Tidbits from Memory (mostly as a result of boredom in econ)

I’ve forgotten how wonderful music can be for the soul.

Everyone talks about how music is vital to their lives. I’ve seen dozens of blogs/lists of 25 things that proclaim the sacredness of music, how people “can’t live without it.”

I’m not sure if I wholeheartedly agree with literally dying in the absence of music, but oftentimes the combination of melodies and words or simply just melodies or words alone can affect us deeply, delve into our innermost thoughts and envelop them in a sense of comfort.

Music is like a friend who will never betray you, like a shoulder that’s always available and will always listen. It’s ironic, then, that we listen to music. I think that when we listen to music, we are listening to our own thoughts and are allowed to roam freely in the fields of our minds. So music is in fact a friend who will always listen to us, because it allows us to listen to ourselves.

I just finished reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. Personally, I think it’s an overrated book, simply because it was recommended to me with such acclamation. It’s a pretty original concept and story, and it’s touching on a few levels, but I don’t think it’s all that jazz. Same with Slumdog Millionaire.

I compiled a list of specific things I dislike as a writing exercise.

I hate waking up to disheveled blankets. My sheets should not be sideways, chaotically and haphazardly flayed and layered about.

I hate setting my alarm and going one minute later than I intended, forcing me to press the button 60 more times. Sometimes I’ll take the extra fate-given minute, but I can’t always. Sometimes I’m an hour off and need to press is 24 more times. I hate that. I also hate setting my alarm to a different 12 hour setting, as in 7:00PM instead of AM. It’s frustrating.

I have an unreasonable and probably unhealthy fear of falling off a treadmill. It has nothing to do with running too far or too fast to control, nor does it lend itself to the metaphor of living my life and the fear of stumbling emotionally. I’m just physically scared of falling, and it’s kinda weird, I think.

Ever since I learned this in chemistry (high school, methinks), I think of eating my foods as limiting reagents. If there isn’t enough ketchup, I refuse to finish my fries. If there isn’t enough Sweet ‘N’ Sour Sauce (or BBQ), I refuse to finish my Chicken Nuggets. If I don’t have enough tofu to complement my rice, I get more rice. I hate it when I get too much rice and need to get more tofu, and the cycle spirals out of control until I’ve literally eaten enough for 4 people.

I hate dressing up without going anywhere. Sometimes I wish I could just see into the future for 24 hours so I can dress accordingly.

Because yes, it gets hard to look this damn beautiful all the time.

The God of Small Things

No, I'm not making fun of Brian.

I just finished reading a book called The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It's about an Indian family and other stuff. It's honestly one of the best books I've ever read. I haven't read many books, but this one is easily the most uniquely written style I've seen in a long time.

Actually, it's ok. You should check it out for yourself. I'm going to insert it now (my favorite excerpt)

It didn't matter that the story had begun, because the kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.

Next up is Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom and Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I don't know why I've started reading again. It's a bit soothing, actually.

I've also started going to the gym again too. It's thrilling. I've never before experienced that rush of endorphins that seems to elate everyone else, at least not until last week.

Since then I have been running more and feeling really good.

My life is going well right now.

It's hard sometimes to recognize when that is, so thank you to all my friends who make this possible.

I'd like to thank the Academy as well. Together, we shall prevail.

My Life is Complete

I follow religiously the Ball Don't Lie NBA blog on Yahoo!

J.E. Skeets, the editor, often holds these "Create-A-Caption" contests with fake prizes. He posts up a picture and beseeches his readers (who number in the thousands) to create the funniest caption, which he chooses and puts under the next contest.

On more than one occasion, I offered my own NBA-related humor, but always to no avail. I wasn't hurt by it, really, since I know there are dozens of other submissions. BDL is extremely popular.

However, the other day, one of my captions was recognized as a runner-up. My Yahoo! nickname is AJ. The picture for which I wrote the caption is not the big one, but this one. I can prove it by showing you my original submission, which is number 41.


I am funny after all.

Or at least, I was funny once.

Denver Overload

I got a call from Anna, Cece, Hien and I think Lana. It was 4AM. Wonderful. Haha, they're hilarious, those Denver girls. I hope the retreat went well.

About 15 hours later, Matt and I picked up Quyen from Lion Plaza. I met her parents, who are very chill and funny. We ate at Sushi Boat, which was ok. Matt was marveling at the carousel of boats going counter-clockwise with its crew of sushi plates aboard.

He commented at how many boats there were, how it was so hard to choose a boat from so many.

And I of course commented, "Now you know how our parents felt."

There were a lot of edamame plates. Matt and I decided to place six of them on one boat, just to throw people off. Quyen, of course, wanted nothing to do with it.

"OMG, I don't know you guys," was her constant intersession.

Well, for those of you who understand the dynamics of sushi-boating, it takes a bit of time before one round is complete. So Matt and I got 3 or 4 plates of edamame on one boat. Running out of said edamame plates, we waited, plucking up innocent edamame plates along the way so as to hold them off for the mother ship.

I see our boat coming back around, and Matt and I make quick of our work. We run out again however, and only got about 4 on the boat. So we just waiting one more time for the carousel to come back around, again plucking up more plates of edamame.

Then, I catch a glimpse of the boat.

"Damn it," I exclaimed. "Guess what Matt?"
"What," was his reply.
"Wrong boat."
"What?"

We had almost covered up two different boats with edamame.

Epic edamame fail.

But at least we got frozen yogurt later. =)

It's Business Time

This is an interesting setting, in more ways than one.

I feel a sense of digital deja vu, typing along in the wee hours of the night. Those who know me understand that "wee" in this context doesn't mean the early hours of the morning. This time, it means "little" or "very small." 2:30AM is not late, it is a small hour, a time ungrown into the day. It's still early for me. My deja vu comes not from my physical setting, the school of business is very new to me. It comes from the familiarity of late-night procrastination.

These hours have inadvertently become familiar to me, like a child who never grows up, trapped in an innocence that we cannot help but come to love.

But maybe we don't love children like we think we do. Maybe we simply have grown used to their presumed innocence, their assumed naivete. We are used to their smallness, their youth that we sometimes envy. And maybe it is not the Love of emotions, but rather the Love of habit that we feel for them.

For we are often broken-hearted more over habit than for love itself. It is the habit of care that becomes for us a part of our day, a part of our lives and a part of ourselves. And when this habit breaks, against our will, against our choice, we become desolate, like we lost a part of ourselves, a sandal in the ocean that the tides take and never return.

I hate these hours. I used to revel in them. I used to dominate the nightly/morningly rants and adventures that were a part of me like the air I breathe. They were the branches to my tree and my leaves were golden, shimmering just as the sun hinted its suffocating arrival.

But like a tree, my leaves have fallen, and I grew accustomed to my emptiness. I didn't mind losing my leaves, my glistening foliage. My branches were barren, but I still had myself and I was okay. But autumn's end inevitably brings winter, and now I am laden with snow. I embraced my fate with optimism at first, admiring the twinkle of each snowflake, the beauty of powder glistening around me.

Then the snowflakes built up. My boughs were burdened with blankets of blizzard-induced snow, and their weight pushed me down.

Now these hours are lived without adventure, without enjoyment. They are a burden on me. My choices have left me heavy with duty. Each new dark realization becomes an icicle below my branches, stabbing into the air like a falcon's talon, searching for weakness.

I don't want to be a tree anymore. That's lame.

We were all young once, wishing, yearning to be free. I was too. So I chose to reach as high as I could go. I never realized that no matter how high I want to go, that no matter how beautiful the journey and growth may be, I will always be firmly rooted in the Earth. Terra Madre holds me down.

I know why the caged bird sings.

Cuz it's fuckin' boring in a cage.

My Favorite Albums of All Time

It seems like toddlers are in a permanent state of inebriation. Their drunken actions are excused simply by the fact of their youth. They are difficult to control, to keep track of, because they are always going around, looking for new things or finding new things to explain and figure out. Like drunk people, sometimes they find something that catches their interest, and once something else grabs their attention, the previous adventure is immediately forgotten, lost as a distant memory. Forgetting about the past, they live in the present and cannot worry about the future or the consequences of their actions.

Like drunkards.
We drink to forget, to fill our lives with a placebo vibrance so that we dull our worries about our future. Except that in children, this is okay. It is understandable because they have not learned to Worry, to think about Consequences. Eventually they will learn that things come with Repercussions, that a wigged-out old nerd named Newton decreed every Action with an appropriate Reaction. Until then, however, their naivete is their golden ticket from punitive judgment, their permission slip for a field trip to be carefree, signed tacitly by the World as their legal guardian. For when we grow up, there is no one else but ourselves to hold us accountable. We ingrain in our souls the shackles of Responsibility and Morality, forgetting our carefree memories of a happier time, and there is no permission slip or waiver to remind us of our follies.

Or we drink. We escape. Alcohol becomes our telescope into the stars, where everything twinkles merrily, and the celestial bodies have nothing to do with our Earthly problems. While Newton proclaimed us grounded, Galileo let us look out into a world not our own, a vicarious and precarious glance into an Other.

But a child always looks through this lens, always sees with the utmost clarity the Nature of Things. And their questions are pure, questions asked with alacrity from drunk astronomers, to which oftentimes there are no tangible answers, only more questions.

But we're stuck in an unfair, unanswerable world, where Growing Up means blurring our vision, where Age equals Responsibility, where Maturity comes only with Morality and Accountability, where telescopes are put away and alcoholism is a disease, where we can't get the signature to go on our field trip, where Time goes forward, uncaring, unstopping, where children must Grow Up and Grown-Ups must Remain Up.

And scariest of all, where Chuck Norris awaits.




On a lighter note, I started the second part of this entry back in the early days of January, with the idea of recapping my favorite films of the year. Then I thought that movie reviews were too long, and that generally, few people watch the movies I watch. So I decided that I would recap all the albums of my life, ranking them accordingly.

Since this will obviously cause rifts and clamors of argument over my opinion, I offer this caveat: These are my personal favorite albums of all time, not the objective greatest. I will list my reasons accordingly, but please keep that in mind.

With that said, I shall begin, two at a time, starting with the honorable mentions and numbers 10 and 9

Honorable mentions:

15. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me (2002)
14. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans (2005)
13. Avril Lavigne - Let Go (2002)
12. Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This to Memory (2005)
11. The Killers - Hot Fuss (2005)

10. Sarina Paris - Sarina Paris (2001)
Notable Songs: Look at Us, Just About Enough, So I Wait
Sarina Paris makes my #10 mainly because her music is insanely catchy. I am a huge fan of pop-like sounds and melodies and though her lyrics are lacking, it is more than made up in her stylishly synthetic and pulsating voice. Her songs exude energy and the dance beats that constitute the majority of her music combined with techno-voice are the perfect union of pop/electronica. You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of beat-driven pop music.

9. Stars - Heart (2003), Set Yourself on Fire (2004), In Our Bedroom After the War (2007)
Notable Songs: Heart, Calendar Girl, The Night Starts Here, Personal, The Big Fight
I grouped these albums together because they all have similar sounds. You can almost look at them as one big album released by the very talented Canadian indie band Stars. Actually, After the War has a bit of a more melancholy sound and moves a bit slower than the first two, but it's still very similar in theme and tone. To me, these three particular albums represent a three-act story. Act 1, Heart, establishes the tone and the characters involved. It introduces you to the interesting sounds and wonderfully conversational lyrics of the band. Act 2, Set Yourself on Fire, continues the story and almost builds up to the pinnacle, Calendar Girl, and the third Act, After the War, is like the sad resolution. Calendar Girl and Heart are honestly among two of my favorite songs of all time. I have to thank Winnie for introducing me to Stars. They pretty much embody my current preference in music, sad lyrics, sad melodies and both male and female vocalists.

More to come later!

Santa Clara County Libary - Milpitas

Spring break is officially upon me. Today, the 9th of March, marks the Monday that is Spring Break. Already, my weekend has graced me with heart-pulsing stories, gulps of gleeful laughter and adventurous tales of danger and daring.

However, one of the more exciting of these tales comes not during the days off, but rather, during the last day of school. Last Thursday, a few friends decided to get dinner for Sean's birthday. Those in attendance included Charles, Wooster, Jag, Michael, Thinh, Sean and myself.

Since it was his birthday, Sean chose to go to BJ's Brewery. On a Thursday night, restaurants are not usually crowded, and tonight was no exception. Thus, the service would supposedly be faster by compare.

Tonight was, in fact, an exception.

There were various complaints with the waitress, from her being too slow to her forgetting the surprise birthday Pizookie. My own personal complaint was that her voice was overly obnoxious and that she used it too much. If it were one or the other, I wouldn't have minded.

So, after a dinner replete with horrible service, Eric, Michael and I left early to get Eric to pep band practice. It was a good dinner, actually, as is any dinner with such company. Hilarity always inevitably accompanies meals with those particular friends. Yet, had the service been a bit better, I am sure we would have enjoyed ourselves more immensely, or immenselier.

Back at school, as Michael and I were talking, the rest of the group returns. Jag, Charles, Thinh and Sean return laughing and smiling. This is what happened:

After we left, the Pizookie arrived. Sean claims it was cold and she had just taken it out of a to-go box and put it on the platter. Obviously this was the last straw. Sean then proceeded to complain to the waitress (whose name was Cindy as I recall). She was evidently ashamed and let Sean talk to the manager.

The manager then offered to give everyone free Pizookies. However, Sean observed that almost half the party had left already and the Pizookie was beside the point. So, the manager offered him to pay for the meal.

A free meal.

We tried to take Sean out for his birthday, paying for him and everything, and he ended up nabbing US a free meal.

Something about this is backwards.

¿Dónde Está la Biblioteca?

So I'm at the library. Actually, the picture above has nothing to do with a library. I just thought it was an innovative way to store books. I think I would like to have a closet like that in my future house.

I realized today that I do crave meat. Before I started college, I was a vegetarian for 8 months. Okay, it wasn't a strict vegetarian diet, but it was certainly meatless. I allowed myself eggs and dairy products as well as seafood. Strictly speaking, I was an ovo-lacto-pescatarian.

It was very fulfilling in many ways.

But this story isn't about my 8 months of clarity, nor about how I arrived at the decision to ban myself of poultry (that is in and of itself another story). No, this story is about how I broke my ovo-lacto-pescatarianism.

There is a popular college chicken wings place just outside Santa Clara University's campus called University Chicken (formerly Cluck U's). They have a particular challenge called the 911 challenge, where prospective contestants must sign a waiver before partaking.

The waiver pretty much said that we were doing this of our own free will and the place wasn't responsible for any damages done. The challenge was simple: eat 12 chicken wings and get a picture on the wall and a T-shirt declaring your victory.

I know someone who finished it and actually did call 911 because of stomach pains, so you get the idea of how bad it can get.

So I decided to break my vegetarianism by taking on this challenge a week after one of my friends completed it.

Of the 12 wings I was challenged to eat, I finished 3. On my 4th wing, I ran to the women's bathroom to vomit. My eyes were burning, and the sauce from the wings were on various places on my arm.

I rolled around the front of University Chicken for the next hour along with a friend or two. I couldn't open my eyes for a good 30 minutes because they were burning from the sauce residues.

When I got home to take a shower, the place where the sauce touched my arm burned upon the washing of the water.

Then came the stool, nearly an hour of excruciating rectal burning that taught me my greatest lesson in life. It is a lesson that I think everyone should learn, though not necessarily and hopefully not the hard way: anything that burns in the anal area will burn forever in your memory. I learned that being raped would not be in my best interest, despite my previous mild curiosity ...

I can now honestly say that I know what it feels like in the hot seat.

I think I have a problem with challenges.




I hate anatomy.

Lenten Journey (March 2)

I hate giving up stuff for a reason other than my own volition. I hate New Year's Resolutions and giving up stuff for Lent. If there's something in excess and superfluous to your life, you should take the initiative to stop it yourself. you shouldn't wait until January 1st or Ash Wednesday to do it.

As much as I think it is wonderful we sacrifice and walk with Christ during the Lenten season, I think that we should always be walking with Christ, sacrificing to show that Man does not live on bread alone, but indeed, on the Word of God.

That's the idea, and that being said:

[The Day After Ash Wednesday]
Stephanie: i just stole a girlscout cookie from my roommate
Stephanie: i hope she doesn't mind
Andrew: youre going to hell
Andrew: God minds
Stephanie: balls
Stephanie: i'll apologize later
Andrew: to whom?
Stephanie: my roommate
Stephanie: and god
Andrew: Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days and you couldn't resist a cookie for less than a week?
Stephanie: false
Stephanie: weeks
Andrew: days
Stephanie: nope
Stephanie: weeks
Stephanie: at least two
Stephanie: if not three
Stephanie: and jesus is jesus
Andrew: shouldnt we strive to be like Jesus?
Stephanie: we should indeed
Stephanie: but might i point out that you had meat yesterday
Andrew: and i might point out that i fasted for the rest of the day
Stephanie: hi, at one day
Stephanie: you fail.
Stephanie: and i fasted too
Stephanie: and
Stephanie: managed not to eat meat
Stephanie: i think i win
Andrew: fine
Andrew: i'm giving up meat for lent
Stephanie: for serious?
Andrew: just to win
Andrew: and yes
Stephanie: JUST TO WIN?
Stephanie: bah
Andrew: a victory for Jesus
Andrew: i swear
Stephanie: thats what they said on the crusades
Andrew: but i'm not killing people
Andrew: it's a bit different
Andrew: the crusades are the crusades
Andrew: don't even
[Pause]
Andrew: say something hilarious before i go
Stephanie: i can't do it on cue!
Stephanie: i don't even mean to be hilarious
[Pause]
Andrew: one more try
Stephanie: nope
Stephanie: but im not letting you win
Stephanie: we'll discuss this later
Andrew: i'm giving up meat starting tomorrow
Stephanie: wait
Stephanie: lent starts today
Stephanie: starting now
Stephanie: you have to give it up
Andrew: i have a dinner to go to
Stephanie: jesus vs dinner
Andrew: argh
Andrew: fine
Andrew: today



So yes, I'm giving up meat for Lent, but can you honestly blame me?

I mean, c'mon. Giving up meat for Lent vs. losing to Stephanie. Before you judge me, ask yourself, WWJD?