Discovered a New Favorite Band

Explosions in the Sky is the name of the new favorite band. They are simply unbelievable and it has been a while since I heard music like this.

Untitled

Getting screwed over and letting your chances slip away f***ing sucks. Alcohol, you are about to become my best friend for tonight.

A Prayer Answered with an Answer to a Prayer

A couple days ago I was pulled over by a cop for making an illegal maneuver around 2:00 a.m. I was DD for the night and I was trying to get my friends back home safely and I freaking got pulled over by a cop. The entire time that I was sitting in my car I was either worried to death that I was going to get my second ticket or silently hoping that God would hear my prayers and let me drive away with just a warning. When the cop asked finished looking at my driver's license and vehicle registration she let me get off with a warning. God has heard my prayers; thank God.

For a while, I have always wondered if God would ever answer my prayer about how and when He answers prayers and now I know. He does it on his time even if it takes three, long years of asking.

TEN MORE FREAKING DAYS!!!

I have been waiting four, long years for these these 30 days.

Closer by ODM

There we were, tenth grade in the hallways
I must admit you were the finest thing in all ways
Every day I used to walk you to class, do you remember that?
We used to make each other laugh and had each others back
We had the same birthdays and shared the same dreams
You used to love when I treated you for ice cream
Saturdays, we would meet up at the movies
It was you, your little sister, and your home girl Lucy
I used to trip when you would always be with me
Cause your mom would get mad when I would send you home with hickies
And if she ever caught me around the house
You’d be grounded for a month without a phone to call out
Now, thats okay, we would meet up at the benches
See it was all good when I didn’t have detention
And if I didn’t mention we were friends from the start
There was nothing in the way that ever keep us apart

Closer and closer, after all this time (so close baby)
You’re still in my life (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
And over and over, your love stays on my mind (you’re on my mind girl)
The memory of you still shines

I wont forget the day when you went off to college
You had big dreams and you were out to seek the knowledge
I had a record deal, we started doing shows
And you wouldn’t even trip when girls would pull on my clothes
We saved our money and bought a house up out the neighborhood
And now we’re happy here together and it’s all good
Inbetween the sheets covered up real close
And making love is what you love doing real most
You said you wanted one kid, I said I wanted two
A boy and girl, and that would equal me and you
Sharing dreams while caught up in this moonlight
I never argued and never once caused a fight
Respect was the main key to our relation
Going on trips and spending three week vacations
We lived it up like real lovers were supposed to do
Now come here lady, I wanna get close to you

Closer and closer, after all this time (so close baby)
You’re still in my life (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
And over and over, your love stays on my mind (you’re on my mind girl)
The memory of you still shines

It’s been a long twenty years now and we got plenty more
And ain’t no telling what the future has for us in store
A couple more kids or maybe even grandchildren
See little ODM’s growing up making millions
Making us proud while our name will live on forever
Same club, one mind, it’ll come together
Remaining strong, as strong as our familia
Mi amor, mi corazon, y mi vida

After all these years and after all these tears
The memory of you still shines
After all these years and after all these tears
The memory of you still shines

*The lyrics in this song are beautiful.*

My mom says I need a girlfriend...

Today was a nice day for Mother's Day. I got to see my family today and had a great time spending a part of my day with my family. It's always refreshing to be able to spend some quality time with the family. However, my parents keep on teasing/asking me the same thing every time I see them; do I have a girlfriend yet or asked a girl out on a date? I guess my parents aren't very Chinese in the sense that they are pushing for me to get a girlfriend but I want to have a girl in my life as much as they do. Seeing my mom and dad interact and listening to their stories about how they met made me realize that I need to be much more proactive in my pursuit of finding the "one."

The thing that bugs me the most is that I watched all of the girls I had crushes on form relationships with other guys (some of them being my friend). I don't harbor any bitter feelings about them being together. As long as they're happy and the guys are treating them properly I'm happy but seeing them together always makes me wonder why did I not make a move first. It happened so many times that I literally lost count. I would spend so much time with a girl I had a crush developing our friendship but I could never find a way to express my interest to her. Thus, I always get to the point of being good friends with her but that's as far as our relationship goes which is not necessarily a bad thing either.

I realized over the past few days that I simply don't know how to express my feelings to a girl even if I wanted to. I tried doing that in the past recently and it was an absolute disaster. I didn't know what to say, when is the right moment, or how to even approach the topic and that created a huge mess. I guess I'm supposed to learn from this experience but honestly I rather skip that whole experience (looking back, I don't even know what to fix). Plus, I didn't get a definitive yes or no (her response was almost as confusing compared to what I said). Another thing that was bothering me was do I really like her as much as I believe to or am I simply lying to myself? I don't want to use a relationship to answer that question because I don't see a point in being with someone you don't see yourself spending, potentially, the rest of your life with.

P.s. I don't know why I'm sharing this publicly...This just makes me look sad which is what I don't want, so here's a distracting picture.

What am I doing with my life?

I always have a tendency to blog before any of my tests. I don't know if it is because it helps me relax before a test or I'm using blogging as an excuse to not study and procrastinate which I shouldn't do. I think it's the former because I feel much more at ease after typing up a whole entry.

So, this has been a recurrent theme throughout my blog but recently I began to think about my future again. There is always an aspect of uncertainty along with a certain aspect of control. We have the ability to influence certain events that will happen in the future but whether or not we get the results that we want is completely dependent on God. There are certain things that we can get through hard work such as good grades from studying hard, but there are other things were we simply don't have control. From personal experience, I applied for SPOP returner and I felt like my interview went well and I know that 4/5 of the coordinators know me personally. Yet, I didn't get picked so it raises one question; why? I simply believe that God did not want me to spend this summer with SPOP. Am I blaming God for not getting accepted to SPOP? No. I already got to spend one wonderful summer with the program and it was a blessing. Besides, I don't really need SPOP to "make a difference" in this world, I can do that on my own by doing the simple things to make the world a nicer place and hope that people will do the same. All this talk about the future spawned from an online conversation I had with a friend.

I'm going to call her Carly for the sake of anonymity, but she was contemplating which major she was going to switch into. The reason for Carly's switch was simple; she's believed that her current major was not suited for her and she believed that God has called her to do something else even more grand than her original plan. Listening to her talk about what major to switch into and how those majors will help her be able to pursue something that God has planned for her was simply amazing. It's funny because some people are able to figure out exactly what God's plans are for them while other people (like me) wait for years and still haven't gotten a clear understanding of what God has called for us to do.

In all honesty, I'm not even sure what I am currently pursuing is what God wants for me. I know I want it, but does it lines up with God's plans for me? That I won't know until I get a strong "No" from Him. In a sense, I don't spend much time listening to Him (I know that's not a good thing and it is something I need to improve on) rather I go with what my heart tells me and trust that what I want is what He wants.

Who knows what I may do in the future after college, it's a big world out there and there are so many options to choose so let's just hope I can make all the right decisions. Now back to studying about human stress.

*This song has nothing to do with this post, but I like it. The music video is so happy!

Audience of One

It's been a while since I wrote something meaningful in my blog. I recently got a Tumblr account and I've been using it to post the random thoughts or things I find interesting instead of posting them here. I've grown very attached to this blog and I believe it would benefit me more if I used this blog as a medium for my thoughts. Which brings up this little question that was bugging me today. Why do I continue to write in this blog?

I'm actually really shy in contrast to outgoing personality some people think I have. So it wouldn't make any sense why I am willing to share some things that I would normally consider personal on an online blog that anyone can read. Granted I can make it a private blog but for some reason I just don't bother keeping my privacy. Instead I write my thoughts and events in my life like an open book for everyone to read. So what is my motivation to continue writing in this blog?

I used to have this conceited belief that some people were interested about things in my life and I relied on the comments that people would leave on some of my posts as affirmation. But after this past couple of quarters I realized that this blog help me learn something about myself. I love to write, read, and learn. I love the idea and image of school being a environment where learning is encouraged, but I hate the concept of school being an institution forcing us to learn.

I enjoy writing in this blog because I'm not writing to impress a professor or someone else, I'm writing for me. I always enjoyed the process of creative writing but I always hated receiving my papers and judging the quality of my paper based on one letter/number/fraction that is often found in red and circled. I love reading and learning but I hate studying. Studying is forces me to cram information into my heads when I know it is very likely I may forget the information that I've just learned after the test. Yet, some of the things I learn from my classes in school are simply mind-blowing and I want to know more without time becoming a constraint or an issue. This blog gives me the freedom to write whatever I want and not be judged. I could care less if someone is to critique my grammar or vocabulary usage on here; it's MY blog and I have the freedom to write whatever I want.

For the Bboys and Bgirls

This still blows my mind.

Youthfulness Doesn't Fade

We can only pretend youth fades with age.

Rejection

Rejection always hard to swallow especially when it's from something you love. In fact, rejection hurts a lot and there aren't many words that can properly describe it. Today I received my acceptance/rejection e-mail. I wasn't sure if I wanted to open the e-mail but I figured I should open it anyways because I'm bound to find out one way or another. When I opened it, my heart sunk because it was a short e-mail. Short e-mails always mean you got rejected from something, but I read the e-mail anyways.

I've been preparing myself for the rejection these past couple of days but for some reason this hit me a lot harder than I expected it to. I guess that subconsciously I wanted to be a returner a lot more than I realized. Granted I'm still pretty young so I'll have another shot next year but I can't help but wonder what if I don't get it next year either.

What really bugs me is I knew most of the coords but the problem with that is, well, they know me as well. So it raises the question of why did they think I wasn't ready to be a returner. That question has been bugging me a lot these past couple of minutes and I'm having a really hard time coping with it.

I won't lie and say that not getting returner wasn't a big deal to me because it is. I can't really describe how I feel right now; it's a mixture of excitement for the new staffers and returners and some sadness because I won't be able share the experience with them. Life is weird like that. However, I guess the one thing that SPOP has given me that cheered me up today is my love of dance. After reading the e-mail the only thing I wanted to do was dance because I knew it would make me feel better and it would take my mind off the rejection. So that's what I did, I drove out to the ARC and danced away my problems. Dance is the perfect fusion of my love of music and my desire to express myself in an artistic form. 

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. " ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Edit: I've been thinking about something...it must of been really hard on the coords to reject people they personally knew. I can't imagine how I would handle that situation. 

Rumble Tumble

So I finally cracked and made a Tumblr account. I'm still going to keep this blog alive but I'm planning to use the Tumblr account for my more random thoughts/pictures/media stuff that I like. I'm planning to use this blog mainly to convey my current thoughts. Sooooo check it....

The World Inside My Head

The Time is Near

It's tenth week already and I'm still trying to figure out how this quarter went by so fast. I noticed that I've been a little more stressed this past week but I think the stress is the result of a culmination of things rather than my finals causing it. Perhaps the thing that is bugging me the most is the SPOP acceptance/rejection e-mail that I'm expecting.

I really, really want to be become a returner and I was blessed by the fact that I had the chance to be a staffer early in my college experience so I have one more year to try if I don't make it this year. Yet, if I was to receive the rejection letter, I wouldn't know how to react. As I expressed numerous time throughout this blog, I hold SPOP very close to my heart for a variety reasons that are very personal for me. So, if I was to be rejected I can only think that the most logical reason is I didn't meet the coords criteria for a returner. Every SPOP staff is unique in their own way and it's very evident if we were to compare them side-by-side. We'll have some similarities but not very many, so if I didn't make it this year, I simply didn't fit the vision of the coords which is perfectly fine. However, I would be lying to myself if I believed that not making returner is not a big deal. Ever since leaving the program two summers ago, the one thing I wanted to do the most before graduating was to come back to SPOP and be a returner. I owe a lot of my personal growth to the program, so I want to give back and help those who were like me discover their own potential and help them realize it. I miss helping spoppers come to learn and appreciate UCI. The whole experience of SPOP was freaking amazing for me and I really hope that I have the opportunity to do it again.

Now I just have to mentally prepare myself for the rejection because it is very possible that I get it despite how hard I wish for acceptance e-mail. However, it's important for me to realize that I was lucky enough to experience being a staffer once and that I have a bunch of people at UCI that I can call my spoppers. It's a huge blessing to have my spoppers and to be able to still talk to them as friend now. I enjoyed watching them grow these past two years at UCI and become more involved in organizations and activities. I can't wait to see what my spoppers do next and I am very proud of each and everyone of them.

I think I used this quote before but I'm going to use it again as I believe it is very appropriate for what I'm feeling right now.

"There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle." -Albert Einstein

Rafiki the Wise

Essay

I noticed that a bunch of my posts (other than the random ones that are rather spontaneous) are really long. I guess I'm starting to like writing a little bit more.

So I present to you guys, whoever may be reading this, a funny irony. Instead of writing my essay I am taking five minutes out of my time to write this post to say that I'm starting to like writing more but I need to write my essay that is due today at midnight.

Awesome picture of the day

Soul Music is the Best

I've been feeling Pretty Wings by Maxwell for a while now, but I just can't stop listening to this man sing. It's refreshing to see some artists like Maxwell still exist.

This is one of the reason why I love dance: it is one of those art forms that is truly beautiful to watch. I am lucky I got to see this performance live, simply mind blowing.

An Old Crush

So I was watching Pocahontas today and while watching the movie I remembered I used to have a big crush on her. She's adventurous, smart, pretty, and can sing amazingly well; she's like the perfect girl.

You Can Learn A Lot in College

In my psychology class we were learning about intelligence and creativity and there was really interesting slide that I would like to share.

Hints to Living a More Creative Life:

-Try to be surprised by something every day

-Try to surprise at least one person every day

-Write down the surprises of each day

-Follow sparked interests

-Wake up in the morning with a specific goal

-Take charge of your schedule

-Spend time in stimulating settings

Stranger in the Laundry Room

A long time ago when I was still relatively new to blogging I wrote an entry about love and what is love.

You are Loved

What's interesting is I started it with the question of what if someone was to say "You are Loved" and simply walk away. The reason why I say that little bit is interesting is because I was doing my laundry last night and a random lady in the laundry room came up to me and started a very casual conversation with me. Most of the time it was me detailing the little bits of my life as a student and how school is getting tougher and how I am lucky enough to find to time to enjoy life, but as randomly as the conversation began she stands up and ask me this:

"Can I give you a hug?"

Honestly, I didn't know what to do because I hardly knew the woman yet she asked to give me hug so I obliged not knowing what is going to happen. While hugging me she told me "May God bless you," and that she is happy to hear things are not too hard on me.

The rest of the night was weird for me. It's funny because right before I fell asleep and I remembered that entry I wrote a while ago and I realized that the reaction I said I would have is exactly the same reaction I had right after meeting that lady. I don't know if I'll see that lady again, but what I do know is she is very nice lady and is capable of brightening up everyone's day.

Oh how I love random acts of love.

I'll give MTV a little bit of respect...

So the other day I flipped to MTV and saw this show called The Buried Life and for once it wasn't some garbage TV show on MTV. The Buried Life has a really basic premise of four college friends having a list of things to do before they die but as they accomplish these things on their list they have another goal of helping out one person they meet during their adventures accomplish one thing the random person wants to do before they die. Talk about a random act of kindness. It's really rare to see TV shows today that inspires us, the viewers, to live life to its fullest like these four guys, thus it's really refreshing to watch this show and see how these guys accomplish all the things on their list.

You can check out the list at www.theburiedlife.com. Here's a trailer for the show:

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” - Albert Einstein

Fortune Cookie

I was eating at Chinese restaurant the other day and when the time came for me to open my fortune cookie, I was really caught off guard by what the fortune said. The fortune said...

"You may lack the ambition, but not the ability to succeed." -Fortune Cookie

That the first time in my life a fortune cookie actually made me think. Normally the habit for me is to eat a great dinner and then at the end entertain myself with the cheesy and sometimes random fortunes from the fortune cookies. However, this time I was presented with something that really made me think about what I just read. That single quote, in some ways, has been the story of my life. I always hear about this potential that I have, but sometimes I feel like I lack the drive to do anything to help reach that potential.

So, in context with the events that are going on in my life right now, SPOP returner applications are out right now. Ever since I staffed Gold year, I have always aspired to become a returner but I feel like I'm taking a lot longer than I need to fill out my application. I think the one thing that is holding me back is not the fear of being rejected but if I can as amazing as my spmother was. I hate admitting this, but my SPOP family wasn't as nearly as cohesive as we could have been. Granted we had our moments, I felt like that a lot of our family members were MIA at times. Although, I am extremely grateful that I was able to spend time with the other returners and my own spmother and had the opportunity learn so much from them. Now that I'm thinking about it, perhaps my biggest fear is I won't be able to provide as much wisdom and knowledge to the new staffers as compared to the returners that I aspired to be like. It's just so hard for me to imagine myself as a returner because I respect them so much. Whenever I talk to them, I always end up not wanting to end the conversation because I always learn something new and they continue to impress me with their knowledge.

After thinking about the application this past hour, I think I should go through with it and if I make staff this year, I'll make sure I'll do my damn best to help pass on everything I learned from my returners to the new staffers this year.

On the side note....

CONGRATU-FREAKIN-LATIONS to Walter and Lisa on your engagement!!!!! You guys are amazing and I wish you guys the best!

A Fond Farewell to the Decade...and 2009.

It's almost mind-boggling to me that I've been alive for two decades now. It's almost just as hard to believe that another year has gone by so quickly. Although it's a little late for a New Years resolution post I'm going to post mine anyways...

-Work out more (so far, so good)
-Study harder for my classes and be more focused in classes.
-Take more time to appreciate my blessings and enjoy my life. You only get to live it once
-Continue to dance and improve as much as I can
-Enjoy the time spent with friends as it is getting harder every year to have quality time with them

Time is flying by and I life just keeps on getting more interesting. As corny as it sounds, everyday is a brand new adventure and I just can't wait to see what this year has to offer me!

Happy New Years!

*This song has me mesmerized...Ever since I heard it on (500) Days of Summer, an excellent movie, I can't stop listening to it