Riddle #2

My goodness, I love riddles too much sometimes. Here's another one I heard from someone.

You want to know when 45 minutes had past. There are no clocks, sundials, hourglass,etc. All you have are two ropes and a lighter. The ropes are different in length, type, and burning rate. However, you know that it takes a total of 1 hour to completely burn each rope. Also both ropes don't have consistent thickness so it might take longer for certain parts of the rope to burn (example: it might take 55 minutes to burn one small section but only 5 minutes to burn the rest, leading to 1 hour total.). How do you find out when 45 minutes has passed?

Hint: you don't need to manipulate the rope in anyway. No cutting, folding, tying, or etc required.

By lighting both ends of a rope, regardless of length, material, or thickness, it will take 30 minutes (half the time) to burn the rope. So burn two ends of rope #1 and one end of rope #2 at the same time. Once rope #1 burns out, quickly start burning the other end of rope #2. By now 30 minutes has passed. The remaining portion of rope #2 should take 30 minutes to burn up. By lighting the other end at this point, it should take only half the time to burn the last portion: 15 minutes. Once that rope finish burning, 45 minutes has passed.

Advice #1: getting over sad feelings...

I never thought about giving advice. Initially, I was planning to bring up positive (and maybe a few negative) memories in my blog to help any one to enjoy his or her life... at least make it more tolerable. However, there are times where bringing up memories don't help. Instead it might do the opposite. It might bring up unsolved feelings because whatever happened was never solved to begin with. It was only pushed aside thanks to work or other daily needs. After talking to a few friends, I came to realize that some people don't know how to handle these stressful situations and might need a little help to get the thinking gears working. Because of this, I decided to type up a small advice column this time.

So what are "sad feelings"? Well, to be specific, I'm actually talking about any feelings of stress. This includes frustration, anger, sadness, and even jealousy. Basically, if you are not happy or in any positive emotions, I count that as you are sad. Remember though, feeling depress or stress is not a bad thing. It keeps us cautious and help us learn for our future. A good stressing moment here and there helps us to work hard. However, sometimes we get so caught up with our emotions, we forget to work and move on. Moving on is not hard actually. It is the working part that is hard. If we can't work out the problem, how can we move on?

Now you have identified that you are sad (if you are happy, you may continue to read to teach someone else). Why are you still in the depression gutter? Our sad emotions are usually caused by our lack of knowledge to a solution. In other words, we are usually sad because we don't know what to do to solve our problems. And because we don't know what to do and we constantly think of the problem, we tend to feed our sadness even more. It is a vicious cycle of depression. If you think about it, it is somewhat true. If you know how to solve your problem, you wouldn't be sad to begin with, right? The reason for you to remain sad after finding a solution is because you need encouragement and reinforcement that your solution WILL solve the problem. So you don't know how to solve your problem under your sadness. What do you do? The best advice I can give is: write it out. You first write out how you feel. This helps you identify and accept your current emotion. Then write out what the problem is. Why are you stress? What happen? If possible, write a whole story. Writing involves putting thoughts in a linear form. It forces you to organize your ideas, picking out important events while deleting what you think is unnecessary. Last write out a plan to solve your problem. "Are you serious? You bluntly want me to write out a solution after making write a whole chapter of my depression?" Yes, I'm serious. Writing helps relieve a bit of stress. Now you should be able to think a little more clearly. If you can't think of a solution, do research. Go see a counselor if you have problems with classes. Go find a professional that can teach you a skill that you think you need to solve the problem. Whatever it may be, just try to find a solution.

You got your solution plan. Now you can either get someone to revise it or follow your solution right away. I recommend finding someone to revise your solution. Don't find a close friend who would ALWAYS agree with whatever you say. No, we don't want that. We want smart friends who think from many sides of a story. These friends can sometimes bring up extra problems you might encounter. Sometimes they might offer a different solution you might never thought of. Sometimes you might even argue with them, but you might be convinced that their solution or your own solution is better. Having a friend to revise your problem keeps your mind open. You will understand your problem a little better and you might find alternative solutions in case your first one didn't succeed. Now follow that solution plan you finalized!

The main goal is to stay open minded and writing out the stress. Not all situations are easy to solve and some may not even have a solution. However, writing out the problem can help relieve stress and organize one's thoughts. So start a blog or a journal. Maybe start painting if you prefer another medium. Try figuring out a solution to a problem. If the problem involves a person, try to think of the situation in his or her point of view. Life is unfair but the world is not full of jerks. After this exercise, I'm pretty sure you would be [at least partially] stress free. However, don't take my blog too seriously. If you already have your own method, by all means, keep going! I'm just offering one kind of method. If you think this method is not working for you, find another method or see a counselor, a psychologist, or an adviser. You can't always be happy but that doesn't mean you should stay sad. Good luck to you and stay positive.

Regrets...

Regretting is such a depressing topic. "Did you ever regret something in your life?" I hate this question. I never wanted to ever hear or think about it.The answer to it is very obvious. Everyone regrets something in his or her life time. "I wish I had done this." "I should have done that." "I should have said something." It is a major bother to almost everyone who thinks about it. The idea that one could have change an event for the better can really stress the mind. Once we get the idea, we start comparing our current situation to what could possibly happen. Sometimes we compare them so much, we get depress by them.

A simple example will be my college application. I applied to very few schools because I wasn't too confident in my application and I had no desire to move so far from my home. Because of my desires, I applied to a certain school without knowing how I was going to study for my career. Sadly, by the second year, I realized that another college, where most of my high school friends applied, has a program that would have helped me in my career. I didn't bother to apply to that school because I thought I was not smart enough or wasn't good enough. To this day, I still have one question in my head. "If I applied, would I have been accepted?" It is one hell of a question since I'm not doing as well as I expected in my current college, mostly because I'm studying another major towards the same career. However, different majors have different standards, as we all know. So... "would I have done better if I went to the other college studying in that program instead?" I will never know.

Let's not be so negative. I never like thinking about regrets (who does?) because I don't like seeing them as regrets at all. Through my college life, I learned many things about myself and life in general. True, regret hurts but what is done is done. We should learn from them instead. I learned to actually research about colleges thoroughly before applying. (First generation college student here. Please don't blame me.)  This knowledge I can pass it on to my other family members who will be going to college. We live and we learn. For regrets over crushes, we learn to identify our feelings and take courage in making our final decisions (whether to confess or not). There are many positive experiences from our decisions. Outside of learning, I also am glad I made wonderful friends in college. I learn how to take care of myself and schedule my time wisely. All our decisions and regrets teach us how to deal with our future. So for anyone who is burden by his or her regret, cheer up. I'm pretty sure everything will turn out all right. As long as we all work hard, our future is bright.

Now what about "always remember" our memories? It is true I say that but we should only see them as where we came from. Our past should not pull us back from what we can gain in our future. "We learn from our past. We live in the present. We work for our future." I don't know who said these words but we can learn a lot from it.

Before emails became a trend...

I know what you are thinking. "Emails? Who uses email these days? We IM and text now." Well if you were born in the late 1990s or the early 2000s, you probably don't even understand why people use emails other than signing up for different online accounts. Emails were really convenient since it saves postage payment when sending letters. However, I'm not talking about emails right now. I want to focus on what comes before emails: letters.

This is a funny story for me. I had an email account when I was in elementary school. However, my friends and I would still mail each other instead. We would write out stories, personalize the letter here and there, and make sure our penmanship is readable so the postman can read the address. Sometimes we had Hello Kitty themed papers. Other times we have it plain but decorated by ourselves. So much effort was put into writing each letter, it seems each one received is like a treasure. Just waiting for the mail to see if one is meant for you was an exciting moment.

Postcards and letters are very cute but it means little to a child who sees her friends everyday in school. How does receiving letters end up so emotional? There was a time when my family stayed in the United States for a long period (about 3 months). I was away from my friends in what seems like forever. One day, I received a letter I never expected. It was from my best friend! I left her my address in case she wanted to contact and she actually mailed me a letter. Now picture a eight-year-old girl's receiving a long letter from her best friend whom she didn't meet for a long time. I was filled with so much joy (and probably jumping all over the place) that I wrote a reply letter and convinced my mom to mail it. I don't really remember what was written on that letter. However, to this day, I still remember every emotion I went through when receiving it. It seems worth more than any email (or even text) I had ever gotten in my entire life. Because emails and texts are so common these days, I treasure letters even more. Sadly, it is easier these days to just email than to write a letter.

Holiday #3: Luck for your Valentine

I'll be honest. I have no clue what is a good gift for Valentine's Day. Having no experience with relationships, I never celebrated the holiday. With the American's view on the holiday, it's a pretty useless holiday since a couple should always be celebrating their love every once in a while. However, I do love the Japanese's view on the holiday. It's a time when girls make gifts (mostly chocolate) for the guys to confess their love. After Valentine's Day, there is also another holiday (I believe it's called White Day) where that love can be reciprocated. Now, I'm not sure if this occurs in any other parts of Asia but this is how it works in Japan. It seems very sweet.

Anyways, good gifts are hard to find since anyone can just buy a box of chocolate or a bouquet of flowers. I'm not really into that stuff. If one really wants to show his or her love, I think the best way to present that is through a hand made gift. One of my favorite gifts were 3D paper stars. Just to clarify, I didn't made these for the holiday. It was a birthday present for a friend to give good luck (being college, we need all the luck we can get). However, when I checked the history behind this cute gift, I found out it was a gift meant to be given between couples. It started from an Asian drama TV series (I don't know the specific show) and it was made popular because the girl made many stars to confess her love to a guy. Did she ever get the guy? I don't know. Sorry, but you will have to find that out by yourself. After the series, this trend became really popular. It was said that the number of stars you make represent how much love you have for that person. When I checked out the numbers,... let's just say you really need to love that person to make such crazy numbers of stars. Either way, if it's a for a friend or a lover, this neat little gift is a sweet way to represent your caring for that person. It represent luck (or love) and the time and effort you put in shows how much you care. So if anyone wants a cheap but sweet gift, this is my recommendation. It cost about $3 for the jar depending on the size. As for the stars, I spent about $7 for material which makes over 170 stars (the jar holds 170 and I had a lot extra stars). A very sweet, cute, cheap gift!

Happy Valentine's Day