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This is Part 2 of the Awesome Youth in Profile: Erica Ho, Unstoppable Believer. Part 1 can be read here.

YAA: Provide some advice, about life in general or about high school or about discovery of one’s self.

Erica: One of the most regretful experiences of my life so far was not doing something. So my advice is to always do. The more that gets done, the more that is learned. And speaking of learning, always keeps an open mind because that’s when everything once gloomy becomes beautiful. Oh, and never let anyone tell you to “chill out dude” because in the end, each second of hard or stressful work put in will lead to a reward unlike anything else!

I’ve had many self discoveries, but I think one that is the most significant is actually my self re-discovery. There were many moments in high school when I struggled with what I wanted to do after I graduated, but in the end I realized that the things we loved doing, and I mean like TRULY LOVED DOING, when we were small will stay with us forever. I re-discovered myself, and now, I know I won’t regret what I do in the future.

YAA: Describe what you are planning to pursue after high school.

Erica: Film studies. Unsure of what occupation, but if you love what you learn, there will always be something made for you.

YAA: What is it that you love about life and why.

Erica: Through all the pain, suffering, unfairness, blood and tears, life is beautiful. A beautiful disaster. The world isn’t perfect because it wasn’t meant to be. Everyone has a different way of seeing things and different ideas. This makes life difficult. The world however also gives happiness, joy and love. Now life is looked upon as dark chocolate. Bittersweet. I love that life holds so many surprises and when you pay attention you realize that everything and everyone is actually connected. It’s empowering when sharing or hearing stories from each other, and it’s magical when delicate beings like butterflies land right on your fingertips. To me, life starts when you’re born and the first thing you see, hear and feel is already a million reasons to be satisfied with life.

YAA: Describe your personality.

Erica: Not naturally good at anything. Tries hard and never rejects. Artistic, emotional, sensitive, determined, brave, flexible, weird and simply complex. I have roles I like to play in life. I can be the helper, the friend, the inspirer, the superstar, (laughs) anything that fits with the moment and the person I’m with.

I also like to make things complicated for myself. I love multi-tasking and can’t stand slowness. Sometimes I can be really abstract, but most of the time I’m really realistic (I need to be if I want something impossible to happen!) I dream a lot, I let myself day dream throughout the day. I could never hurt anyone or anything. It’s easy for me to let things go, and I never really miss too many things. I laugh hideously and I love it. And I’m full of secrets that will never be told, because those secrets are what makes everyone unique.

YAA: Do you believe you are a good role model for other youths? If so, why, and do you believe you affect others in a positive way?

Erica: I think something I do for other youth, and for anyone really, is I listen. I listen and try my hardest to really hear what they mean to say. A lot of the time, action speaks more than words. A picture is worth a thousand words.

YAA: Why do you think I considered you to be an awesome youth?

Erica: I put myself out there and am not afraid to be destroyed. I enhance my flaws and try my best to inspire others to shine.

YAA: If you could change one thing about the world, what would you change?

Erica: The world’s obsession over money.

YAA: If you could relive any part of your life, or a moment, what would it have been and why?

Erica: The moments of make belief as a child. I still do it now but those character’s my childhood friends and I became, and those stories we made together were more than phenomenal. Things I wish I wrote as a child and kept until now.

YAA: What do you hope to gain through your pursuing your passions?

Erica: More perspectives than I have already.

YAA: Why do you choose to be who you are?

Erica: Because I can laugh at myself, cry with myself, dream of amazing things, and because I can.

YAA: If there are any questions that I have not asked, but you would like to answer, feel free to! And any last words?

Erica: Screwing up is a part of experimenting. Experimenting is a part of making something come true.
Having flaws is a way of connecting.
Lisachino is my favorite part of the day (=

YAA: This strong willed youth and independent over achiever, lives life to the fullest by realizing with unprecedented maturity that hard work to achieve new perspectives, is not only necessary, but is the path to experiencing happiness, joy and love. Her zest for knowledge, voluntarily attending IB theory of knowledge (TOK) classes, empowers her sensitive and complex perspectives on life. Having just completed a multitude of classes in the fine arts program at Lester B Pearson High School, this future student in film studies, is an inspiration to people across the globe, emplifying amazing self discipline and faith pursuing her passions and dreams, as Erica calls for other youths to use your hearts and not your heads.

This incredible triple threat performer allows the creative genius of art, music and life to influence and guide her wholehearted passions for the fine arts to incredible heights. However, this doesn’t prevent this realistic dreamer from compulsively volunteering her time to many things, be it animals, people (young and old) or the environment.

I’m extremely proud and privileged to introduce my philosophical mentor and this Pearson graduate, Erica Ho, and her inspirational views and advice on self discovery, life and success.

Erica Ho

YAA: Give a couple adjectives that describe you.

Erica: “Love at first sight” or “unstoppable believer.”

YAA: Describe your involvement at Pearson.

Erica: Oh boy. For three years, I’ve been an active member of the Concert Choir, Vocal Jazz, Women’s Choir and Choral class at Pearson. I’m also a writer for the school newspaper (often writing about upcoming events and performances in the fine arts department), Speech Club competitor and REGIONAL CHAMPION WINNER (for solo acting), and was Leadership Co- Chair (which I was involved in pretty much organizing and carried all of the school’s events: Terry Fox Run, Spirit Week, Breakfast of Champions, etc.).

Also having been Parent Council meeting representative, drama kid, musical theatre performer, dance performer, choral performer, and unless I’ve forgotten something, I think that’s most of my involvement at Pearson.

YAA: Describe your involvement in your community.

Erica: I was a member of Youth Training and Action (YTA) through the Red Cross, in partnership with All Nations Theater, a program that promotes youth to share, expand and act upon actions and ideas to deal with local and global humanitarian issues. I’m also an active volunteer with CCCSA (with various types of task such as helping, performing, and visiting seniors, city clean ups, etc.) and mentored children through the Calgary Public Library. I love caring for cats, bunnies, and hopefully dogs one day at the Calgary Humane Society. I also answer the teen line at the Distress Centre for those in need of support and advice.

YAA: Name any notable achievements or awards you have earned.

Erica: Appreciation and helping others are my real achievements. The only awards I’ve ever earned proudly were those related to music: Vocal Jazz 15 award, Concert Choir 35 award and Choral 20 awards.

YAA: Describe why you believe you are successful.

Erica: I never stop moving, growing and learning. I’ve felt that I’ve touched the hearts of many as they have for mine, and I never stop believing in the possibilities of the impossible.

YAA: Describe what inspires you to live your lifestyle, and why. How did it get this far?

Erica: People inspire me. The artistic, creative, and just pure genius and wonderful things that people do. Whether it be picking up garbage off the ground, or holding the door for someone, or finding a cure for a disease – in the end the world is connected. I truly believe that no matter how bad somebody is being looked at, or how many sins someone has committed, in the end, everyone is beautiful, emotional and pure.

YAA: Share a favourite memory that was at Pearson, a moment that had inspired you or a moment when you experienced success.

Erica: Musical Theater. Performing and being able to have the chance to become a different character and really move the audience is a memory and a gift.

YAA: Describe some of your hobbies or what you like to do in your spare time.

Erica: I love exploring music. I love feeling the intensity each artist provides through their amazing music. Video gaming is also huge part of my life, and has been since I was a young girl. Anything from first person shooting games to adventure to strategy games. I also love films. I like reading on film theory and visioning different scenes out of random. Hopefully I will come out with a short film, and many more mini projects as well! I really love learning about nature. Be it animals of the ocean, astronomy or even bugs. I just love learning about the natural things that happen all around us! And I could go on forever about the endless projects I dive into such as scrapbooking, photography and singing. In the future I plan to make sky diving, paragliding and many other similar sports a regular hobby.

Watch for Part 2 of my interview with Erica tomorrow!

I stumbled across an intriguing website very recently (a few minutes before writing this post, heh). I don’t think I can say much about it as it’s rather self-explanatory. This website isn’t all that old or all that new… it was created in October 2006 by David Bleja, a “multimedia designer, or digital artist, or multimedia artist, or something like that,” in his own words.

The website I am talking about is Breathing Earth. What is it?

This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates.

It’s also received over 1.4 million hits and has been mentioned on numerous websites, articles and blogs (like this one!), and has been installed as part of Vancouver’s Science World exhibition (this info comes from Bleja’s own website).

After you’ve spent some time ogling at the simulation, be sure to scroll down and read all the lovely information included about the website, the environment, the things you can do, and more.

The situation is still within our grasp, but we must act now, we must act strongly, and we must act together. Individuals, companies, and governments across the globe must each do what they can to reverse climate change. We will never get a second chance.

–Breathing Earth

Many people need to realize that there’s not enough water for the future.  As we can feel in our life now, the weather has been weird all around the world. The climate change is frequently happening now. There’s no substitute for water. If rain doesn’t come properly and the temperatures rise, water easily evaporates.

Water pollution is not always easily found. So some people don’t believe that it’s happening. Even in Canada, it already started to contaminate

Surface and ground water in Canada are generally clean. However, it is sometimes locally or regionally polluted. Pollution enters water bodies in a number of ways, including industrial and municipal discharge, runoff, spills, and deposition of airborne pollutants.

It is easy to dispose of waste by dumping it into a river or lake. In large or small amounts, dumped intentionally or accidentally, it may be carried away by the current, but will never disappear. It will reappear downstream, sometimes in changed form, or just diluted. Freshwater bodies have a great ability to break down some waste materials, but not in the quantities discarded by today’s society. This overload that results in pollution, eventually puts the ecosystem out of balance.

Sometimes nature itself can produce these imbalances. In some cases, the natural composition of the water makes it unfit for certain uses. For exampe, water flowing in the highly saline terrain of the prairies or gushing from highly mineralized springs in some parts of the country cannot sustain fish populations.

But most often our waterways are being polluted by municipal, agricultural and industrial wastes, including many toxic synthetic chemicals which cannot be broken down at all by natural processes. Even in tiny amounts, some of these substances can cause serious harm.

This site offers information on the causes and effects of water pollution, as well as information about the types of water pollution that are of special concern in Canada.

http://www.ec.gc.ca/eau-water/default.asp?lang=En&n=E86BC86A-1

Music, music music! Everybody loves music! You know who else loves music as much as anyone else? It’s Canada’s own environmental activist, David Suzuki! Suzuki has proclaimed that thhere shall be a playlist for the environment. Or, more appropriately, a Playlist for the Planet.

But, the thing that is really nifty about this is that they are allowing all of us, of the true north, strong and free, to enter the playlist! That’s right, your music, no matter the age (as long as it’s comprehendible) you can enter your song for the playlist and contribute to our nice little (mostly) harmless planet. Suzuki says, To quote from his letter,

“I believe that an environmental anthem can help bring the overwhelming public support for the environment to its rightful place. Together, we can inspire thousands of Canadians to gather around song.

“Imagine artists from every genre of music joining in to show the diversity of Canadian thoughts, feelings and ideas about how we can reconnect with nature. When the dust clears, I hope we will emerge with an anthem that we can all sing along to!” (To read the whole letter, click here)

And your song may get onto the CD that’s coming out this October. You can ALSO get an awesome Gibson guitar from Long & McQuade as a prize!

Artists among the playist include the “classic” band D.O.A and artists such as K-os and Sarah McLaghlin are also featured in this playlist. And maybe even you! (Sorry for the tackyness there).

You can got to the CBC radio 3 website where you can enter your song here.

Or, if you would rather just liten to some music, click here to listen to some environmental  harmony!

You have until August 15 to come up with a song that in someway contributes to the environment we all love and adore so much! What are you guyss waiting for? Get to it!

“Once oil becomes caught in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast moving Loop Current, it could be carried thousands of miles, around Florida, up the Atlantic coast of the US, and then out into the open ocean.” (from BBC news)

As I previously mentioned about oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico’s on April 22nd, it comes to serious environmental problem in the world. The scientist says that it would spread up to the open ocean. They also modelled what would happen if they were to release a coloured tracer dye into the water at the site of the leak.

(About colouring)

“It’s like a food colouring. You inject it into the ocean and watch it disperse,” explains Dr Peacock.

The virtual dye then shows the path that the water – and therefore the oil – could take.

The researchers repeated the experiment several times, using slightly different scenarios, to arrive at a likely spread pattern for the oil.

There are still some aspects to the Gulf of Mexico leak, and the behaviour of oil released at great depth, which are not fully understood.

The scientists say that could have an influence on the accuracy of the model.

“Oil is a little bit different, for several reasons; it undergoes a number of transformations,” says Synte Peacock.

“There is a lot of evaporation in the first few hours, so it changes form.

“People are also skimming it like crazy, and trying to contain it as it comes up from the flow head. So it’s not a perfect analogy by any means, but it’s the closest thing we have right now.”

(Oil Spreading)

“In the Atlantic Ocean there is a Western Boundary Current System, and the Gulf of Mexico’s Loop Current is part of this system,” explains NCAR scientist Synte Peacock.

“So what happens is the current comes up through the Yucatan [Channel, the strait between Mexico and Cuba], and it does a clockwise loop within the gulf, and then shoots out and joins the Gulf Stream proper.

“So when something in the gulf gets caught up within that current, it can get out of there.”

So with that definitely happen? Dr Peacock says: “At some time in the next six months it’s highly highly likely that it will escape from the Gulf.”

The Atlantic Ocean Gulf Stream carries water towards Europe, but the simulations show it is unlikely that oil will be detected that far away.

“Even a year after the spill start date, in our simulations we don’t see any detectable quantities of oil hitting Europe,” says Dr Peacock.

“It’s very diluted within the Atlantic Ocean.”

I posted previously about a number of events going on throughout Calgary to honour Earth Day. Well, today’s the day, and while you’re out hugging trees you may as well take advantage of these other cool happenings as well.

Higher Ground, an awesome café I’ve also blogged, is offering free coffee (or tea) for anyone who brings in a reusable travel mug, and will be selling their own travel mugs for nearly half-off. They’re also participating in the David Suzuki Foundation “Earth Week Book Swap” and will have a table set up from 6PM-8PM for anyone wanting to leave a book and take a book, and free coffee and tea for those who participate. Finally, as it’s a Thursday, they will be having their third Vegetarian Night of this month. Part of the menu tonight: “Pumpkin cake with chocolate-hazelnut ganache & organic cinnamon coffee sauce”. If that doesn’t get your mouth watering..

In any case, enjoy your day and your surroundings, and take it upon yourself to show the trees some love.

So the other day I went out and got some chips. Feeling somewhat healthy (yeah you can’t be that healthy from eating chips), I decided to pick up a bag of SunChips. To my surprise, the bag was ridiculously loud. And I mean ridiculously. There was no way you could have been subtle while eating from that bag of chips. So I checked the label on the bag and found out something really neat about it…

It’s compostable! In just 14 weeks, it can be fully broken down! The picture below is of a bag in the process of decomposing…

Being an environmentally conscientious individual, I was quite happy to find that I could reduce the amount of garbage I produce. This caught my attention so I looked up the bag and found out that SunChips currently has a campaign out to reduce their environmental impact. In addition to compostable bags, they also have started using solar power to power their chip producing plants. I like the fact that SunChips is contributing to environmental sustainability. Yay SunChips!

(Although the bag is still ridiculously loud and annoying.)

Earth Hour: what started as an initiative to stop climate change in the city of Sydney, Australia quickly spread internationally and became a ‘global sustainability movement’…

…giving people a voice on the future of our planet and working together to create a sustainable low carbon future for our planet.

Why should you care?  Think about the fact that this is our only home and look how much resources we take from it.  So, why not try to reduce the damages and maintain it for the future generations to come by giving a back a little?  You don’t need to go out and plant dozens of trees (though that is not such a bad idea).  No, just the simple action of turning off the lights for 60 minutes will make a difference.

Whether you believe in ‘global warming’ or not, climate change is real and it affects us all.  By turning off your lights you are taking a stand and putting a vote towards a better future for this precious planet we call home.

Spread the word and remember to show your support for Earth by switching off your lights for an hour at 8:30 PM, Saturday March 27th.

One Earth. One Hour. Earth Hour.

So yesterday, I made a trip down to the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant to take a tour around the facilities, and I have to say from what I heard there and read, it is probably one of the most important infrastructures we have in Calgary.  In a nutshell,  Bonnybrook takes about 70-80%0 of all the sewage in Calgary and surrounding areas, and processes it before releasing it back into the river.  All the stuff from your toilets, showers, sinks, stuff that goes down the drain pretty much all end up there.  When they arrive, they’ll go through three steps of treatment: primary, secondary and tertiary…Simple enough?

Primary takes care of the visible solids that’s in the sewage that comes in so that things like toilet paper, poop and, well, I’ll leave you to imagine the rest. Secondary treatment takes care of the dissolved chemicals - mostly nutrients - in the water and also gets rid of the solids that are left that didn’t get filtered in primary.  They do this with big tanks filled with bacteria that feed on these chemicals.  Finally, we come to tertiary treatment where intense, and I mean intense, UV light are used to mutate the DNA of the bacteria still left in the water so they can’t reproduce anymore so you won’t get a huge boom of bacteria downstream killing off all the fish and other wildlife.  So, I would stay away from those lights if I were you, you’ll get hurt pretty bad!

Anyhow, Bonnybrook helps to clean the water dramatically.  Without it, our river will be completely filled with sewage and be completely disgusting.  It provides the conditions for Calgarians to go out and enjoy the river.  Believe it or not, Calgary’s got one of the best fishing spots in the world.  One more thing to be proud of, the waste-water treatment plants in Calgary are rated A+ amongst others in the world.  You can’t get better than that.

However, all this treatment takes a lot of money and it’s not 100% fool proof.  So, the less water that is being used or wasted, the less cost and less chance of bad chemicals going into the river.  Guess the point I’m trying to get through is, be efficient with water.  It’s an important part of every single living organism’s life: you, me, animals, fish and birds. Don’t dump random things that you are not suppose to down the toilet or sink and don’t waste water.  Know that you have the leisure of this wonderful plant and others in the world don’t.  So, save your water!

Since 2007, there has been a high percent of honeybee hive die-offs (30-70%) occurring in US and parts of Canada.  This syndrome is called Colony Collapse Disorder or Honeybee Depopulation Syndrome.  European beekeepers have observed a similar phenomena in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, and initial reports have also come in from Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a lesser degree, while the Northern Ireland Assembly received reports of a decline greater than 50%.  This means that more than 50% of the honeybees who went out foraging have not returned to their hive, making the hive vulnerable to attacks of hive pests.

The actual cause of Colony Collapse Disorder is not yet confirmed, but some possible causes are malnutrition, immunodeficiency, toxic chemicals such as pesticide and antibiotics, and climate change.

Why is this at all important?  Well, many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by bees, and the disappearance of bees will initiate a series environmental issues.  Fortunately, many scientists are working hard to find out and eliminate factors that could be causing Honeybee Depopulation Syndrome. Plus, there is something simple you can do: plant flowers in your garden.

The best type of flower to plant for helping population of honeybee is the sunflower, and there is an organization, The Great Sunflower Project, that distributes seeds of sunflowers for free.  By planting flowers in your garden, you are helping make sure that honeybees are getting enough nutrition to repopulate and stay alive.

In addition to planting your own flowers during summer season, you can also encourage your member of Parliament to increase public funding on honeybee research.

If you have any good ideas about how you can help out the honeybees, you’re welcome to comment.

Learn even more about colony collapse disorder and how you can help on HowStuffWorks.com.