1. PBJs 2025

  Photo Credit:  https://abc7.com/disney-day-cars-on-the-road-lightning-mcqueen-mater/12213387/      “Speed. I’m speed.” Those were the first words I remember hearing when I was little. The first ever real movie I ever watched. Cars . Lightning McQueen came rushing around the race track, and I was hooked. The wonderful animated story of a car learning that friendship and humility trump pride in every challenge we face. But it was more than that. It was the story of a racer achieving his potential. It was about a car going “quicker than quick, faster than fast.” Now, there are a few reasons why this movie is so amazing. First of all, the movie is literally about cars. They all look so cool and having personalities just made them even cooler. Secondly, the friendship between Mater and McQueen was any child’s dream. They contrasted so well when they had to, and the rest of the time they were a duo to be reckoned with. And of course, the racing. The Piston Cup. ...

Lollipop moments. I believe that’s the word for it. It’s strange how some memories just stick. Not the fantastic, beautiful, and grand ones—like a special birthday or a family trip to Hawaii—but the tiny, insignificant instances that, for some reason, never budge and leave an indelible mark. These tiny things echo in our heads, nesting in little burrows of our mind that they never really deserved.  Remembrance. I can pick on a million different things to think about, but for whatever reason, some things—things that I shouldn’t care about—take the spotlight and become the only memories I distinctly remember. So I’ll decide to remember some things, the fleeting moments that outlast their expiration. For some weird reason I can specifically recall the feeling of sitting alone a week after posting a blog here, refreshing the page one too many times, and being overcome with an unsettling feeling that I’d never thought would bother me. No comments, minimal views, and a blog sitting all a...

This is the beautiful LA skyline. https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=los+angeles+night+skyline Now, I'm sure you all have heard enough of nostalgia, especially from me :), but I felt Los Angeles, yes the city, deserves to be the closing, the last time I speak of this. LA holds a super special place in my heart, and I like to call it "second home". Practically, one weekend in a month, I would take a day off from school on Friday, and fly out to Irvine. Now, seriously, people have a problem with me saying Irvine is in LA, when a 10 minute drive away. But anyways, my family lives there, and since our Grandma lives with us, we end up making the trip down there so my Grandma can see her daughter. And obviously, the amazing time we spend with family. I think, the main reason for going there so often is, I've never been to India! And yes, as shocking as that might be, I just don't have any family there. One of my dad's sister lives in Hong Kong, and since that's ne...

Muscle Memory? A beach I visited last summer As summer approaches, memories of past vacations and summer breaks are resurfacing in my memory more and more often. The pool parties with my friends, fun trips to the beach, and lazy weekends with my family and friends are vivid in my mind, and make me grow excited for the upcoming months.  Memories can be recalled like a muscle. As summer comes, I remember memories of summer, same as before winter break, I might recall previous winter breaks. It becomes a habitual cycle of recollection. Due to nostalgia, anticipation for future experiences are often more exciting than the experiences themselves. Daydreaming and recalling memories get intertwined, and start going hand in hand as the past merges with what we hope to be in the future. For example, when I am studying for my AP Biology exam, I often think about evenings lounging in my pool for motivation. This is a daydream, but it emerged from past memories of actually lounging in my pool ...

 Image Credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/vietnam-street It has been almost 10 years since I last visited Vietnam, but I can still vividly recall the thick humidity the moment I stepped off the cool, air-conditioned plane. The air was warm and humid and seemed to cling to my skin, heavy with the assorted scents of motorbike exhaust, fragrant flowers, and even a tang of fish sauce. I remember walking through the busy, labyrinth-esque streets and alleys, comparing it to Subway Surfers but on steroids. Yet my parents still managed to navigate through the streets with ease, effortlessly switching between Vietnamese and English while I just tagged along, overwhelmed yet in awe.  When we came back to the US, I noticed Vietnam never really left us. It clings to my parents, grandparents, and relatives, sometimes in obvious ways: their mannerisms, the food we share, and the shows we watch on the TV. But it also shows up in subtler things, like in their pronunciation or the...

Darshan Dhaduk Mrs. Smith English 11 AP 15 April 2025 Image Credits:https://images.app.goo.gl/3VtnY3fSEFRTPqKy8 Every time my family would get a big cardboard box from an amazon delivery, I would always be the first one to open the box up, not for what was inside the box, but cutting up the box so I could make a box fort. I remember the first time my friends and I made a fort together. It was the summer of third grade and this was one of the hottest summers in my opinion. Going outside and playing for more than thirty minutes made me sweat so much that I felt like I lost at least five pound of weight. During this summer my friends came up with the idea of making a cardboard box fort together. We gathered boxes and after some tape and cutting up cardboard, we had our fort. This was still not enough for us, so we decided to make two forts and we started to have a water fight. Now making these forts had already drained our energy. We still decided to go on, and later we had a water fight ...

  The Slime Empire That Almost Was Every time I find myself making slime, which is actually quite often, I get a very specific memory. Not to YouTube tutorials or the stress of cleaning slime off my carpet before my parents (although these did happen), but back to fifth grade. Back when my friend (whose name I will not reveal because she would kill me) and I were co-founders of a highly unlicensed yet semi-successful slime business.  It started as a simple idea that two 10-year-olds dreamed up. Slime was all the craze at the time, so why not profit from it? We convinced our parents to take us to Target and buy supplies: glue, food coloring, baking powder, saline solution, shaving cream, glitter…the list goes on. They were confused and suspicious but decided to let us be.  We began with advertising to our friends. $5 for a regular-sized container of slime of any color. $7 for a glitter or foam beads addition. Surprisingly, we got some orders—around six if memory serv...

  For as long as I can remember, my family’s idea of family time was tabletop games. Not TV, or going out, but board games. There’ve been countless weekend nights spent playing The Game of Life, or inviting family friends and cousins over for rounds of Uno, or just casual rounds of Jenga while catching up with each other. Regardless of what game we played, the memories that came along with them are what made each week memorable.  Now if I had to rank my favorite game, foosball is a hundred percent on the top of my list. I first discovered foosball while at a friend’s house, where they had this huge, 4-player table. Immediately, I was hooked, and so my dad agreed to buy a smaller, miniature set. From then on, I would practice and play for hours on end, trying every possible trickshot from every angle possible, destroying my sister in endless rounds of foosball after school. Once, I tried challenging my mom, not knowing she was a former champion of a foosball club back in her h...

  Photo Credit:  https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2018/08/16/this-is-your-brain-on-roller-coasters/           Roller coasters have to be some sort of canon event in everyone’s lives. I must have gone on over a hundred rides in my life so far, yet everytime I sit down into one of those carts and the bar comes down, my heart starts to race. Every dip, sharp turn, and flip make my stomach lurch just the right amount where the discomfort is enjoyable. I try to go to Great America, with my friends every year, to keep my thrill-seeker side happy. Now that Great America might be closing in a few years, there are only going to be a few chances for me to spend my summers waiting in the lines and having fun on those rides. Of course, there are other amusement parks, which I do plan to go to, but Great America was such a vital part of my development. Those flying red chairs as soon as you enter the park, or even the 90 degree dip of RailBlazer, make Great Am...

Image source: https://lifehacker.com/the-best-technique-for-using-a-playground-swing-accord-1850355533 Occasionally, I get this sudden urge to stop whatever I’m doing and dig through my things in search of childhood memories. Being a messy person, this can take either a minute or turn into a really long time, but once I do find something, I just sit there and remember.  When I was younger, my parents would put together photo albums filled with pictures of me,—shots of birthdays, vacations, and everyday moments—all carefully slipped into laminated pages. So I usually try to find the photo albums first, and flipping through them almost feels like stepping back into those moments.  Of all the childhood things I held on to, my most treasured possession is this worn-out stuffed dog with a ripped up hat stitched onto its head that is barely hanging on. My parents gifted it to me on my second—or maybe third?— birthday, which I grew really attached to and took it everywhere I went. If...

Darshan Dhaduk Mrs. Smtih English 11 AP 2 April 2025 Image credits:https://images.app.goo.gl/T46ioAHV57gAYzsR7 My love for basketball started when I was around two years old. Now being this young and loving basketball made my parents realize that this sport was going to stick with me forever. I remember the first time I played a game in elementary school and it did not turn out great. I scored 2 points, for the opposite team. I was so confused at the time because I started jumping around yelling I finally did it, I scored my first ever points in basketball, while everyone else was either laughing or had a straight face the entire time. I knew that if I practiced playing basketball again and again, then I would be able to have a chance at playing at a higher level. Now being around four three tall in elementary school I was no were near to playing basketball at a higher level. I told my parents that everyday I would come back from school, do my homework then I would go to the park to pl...

  I’ve always had a very profound understanding and appreciation for films. Whether it be action, romance, comedy, whatever I saw on screen became an embodiment of me for the time being. Movies have always been my way of preserving memories, like scenes of different moments in my own life. Sometimes these movies serve as a reminder, something that takes me back to places, people, and things I’d long forgotten. Every christmas movie reminds me of my last christmas, every pixar movie allows me to relive my childhood, and just like that, I’m lost in a nostalgic reverie, letting the scenes of my life live in my head for those moments. So years later, revisiting those same movies is like unlocking a time capsule—I remember exactly where I was, who I was with, and what I was feeling. I think it’s worth saying that a lot of our life experiences are fulfilled through a screen—things we dream of doing, people we dare to love, places we hope to go. It gives us the opportunity to remember a t...

 We all have that one closet or that one area in the house which keeps all the memories together. Whether, that's a photo wall, which I have. But I didn't know there's another place in the house, which kept the "unopened" memories stored away.      In my house, right outside my bedroom door, is an attic. An attic that blends in into the roof ; and all honesty, I didn't even know it was there until a couple of years ago. A week ago, I randomly saw a white string that was coming down, and being the curious self of mine, pulled on it. But did I know, that white string, was a hint of nostalgia coming my way.  A ladder came coming down, (and this was around 9:00 pm being home alone), and I seriously got scared. But, at the end of the day, I'm a "warrior", so we climbed up those stairs to investigate what was up there. This obviously wasn't any horror movie, so there ended up just being a couple of boxes. One by one, I took each of them down to ope...

Quarantine Memories credit: https://scroar.net/4439/showcase/spotlight-how-students-stay-busy-at-home/ Throughout our lives, we have collected millions and millions of memories. The first trip to Disneyland, our first day of school, playdates and sleepovers with friends, attending classes as a kid, and more. However, I think there is a time in all of our lives where we collected the most memories. How is this possible, you might ask. Memories are just a recollection of time passing, right? Well, memories are often lost in the bustle of our lives, so, in my opinion, they are not equally distributed or stored throughout years.  The time I am referring to, where I believe we accumulated the most memories, is quarantine. It was a transformative year for me, and I am sure for others too. The time spent isolated inside our homes forced us to look within to become our own companions.  For me, that meant time spent doing DIYs, learning how to paint and draw, reading hundreds of b...