So I said I would start going to people's houses. Even though I have been friends with people for a long time, I never really hung out with them after school. So I decided to go to their houses.
Sam and Victoria's house. Awesome and fun. Enough said.
Elizabeth's house. Disorganized and organized at the same time. Didn't know how scared I should be of her mom, so I played it cool. Sisters knew of me so that was fine.
Marilyn's house. Dad is a big VT person, but I don't care about schools that much so that was fine. He seems to love everybody sport but soccer, so I had to lay down the law to him.
Casey's house. Monopoly and Just Dance. Was fun.
Mike's house. Watched Battle Royale with some of his gaming buds. Not really part of that circle but it was fun to joke around with them.
Indian houses are assumed, but I'll list them anyway.
Surika's house. Been there all my life so it is always fun. We play ALL OF THE BOARDGAMES!
Shannon's house. What we always do there. Exercise on all her fancy equipment, play table tennis and air hockey, and jam out on some instruments.
Abhinav's house. Sit around and play video games.
Yeah that is really all for the month of June. I'm really bad at this. It seems awkward to ask people to go to their houses when we don't really interact outside of school.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
A Nice Ending
So happy and sad right now.
Let me explain. There is this
group called the Speed Gamers, which holds video game marathons for
charity. They play the games, stream
them online, and take donations for different causes. I’ve only seen one marathon completely and that
was the Pokémon Marathon back in 2008.
They collected $5,923.69 for ACT Today, which is a charity for autism.
The last couple of days, the Speed Gamers did another Pokémon
Marathon, also for ACT Today, but with a goal of $50,000. The catching of the Pokémon is fun, and the
earning money for charity is fun, but the most fun part is the community. While some of their members are playing the
games, other members are talking with the fans on chats, or doing crazy things
on the other screen. There are contests,
auctions, raffles, drawings, singing, random goofing off, just everything
awesome. Having fun while giving to a
good cause.
The goal of this marathon was to capture 646 Pokémon, which
they did with about 3 min. to spare. On
the previous day when the donation was getting close to 50,000, Bulbagarden, a
website dedicated to Pokémon, donated 1,000 dollars, pushing the donation to
the goal! The last raffle of the show was an Oshawott doll. People had to donate in the name of one of
the members of the Speed Gamers. The
fans went crazy, donating almost 4,000 dollars just over that doll; bidding
went past the deadline by 1.5 hours. Y3llow
deserved it, he did sing “Call Me Maybe” on a previous day.
As per tradition, the marathon ended with “The Final
Countdown.” The community was just so
awesome. No flame wars, no evil, just
people who had a genuine love of Pokémon and helping charity. It was sad to leave the group, but alas the
event was over. So congratulations to
the Speed Gamers for capturing 646 Pokémon and donating $57,543.50 to ACT
Today, a record for the Speed Gamers.
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Awesome Job Guys |
Maybe Something You Will Not Agree With, But It Was On My Mind
First month of summer started and I feel the decay. Knowledge I acquired is slowly draining from
my mind. We learned all of this info and
worked so hard in our lives just to watch it crumble away in the gentle winds
of summer (or the huge storm we saw today).
I feel I have to struggle to maintain my current knowledge, with little
hope of acquiring more by myself. What
is the point of grasping this info? To
be different.
On another topic, for some reason this summer feels lonelier
than previous summers, though it really isn’t.
Maybe because I don’t have books to read. Why do I feel this way? I was content all the other summers, why is this
the summer that makes me super bored?
Again, I feel it is a method to be different.
Then I guess the real question is: why do we try to be
different? Let’s face it, only a few
people in the world will actually be different, people who are amazing and will
be in the annals of history. Everybody
else is just a reiteration of another.
We live mediocre lives. Yeah I
know you are thinking “you can’t know until you try” and all that crap. Yes I’m an idealist like that too but I know
and you should know that sometimes being special is beyond our own control,
even if the ideals of our society and capitalism say otherwise.
That is the paradigm of our society. We always want to make the next day better
than this one. Why not just be happy and
content with life as it is? Unless you
are one of those great people, this is all you are going to get. To live without wishing to be special is
harder than expected. We always feel we
are special, as individuals and as a species.
But it is the destiny for humans to strive for this specialness, only to
fail.
The hard thing for people to understand is they are not
special. Someone can probably do what
you do better. Doesn’t mean you should
quit everything, but it means find enjoyment without the expectation of being
special. It means to strive to be better
without the expectation of surpassing humanity’s bounds. To live without hurting others, without
stealing (not in a material sense), without causing a wave, that is hard for humans
to do. This is the ordinary, mundane
life we live. Best leave the pain of
thinking yourself special and live life as it really is.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Brain Dump
The air is stagnant, suffocating. I unconsciously curled into a ball a few
times. I turned on the AC, but that made
me curl up because it was too cold. What
a pain.
I guess I should say what I’ve been doing. I finished reading and watching Kara no
Kyoukai, finished reading Fate/Zero, finished reading City of Lost Souls, and
finished watching season 1 of Nodame Cantabile.
What a productive two weeks.
I have my bible on my desk.
Both Fate/Zero and City of Lost Souls like to quote the bible. I’ve actually read the Bible so I know
biblical stories, but my understanding is literal. I never was a Christian so I was never taught
biblical interpretation; what I know is what is written in the book. So I used my copy to look up the passages the books
were referring to so I could see the context.
Sometimes they used the sentences literally, sometimes interpretively.
Been playing guitar a lot.
I didn’t play guitar for almost 2 years, yet for some reason I’m doing it
again. Even with that hand problem hiccup, I’m
still going. I was playing every other
day to give my hand a break, but now I’m playing every day. My hands feel really, really tired; I should
take a day break from it. I only have a
few guitar books, and I’ve been playing the same etudes over and over again,
not even caring about technique. I know
my fingering is wrong, my tempo is wrong, my dynamics are wrong, my emphasis is
wrong, my rhythm is wrong, my phrasing is wrong, but I don’t care.
I don’t even know why I’m still playing it.
I learned one reason why my parents and I don’t see on the same
terms. Our sense of humor is different. If I say something as a joke, they take it
seriously. If I say something serious,
they take it as a joke. I don’t know
what I did to create this impression on them, but I don’t really have any plan
on fixing it either.
I got bored today, so I walked to the lake. The lake at this time is really nice
looking. The sun setting gave the lake a
cool shimmer. I recalled a conversation
I had with Surika yesterday. Her Sweet
16th party is in November, but I didn’t get an invite. We have known each other since we were born,
so it is assumed I am invited, but I wanted to tease her anyway. So I brought it up and acted fake hurt that I didn’t
get an amazing invite, but then she responded, “but you are going to be at college
during that time.”
That thought didn’t even occur to me. I don’t really have any connection with
Stephens City or Winchester, but it has been my home for most of my life, and
some things such as this are just…assumed.
But no, I’m not going to be here during that time, the normal
assumptions do not apply anymore. So I
stood there by the lake, a place I also cannot assume to be always in walking
distance, thinking about things again.
Being alone is an interesting feeling.
My computer autoshut down because my battery ran out. I thought I lost this blog post, but I know now that I wouldn't that sad if I lost it. I would have just chalked it up to fate. I guess fate wanted me to post this. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.
I just realized that I didn't really say who Surika is. Anh told me once that I should explain who the people I mention in my post are. I shall respond to that by tweaking the words of Anh's sole expectation of me. Surika, and a few of my other friends, are people I expect to be my friends no matter what. People come and go in our lives and I, more than anybody, am ok with that. But some people, no matter how much we change, I expect will still recognize me and consider me a friend.
I've said more than I thought I would, but less than I would have wanted. I'll just end this here. Oh wait, because I made a promise... VICTORIA IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! (and best friends with Abhinav).
![]() |
Shiny |
![]() |
Boy Fisher |
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Adult Fisher |
My computer autoshut down because my battery ran out. I thought I lost this blog post, but I know now that I wouldn't that sad if I lost it. I would have just chalked it up to fate. I guess fate wanted me to post this. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.
I just realized that I didn't really say who Surika is. Anh told me once that I should explain who the people I mention in my post are. I shall respond to that by tweaking the words of Anh's sole expectation of me. Surika, and a few of my other friends, are people I expect to be my friends no matter what. People come and go in our lives and I, more than anybody, am ok with that. But some people, no matter how much we change, I expect will still recognize me and consider me a friend.
I've said more than I thought I would, but less than I would have wanted. I'll just end this here. Oh wait, because I made a promise... VICTORIA IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! (and best friends with Abhinav).
Monday, June 18, 2012
"Whaddaya Mean You Want Some ID?"
I have three situations that are my best thinking
times. One of those situations is resting
on my bed. Not really relevant but if
you want a mental image of me thinking, there it is. So I was doing what I do when I’m bored,
writing stories that I have no plan on sharing to the world. Because I don’t plan to share the full story,
I’ll share the relevant parts for the sake of this post. Orphan girl kills a boy’s parents because she
has her sadistic side, so afterwards they have to find a way to coexist in the hidden-from-the-law
world they live in since there is nobody else to help them but themselves. A pretty uneasy alliance if anything. So in my head I always thought to myself that
the girl was like a year younger than the boy, but then while thinking on my
bed, I realized “How in the world would I know that?”
In my mind, she wouldn’t have known her birthday or
birthdate, she is a street orphan, so how am I to say how old she is? If I believe it, then the other characters
would unconsciously believe the same since I’m the writer and decide how they
think. For some reason, this thought
really threw me.
If I didn’t know someone’s birthday or anything about them
(such as year in high school which would give away age), could I still guess
how old they are? I really doubt
it. I wouldn’t assume Aarti was 15 by
looking at her since there are girls smaller than her but older. I felt it was weird that there is this number
that holds so much weight in society, but has no practical use.
So many things get decided based on age. From driver’s license to year in school to
legal limits for certain…activities. In addition, Minors get punished differently
than adults…I could keep going. If that
is how society judges age, what about without society? Age doesn’t signify growth; I can’t judge
people’s ages based on their height and weight.
Age doesn’t signify maturity (I am a great example for this). Is there any innate significance to age? Anything that we can feel on a different
level than on the level of society? If anybody has the answer, tell me because I
couldn’t think of anything (or maybe I fell asleep before I could figure out
the answer).
Friday, June 15, 2012
Time to Lay Some Schooling
An object can change.
Any object, even an eternal one.
We perceive the object, adding our own meaning to it. But because of that, the object isn’t
eternal. The object’s value is dependent
on the perception of the person. What
seems magnificent in a moment becomes normal over time. What is beautiful seems commonplace
later. How sinister it is for us to
impose ourselves on the world. What is
even worse is that it is necessary.
Without our thoughts, without our views, objects would have no
worth. They wouldn’t even be eternal,
for being forgotten forced them to exist in nothingness.
There is a good poem “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens, that
sums up this idea.
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Stevens uses the precision of imagery of Imagism and the
dissociation of Cubism. He has the “mind
of winter”, seeing things through different senses. He slowly fades away as each sense
escapes. First he uses sight, then
touch, then hearing, until he is “nothing himself.” Stevens is completely
disassociated from the scene. He cannot
impart his own thoughts and ideals on the scene. What is left? “Nothing that is not there and
the nothing that is.” The only thing there is the physical objects, hence the
first part of that phrase, but I’m obviously talking about the second part: “the
nothing that is.”
THE nothing, not just nothing. The only thing left is a blank, a void. Nothing has meaning, so the winter scene is just a
null. By removing himself from the
scene, Stevens is saying there is nothing in the scene. Only through humans can value be derived in
objects. Without people, the scene is bare of anything except the physical object,
while before he describes it in great detail.
Things we associate with nature, such as a beauty and grandeur, is gone without people, and this is true with any object. Just something to think about.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Music Stuff Part I
Another post about how I realized something. This time I felt like I should tackle
music. I’ll try to explain it better
this time.
As a kid I just listened to the radio, so basic pop. I didn’t really have any musical style I
liked more that another, it was just “oh something is on right now.” This idea
didn’t really change for a long time. The
only minor change I could say occurred is I really liked classical. First reason is because if an elementary school
kid said he liked Dvořák or Mendelssohn,
then he is known to be smart. Second
reason is because it just sounded cool.
Classical music forces people to go through the whole emotional
band. A whole orchestra is so dynamic
(pppp to ffff if you know what I mean).
Sadly, I thought I could mimic this ability on the guitar,
but boy was I wrong. One can’t compare
guitar to an orchestra, can’t even compare it to a violin and piano. Go to a recital and all I heard is “oh that
violin was great” or “that piano was amazing.”
What is a middle school guitarist supposed to do? Guitar doesn’t have the dynamic capacity as
other instruments, so we were pushed back and were forced to play simplified versions
of classical pieces.
My Guitar for Seven Years |
Still, at least I could play music. Instead of just hearing it, I could actually
mimic it. The most fun was guitar
quartets. Yes we had guitar ensembles,
but unless I was first chair (which I was only a few times), I just felt like
one of the crowd. Being in a quartet was
much more fun. One plus is four guitars
are louder than one (take that violin and piano!). Second is I got the feeling of playing in a
group. It isn’t just learning notes and
regurgitating them out. No, I had to
listen to others and mold my playing to fit in with the overarching music (they
did the same for me). In the end, we
didn’t sound like four guitarists, but one collective.
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Guitar Ensemble. Here I Played Guitar 3, but Previously Played Guitar 1 when in a Trio |
Don’t really know where I was going with this. I have a lot of stories from my guitar days,
but there is no point talking about my past.
I guess the point was my shifting viewpoint of music from something I
passively listened to to something that I actively created.
Monday, June 11, 2012
What do You Mean Twilight isn't Good Romance?
I was reading Kara no Kyoukai and this line pretty
genius. Shiki, the main character, says “I’ll
tell you something someone once told me.
He said that ‘it’s those unseen, unvoiced things that form love. And it isn’t right to give voice to them, or
else they might turn into lies.” Ahh so
true, so true indeed. Now, I read books,
and some of those books end up being romance books. I, like many other people, get annoyed when
the characters constantly profess their love for each other (cough cough
Twilight). When an author knows how to
weave in love through actions and interactions, attitudes and unspoken traits,
that is true romance. A bond of mutual
respect doesn’t need to be constantly brought into the forefront in a novel, it
is obvious, and it is unnecessary to constantly repeat it.
When did I start to
understand this storytelling as more profound than simple love stories? Maybe the Sword of Truth series started me
down that path. The main female, Kahlan is
strong and can hold her own. Her love
with the main character is present and integral to the story, but there is
respect of both of their talents.
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Kahlan Killing Someone I Assume |
![]() |
Best Way to Get a Woman To Marry You, Kidnap Her and Tell Her how Much You Love Her |
So as king and queen of Attolia, they end up having to face the politics of dealing with a nation almost at the brink of war. Their affection for each other in the novel is only shown through trust and actions. They rely on each other when there is no other helpful hand to turn to. Also, when someone hurts one of them, the other strikes. Their love is so unspoken that most characters actually think they hate each other since Gen is seen by most as a usurper. I’m not doing the books any justice, but the love was an undercurrent but ever-present, which was just awesome. Way more realistic than people professing their love all the time.
Sorry I did a horrible job explaining my thoughts.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Summer is Upon Me
So today is the first day of summer for me. Why? It is because it is the first day I felt really bored. to fix that, I played a flash war game. Just think Risk but with flash graphics. I was really bad at the game before, but I’ve
gotten much better at it. I’ve learn
some strategy: always try to get a good hold of a section of the board, make
the enemies fight each other, and don’t overreach even if
possible. Better to play defensive. The game has this war music playing all the
time, but I switch that off and put some nice, soothing classical. Helps me make proper decisions and not be
rash. This is the same as when I tackle
homework. If I have some music, even
menial tasks are not boring.
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Another Great Victory |
I could have been doing other stuff. I have so many unfinished books just lying
around. Still have to finish Kara no
Kyoukai, Fate/Zero, On China, some fanfiction.
I just don’t feel like finishing my reading list just yet; that usually
starts to get done mid-summer.
Not like I wasted all my time today. I was tabbing a song that I wanted to play on
the guitar since my hand has gotten better.
The pain of staring at a screen watching somebody play the same notes
over and over again, this is what guitarists face. In the end, tabs are pretty meaningless after
a while. I learn music more through
hand shapes. That is probably why I’m bad at sightreading. Not to say I can’t do it, but I rather like
watching somebody play the song before I do it.
I used to ask my guitar teacher to play the songs first so I could watch
her and see what I had to do.
Eventually, the sheet music ends up just being a subconscious marker of
my place instead of piece of paper I’m playing notes off of.
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My Beautiful Tablature |
Watched “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”. It is a
movie about people retiring in India and how it changes them. Don’t know why it has such good reviews, it
wasn’t that good. Maybe because people
were fascinated by the Indian setting and how different it is from America
while I just thought “been there, seen that.”
Did other stuff today, like listen to K-pop with Anh, but
nothing really worth writing about. First
day of a long string of days left of summer.
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