Image Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm To start this post with something about my daily life, as I'm writing this my little brother just came back home from his piano evaluation. He was stressing all day about it yesterday, and was scared that if he made even one mistake with his song in front of the judge, he would automatically get a silver medal recital instead of a gold medal one. I also have my evaluation right before noon, and I am not very worried. Him and I practiced in public yesterday (since our electronic piano at home's sensitivity settings are wack) on a piano, and when we were both done, a man walked up to the piano, sat down, and started playing awesome jazz music by memory. His fingers moved with energy and skill across the keys, and filled the entire massive public space with the loud, joyous funky sounds of piano jazz. When it was over, he got off the seat and we all applauded him and waved back to him to have a good day. When my little brother walked into my...

Photo credit: Disney/Lucasfilm I first saw the conclusion to the 42-year-old Skywalker Saga of 9 films and three trilogies nearly a month ago, on December 27, 2019. That was seven days late due to a ski trip I was on that coincidentally started the day of the film's release, so unlike all of the preview new Star Wars movies, I was unable to see it on release day or the day after. I finally watched it together with some of my friends, and I walked out of the theater smiling and feeling mostly satisfied. I also rewatched it yesterday with my friend Xiang to keep it fresh in my mind. Since I do not have enough time today to do a full review (that will come later), here is my short-as-possible mini-review of the film. It contains no spoilers for those of you who worry about that. So, to start, this film had four distinct purposes, as the film's director J.J. Abrams once put it: one, to conclude the saga, two, to conclude the sequel trilogy, three, to be a sequel to The Last ...

It feels like every single post I make nowadays is about a celebration or special event, since I never get time for anything else, but I don't want to complain about that this time. Why? Since it's the most wonderful time of the year, and my favorite winter holiday: My birthday! To say that yesterday, my birthday (the post publish date says my actual birthday day December 12, even though technically I'm writing and publishing this the day after, December 13th) was a bit unusual would be an understatement. I woke up, ate some eggs and breakfast, and then walked to my bus stop. Pretty normal. Then, I slipped on some ice on my way to my bus stop, which is two streets down (I got back up and was fine). Then, I went to school and my first class was English. We spent most of our time in class reading. Again, also pretty normal, except that this time it was under the label of  hygge - A Danish tradition for having fun. So in other words, some people were allowed to bring in ...