you are b e a u t i f u l

Jan 25th, 2010

After hanging onto WordPress 2.8.(insert some low number here) for a while, I finally got around to updating my version to 2.9.1. However, I was pretty disappointed to find out that 2.9 looks exactly the same as 2.8. I think since it was a completely different version number, I figured that it’d be a completely different version as well. I guess it’s one of those things where I’d like it more if I could actually observe the charge rather than just know it’s there. After watching the update blog post/video though, I don’t really think that this new version should be called a new version at all. It seems like it’s just another update to the same version or something.

Anyway, that’s boring talk. I don’t really know why I’m here. I mean yes, I did update to WordPress 2.9.1, but I don’t really think anyone cares about that. Actually, I don’t even think anyone checks this blog anymore to begin with. I’m doing my laundry right now. And avoiding homework, even though I know I shouldn’t be. I don’t know. I feel very blah today. Yesterday too. I don’t know. I feel like there was such a huge leap between freshman and sophomore years. I mean, suddenly I’m talking about internships, career fairs, studying for GMATs/LSATs, and searching for apartments. Today the lady asked Hiromi and me what we were looking for in an apartment and I didn’t really know what to say. Neither of us did. And I don’t know, it’s a small issue but it just made me realize how much I don’t know, how much I haven’t thought about, and how much more responsibility I am suddenly taking up. It’s like a whole ‘nother world out there.

I don’t know. I’m weird. I should just be studying, but recently I got the inspiration to start blogging again from seeing other people’s blogs. You’d be surprised how many people actually keep a blog, if you actually take the time to look for it or ask. I wonder why people keep blogs. I know why I do, because I like to write, but I wonder why other people do it. I mean, there’s the obvious ones, the people who update their status every time they blog – it’s obvious that they’re only blogging for the comments and attention. It’s just interesting, I guess. I feel like my blog posts have become increasingly less meaningful. I’m out of practice, I guess. I haven’t had the time to just stop myself, take a step back, and reflect on everything in my life. I mean yes, to a certain extent, I do do that, but not enough, nowhere near like the way I used to reflect on myself and my life before.

Life is fake. People are fake. The world is sad. This is what I’ve taken away from sophomore year. I wish a world like Avatar actually existed… lol. Does that sound random? I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like Avatar itself, just… the concept of it, I guess. It’s not like I’m an extremist and saying let’s live in a dome in the middle of nature! (ha ha AUD…) but I just wish people appreciated things more, I guess. I wish I appreciated things more. I wish people actually cared about what mattered, what a person knows versus what a person appears to know after talking to them for 5 minutes at some career fair. I wish people wouldn’t act like they’re your friend and secretly not like you behind your back.

I guess that’s a lot of what I thought about when I went with Hiromi to her winter training thing for her Shinnyo-en. I mean not that, nothing that specific or in particular, but I guess it just made me reflect on a lot of things about myself. I mean, the chanting wasn’t even about me, it was about… whoever… but it was like saying all these things that the person shouldn’t have done and it was something like a reality check I guess. Like wow. This is the person I’ve become. I’m a terrible person. But not necessarily in that way, just an inspiring way.

♥Posted in provoked thoughts, wordpress, writing @ 5:10 pm / Leave a Comment

Dec 22nd, 2009

So I don’t know why I’m still up. I was super tired at like 2:30 and then I went to take a shower and now I’m all awake again. I’m planning on sleeping soon though, since my hand feels like it’s more close than comfortable to freezing off. I was looking through some of Sam’s Shanghai pictures that she posted on Facebook though, and surprisingly enough I found myself missing Shanghai. That came as a surprise to me because for the most part, while I was in Shanghai, I really hated it. I left Shanghai only raving about the food and nothing else. I felt like so many of the people who I met through NextStep were fake (which they were. 3 of them completely rejected my friend requests on facebook). I never wanted to leave my apartment because the air was hut, muggy, and humid. I didn’t do anything at work. I debated with my Chinese tutor for our entire three hours together as I complained in my head about how she would waste time so she wouldn’t actually have to teach. I hated so much about Shanghai. And yet, I found myself missing it today. Unsurprisingly though, the parts that I missed were memories of times that I spent in Shanghai with Peter.

I’m thinking that Andrew was right. I just wanted someone to be there who actually cared for me, and so when Peter came, I got it, and actually felt like I could start to enjoy it. My aunt too. It was like suddenly there was someone in that city, in that country, who genuinely cared. Someone who wasn’t just some phoney two-faced bitch like the people from Next Step Connections.

Looking at Sam’s picture of Jing’an Park made me think about all this. I know I’ve thought about it before, but I guess just seeing it brought it all up again. It reminded me of Bali Laguna and the time I ate there with Peter. It was really pretty, and my Chinese tutor here had recommended it to me. Thinking about all this, and actually, finally being able to appreciate my time in China, I realize that you only really learn the true value of an experience afterwards, 6 months or so down the road when you don’t have it anymore, when it’s the past and not the present, when you can objectively take yourself out of the situation and step back, look at it, and see the good parts for what they really are, not diluted and hidden behind all the little negatives of your experience that added up to be something big. So aside from the humidity, the lack of good people I met, and the shitty program, I now realize that I actually was able to create some really good memories in China, and I realize that there is more to miss about China than just the food.

Although I must say, the food was amazing.

♥Posted in china, provoked thoughts @ 4:28 am / Leave a Comment

Dec 14th, 2009

Yesterday when my parents were asking me about what I want to do with my life (love that question…) I told them I’m going to do accounting and maybe sometime later down the road I’ll go to law school and become a tax lawyer. Being the parents that they are, my parents loved this idea (of law school). And like always, my dad said, “Oh yeah. Tax law would be good for you. You love filling out forms.”

And yes. I do. That is why I just went through all the surveys that my friends on Facebook took since September and did them all. Tonight. Instead of sleeping. So here they are, for whoever feels compelled to read them, lol. It reminds me of the days when I kept a separate blog just filled of surveys that I did. I actually decided that I wanted to do a survey because I wanted to do a reflective survey at the end of 2009 (can you tell that I’m ready for it to end? I’m anxious to look at my 2009 resolutions too) but I actually never found anything like that. Sadly. I’ll find one though, or if not, just reflect on my own.

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♥Posted in surveys @ 5:41 am / Leave a Comment

Dec 14th, 2009

Soo in case you haven’t noticed, new layout! It’s actually been up for about a week now, I’m guessing, but I didn’t take the time to really go through it and fix all the coding until today, just now. Actually, I don’t even know if it’s all completed yet because for some reason, CSS on this is always screwy and it takes forever for the changes to actually take effect so I know what I’m doing. I suppose that there’s always the option of creating the layout beforehand on my computer and then copy and pasting it onto here like I used to do, but I’ve grown far too lazy for that and now just find myself changing things on the spot, which I guess gives me screwed up layouts for a few days until I decide to sit down and fix it all up. Oh well.

So it’s winter break now. I don’t really know why I’m blogging, but I suppose that maybe it’s because I don’t have anything better to do at 2:30am. I don’t know why I continue to refuse to go to sleep at a decent hour. Maybe it’s just something about being on break and having close to no obligations that screams to me that I should be making the best of this all and sleeping at obscene hours. I don’t know, but it tends to happen every single time.

Facebook has new privacy settings. It’s so ironic because the new settings were supposed to make people’s profiles more private but since they’re all idiots and don’t know about it, so many peoples’ profiles just became more public instead. I’m finding out a lot of things that I didn’t really ever want to know. Or maybe I did. Oblivion is not bliss, after all. It’s just not knowing things that other people do know, which pisses me off more than knowing something that I don’t like pisses me off… if that made any sense. Whatever.

Anyway, I don’t know what I’m here to talk about. I wish, as always, that I had something more intelligent to say. Then again, there are some people who have things to say but just have a terrible way of articulating them, and after reading those posts I figure that it’s better to at least sound decent and not say anything rather than say something but say it terribly. But I guess that would be kind of materialistic in a sense, wouldn’t it? Well, a writing sense, lol. Putting the style over the content. Well I guess it’s to a certain degree. Like your writing should have some basic level of coherency and style to it, and once you reach that minimum, you’re good and content takes over. But seriously. You’d be surprised at how many people can’t reach that level. But then again there’s also those retarded bloggers too who think they’re the shit and who think their blogs and writing are amazing and try to sound all smart and intellectual and interesting, when really they just come off like they’re trying too hard.

I guess it’s different for me though, since I don’t really write for anyone anyway. I just write for myself, and for my random layouts that I put up whenever I’m obsessed with something like You’re Beautiful. I think that pretty much sums up my blog. Only 2 people, if that, read this anyway.

What a useless post.

♥Posted in technology, wordpress, writing @ 2:44 am / Leave a Comment

Dec 7th, 2009

Is it December already? Time has passed so quickly, I haven’t a clue of where it all went. I think it’s this song. It’s making me so calm and reminiscent about everything, that suddenly I realized I have no idea where my entire year went.

Since I finished basically all of my finals (I keep wondering if me saying this is going to come back and bite me in the butt because I’m writing off my Japanese final) I spent the last 2 1/2 days watching a new Korean drama, You’re Beautiful. Finally right? I haven’t watched anything since Boys Over Flowers, but as I look through soompi searching for another drama to watch, I can’t help but feel like this was the only drama in between that was worth my time anyway. I shouldn’t even really be talking about dramas on this blog, but that’s what I’m interested in right now and that’s what’s in my life right now so let’s just go with it. (Even though I already blogged two entries about YAB on my VOX too) The way I see it, worthy Korean dramas only come about at most once per year anyway, so for 2009, this was it. It’s really good though, and I think it calls for a new blog layout (yesss 돼지토끼!!!). I just need to gather the images to make it.

I’m also looking for another drama. Hiromi keeps recommending Japanese dramas to me but truthfully, I don’t like Japanese dramas. The only Japanese dramas I really enjoyed were Boys Over Flowers and Jotei. Liar Game and Nobuta and Prodai and Nodame were cute but I wouldn’t say I ever really liked any of them on the same level that I liked any Korean drama.

Anyway, yeah. I can’t believe it’s almost 2010. And that my Fall quarter is over. And that soon it’ll be winter quarter, and then spring, and then summer. It’s also so weird not knowing what I plan to do with my summer yet. And unnerving too. I don’t like being a sophomore. I remember how in high school, I always lamented that being a sophomore meant nothing, that you were just stuck in the middle. At least Freshmen are new, juniors start taking SATs, and seniors apply for colleges, but what are sophomores. I shouldn’t have said that back then. Being a sophomore now just means networking and recruiting and trying to gain whatever edge you can get over everyone else. It’s annoying. It’s like suddenly everyone cares. Suddenly everyone around you is just doing things to put them on their resume or whatever. I don’t know. I mean, I’m like that too (not necessarily basing my entire life around my resume but just having my career always at the front of my mind) in a sense but I think sometimes I just need to take a step back and just remember to enjoy life again.

After receiving my accounting grade after a quarter of working so hard, I had a sudden lack of desire to do anything. Like what the hell did I do this quarter anyway? I didn’t have to study that hard to get an A-, did I? I don’t know. I just had a lack of desire to even want to get good grades anymore. I guess I’m just sick of trying. Which is why I need my dramas, right now. I need this winter break to do nothing, right now. I need a break so that I can return to school next quarter with renewed motivation to try hard. It was just kind of a weird and scary feeling, I guess. I’ve felt that way for other things, like Restaurant City or Farmville or whatever, but school? School’s not a game. Life is not a dress rehearsal. I need my break so that I will have the will to keep reminding myself that.

♥Posted in media, school, wordpress @ 9:41 pm / Leave a Comment

Nov 4th, 2009

I do realize that it is 2:22am, and I have class tomorrow (at 11, but still…) and I still have another 15-ish pages to read in order to be caught up for last week’s lecture in geography (I’m working on it… plus we’re a lecture behind too so it’s sort of okay) but I randomly decided to click the Friday Five category on my blog and decided that maybe I should do one. Just for fun. Just because I haven’t done one since last December and I don’t want to read any more geography, even though I am going to force myself to eventually.

So anyway, I sorted through some of them, found a lot I didn’t like, and I guess I finally decided that this one would be okay, even though no one probably cares about reading it, a lot of the other Friday Fives are just annoying to answer. I wonder how many people actually still do them.

Then & Now Five

how old were you when you first started your livejournal? 15 maybe? I think it was the end of freshman year that I created my one of my first LJs, but there probably were some random LJs before that that I never used, maybe back in middle school.
how has your life changed scince then? Drastically. I guess I could go back and read some of my entries, which would be weird, and I guess it’s not really weird sometimes but just kind of reminiscent, but I don’t really have to do that to know that my life was completely different. For one thing, I was still living at home.
if you could go back and change one thing from your past, what would it be? I’m not really sure. I may have attended more of Next Step’s events last summer in China and tried to get to know more people. I think the only thing I would have done differently, maybe, was to go to that one meeting that I could have gone to, since it only would have taken an hour of my day. But that’s not really huge so I wouldn’t really say I’d go back and change it, so for the most part I don’t like the concept of changing much or anything at all in my past. It is what it is. If I don’t have an imperfect past, then how can I ever have a perfect future?
what is one thing you would do to make livejournal better? Make it more user friendly. The pre-made layouts really suck but it’s also pretty difficult to customize and layout and make your own. I have a good grasp on CSS and HTML and yet I still have some difficulties manipulating LJ’s layouts.
if you joined the spice girls today…what would your spice name be? (ie, baby spice, scary spice, etc) Does it have to be from the already existing spices? I used to really like and identify with Sporty spice. I have no idea why lol. In any case, I would never be admitted to the spice girls. My singing sucks and I probably don’t posses enough girl power, which might pose some problems.

It figures that I would chose the most reminiscent friday five to answer. Anyways, I guess I would probably write more but I really do have a handful of things to get done, so I’d better not dawdle too long.

♥Posted in friday five, technology @ 2:31 am / Leave a Comment

Oct 20th, 2009

I’m trying to decide whether to read my story or write here… during Japanese class. Well. I shouldn’t really be doing either but last night, as I was laying in bed, restless and unable to sleep, I decided that I would blog in here. I guess in a way, those seemingly endless nights where it feels as though I’ll never be able to fall asleep are good for me in some ways. In those hours when my mind belligerently refuses to embrace sleep, I begin to think about every single thing in my life that bothers me even the slightest bit. Suddenly what’s usually a second’s thoughts becomes thirty minutes worth of analyzing, agonizing, reminding myself to take care of that aspect of my life. Even problems that I had forgotten and had shoved into the back of my mind were being dragged back up front again. Suddenly, my life that had seemed okay, perhaps not perfect but okay, satisfying enough, was turned to a welter of problems.

If only I could have dealt with my problems right then and there. Dragged everyone who I had a problem with and dealt with my problems on the spot, every single thing, big deal or small deal (because it all seemed big at the time). I feel like I could have been so much more productive, my life would be so much better, if I could have dealt with my problems one by one as they came up. I feel like in those hours, I would have been so much more honest, so much more organized in my presentation of the problem and so much more helpful in thinking of solutions as well. But I didn’t do any of that. I never do. I just lie there, banishing those thoughts to the back of my mind, trying to imagine the first white surface that comes to mind, then slowly focusing on it, zooming in until that’s all I see, all I can imagine, all I can think about in my mind. And then I’m asleep.

Last night, for me, that didn’t happen until past 1am (I got into bed at 11pm). But now I feel like I have all these problems in my life that I never really thought were much of problems, that I have a great urge to solve. Suddenly there seems like so many things to do, so many things to fix, when I’m supposed to be feeling relieved that my midterm is over, relieved that I get to take a break from studying management, at least for a day, relieved that I don’t have an ominous Ravetch exam looming so closely overhead. But I don’t feel at ease at all. Suddenly it feels like that was just one task amongst the many that I had to get done. And now that it’s out of the way, there’s more, always more, just a never-ending list of things that I have to do or should be done.

I guess I have to start somewhere.

♥Posted in provoked thoughts, school @ 12:32 pm / 1 Comment

Sep 3rd, 2009

Alyssa decides to actually blog. I’m really bored. I got my two lower wisdom teeth taken out today. So far I haven’t felt any pain at all, just a lot of inconvenience, a lot of numbing, a lot of drooling, and a lot of blood. I can’t shower or brush my teeth either, because I’m not supposed to have anything hot touch my cheeks and brushing my teeth could take out the blood clots from today’s surgery, which would be very bad. I’m really bored though. I can’t talk much. I talk a lot better now that I’m not using the things to absorb my blood anymore, but it’s still difficult because I can’t move my lower jaw, which is probably supposed to be un-numbed by now but it’s not, not that I’m really complaining. I ate three small things of mashed potatoes from KFC today, and also a bowl of ice cream. I hope my parents will get me apple sauce tomorrow (I love apple sauce…) but I’m coming to hate everything I once loved anyways. I really want to eat ramen… hong shao niu rou mian… xiao long bao… even beef chao mian… yum yum. Why are all of these foods suddenly so inaccessible to me?! T_T So sad. I want a bagel from Noah’s Bagels too.

Anyways, I didn’t write a blog post about Shanghai, but I don’t really know what to write. I basically just worked for the majority of the time that I was there. There wasn’t that much for me to do, but I helped out with some miscellaneous jobs. I guess it was an okay experience. After August though, I’d have to say that I enjoyed my trip a lot lot more ^^ Nanjing was lots of fun too. Suzhou was okay, not that pretty, too tiring, doing too much in one day. I guess it was okay. Wouldn’t do it again though. What I really miss from China is the food… I miss it so so much, even though all of July I was just missing American food. I miss KFC China too. It’s not the same as the KFC here. McDonald’s here is actually better, but I do miss its take out… why is there no take out in the US too?!?! I have to find some take out places here so I can just sit at home and still have good food. I really want Lucinda’s though. YUM YUM. Mexican food ^__^

Anyways, I uploaded my albums onto Facebook and Photobucket. Facebook finally increased their limits of photos per album, so I was able to get all my pictures into 3 albums (or 2 albums if I condensed them). My Photobucket ran out of space though so I started a new one, so it’s kind of weird when viewing my China pictures, but oh well.


Shanghai	Suzhou	Nanjing

(photobucket 1) (photobucket 2)

Enjoy! (or not)

♥Posted in china, summer @ 10:50 pm / Leave a Comment

Aug 19th, 2009

I have read these surveys so many times that I thought to myself today, well, I might as well do them. Too bad wordpress doesn’t support cuts like LJ does. Sometimes I miss using LJ. Then I could monitor who reads my blog too. But then again, things might be different if that had happened… haha.

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♥Posted in surveys @ 12:26 am / Leave a Comment

Aug 11th, 2009

I am in a bad mood. Bad day. I feel like making a list of goals for… whenever. The near future, or however each applies.

Don’t eat any more KFC or McDonald’s for the rest of my trip
Refrain from buying soda. Only buy juice/water
Refrain from drinking soda at work too
Speak more Chinese for the remaining 13 days of my trip
Stay more informed about current events
Try harder to improve my Chinese (a lot harder)
Be more firm about the things that I want
Stop going on facebook bumper stickers
Stop checking facebook so much period
Don’t read boring fp stories – they’re a waste of time
Study harder in school
Write more in my journal – stop neglecting it
Don’t spend too much on lunches during the work days – they’re probably not worth it
Don’t eat unless I’m hungry
Stop texting so much because I don’t have unlimited in China
Don’t get fat in China
Stop complaining about people and letting my own expectations about other people get me upset

Things to do:

Buy a new iPhone case so I can have cell phone charms
Decide whether or not to continue KASEO
Figure out the things I want to do/join next year
Buy Christine her birthday gift + China gift
Buy Jonny a better gift
Find more iPhone apps to download
Write a blog post about Next Step Connections’ shitty program

Last needs to be done… soon. Because now I’m REALLY pissed. I hate how Next Step Connections treat my internship like it’s nothing. Like I can just take off work whenever to fit their schedule and it’s fine, because it’s not. They’re so fucking fake. On their website they make it sound like their program is all about fitting your needs and advancing your resume and helping you find the best internship possible, but it’s not like that at all. They always expect me to leave work early and make time for their pointless monthly meetings, and the first day they took me to work, I was half a day late, and now they want me to switch apartments one week before I am due to leave China (SO pointless) and they expect me to take off another whole day of work so they can “help” me move. At 12pm. Did they ever stop to fucking think that the reason why I am IN China is for my internship, not to just ditch it to suit their needs?

This entire program is a lie and bullshit. Next Step is only out to suit their own needs. They don’t give a shit about their participants or their participants’ needs.

♥Posted in china, food @ 11:39 pm / Leave a Comment