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...