Month: March 2020

As many of you know, I’m a huge animals guy. To me, pets and animals in the wild are the world’s most purest form of life: their primitive, oftentimes adorable, and, best of all, can’t talk back to you (not in English, anyways).

So, when the COVID-19 quarantine began, I, unlike most of my friends and family, wasn’t too upset. Patch, my dog, would be accompanying me for the next three weeks (hopefully longer) on the couch. Not only that, but the schoolwork that used to take eight hours could be crammed into three without the distractions of other human beings around me. In fact, this whole virus outbreak seemed to make me more focused and productive than ever.

Or so I thought.

You see, this past Tuesday, my sister texted me a news article that would begin to invade my every waking thought until this present moment. Amidst shocking statistics about the number of infected Americans or mortality rates, this was the most unprecedented of them all. Most shockingly, with my sister, Jessica, being a practicing allergist in Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, I never thought a professional doctor would be willing to share this earth-shattering news with her closest coworkers, let alone her immediate family.

“Penguins Toured An Aquarium That Closed Because Of Coronavirus Concerns. The Videos Were Exactly What We Needed.”

In a three-part Twitter-thrille consisting of seconds-long clips of penguins strutting the hallways of the Shedd Aquarium, I was briefly transported to paradise. Watching those short (compared to most of us), waddling, flapping birds mosey along dolphin exhibits, information desks, and exotic fish aquariums was truly a sight to behold.

I was entranced. My ELA and APUSH homework went by the wayside as I looped the clips over and over. While the world was crashing and burning around me, these penguins were just too damn funny to watch. By the end of that Tuesday, I had found closure and contentment in my imprisonment to my home, computer, and phone.

The adventure continues! 🐧🐧
This morning, Edward and Annie explored Shedd’s rotunda. They are a bonded pair of rockhopper penguins, which means they are together for nesting season. Springtime is nesting season for penguins at Shedd, and this year is no different! (1/3) 👇 pic.twitter.com/VdxN3oQAfe

— Shedd Aquarium (@shedd_aquarium) March 16, 2020

Part one of three of this cinematic masterpiece. If I could give extra credit points on Rotten Tomatoes, this is where they’d all go. (Source: Shedd Aquarium)

All jokes aside, this stunt put on by the Shedd Aquarium was, in reality, healing in its own right. Essentially, because of the massive closings of tourist attractions, the Shedd Aquarium staff allowed the penguin exhibit to roam free, transforming the exhibit to the expeditionists. Seen as a lighthearted, uplifting pick-me-up in these dark, unprecedented times, tens of other zoos/aquariums have put on similar shows, streaming exhibits online or walking their own rare species around the block.

While this easily has to be one of the cutest and funniest videos I’ve ever seen, it also showed me the power that your mindset has. In a way, I’d argue that these video clips, blurry footage and all, will heal millions of people worldwide, whether they have the coronavirus or not, blessing them with entertainment and giggles to combat their recommended isolation and distancing. Though completely meaningless and (probably) against all Shedd Aquarium policies, this short news article was truly something special that I felt I needed to share.

Link to original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/17/penguins-coronavirus-shedd-aquarium/

When it comes to my closest friends, our hangouts usually consist of doing one of the following three activities: playing Spyfall, playing Canadian Fish (see Jeffrey Cheng’s blog), or just acting stupid in general (see all of Eric Wang’s blogs). Be it guessing locations, guessing half-suites, or guessing who the hell stole Eric Wang’s Minecraft potatoes, I guess it’s time for me to round things off by explaining a go-to for spending quality time with the lads.

In essence, Spyfall is an online, real-time “Guess Who.” After joining a game on spyfall.crabhat.com with your friends, every person except one is given a predetermined location and role from a displayed list. The last person is deemed the “spy” of that round, and he/she is not informed of the location nor the roles of the other players. 

The objective of the game is to rat out the spy without giving away the location solely through asking and answering questions. If the spy figures out where the rest of the people are, he/she wins. If the non-spies can determine who the spy is and accumulate a majority vote, they win. 

Seems simple, right?

Not so fast. The problem with asking extremely revealing and obvious questions is that, with each clue you drop, the spy can hear it, too. With that being said, the dominant strategy, in general, is to ask misleading, referential questions that only a few other players would know the deeper meaning behind in order to single out the clueless spy. Puns, childhood memories, and inside jokes are all fair game, forcing every person in the game to expand their craniums to stay afloat.

Yet, the scope of the game spans far beyond just the content of the intense Q&A session, as it’s often easy to forget that your teammates/opponent are all sitting within ten feet of you. Staring too much at the list of locations as if you don’t already know where you are? Suspicious. Slow to get a reference that directly relates to your past because you “didn’t hear it correctly the first time”? Doubt. 

Grinning stupidly all of the time and acting clueless in general? 

Unless you’re Josh Tennyson, I think we’ve found ourselves a spy.

(Yeah that’s right, celebrate. Source: Brian Zheng’s New Years Party)

Thinking back, Spyfall brings me closer to my friends not because of the present, but because it allows us to relive our pasts. It forces me to make near telepathic connections with each individual player, transcending the childish roleplaying and scenarios our phones spit out to us. It creates drama, frustration, and skepticism, all while sitting quietly in a friend’s car. 

And when the spy is unveiled, with pointed fingers lashed out towards suspects, the game may come to a close, but the newly formed bonds of friendship and uncovered memories don’t. The long, once-boring car ride had been transformed into an all-out mental battlefield, and the winners and losers alike relish in the hardfought war they’d just experienced. As the final hands are raised and a majority consensus is reached, there’s only one question left to ask as we finally reach whatever destination we’d traveled to.

Where are we?

In case you didn’t know already, I’m not usually a movie type of person. I fall asleep through horror movies, text through Lord of the Rings watchings, and pester my nerdiest friends during Avengers movies as I struggle to figure out which superhero is who (the online summary of all past movies I read before going didn’t include pictures).

So, you can probably guess what my reaction was when my friends asked me to watch a “cinematic masterpiece” called Parasite which, only after sitting down, I realized was completely dubbed in Korean. Needless to say, if I didn’t get to (try and) play basketball and grab dinner prior, coronavirus would probably have had to do as my excuse for the night.

But, after watching Parasite, I can safely say that it is easily the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life.

For those of you who also won’t watch movies until they win an Oscar, Parasite tells the story of the Kim family’s struggle to survive economically. Through a series of ingenious (or what we would call “big brain”) schemes, each member of the family lands themselves a job in the upper-class Park household. However, throughout the duration of the film, we watch the moral and interpersonal conflicts between the rich and poor create a black comedy that draws striking parallels to classic stories like “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

While I know next to nothing about film techniques, my AP Lang/Lit mindset couldn’t help but notice the countless symbols and extended metaphors this seemingly impossible, fantastical plotline contained. In what is completely my personal (and most likely, uninformed) opinion, I’d say that this movie is making a social commentary and archetypal characterization on the divisiveness between rich and poor.

The poor Kim family is impressively intelligent. They are smooth and persuasive with their words, quick on their toes to cover up holes in their plan, and, for the good first half of the movie, play the Park family like a fiddle. Yet, this brief sense of utopia and acquired prosperity doesn’t last for long. In an eerie, twisted (clockwise) series of events, the Kim’s are left to watch the Park’s enjoy the superficial pleasures of life that they were so close to sharing.

Yet, the Park’s, in my opinion, are nowhere near as deserving of this life of luxury as the Kim’s. They are gullible and spoiled through and through, never having once needed to worry about the struggles of life that the Kim’s fight through everyday. With housekeepers and drivers that help keep their lives running smoothly, the Park’s seem quick to blame and judge people doing the work they never have had to do.

So, when we look back at this movie’s horror-esque title, we really have to wonder who the true parasites really are. It’s obvious that the poor Korean family, invading and hosting the body of the Park’s dream house, resemble the word “parasite’s” biological roots. However, the Park family, when we take a closer look, reflects this very same parasitic behavior. For all of their gluttony and materialism, what have any of the family members truly created by themselves, save for a couple ugly drawings of a “ghost” and an affair between a high school sophomore and a grown adult?

It seems as if, behind the lavish cupboards of plum extract, the dirty, smelly depiction of the Kim family can be directly reapplied to the Park’s.