Halloween Roundup: Mystery, Suspense & All Things Spooktacular!

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Hehehe, Halloween has arrived! For the past two weeks, we have been working on an array of Halloween-related activities, and now that the actual day is here, we can finally take a look back at some of the most spine-chilling, hair-raising and blood-curdling things that everyone has been doing this past week, which also happened to be midterms week. Boo! (Pun intended).

Alice has finally published to her blog! Her second blog post is her own version of George's Marvellous Medicine, complete with doses of wine, human eyes, stinky socks and creepy crawlies. If you are thinking of cooking up a witch's brew this Halloween, click here for instructions on how you can remake Alice's Fantastic Medicine*.

Coco has written a spooky story about a sweet old lady who really was not so sweet...

Sandy, who loves scary stories, has started working on her own story about a group of teenage computer geniuses who hack for the state. One day when our protagonist was on a covert hacking mission, a mysterious message appears on the screen...

Selina and I spent some time last week reading some Edgar Allan Poe, the master of mystery and macabre and the inventor of detective fiction. After we explored themes of madness and guilt in The Tell-Tale Heart, we watched this excellently creepy UPA animation of the story.

On the note of detective fiction, Selina and I also started reading something a little more challenging but very, very exciting and mysterious and intelligent and wonderful and all the rest (Can you tell I'm a big fan?) – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of the eccentric yet fantastic consulting detective who lives on 221B Baker Street that is, none other than Sherlock Holmes himself. After reading The Red-Headed League, Selina has written her thoughts up in a post. Our next mystery will be A Study in Scarlet, as well as other Sherlock Holmes short stories. In the mean time, we have begun watching Sherlock, the BBC's wonderful modern adaptation of the stories and one of my favourite TV shows.

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Finally, we have been collectively working on a tale of mystery and suspense titled Rosebud. I did borrow the word from Citizen Kane but our story turned out quite differently, and thanks to the weird inner workings of the minds of everyone (myself included), much, much more scary. It is still a work-in-progress so keep an eyeball out for how the mystery unravels...

*We are in no way responsible for any injuries that may occur as a result of consuming the fantastic medicine. We also will not be able to help people clean up any vomit (or dead bodies).

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween all you witches, vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves and creepy creatures of the underworld!

You may have noticed that this blog has had a tiny bit of a makeover for pumpkin season. (Selina, please tell me what kind of irony I just used in the previous sentence.) For now, this blog will remain this way until we are done with all our creepy Halloween festivities this week!

Although Taiwan doesn't celebrate Halloween with trick-or-treating, we can still get into the holiday spirit with a few freaktastic videos. To get things rolling (over in the grave), let us start with the wonderfully iconic theme song of The Addam's Family.



Followed by Vincent, one of the first films done by Tim Burton, master of mystery and horror, when he was working at Disney. This short film is loosely based on Tim Burton's own life!



Speaking of Tim Burton, this is the Halloween a song from the essential Halloween movie – The Nightmare Before Christmas.



If that made you howl like a werewolf, cackle like a witch or crawl like a spider (happy, in other words), check out this amazing Halloween light show set to the same song:



And of course, no Halloween video post would be complete without the King of Pop's most famous song.



Have a spooktacular day!

How to Prepare for a Big Test Tomorrow

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There's a massive test coming up tomorrow and you're scared out of your wits, unsure of how you are going to get up and face the dreaded PSAT. If you think you are going to stay up all night just to study for it, you might want to think again. Here are some of my own tried and true tips on what you should do to prepare for a test, whether it is the PSAT, a midterm or final exam or even a short quiz. 

1. Get a good night's sleep

While it may feel like a good idea that to squeeze that extra bit of information into your already-exploding brain at 4 AM, your brain will not be functioning enough for you to actually absorb the information and remember it tomorrow. In fact, you may end up spending a lot more time trying to memorize the information than you usually would.  

Instead of using sleep time to cram, it is much better to get at least a few hours of sleep (even if it's only 3 or 4 hours). Many times you will find that you will magically remember the information after you wake up! If you pull an all-nighter, you will inevitably crash the day after (maybe even during the test, and we definitely don't want that!)

2. Do some LIGHT bedtime reading

As you near your bedtime, you should start wrapping up your studying. Do not try to memorize entire dictionaries in the minutes before you go to sleep. You should have done that earlier in the day! Instead, skim over your notes, write down the main ideas or things you keep forgetting. Look these over and then turn out the lights! 

3. Breakfast 

The morning of a big test, make sure you eat a healthy breakfast, even if you don't think you can possibly eat because of the butterflies in your stomach. You need energy for your brain to function at the best of its ability so make sure to give it enough nutrients! If you don't eat, you may feel even worse during the test (and maybe even pass out?!)

4. Bring snacks

Speaking of food, you should bring snacks and water to the test. Energy bars and chocolate are good options. During the breaks, make sure to stay hydrated and eat some snacks to keep you going!

5. Make sure you have all the stationery and equipment you need
Be sure you bring everything you need for the test – pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, calculators and so on. It would be a good idea to bring extras of everything, in case your pencil runs out of lead, your pen runs out of ink or someone borrowed your eraser first period and never gave it back in time for the exam. For exams like the PSAT and SAT that allow you to use your calculator, you should bring extra batteries in case your calculator runs out of power half way through the exam. 

5. On the way to the test, read over your notes. 

It is best not to cram information the morning of a big test. Personally, the night before, I like to make a summary sheet (no more than 2 pages) of all the main ideas that I need to know for the test as well as the things I keep forgetting about. In the morning, I look over these notes over breakfast and when I am walking or in the car on my way to the test. Looking over the main concepts reminds me of the other minor details that I may also need to know for the test. 

6. Don't stress or panic. 

This is a biggie! If you start panicking, you will lose your ability to concentrate during the test. To stop being anxious, some people like to listen to music, some people like to walk around, others like to eat. Everyone is different, but do whatever you need to do before the test so you can focus when you go into the room. Be calm and confident! You're going to do amazing! 

Rest In Peace, Tom Clancy

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

– Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy, one of America's most successful espionage and military novel authors, died on Tuesday October 1 in a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He was 66.

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Tom Clancy is best known for his complex and detailed spy and military novels, 17 of which have made it to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. He is the creator of the Jack Ryan series, which has been adapted into four films – The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears – with a fifth one on the way. Actors Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck appeared as the titular character Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst, in the films. The upcoming film is titled Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and features Chris Pine (Captain Kirk from Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness) as Jack Ryan.

Tom Clancy also co-founded Red Storm Entertainment, a video game development company that was later purchased by Ubisoft Entertainment. His next book Command Authority is set to be published in December this year.

According to the New York Times, when Tom Clancy was growing up, he didn't read much children's literature (like we are doing in our classes). Instead, he was obsessed with naval history, reading lots and lots of military and engineering books about submarine warfare, espionage, missile systems and secret plans between countries. He aspired to join the military but found his eyesight wasn't good enough. Besides looking all cool and military-esque with his aviators in the photo below, he did end up doing what he loved despite not joining the military, because he believed that...

The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read.

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To Infinity and Beyond! NASA Celebrates 55th Anniversary

October has come, and with it we celebrate the birth date of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known by its acronym NASA.

On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed an act that established NASA with the purpose of encouraging peaceful human space exploration. The operation opened its doors on October 1st of the same year, and this year marks its 55th anniversary.

NASA is perhaps best known for the Apollo moon-landings. On July 20, 1969, only 12 years after NASA launched, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. As he stepped onto lunar surface, Armstrong described the event as "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." You can watch the televised moon-landing here.

Interestingly, Armstrong was not the first man to journey into outer space – Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin completed an orbit around the Earth in 1961. After World War II ended, the United States and Russia started fighting in the Cold War, a war that had no real physical fighting. Instead, the two countries both constantly threatened to use nuclear bombs on each other (but never did it) in the hopes of attaining global influence. The rivalry from the Cold War even led to a Space Race, which began when Russia sent the Sputnik 1, the first satellite, into space. During this time, both the U.S. and Russia tried to show their superiority by competing to achieve "firsts" in space exploration. 

The Space Race led to many great technological achievements in space exploration. Here are just some of the achievements that NASA has accomplished in its 55 years, with many, many more to come.

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In honour of NASA, we conclude with one of the most famous phrases about space made popular by the science-fiction TV and film series Star Trek:

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It's five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.