Tales of Halloween

Halloween has always been an interesting time of year for me.

My first Halloween [age:5]

I had just come to the states and was trying to make friends in my elementary school. For some reason I ended up with a pumpkin costume for Halloween that my parents thought was adorable. All the other girls were princesses and cute witches and I was a round, bright orange pumpkin. Mortified, I considered not going out for Halloween, but the lure of free candy (despite not liking sweets, or perhaps I did at the time and the dislike developed later) was too much for young Yun-Yun to withstand. Needless to say that night I ended up knocking on the door of one of the most popular girls in my grade who nearly screeched with laughter "Oh my goodness.. are you.. a... pumpkin??" Never again.

Trick-or-Treating with Siblings [age: 13]

I had been looking forward to Halloween. Middle school had been a difficult time for me and found myself thinking I could get through things by looking forward to going trick-or-treating with old friends... and my little brother (and their little brothers). This was his first Halloween ever and it was my job to make sure he had a good time. I was getting to old to trick or treat alone anyway (hah, right) so we used our siblings as an excuse to go for candy. Things were going relatively well at first as my brother was still trying to soak in the glory that is receiving free candy from strangers. However by the end of the night the novelty had started to wear off. Soon he was noticing other things like... the old lady who answered the door "Trick-or-treat! Hey! You are an OLD girl, why are you look so old?" or the smell of the Indian house-hold "Trick-or-treat! Oh! It is STINKY. Why is it smell so bad??" Seriously, never again.

Trick-or-Treating in a Gated Community [age: 15]

Cons: Houses are way too spread apart; contrary to popular belief, uber-rich people actually give out less candy; why do rich people always live on hills/mountains??

Pros: Many who did not plan to give out candy feel bad and give out money instead, uber-win

Trick-or-Treating Senior year [age: 17]

See you can never be too old to go trick-or-treating. Senior year t&t was awesome. Clearly, the older you get, the more awesome Trick-or-treating gets.

Part of a speech for class

I'll write out the whole speech at some point, but for now part of the idea generated this website.

Creativity through Limitations

Sometimes total freedom does not foster creativity. Restriction fosters creativity.

Three summers ago in Japan I took a freestyle dance lesson that consisted entirely of ways to restrict yourself in order to foster creativity: don't take your hands out of your pocket until a pivotal moment, keep your left foot at the same place on the ground during an entire set, dance with your eyes closed, only move what's above the waist.

Yet it wasn't until today that I realized restrictions can foster creativity in other areas as well. For photography for instance, restrictions could be: take exactly one minute looking at an object and framing it before taking a shot, every day at 5pm take a photograph, don't use the zoom, don't look at the viewfinder and take instinct shots.

I have yet to flesh this idea out entirely, but I'm already excited to try some of these out. I have also started to look at light and lighting as a very tricky and difficult (for me personally; despite taking photo classes I still have no idea how aperture and shutter speed really work) but interesting project to pursue.

Lots o'media

Drawing is fun. You should draw too! :D

No matter how fast you are...

He will always catch you...

For those of you who don't understand (shame), the game of my childhood can be downloaded: here

I can't make you love me

Turn down the lights

Turn down the bed

Turn down these voices

Inside my head

Lay down with me

Tell me no lies

Just hold me close

Don't patronize

Don't patronize me

Cause I can't make you love me if you don't

You can't make your heart feel something it won't

Here in the dark

in these final hours

I will lay down my heart

and I'll feel the power

But you won't, no you won't

Cause I can't make you love me if you don't

Hello Apathy

If you were stuck in Widener (library) for a day what books what you read?
If you were in a room and had some paper put in front of you and were told to "do something creative" what would you do?

Thinking about it, none of my answers to these questions match up with the path I'm projecting myself on right now. But what would? There's a tendency to want to do what we're good at. But who's to say that we're good enough to do it, or that what we are good at is valued in "the real world".

Mid-first-semester-senior-year-of-college-crisis