matters of consequence

2012-01-20T03:18:00.000-08:00

you know what? falling in love can be a lot of fun, its like going down a hill, sometimes you can't even control how fast you're going. so, when you don't have anyone to coast downhill with, life gets kinda flat. and boring

so you miss the companionship, but i never thought about this: it's so much easier to miss companionship in GENERAL than to miss having someone in your life. getting over someone is such a process. i hated it when i wanted to much to call that person, text them just to see what's up. it's way easier to miss a concept than it is to erase an existence

2011-12-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

i'm always curious if the people who i wonder about are wondering just as much about me, or at all

"you can't always get what you want"

2011-12-14T01:06:00.000-08:00

but if you try sometimes, you get what you need

its one thing to feel like you're settling for a lesser value. sometimes, you can get by that way, its another thing entirely when you know you're wasting away. that's the thing with time, you're spending it no matter what, but are you getting what you want in return? value is important

my year in pictures

2011-12-04T21:50:00.001-08:00

the nihilistic youth

2011-12-04T21:28:00.001-08:00

if i had to describe my life at this point, right now, the best word i think would be: empty. but, actually, when i think about it, it isnt my life that is empty, it's me. i can't care about the stuff everyone wants me to care about. i can't learn about the things i'm supposed to learn about. life is like an ocean, knowing how to swim isn't always enough when you are dragged down with a heavy coat of responsibilities. i can barely keep my head up with this coat dragging me down, so i let it go.

2011-11-16T01:37:00.001-08:00

i guess i never did post about being home. which is strange because its the last time i remember being so excited about what was happening in my life. i loved being home so much, wouldn't change any of it, and seriously can't think of a bad memory. seeing my friends was amazing, it wasn't even weird. felt normal, like it had just been a couple weeks since we'd seen each other. still now, its a concept thats incredibly hard for me to grasp that we're all on different tracks, we're not linked and its unpredictable what's going to happen to all of us. being home made me forget that because i saw everyone all at once. for some reason i always get the feeling that time stops when im away and it starts again when i go back, but thats so untrue. silly of me to think that way, actually. why wouldnt my friends be making their way in the world? theyre probably better off than me, but whatever.

things i did when i was home

jumped off the arboretum bridge with crazy chelise
went rock climbing with ian carl and chelise, did a rope swing into frrrreezing river water
went cliff jumping (granted i only jumped twice..) with chelise in bellingham
visited danny in his new house in bellingham, spent the night, drove back and got my first ever speeding ticket
awesome picnic at gasworks park
burned my hair and eyelashes off with logan at the beach
went on a cruise with my family, just miles in front of hurricane irene
fell asleep on nik's sharkboat woke up and we were stuck on the water with a dead engine

blahhhh i have to prepare an english lesson now

it goes on

2011-11-16T01:32:00.001-08:00

i'm not sure of what i'm sure of anymore, but don't you hate how that sounds? like an existentialist bratty teenager so overly whelmed with mundane life.. etc

letters to people

dear ____
i miss you so much, and you are the single most important person in my life. i know i haven't been acting like it lately but it's just because i've been so damn selfish

dear ___ and ___
i gotta learn to get less annoyed by the two of you... but christ could you tone it down?

dear ____
makes me sad but i'm starting to not care about you, thought we were invincible

majority of people i know,
youre annoying as hell but i guess i probably am, too

dear ____
i think i try to get myself to care less because i don't feel you caring about me

2011-09-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

"everything was beautiful

and nothing hurt"

2011-09-26T00:37:00.001-07:00

all we're really trying to do in life here is striving to be remembered. to leave some sort of pressing into someone elses flesh and bones, their memories

here's my week

2011-07-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

in an attempt to motivate myself to write more i am doing a thing where i write in my blog every day of the week but save the entire post as a draft until sunday and publish it. that way if the day is boring i dont have to write much. but por ejemplo monday was awesome. todays already practically wednesday but here goes

sunday the 17th: went home for dinner with the family. afterwards i went to shida night market and saw peggy chang who i havent seen for two years. she's the first friend i made when i came to taiwan to do loveboat, that month long camp where we travelled around taiwan and did boring stuff. it was great to see her and catch up. she's really the only friend i have left from there that i still miss and talk to. with everyone else im pretty sure if i saw them it'd be small talk for a few hours and we'd both leave the hangout feeling awkward and relieved to have gotten that over with. peggy and i always talk about stuff and she's hilarious and i've missed her.

monday the 18th: went with lachlan to wulai. it is a mountain rainforest villagey area where a bunch of aboriginals in taiwan live. we thought it was going to rain.. and rain it did. only a 40 minute scooter ride out of taipei if the traffic is on your side (which is wasnt) wulai is a totally awesome day vacay. we got wine and noodles and went down a beaten path to see where it took us. chilled by the riverside and made up our own songs because we had no speakers. eventually it started pouring. on the way back we found the waterfall that we had passed by earlier but had a lot of people at. but the rain scared them off, it was deserted. we climbed around the top of the waterfall and that is when i decided i wanted to go swimming, so we did! it was fun and awesome we had our own private waterfall lagoon and the water wasnt even that cold. went back to the city, got japanese curry and watched breaking bad, a drama about a cancer patient meth cooker. its pretty good. theeen we hit the mahjong tiles for a few rounds and i came home and stayed up until the sun came up which is something i've been doing a lot unfortunately. at least i wont have jetlag in seattle!

tuesday the 19th: didn't do much today except for go to lunch with lachlan, read cosmo in shida park and then came back and did laundry. i put the laundry in the dryer for two rounds today instead of one like usual and my clothes came out COMP LETELY DRY. sad that this was the highlight of my day.. but it was. and i attempted to watch harry potter 7 part one but it was so laggy and pixelly i just ended up getting annoyed. jamie and i are going to the beach... in 5 hours hah

wednesday: didn't end up going to the beach

thursday: went to the beach, got really rosy on my cheeks. got a new swim suit, its blue. started raining so rebecca and i went swimming naturally.

friday/saturday/sunday: didnt do anything worth documenting. went home to visit the family and spent the night at a friends on saturday night.

things i have lost

2011-07-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

cell phone
money
hello kitty wallet
jewelry
faith in humanity
the game
some of my favorite clothes
socks and bras
keys
my virginity
homework
my mind

waiting for this

2011-07-19T21:47:00.001-07:00

started out with nothing

2011-07-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

i think it used to be easier to write. at least for me, when i was younger. i never thought about what to write about really i'd just write about my day and it would turn into a really long incoherent tangent with no real purpose. but i love looking at those old journal entries where i would just write out my entire day. i mean even then i was lazy and probably never wrote as much as i should have.. who does? but i really would never have remembered any of what i read about in those entries if i hadnt written them down. lately its been bugging me that life has been too mundane to write about anything fascinating, but i'm curious now if maybe i should just write about the mundane things, write about my surroundings and how i'm feeling this exact moment and see if its as entertaining to read about a few years from now. maybe ill do one of those picture a day things but probably not thats way too much work.

today i had lunch with lachlan and afterwards we sat in the park and read the "50 things you never should have stopped doing" from cosmo magazine. it was the stupidest list ever i can make a better one. as a matter of fact i will.. i dont know if i can get to 50 though:

1. never stop reading the books you loved as a child
2. never stop singing in the shower
3. never stop enjoying the small things in life that are important to you. for me: aioli sauce and feta cheese, a nice breeze on a hot day and the feeling you get when you find money in places you werent expecting
4. never stop bubble baths
5. never stop playing with fire!
6. "sometimes love comes around and it knocks you down, just get back up when it knocks you down."
7. never should stop doing summer bonfires
8. or allnighters with friends
9. doing fireworks twice a year minimum or at the very least watch them
10. never stop talking to people you promise to keep in touch with. people who can make you laugh, people who challenge you to think, people you teach you how to live. they're hard to come by
11. never stop picking your nose, i'm serious. think of all the gross boogers that will stay there unless you pick them out
12. here are a few things you should never stop eating: roasted marshmellows, popcorn at the movies, cheese, hummus, cream cheese and bagels, spaghetti, lasagna, dumplings, indian curry, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, cheeseburgers, pizza, clam chowder, spiced chai, chocolate mousse, creme brulee
13. don't stop taking naps in the sun. or taking naps in the rain. napsss are great
14. stargazing
15. family game nights are awesome! if you dont live with your family do it with your roommates friends etc the homeless man on the street...
16. don't stop writing about the things that happen every day
17. never stop dressing up for the sake of fun and being pretty.
18. never stop playing with puppies! they're the cutest
19. never stop playing in the snow at least once. if there's snow
20. i'm tired and can't think of anymore. never forget what it feels like to be young and have the world at your feet. never forget what it was/is like when life was a mystery, when there were things you were curious about. when there were things you thought you'd never experience. everything is always happening. never let that end.

consecutive happenings

2011-07-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

i cannot even remember the last time i sat down and wrote. i've kind of been feeling apathetic and indifferent towards life lately, making things uninteresting. ive realized all it does to me is make me count down the days until i go home, but actually i've been doing a lot of cool stuff.

i guess the only major thing that ISNT happening lately is no major changes.. therefore no life epiphanies or theories to publish. i guess thats why i haven't written. nothing too much to vent off about either. so, i guess i can't complain. but i've done a bunch of super cool trips. like that three day vacation away from the city to green island and taroko

and that time pat and i biked from my house to danshui from 2:30 AM to 5:30 am. i have attempted to learn to surf (no success thus far.. attempting again this weekend though), and some other day adventures with my good friends in taiwan. andrew came to visit me. having a friend from home made me realize in such a drastic way that i have two completely separate lives. and i guess i have changed a lot from the person i used to be. i mean i still like the same things and have the same values but i think i go through life differently. i've grown up. i've grown up having friends that are older than me, but more so i've grown up being so independent. it's funny. for the last two years my parents kept telling me i wasnt going to be capable of taking care of myself. i'm doing a pretty good job. not completely independent but more so than most of my friends. sometimes i want to feel like a kid again though. i'm not saying i'm completely not a kid anymore, i just mean sometimes i want to feel vulnerable and like i have no control over what happens. sometimes i wish there was someone that would say "everything will be okay if you do what i tell you to do" but i guess this is growing up.

anyways, 25 more days until i go home. here's a new approach to life i've recently decided to start applying. whenever making a tough decision ask yourself: what's the worst that could happen? what's the best that could happen? obviously extreme circumstances excluded i'm not talking about war, death and epidemics, okay.

2011-06-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

i'm only a few months away from excelente mexican food, my close friends, the puget sound and my long driveway on 226th st SW.

golden grotto

2011-05-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

i have not been blogging, nothing of real interest has been happening lately in life but i'm trying to change that. over the weekend some friends and i went camping for a night in hualien. our excursion was one of the longest and most intense hikes i have ever done. our destination was a place called golden grotto. after hiking for hours in a riverbed, climbing rocks and wading through a river we reached our destination. what's remarkable is how it took us 7 hours hiking there (of course, we were taking our time) but on the way back our grumpy and tired bodies made it in 2 hours time.

the hike itself was, overall very rocky, wet and river beddy but once we were actually IN the grotto it felt awesome. seemed like i was on a roadrules challenge... or in pirates of the caribbean.

side note: its 3:30 in the morning right now and my window is open, i just heard a man scream out super loud.. i hear a lot of weird things in my apartment. more on that later. anyways i shouldnt be lazy about blogging because this is what ends up happening, i dont feel like writing anything interesting because i've already discussed it several time orrr because too much time has passed for me to remember.

this is your brain in love

2011-04-12T08:39:00.002-07:00

so last night as i was falling asleep i listened to radio lab (great podcast, check it out). the segment was called “this is your brain on love”. i learned a lot of cool stuff about the culture of love. like how people who are “madly in love” get the same rush of happiness that cocaine delivers. people who have gone through a breakup feel withdrawals just like addicts do. i learned a long time ago that love is an addiction. it’s one that people never seem to want to break, or think they need to break. i’m not saying it’s always unhealthy, just sometimes.

anyways, it talked about the three levels of attraction. dopamine, noraeverasdfawe (i can’t remember how to spell that one) and oxytocine (probably got that one wrong too.) i’ll explain

dopamine is the chemical that gets you in the mood to be drawn to someone. it sets up the party, plays the music and gets you hyped up
norepinephrine is that moment where all the lights dim except for on one particularly suave tall dark and handsome guy with the vneck and james franco hair, you start drooling a bit and the rest of the night is focused on making sure that guy pays attention to you
oxytocine kicks in a little bit later, its the feeling of long lasting. after you have hit it off with sexy james franco look alike and have gone out for coffee a few times, had your first kiss blah blah blah oxytocine comes knocking at your door saying “hey wouldnt it be great to start dating this guy” and eventually “hey wouldnt it be great to fall in love with this guy” and then “hey wouldnt it be great to live with this guy” after oxytocine has come into the picture dopamine and norepinephrine die out a bit. if your brain was constantly being sent surges of the two, you’d go crazy and be hormone ridden for the rest of your life

i always love finding out about these things, the science of love, the science of emotions. there are too many people who believe that love is a religion, that its unexplainable or something. not true people, its 100 percent explainable. love is not a religion. it’s not really a fluffy cloud of happiness. actually, yes it is but underneath that fluffy cloud are all these chemicals that your BRAIN creates. not your heart.

these days are not fast

2011-04-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

i have learned that life doesn’t happen all at once, we are meant to wait for things. the storm does not always pass in one day and tides are gonna change several times. we should get used to it. you aren’t satisfied with the way things are, and trust me plenty of us feel that way. as much as you want to do everything you can, say as much as you can say, run a thousand miles, WHATEVER IT IS, you have to accept that life doesn’t happen all at once and if time is a lesson then we are meant to learn from it.

time-space continuum

2011-04-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

people think about the past all the time, i know i do. but seriously they only ever think about how things have changed and people who have left them. and then it results in this continuous spiral everyone throws themselves in, you know what i mean. feeling sorry for yourself, spending hours thinking about it, coming to what you think is a really brilliant and enlightening conclusion that gives you “clarity” and then the next time you have nothing to occupy yourself with, you think about the past and people who have left you all over again. you think about what you could have had and what you used to have but why don’t people ever think about anyone else, about the people actually worth your time.

some people sit around thinking about the past only to fill the present with a constant desperation of something that’ll stop them from thinking of the past. i don't understand how it is that we feel the need or the reason why we're so drawn towards making our lives about someone else when life should really just be about you.

Tôi đang ở Việt Nam

2011-04-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'M IN VIETNAM!
Day 1: CROSSING THE STREET
and this is why:

the traffic here makes Taipei look humane. People drive the wrong way, there are NO traffic lights. it's chaos and recipe for disaster for sure. The buildings here are french inspired but even though they try to aim for a degree of elegance i feel like I am in the slummest of slums. what is really most saddening of all and makes me want to spill my pockets for this country is the fact that the currency rate is 1 US dollar to 20,000 Viet dollars. TWENTY. THOUSAND. Tonights dinner was a million dollars, one could easily spend a trillion in one day. i'm no economics major but talk about inflation, right?

also, there are a decent amount of wai guo ren here but i feel like the locals still find us extremely exotic. I was standing on the sidewalk with my sister and i look over to find a guy taking a picture of us. and everyone stares at us.

people here seriously sit on the sidewalks in plastic stools and sell all sorts of stuff. the most interesting thing i saw being sold today was um.. drumroll please.. snails. My mom and uncle were about to eat them but fortunately there were no more stools. We had grilled fish for dinner and then later on I had some pho. I take back what i said about pho before, it's good.

also, it is so great seeing my family. really weird to think it's been six months. it feels like nothing has changed.

2011-03-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

"these days are not fast, these times will not last
so they say, but i'm having trouble believing.
try to settle soft in the canopy we've lost
as you dance and sway and kiss with costa ricans

you are getting all you can from my hurting. from my hurting"

taipei 101

2011-03-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

these pictures are from when i went to the top of 101 with hannah, francisco and his boyfriend darren. they're not edited, sorry. and i will put them on facebook eventually soo yeah. i went 3 weeks ago (the day before hannah left). 101 is the world's second tallest building, and it has the worlds fastest elevator.

when you ask a lot of taiwanese people though whether they've gone to the top of 101 they say no. kind of like how if you ask me if i've gone to the space needle i'll say no. or maybe i did, but it was when i first moved to seattle.

okay i really thought this post was going to be a little interesting but turns out it isnt at all.. i'm going to go to school and getting some hours in.

beitou hot springs

2011-03-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

i've been super lazy with taking pictures lately. mainly because my camera really is a pain in the ass to use and it doesn't take good pictures. but on saturday we went to the beitou hot springs, it was so so so soothing. and it cost seriously like 75 cents US (20 NT) to go. we are going to make it a habitual outing for sure. hopefully we get a few more good sessions before the weather becomes sweltering hot

word to the wise though the xinbeitou mrt line moves at a SNAILS PACE. if anyone figures out how to walk there pleease tell me.

ok, so anyways. i started this blog today, don't even really know why but i think it'll be easier to organize all my photos. obviously i'm still going to keep my journal, but this is going to be more like a scrapbook i guess. i'll put pictures and stuff (when i remember to take pictures, that is)

here is the ONE picture that i took from this weekend @ fulong beach. i enhanced the color a little bit

but really it was gorrrgeous. that guy you see on the right was on the train with us the entire time and would not leave us alone and totally had the 外国人(foreigner) personality that i hate. basically its the whole "look at me i'm soo cool and waiguo i talk to everyone and tell them about how cool and waiguo i am and everybody wants to be my friend right right?"

ok its 4. i am heading to bed. sorry, i feel like these posts are all really annoying to read. now you know how annoying it is to be in my head.

things you should always carry with you in taiwan

2011-03-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

tissues. seriously because you never know when the bathroom you use won't have them
hand sanitizer. you should carry this with you no matter where you are actually
umbrella
roughly 1000-1500 nt (30-50 US dollars). you'll most likely only use cash for the entire day

seashells (fulong beach)

2011-03-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

i went to fulong beach today with rebecca and christina. it was really really relaxing, despite the 2 hour train ride there... and then back. but i got some awesome shells. and i'm going to start a project where i fill a corona bottle with seashells. easier said than done though because the opening of the bottle is actually pretty small.. not a lot of shells fit. as you can see, i did not fill up my bottle. basically after my room is clean i'm going to ~keep it clean~ (hmm when have i said that before) and it's just gonna look super awesome with my line up of corono bottles filled with seashells.