwide information, which usually overwhelms the reliability of internet, and that often TVs can entertain an entire family economically and efficiently. However, using these advantages, TVs are camouflaging their numerous problems, and infiltrating into our society as if it is the only way a family can be entertained. So as mature inhabitants of this modern society, we must be able to define these problems and to offer better solutions rather than completely banning the televisions. So, today, I plead you, to think twice when you are sitting at the sofa, holding a remote control on your hand at the evening.

self introduction

      "I think therefore I am." A famous quote by Descarte. I think this is a setence that fits me perfectly. No matter where I am or what I am doing, I always think, even when the situation isn't really important. For example, when I went to a buffet, I was standing between the foie gras and sashimi section for 3 solid minutes. To many of my friends, this rather unique personality is defined as shyness, but I want to be clear-I am not a shy person, it is just that I do not speak or move when I think deeply, and I can be more confident than anyone when I face a challenge or diffficulty.
       Sometimes, I suspect that this personalty is enherited from my parents. Unlike my independent, freeloading older brother, my parents are  really prudent people. Under the eyes of my parents, there is no such thing like telling them a lie or stealing a reese peanut butter cup from the fridge at midnight. Don't get me wrong- my family is very enthusiastic and full of care. To be honest, I have the confidence to tell you that my family is one of the brightest family in the entire city of Beijing,
      Now you might be wondering why on Earth am I mention the capital of China when I  am a Korean, and I will tell you why. Even though Korea is my home nation, the nation I grew up is China. For a resident that lived in Beijing for 15 years, I admit that culturally I might not be 100% Korean, but I can proudly claim that even though I am deeply connected to the great culture and history of China, my cultural root is based around the proud nation of Korea. For instance, I didn't know who Pinkle was for 10 years, but I can name more than 20 kinds of Kimchi.
    Talking of food, I admit that I am a gourmand. From pico de gallo to Durian pancake, I love to adventure my tongue through endless types of exotic food, and I enjoy the uniqueness of the smell and taste of different kinds of food. However, my favorite food of all times is Reese Peanut Butter Cup.
      
- image title- long live the honourable reese peanut cup

Some might criticise this is an unsuitable food for a gourmand, but, to be honest, when I face them, I never think carefully. Why do you think I would crawl to the fridge at midnight?
    As you probably realized, I am a rather unique person, both my personal background and my personality. However, I can assure you, even though you might me as a strange person- a student who lived in China for 15 years and turns insane when finding a piece of chocolate, I am more than confident that when you actually meet me face to face, we will become friends in no time.