computer blog from last summer

one of my favorite scenes from garden state is at the very beginning, when zach braff’s character (i forget his name), is on an airplane and he fantasizes about horrific mid-air plane collisions. 

except he finds the possibility of one surreal and somewhat exciting. i always though he was a bit twisted. 

 

right now, i’m flying from san francisco to taiwan on a rather turbulent flight- the fasten-seatbelt sign has been on for the past 3 hours. and according to the lovely blue map on this screen i don’t know how to turn off, we’re currently flying somewhere directly over the Bering Sea. 

every time the plane takes a particularly violent lurch to one side, or a little nosedive that gives you that lovely soaring feeling in your stomach, i find myself fantasizing about not a mid-air collision, but a emergency crash-landing directly into the sea. 

 

WHOA.. that was a big one. the 747 just made like a car going over a big bump in an intersection. 

 

and the weird thing is, the thought of one actually occurring doesnt incite much fear in me. i envisioned myself much like zach braff’s character did in his fantasies- calmly serene and even smiling as people around me scream and toss and papers are whipped through the air. in my fantasy my only concern was for the little asian family sitting next to me, and their incredibly annoying young son who won’t stop whining. i look over at them as carry-on luggages empty their contents into the air and go hurtling over our heads. the mother sits wide-eyed and terrified as she clutches her screaming son. and i feel pity for them, to have to be subject to such horrors just for the sake of my twisted little fantasy. 

 

there is icy-cold wind now, roaring through he cabin, drowning out the noises of human panicking and the crushing noises of the plane being ripped from its seams. 

the wind lifts my hair up around me like a veil, and my hands clasp the sides of my tray-table. i feel like i am in a dream, and as i face a sure and impending demise, the only thought that goes through my head is, ‘..but i’ve never been in love..’ and it’s true, as lame as that sounds, and this solitary thought causes me more pain than the fear of death or the idea of any other regret in my life. and the feeling is too lonesome for me to cry, and even if i wanted to the cold wind has whipped all the moisture from my eyes. and i try to shake off the irony of this cruel existence that deprives me of the one thing people would give up their lives for in their time on this earth..

and then the plane crashes into the Bering Sea with with a noise like all the sounds i’ve ever heard in my life being played at once.. then we are enveloped with nothingness and everybody dies. 

 

 

and then i blink and i’m staring at my glowing white macbook, serene and intact. and i glance around the darkly glowing cabin, completely death-and-destruction free and heavy with sleep. and the little asian family next to me is napping, and their son has finally settled down and shut the fuck up. 

 

the map tells me we’re now veering away from the Bering Sea. and that we’ve only been flying for five and a half hours. so i look ahead in my life and know that there is no fate so cruel that awaits me. and i feel mildly disappointed. but i suppose i should be glad.

tips about driving through the night

If you ever find yourself in the predicament of whether to ‘beat the traffic’ and drive headlong through the night for several hours in hopes of finding yourself at home in record time, by God do not do it. 

Unless you enjoy feeling like you are flying blindly trapped in a dark tunnel into the wee hours of the morning, talking to yourself and hallucinating up your very own three-ring circus, your limbs shaking and twitching and tapping from inhaling an entire Rockstar Roasted only hours prior (THE best energy drink by far, I would say), please take my advice.

I’m glad to have learned this lesson early while I am young and my body can still rebound from this sort of cruel and unusual abuse. After this six-hour long nightmare of a drive, from 11pm til 5am, I stumbled-shaking and muttering nonsense bits of swear words- into my front door, my eyes wild and every shadow morphing into gangs of menacing ghostly creatures. 

I shit you not. Save the long midnight drives for the truck drivers and crack-whores.

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmaraglio/>

reminiscing

i don’t know if any of you have looked at your kiddie pictures recently.. you know the ones you’re embarassed to show your friends, the ones where you’re wearing geeky coke-bottle glasses and spandex. (or maybe that was just me..) 
keep looking and see all the birthday parties and random snapshots- there you’re turning 9, now 13, now here’s one during your freshman year, with your trendy clothes on, looking excited about the 4 long years of high school ahead. Your best friend is turning 16 in this one, and in the next one it’s your turn. In each picture your face grows a little bit more mature, your smiles become less gleeful and more controlled, and the friends around you have changed their hair and taken on their own unique style. Years fly by with a quick turn of your wrist, with each photograph you see moments separated by years of time, and yet it all seems so short. Graduation now, your face is glowing and you are wreathed in flowers, and your parents stand beside you looking older than you’d remembered. What now? snapshots of the insane moments during your first year of college where you were too caught up in the moment to completely appreciate. Now you’re 18, 19, leaving your teens. What now? In a few years when your youth is almost spent and you find yourself lost in a stack of photographs, the journey of reminiscing from your geeky childish years to present will be just as fast, and you will still wonder where all the time went.

I don’t know how to say this in a way that will really hit home.. but time flies.. so insanely fast that sometimes i just want to dig my fingers into the ground and will time to stop for a second so i can make the most of my youth. time is like water slipping through your cupped hands, and in the blink of an eye you’ll have grown older and college will only be a fond memory. 
You’re in it now. you’re in it right now, you can feel it, taste it, this is college. this is what you will be looking back on fondly for years to come. Are you making the most of it? making it worth what little time you have left?

damn, time fucking flies.

 

<photo by my mother>

a bit of superficiality

will ferrell: is he the most annoying thing ever, or a comical genius? 

the answer is that he’s the most annoying thing ever. sure, he’s funny sometimes, when i’m feeling lightheaded and stupid, but mostly i just want to kill him..

mainstream music is going to the dogs. 

nicholas cage is a complete douche. he’s got 2 lazy eyes, an incomprehensible drawl like he’s just had a stroke, and an asian fetish. what a WANKER.

tom cruise and katie holmes need to die. 

i want to rip off ashlee simpson’s $10,000 facelift and flush it down a public toilet. hey ashlee- no one liked you when you were ugly, and the people who like you now just want to poke the rat cartilage implanted in your face.

..and that’s it for entertainment television tonight..!

 

back at school

so i’ve been here for about a week and a half now. almost every waking moment i have is being spent with someone, and the moments i am alone, i’m usually vegged out in front of the tv. it’s such a change- during summer i had so much alone time to just wander around and soak up that lonesome, surreal feeling of being your own company. at first it was depressing, but i learned to cherish those moments of being by myself. everything is in perspective, and time kind of melts away. i need that.

tomorrow morning i’m biking to campus with kate. she’s going to class, and i’m going to the library about a possible job. most likely i got it. it’s just the freakin library. and the rest of the day is mine!

don’t know where i’ll go, but that’s the grandest part.

time

mom’s moving to taiwan. my childhood’s over..   

sucks. soon my youth will be over. but i’m just being emo and dramatic right now.
i wish they would both move away, so i’d know they’re still together, at least. so i can miss both of them. and say, “i miss my parents.” and not, “i miss my mother, who currently lives halfway accross the world from my dad.”

this isn’t supposed to happen until i left college, until i was stable enough to stand on my own two feet, and push them away on my own terms.
they’re not supposed to just up and move away from me when i’m still 18. fuck.

theyre not “separating,” in that horrible sense of the word. its just that mom hates america and dad still has business here.

i’m just feeling clingy like i still want to hold on to my idyllic childhood when coming home from college would be met with two smiling parents. the traditional way..
but i guess everything changes. i guess that should have hit home when we moved out of the home of my childhood. we don’t get the american dream- we don’t get the mom and dad growing old together in the house they raised their children in. we dont get the visiting mom and dad once in a while as we take breaks from our rapidly accelerating lives. i don’t get the slow, gradual move to maturity. i have to be mature now. 

most of all i need to remember that everything happens for a reason, most of the time a good reason. we moved from our old house and found a wonderful cozy townhome that i truly love. dong dong died because it was past his time, and i needed to let him go and move on with my life. he was my childhood, and with each loss i suffer i grow. 

‘time can take its toll on the best of us,
look at you you’re growing old so young
Traffic lights blink at you in the evening,
Tilt your head and turn into the sun.’

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/amsterdamned/>

ah, seasons

seasons in southern california are like different worlds altogether. the fall and winter blend together- the mornings are hazy and chilly, and the nights are clear with cold winds. The whole cold period is generally unremarkable, except for those days when you forget to wear a jacket. then you really suffer.
then the city goes about changing its wardrobe- there is a period of about 2 weeks when the weather can’t seem to decide whether it should be cloudy or unbearably bright, and the clouds take turns blotting out the sun. me and kim sit beside ring road, proclaiming, ‘God loves us now!’ and ‘..aw, God doesn’t love us anymore.’
When spring finally sets in, i feel it first in my nose. it gets really itchy, and i immediately scramble for my allergy pills in preparation for the long months of pollen, dust, and heat. the mornings are greeted with cheerful sunlight, which grows in heat as the day progresses. and the nights become hauntingly beautiful- they are warm, and clear, and the bugs begin making those summery chirping noises. i’m tempted to just sit outside at night for hours and hours, reliving in my mind summers past. 
days like this everyone says how much they wish they were at the beach, instead of in class. but we’re not bitter- the campus is so beautiful on these sunny days, and as on the beach there is no shortage of scantily-clad chicks. 

This is the best time of year. we’re blessed with warm weather from morning to night, and coming home to change into basketball shorts and tanktops is pleasantly refreshing. everyone’s thoughts turn to the coming summer- of swimming pools and beaches, sunglasses, warm nights out and laughter with friends.

It enough to make all this routine worth it- even impending finals. Finals coop us up in apartments and stuffy libraries- but the weather outside is so full of promise, the aniticipation only builds up the pleasure we will soon feel when we are unleashed in a joyous, raucous mob of sleep-deprived college students.. into the sunlight and springtime and simple sweet bliss…

summer is coming!

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/steph_hu/>

public transportation

the bus stop in front of my campus is always abundant with crazies. it’s strange, because you never see crazy homeless people in this city, unless you’re at a bus-stop. they only ever pass through, they never stay. maybe they find this stiflingly perfect city unnatural, too. or maybe it’s because the cops are constantly picking them up and hauling them out to the neighboring city.

but the bus stop is nothing compared to inside the bus itself- it’s like a crazy exhibit at the homeless wacko museum. and literally, all the sane people line the sides of the bus facing inward, watching the schizo antics unfold. it’s sad, kind of. the people sitting next to me give each other meaningful looks of amusement as some middle-aged lady yells at the bus-driver. she’s wearing a raincoat, and it’s 90 degrees out. directly in front of me a man wearing reflective sunglasses and carting his entire life along with him in boxes has an enthusiastic conversation with the handrail. 
i have my headphones on, and i try not to stare. but every time i see people like this, i can’t help but wonder and imagine what they were like maybe 20-30 years ago, at christmastime or something. i wonder what they were like in high school, if they went to high school, before their minds decided to take a permanent vacation. i wonder what their classmates would think to see them as they are now. maybe theres pictures of them up on a mantle somewhere, in a group of family or friends, smiling.

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/murplejane/>

smells..

smells.
they make me wanna cry.. in psych i’ve learned over and over that the area of our brains the process smells is very closely linked to our emotional center. which is why.. when you’re smelling a familiar smell, you’re not just processing it with your nose.. you’re feeling it. 

and that’s also why even a scent from a longass time ago can bring back intense and vivid memories. the smell of the citrusy-mango air freshener that was plugged in the wall of my dorm room freshman year brings back such a wave of nostalgia and emotions i could cry.. and it’s exactly like i’m back there again, with everything novel and new, my sweet roomie arianna a complete stranger to me…

and likewise the smell of the apple-vanilla wall freshener from the beginning of sophomore year reminds me so vividly of new furniture, a foreign new house, kim. 

my old perfume.. ‘paradise,’ by alfred sung.. hah. it reminds me of *drew. which ofcourse, is why i’ve stopped using it. pity.. :T
the chi serum i used to rub into my hair before sleeping over with *jake.. well yeah obviously it reminds me of that time, and him.
and even though it was such a short time.. the lotion i used when *wes and i used to talk.. “coconut lime verbena” lol. it reminds me of him, and how stupidly foolish and optimistic i used to be. and how… very not myself. 
and i’m SURE.. as soon as i’m through using this new perfume by lucky, it’ll remind me of this time. and then.. what rush of emotions will lucky bring back to me? will they be happy or full of loneliness&longing and shit? gahh. hindsight is 20/20. and so is.. hindsmell. haha. i wish i could know now.. what kind of emotions now.. will bring back to me.

ahh. there are no words.

my mother was blowing her hair just now, and for some insane reason, the smell reminded me of cologne. a thrilling, fresh-smelling cologne… like.. like a boy.
aahh…. sigh.

i have this bottle of lucky cologne that was accidentally sent to me by a seller on ebay. i was trying to buy the girl’s perfume. but she let me keep it. whenever me or kim take whiffs of it, we get tremors- that’s how damn good it smells. it smells like a sexy assss clean beautiful boy. haha. guess i’ll spend the rest of my lonely life sniffing cologne and loving a dream out of my reach.

the lunar eclipse

i missed the lunar eclipse. and it’s not like i was terribly bummed about it, but i am kinda fond of the moon and all her phases. and i’d say an eclipse is a rather major phase.

last night i was lying in bed with my headphones on, and the den was pitch black. i was drifting off to sleep to my chill playlist. then ’stone in focus’ by aphex twin came on, and i woke up for some reason. maybe because that song is too beautiful to be unconscious for. 
i traced my hand along the wall and my fingers found the string that rotated the blinds. i pulled it slowly- and the room became flooded with a cool silver light.. i thought it was a lamplight. i put my glasses on and found the moon, radiant and full, sparkling in the sky. she was floating high and lofty like an ethereal goddess, like some otherworldly beacon.

soft silver moonlight fell across my face and arms in slatted patches. gazing at her, i could feel my right eye sparkling, reflecting. it was about 3 in the morning. i felt like i was the only one in the world watching her, freshly unveiled after the eclipse.
a moment like this, suspended in time, is what songs like ’stone in focus’ are meant for. 

such unreal beautiful moments come along so rarely.. but when they do, they are haunting and incredibly perfect.