6. Harbor Seals 2026

  “It’s a beautiful day to save lives.” The sentence is simple, ordinary even. Yet to anyone who has watched Grey’s Anatomy, it carries the weight of ambition, struggle, uncertainty and the desire to make a difference. That is the peculiar power of American television: American television does more than entertain; it shapes the language people use to define themselves, and interpret their experiences.  American television has created a vocabulary that extends far beyond dialogue. Catphrase become inside jokes; characters become shorthand for personalities. We borrow the language Of television to articulate emotions we find difficult to express. A line of dialogue can become a substitute for explanation, giving shape to feelings that otherwise might remain unspoken.  For me, Grey’s Anatomy made medicine feel like more than a profession. Its language framed surgery as an intersection of precision, sacrifice, and purpose. The monologues about life and death offered me a voc...

“Go back to your country.” These were the words uttered to my seven year old sister, an American citizen, as she walked into her first grade classroom and was pushed by her classmate. My sister is not only an American citizen, but was born and raised in the United States. She possessed no accent, no memory of living anywhere else except America—yet she was targeted for one reason and one reason only: the color of her skin. My parents, like many others, immigrated to America in the 1990s with the hopes of finding better opportunities for themselves and providing even better opportunities for their children. Their hard work and perseverance had paid off, and was evident in their first-born child—my sister. She was going to school in America, was fluent in English, attended piano lessons, took chess classes and swim lessons—all of the things my parents never had growing up. They were proud of this accomplishment (and rightfully so), but with just a few words from an ignorant kid, it felt ...

  Week 5: Apeirophobia Inverted  – 10/21/26 - 10/21 [9:50].   What ends the universe? How long will humanity last? What would it be like to watch the last star die ? The void after heat death These concepts used to keep me up at night, pondering, while having nothing to do thanks to the pandemic. Life never was quite the same after watching that Kurzgesagt youtube video on the future of the universe. The idea of what came after terrified me; the concept that there would be a point where it cut off, where it just ended, where it would just be,       nothing…       forever… I often couldn’t sleep because of this, staying up at night, pondering… wondering… using my imagination combined with the rules I learned in the video to try and come up with some happy ending through all of this. (Spoiler: there never was)              I never could really explain it ...

One theme in particular that stood out to me while studying In Cold Blood was the idea that the Clutter family embodied the seemingly perfect American Dream, only to be shattered by the murderers. This led me to wonder, “What would the modern day version of the American Dream be like?” The American Dream is defined as a happy life that anybody in America can achieve through hard work and becoming successful, yet how attainable is this dream, really? Image Credit: https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/gasp- nepotism-yunjin-by-gemimai/128685299/7sgk Happiness and success come from the same root: having a job. Or maybe being a nepo baby. But the key part here is money. People say money can’t buy happiness, but without money, it’s difficult to stay happy. To achieve this version of the American Dream, people begin working at a young age. At the ripe age of 5, children begin their education. At 14, the harsh academic pressure begins. You have to find a billion extracurriculars because if yo...

“Yah bahut mazedaar hai.” Just last week, I heard this Indian student speak those words to his friend. Diversity is the norm in our school, yet I whipped my head around to see the student. It was surprising to hear someone my age speak Hindi like that, as I rarely hear the language in practice. (And while I have heard my friends speak Urdu in their homes, I have heard it scarcely outside of that boundary.)  So why was I still so surprised? Indians make up the majority of our school’s population, but I was whiplashed by the use of Hindi. Maybe I am not floating around in the right places, but Indian languages and dialects are not a common occurrence for me (at least for people around my age). English is the main language used in our school—despite our students having a great variety of languages to choose from.  I understand that English is the one language that most people can understand in our school, but why should that stop us from using our own languages when we c...

I was unstoppable the moment I could wrap my little fingers around the sandy paper of a crayon; I began scribbling on every surface I could reach and covering it with vibrant colors that changed the plain, meaningless, white wall into a canvas of citric oranges, cyans, and cherry reds that perfectly reflected my imaginative mind. I felt rushes of joy weaving through my veins as I created something I truly found beautiful for the first time. I became utterly obsessed with bringing my ideas to life. Predictably, my constant scribbling on our walls did not impress my parents. All they saw was our landlord shaking his head disapprovingly and our money slipping away with each line of colored wax stuck onto the house. I was luckily a pretty good kid, so I listened when they scolded me to stop tainting the pristine and perfectly blank walls with a “vomit of random colors” and use a sheet of paper. I was devastated. For one, drawing on paper sucked; second, they couldn’t see the artistic visio...

America. The land of the free, home of the… extra large?  That doesn’t sound right, but maybe it does fit, considering how we’ve made it a habit to make everything bigger than it needs to be. From enormous pickup trucks to houses with more bathrooms than people living in them, America seems to follow a strict policy of bigger is better. But the clearest example of this is food. When I was younger, I used to watch this food comparison series called “Food Wars,” where they looked at fast food items from the same brand in two different countries. In most comparisons of sizes, a small drink from the States would be equivalent to a medium sized drink in other countries. However, this pattern wasn’t limited to drink sizes. The maximum number of items you can order is also much higher. For example, McDonald’s McNuggets have a maximum order of 20 in Great Britain, this becomes 40 McNuggets in America.  Portion sizes in the United States also became a big part of the World Cup experien...

  Week 5: The Loss of Friction – 10/21/26 - 10/21 [5:30 PM].   Hypothetically, could I be able to live in the United States while only walking fifty steps every single day?  Let’s experiment for one day: Before the experiment : I have the amount of money that the average Californian citizen spends each day, subtracting transportation fees since I won’t be leaving my house, is around $182. This seems high–I know that I don't spend $182 every day–but for our little experiment, the extra money wouldn’t hurt.  From this, I subtracted $89, since that is the reported daily (burdening) cost of housing and utilities per day for the average Californian. This leaves me with $93.  For the sake of efficiency, I live in a studio apartment (already paid), where I will move my bed (already paid) to be adjacent with a corner near the front door and a window, which has an outlet on one of the walls.  My restroom is five feet away from me; my feet are size 8 in women’s sho...

San Diego is the first home I have ever known. Its sunny beaches and warm weather characterized the first four years of my life, from our little two-bedroom home with two palm trees in our garden (that are as old as me) to our visits to La Jolla Beach, where I got my first taste of the salty ocean breeze that I have come to adore.  In 2016, we moved to Fremont, trading Southern California sunshine for the foggy Bay Area. 4-year-old me inside Minnie Mouse's house at Disneyland (L.A.) On our first Costco trip in this new city, my parents were in utter shock; they found themselves surrounded by Asians. San Diego had been primarily White, from our neighbors to my dad’s colleagues. Now, our next-door neighbors were the Singhs. Today, I have come to love this Indian-ness of Fremont: the universal experience of being subject to our strict parents’ shared principles and expectations, the familiar cuisine that is home to me, and the traditions and holidays that we all celebrate together....

                                                                                    image credit I stand beside her and admire  the quiet grace of her existence— as the bees land delicately  amid her fragile petals that mankind covets so dearly. At first, I pitied myself. I wondered,  as I stood perpetually ignored in the cold, untouched soil—  for weeks, for months, for years: Why must I grow— Only to feel apologetic for my own existence, and  shunned  by the earth that bore me? But after years of observing her being snapped over and over, just to be esteemed  impermanently by the greediness of  the eyes and hands of man, I felt pity for her. Time etched its lines; her splendor rotted, and she wa...

 It's been almost 4 months now... ...Since Deltarune chapter 5 released... What's changed? Ever since I discovered the Undertale community, I was hooked, consumed, absorbed even into a rabbit hole that was deeper than almost other fandom I've seem combined. The music, the characters, the gags, and my favorite, the Au's Now I know typically this type of content isn't exactly favored, but the base conceptual design had so many years to evolve that we created a completely new community, one that almost focused entirely on love for our own version Tumbler sexy man of 2022, and his game. (Of course Sans wasn't the only character we made our own but he was the main and most popular one)  From this we created gems like Dust Sans; whose theme was "Red Meglovania," Ink!Sans; whose theme was "Tokyovania", and Bad Time Trio ; whose theme was "Triple the Threat." (All of which I highly recommend you check out) These massively popular versions ...

 There is a strange mythology surrounding being the first. I was the first child, the grandchild on both sides of my family, the baby everyone carried around, the one with endless photos and the one everyone cherished.  Then slowly many more arrived. Cousin after cousin after cousin. At first, I was thrilled. I would soon be big sister; I would have someone to play, someone to hold, someone to watch grow up. But as more cousins arrived, I began to feel as though I had become a little less visible. I distinctively remember one moment with my grandfather. My cousins and I were about to cross the street, when my grandfather reached for my cousin's hand first. For a mere second, it felt as though he had forgotten about me.  As a child, that felt enormous I remember coming home and deciding, with absolute certainty only a child could could have, that I would never talk to my grandfather ever again.  Of course, I eventually did.  Another moment that I do not like thin...