Simply Brian Zhang

Hey,  I got back from Kenya last Sunday, July 26th and I must say my trip was lovely. I’ll write more about it another time but I just wanted to make a quick update.

Follow me on Twitter!:

Twitter.com/BzBrian

If you haven’t realized, BZ is my initials and it makes a… funny word, just say it verbally and think about it for awhile.

The Good: 12.1 Megapixel Camera, 5x Optical Lens Zoom, 3-inch screen, high definition video camera with a sophisticated image stabler, easy to use, relatively cheap price for what’s included in the camera

The Bad: The 3-inch screen collects many fingerprints, and confusing to learn how to zoom during a video

My Rating: 4.5/5 EXCELLENT.

CNET’s Rating: 4/5 EXCELLENT.

Summary: The Sony DSC-W290 Cybershot is a relatively new camera out in the market today. Sony first announced it back in February of 2009 and waiting for it has not disappointed me at all. This camera comes with a 12.1 megapixel camera which is absolutely amazing for anyone for vacation snapshots to amateur and mediocre photography. The main attraction this camera has is a 12.1 megapixel cybershot camera, 5x Optical Lens Zoom, 3-inch screen, and an amazing High Definition, wide-screen video camera. On top of all this, it comes with a sophisticated image stabler by Sony Cybershot Super-Steady-Shot that keeps your pictures from blurring. As impressive as this all seems, the camera comes at a cheap $229 at retail electronics stores.  This camera also has many features like face tracking, high-low light adjustments, and other features that adjust the visuals to maximize the quality and clearness of your pictures. With all these features and sophisticated technology the Sony DSC-W290 is very easy to use so its suitable for all ages to quickly learn and use.

The Sony DSC-W290 is a great camera with many cool features and to play with and it comes at a very cheap price for what it offers. I highly recommend purchasing this camera to anyone as its worth the money in comparison to other top of the line cameras that may cost twice as more. The bottom line is that this camera is very well balanced and is definetly top-of-the-line for compact cameras.

Hey guys!

As you can see, the title is ‘Innovative Thinking’. My new ‘innovative’ idea is not so innovative but the idea caught my eye. That idea is to stop making this blog on my boring life. As you can see, the you in what I just said is nonexistent. By this I mean, I have no readers at all, whatsoever. So I should start talking about the most recent news in entertainment, politics, and whatnot. So, the most recent news that everybody has been talking about is the unfortunate death of the amazing King of Pop, Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson by KevJumba

That video is from the famous, KevJumba, or now, Jumbafund. KevJumba is a young American Born Chinese (ABC) who has grown as an internet celebrity on YouTube. In that video, he talks about the controversy of Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson was an amazingly talented singer and dancer. He grew up warming our hearts and bringing smiles on our faces in, The Jackson Five. However, his life controversy has very well become a controversy in its own right. People have been repeatedly giving him demerits on his natural and stunning talent.
Should his actions affect our, the people, view on him as a singer?
It should not; his creative and enjoyable songs should be respected and enjoyed as songs regardless of the personal background of the singer. However, this is not the case. Michael Jackson had been accused of many accusations which were all, clearly, dismissed as not guilty. So then, why do we continue to call him for something that our United States of America’s court declared that he did not do it? Other people have been criticizing him for bleaching his skin to a lighter pigment, as KevJumba had stated and there is a reason behind everything. No, Michael Jackson did not want to become a white man, and nor did he want to be anything but black. He was diagnosed of a unfortunate disease called Vitiligo. Vitiligo is a disease that causes the skin on the body to gradually turn patches of skin to a much lighter pigment. Therefore Michael Jackson chemically made his skin much lighter. I do not want to get into any other arguments of his controversial life but I would like to conclude in a few words.
Michael Jackson was the undoubtedly, most influential singer in pop culture and possibly all of music. From there, we should remember him for his music rather than his accusations, for his talent rather than his skin color, and for his accomplishments rather than his failures.
Au Revoir,
- Brian Zhang

Hey my reader! If I have any readers…
well anyways! Off to today’s topic!
‘So Much for Summer’

We’re now beginning to move into our second month of summer and our second last month of summer. Many people have been saying recently, “Summer’s going by really fast!”, “Summer’s awesome!”, or if they have just been ‘chillin’ for the past 3 weeks and I completely envy their state of repose. However, as a scion of my father’s trade in the medical department I have no choice but to deviate the summer tradition and set course to working hard over the long summer. I am currently enrolled in classes at a respected institute and it is kicking my butt. I spend hours and hours of my day as a high School Freshman to Sophomore studying new vocabulary words and reading novels as a direct preparation to the SAT.
Although the class is in fact, challenging, it pushes me to do something with my free time rather than running around in a park chasing butterflies. I am glad I enrolled in this class and I hope to rapidly and efficiently increase my vocabulary and reasoning skills throughout the summer.
For now,
Au Revoir.
- Brian

Simply put, the best time of every kid’s (American at least) life which he or she will spent countless hours running around on a beautiful green meadow chasing butterflies or playing the great American pastime, baseball. Well, ideally at least. The truth is, summer is boring! Well, don’t get me wrong, summer’s fun at first and much better than school, but out of complete honesty, it’s truly a waste of time. As a matter of fact, summer doesn’t just waste 2 and a half months of school, it wastes an additional month and a half or two months because you spend the early first semester just reviewing the pre-requisites of the lesson which is what you learned last year.
For now, I’m going to post this and eventually edit this tomorrow because im tired!
Goodnight.
-BrianZhang

Hey!
Yeah, I know I haven’t posted in like a week and a half, but I have a good reason. This coming week, as in tomorrow through Thursday, I have finals. So I’ve been preoccupied with studying and prepping up for the tests. My GPA is a 3.7 which kinda stinks and my two Bs are an 87 and 88. The finals are worth 15% of my overall grade so I am hoping to raise the 88, English honors, to an 90. That however will be a challenge and posting here won’t help at all!
I’ll see you guys soon.
-Brian

Last night, my father walked into my room wanting to show me a YouTube video. This video is one of the few videos on YouTube that has really touched me about how father and son relationships should be. Without spoiling anything else, please watch the video as I am sure it will be worth your five minutes.
~Enjoy!
*Click Link Below to YouTube.com*
What is that?

Today, my whole high school had a field trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. If you’re not familiar with the California scene, especially Northern California, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk is very similar to other popular theme parks like Great America. It however, is located right on the beach. It was great! The weather was someone cold yet manageable but it stopped us from becoming drenched on the water rides.
All the rides are great but I want to mention one ride, Fireball. Fireball is very similar to how a pendulum works except it spins to add the little feature of dizziness with butterflies in your stomach. I must admit, waiting in line for that ride and looking at all the screaming faces of those brave hearts who chose to hop aboard the Fireball. I, myself, was one of those brave souls and nearly vomited.
Besides the Fireball, everyone played volleyball on the surprisingly warm sand on such a cold day. Everyone played exceptionally well and we had a great game of diving and missing the ball completely.
At the end of the day, my whole high school had been leeched out of energy and collapsed in the bus quietly.
-Brian

Today I had to give a little speech to my class, ranting about moral values an such. I had great ideas with nice quotes to go along with it by Ghandi and Oscar Wilde and as I was preparing I felt as if I would do terrific. That however, was not the case and I noticed my problems.
I have a minor speech impediment in stuttering on my first word of whenever I begin to speak. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Another problem I have is that I talk way to fast, when I talk very fast, I don’t stutter which is why I unconsciously decide to do it but nobody in the class knows what the hell I’m saying! Concluding my speech today, I got an 92% but knocked down to an 82% for being one day late. I didn’t really care much as my grade wouldn’t be heavily affected by this but I did feel morally degraded in my speech shortly afterward but this feeling died off once class began in its daily pace.
Now, that I have finished my day summary, I want to talk about speech impediment on a general scale. Speech impediment is when a person has trouble speaking (i.e. mumbling, stuttering & so on). Usually people tell people with speech impediment to talk slower. However, that really doesn’t help. Stuttering in my case and many others’ cases is that stuttering only happens on the first word of a conversation. So my question to you is, what advice would you give to a person with speech impediment and if you have, tell me what problem you have had in the past or present of speech impediment.
Thanks,
-Brian Zhang

Memorial Day weekend is great all in itself as we have no school! But more importantly, I do appreciate the greatest contributions of our brave young men and women throughout history.
Well, about my weekend… [Warning!! Quite Long!!]
Friday, I came home reluctantly as my mother (being Asian) was infuriated at me for scoring so low on my PSATs. I scored horribly and couldn’t even believe my score and I really wish I could retake it! Well anyways, after school that day I walked home and sat near the railroad tracks near my house and nearly slept as it was so hot. Haha, anyways! The highlight of Friday is that I probably successfully got in our school’s Student Council! Yay for me!
Saturday was an interesting day. It’s my first week without Chinese School at 9:00 in the morning which is highly enjoyable not to have. But at 11 I have my weekly biology tutor which isn’t as bad as it sounds. However, my teacher couldn’t come as she was graduating college that day or something and a substitute forgot to come! So that pretty much wasted 1 hour of my beautiful Saturday.
Sunday is always the same. Although I do go to a Christian School, I’m really questioning and attacking pretty much all religions now as I am highly skeptical of what I believe in so I don’t go to church as my family is not Christian. Anyways, every Sunday morning since I could remember, I have piano class that I’ve been taking with the same teacher since I was 6 or 7 years old at 7:30 AM in the morning! Other then that, it’s a really slow day.
However, later that day my aunt and uncle along with my two little cousins invited my family to go to a really nice restaurant in San Francisco which is about 50 or so miles away from my hometown, Fremont CA. The food was great, they serve Californian food with Asian influence and I was surprised that I actually liked it. I ate lamb… which is like eating Jesus but whatever it was yummy.
Yesterday, Monday, or Memorial Day went extremely slow. I pretty much ‘chilled’ all day long and watched Jon and Kat Plus 8 or something all day and had a small barbecue meal for dinner.
Relaxing weekend you might say.

Haha, thanks for reading.

-Brian