Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

.:William Ernest Henley::1875:.

Another "note"

I'm so in love with Chopin etudes at the moment. Actually, Chopin has always been my favourite composer but recently, I've rediscovered his etudes. They're incredibly difficult to play but the most amazing things to listen to. They're definitely on my list right around Rachmaninoff's piano concertos.

Piano Battle

I wish I could play like this.

Center

Finally finished the class on forensic pathology. What a whirlwind experience! I think it was by far the most frustrating, exciting, fast-paced, time consuming class I've taken (and that includes classes from my undergraduate career!). Just an immense amount of reading and writing and test taking. So what did I learn from it? Beside all the gruesome details like inlet/exit wounds of firearms, sharp force trauma and blunt force trauma patters, asphyxia, I think most was how to stay centered and focused. Face the issue at hand and not get flustered by it. Sometimes you have to jump right in and go head long into the task (like a midterm or a 20 page paper) but other times you just have to find other ways around it, look at it from a different perspective. Yes, I believe I'm applying wing chun principles off the mat. I feel all "mystical and kung fu-ey." Haha!

reflection

there always comes that time every couple of months when i have to poke my head up and see where i am, get my bearings straight. so far it's a vast wilderness that i see before me. some of it looks quite daunting. i guess right now things are pretty good because i have a job, i have income, i have something i'm working toward (masters degree). but there are so many things up in the air like the job i want, the house i want, the ability to breathe and not feel like i'm holding my breath waiting for something. i've come to a decision about things. i don't just have dreams or hope anymore. i have goals. dreams and hope are nice, you know. you can dream about that job or that life. you can hope it happens, but unless you make it into a goal, it's not going to happen. so i'm turning all my hopes and dreams into goals, goals that i can achieve, that i tell myself i have to achieve. anyway, serious post for once. time to make my hope of getting to bed before midnight a reality. haha.

nostalgia

it's always weird to be back home. maybe it's because i don't come back often that when i do, it seems to all hit me at once. well, i did get to meet up with a friend who i haven't seen in six years. six years!!! holy crap i'm old! it's great to catch up though and find out that even though things have changed over the years, friends are still friends. that's always a nice feeling. sometimes it makes me miss the area and then i go all nostalgic. maybe if things work out, i'll move back. who knows. i'll get to see my friends more. now i'm thinking of all the stupid things i did in high school and thinking how stupid and immature i was. haha. well i think i was too mature and too immature all at the same time. oh hindsight, how i love thee! okay enough of the reminiscing. it's all gooey back there.

whoa

wow it's been a whole month since a post. i guess i got busy. *nod, nod, nod* well, that's what happens when you're working and in school. yes, i'm finally pursuing my master in forensic science! huzzah! now hopefully with that comes a job. yes, a reall csi job would be good. i dunno, besides that, i haven't been doing much else. nothing fun or interesting. just a lot of studying, paper writing, test taking, more paper writing, not sleeping. oh and throw in some wing chun into the mix and blend. it's been good though. speaking of wing chun, i'm trying to grade for my orange sash. i really don't think i'm ready but we'll see. hopefully i'll have a couple more weeks to practice. i think i'm learning a lot in the various classes, and i just need time to incorporate it into muscle memory. most of the time, i still don't know what the heck i'm doing. i feel like i've got the technique down when we're drilling, but when it comes to being thrown a random punch or kick, i'm completely at a loss. we'll see how things turn out after i start sparring. that'll be interesting and likely funny to watch.

uuugh

Sooooo tired!! Who would have thought this week would be so tiring. After that huge paper last week, the furthest thing on my mind was doing assignments and a final. But man, after finishing that, I'm just exhausted. School's not as easy as it seemed back in college. Maybe it's because I'm working as well and trying to have a somewhat normal life. This is why I have to go to kung fu training, to blow off steam. I build up a lot of steam at work. This week in particular. All I want to do now is shower and collapse. Perhaps I'll do that. Next week doesn't look to appealing. Much in the way of overtime. Yay for money but boo to being overworked and underpaid.

late nights and energy drinks

I didn't think I'd be up to doing this again, studying. How strange it is to be up trying to finish an assignment after a whole year of, well, not. I'm tired beyond tired considering I actually have to be present at work everyday at 7am. How glorious! Caffeine is my friend once again. I always tell myself that I'll try to get up early and do something, but that never happens. And then there's the procrastination, like I'm doing now. Okay time to get off the internet and continue working. Have to finish by midnight! That's the goal for tonight.

Miley Cyrus????

I never thought I would like music by this new breed of teen pop musicians but I was listening to the radio at work and Miley Cyrus' The Climb came on. I had no idea who sang it until I Googled it and took a double take. Miley Cyrus???? Me, like a song by Miley Cyrus?? What's next Taylor Swift? Jonas Brothers??? But anyway, I like the song. Actually, I feel like this could be my anthem right about now.

I can almost see it
That dream I’m dreaming but
There’s a voice inside my head sayin,
You’ll never reach it,
Every step I’m taking,
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking but I
Got to keep trying
Got to keep my head held high

There’s always going to be another mountain
I’m always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes I'm going to have to lose,
Ain’t about how fast I get there,
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb

The struggles I’m facing,
The chances I’m taking
Sometimes they might knock me down but
No I’m not breaking
I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I’m going to remember most yeah
Just got to keep going
And I,
I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on,
cause

There’s always going to be another mountain
I’m always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes I'm going to have to lose,
Ain’t about how fast I get there,
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb

restless

It's Sunday and for some strange reason, I'd rather be at work. Maybe it's just boredom, maybe I'm still thinking of how to reorganize the walk-in fridge so there's more room. I should be relaxing, but I say to myself, I did have a relaxing day. Maybe I need to start working overtime so when I do have days off, I'll enjoy it more. Ick, I'm turning into a workaholic. Wait, I'm already a workaholic; now an even worse workaholic. Well, at least I have wing chun in the evenings. Speaking of which, grading is on Saturday. I have a week to get everything down pat. I think I know it all, but I'm afraid of just tripping over myself which is a likely scenario. Well, I think there's reruns of Law and Order on tv right now. Yay!!

headline news

This month did not bode well for the entertainment industry with the untimely death of David Carradine. Then this week, Ed McMahon passed away, but today was a tragedy with the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and of course, Michael Jackson. The radio waves are bombarded with similar reports of his death and I can see the headlines tomorrow. Front page news, local section, entertainment section, calendar section...and so it will go.

Okay I guess I'm not seeing the intense impact of this. Call me a cynic. I mean yeah, it is Michael Jackson, who is probably the Elvis of our generation, but it still riles me up a bit that this trumps global events in terms of coverage. But I suppose with all the chaos going on locally, nationally, and globally, it's a reprieve from the impending doom of our planet.

Anyway, in other news:

> Iranian opposition leader Mir Houssein Mousavi continued to urge supporters to protest and will continue to challenge the elections that took place earlier this month.

> North Korea warns of retaliation if the US leads an attack. "Let's crush them," was the chant of hundreds of thousands at an anti-US rally.

> The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the strip search of an Arizona middle school student was illegal

want but can't have

sometimes there are things that you want so badly but you know you can't have them. no matter how much your heart wants it, you know in your mind it's not a good idea and have to use all the resistance in the world to refrain from just going for it. i guess the expression, "cant have your cake and eat it too" would apply.

so now what??

With work well under way and my car issue dealt with, I'm at that phase where I stop to evaluate my life and try to organize it into neat files and compartments. This is where I take time to tie up loose ends, fix things that need to be fixed, take care of finances, make lists of things to do, come up with/revise my 5 year and 10 year plan. Okay, so I micro-manage my life but if I don't, things just get too out of control and I don't like it when things get too unruly. I can cross of, "Get a job" and "Pay off loans". So now what? Master's degree, save money, get a boyfriend?? Apparently my single relationship status is a big topic of conversation whenever I call my relatives. "No, I'm not seeing anyone. Yes, I go out." Anyways, tangents aside, I think the Master's degree is the next on my list. Hopefully, I'll be able to start in a couple of months. Who knows, maybe by next year I'll be a working forensic scientist.

whirlwind

I've heard that expression, "When it rains, it pours," many times (especially in association with Morton salt) but in the last week and a half, it seems to be my motto. In brief, got into a car accident, had to get rental car, drove up north to buy a new car, drove back down to start new job, got rid of wrecked car, flying up north to drive new car down, and many other things associated with such events. It seems like these events cause all the other things that need to be taken care of in our lives to resurface. You know, all the daily "to-do's" that we keep pushing off or refusing to acknowledge. They get pushed off and pushed off until something happens that makes us deal with them. This is definitely one of those times, from the big to the small.

Cars and Stuff

I feel like everything has been off this week just because I was rear-ended. There's claims adjusters, estimates to get, rentals to acquire, doctors to see, not to mention the never ending phone calls to various insurance agents. Well, with luck it will all be resolved soon with the repair of my car. I hope that's the case anyway. Ah well such is life. Accidents happen which is why we have insurance. And the insurance companies make big bucks off of us. It all reminds me, I'm an adult, and I'm treading more and more into adult territory. I can't hid behind the label of "college student" anymore where I'm old enough to not be treated as a kid but still young enough to get away with certain responsibilities. Blast this phase! Haha. Well, you live and you learn and life goes on.

the good, the bad, and the ugly

the good: i'm starting my job after months of waiting! i'll officially be a county employee. i'm excited to start and be done with my old job.

the bad and the ugly: got rear ended on friday. my car looks terrible from the back, like a crunched accordian. so sad...

wing chun

Last month, I decided that I was going to start training in some form of martial arts. Hence wing chun kung fu. Today is my first grading. Yes, I should be practicing and warming up but instead I'm blogging. Hehe, not the highest priority right now, but I feel I'm prepared and cramming last minute isn't going to help. It's definitely not like midterms and finals where you can just cram the information in and forget about it. I really need to know my stuff here because they can call out anything and I have to be able to do it. It's really good way to improve focusing. I think I'm totally addicted to it now. It's kinda like in Kung Fu Panda when Panda goes, "I love kung fuuuuuuuuuuuu!"

wouldn't life be cool as a musical

i always thought life would be more interesting if it were a musical and people would randomly burst into song and dance. so here's something to indulge that fantasy...

sad state

Samson, Alabama: 10
Oakland, California: 4
Santa Clara, California: 5
Carthage, North Carolina: 8
Binghampton, New York: 13
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: 3
Graham, Washington: 5

it's beyond words. just look it up and you'll know what i mean.

crazy...

as time goes by

it's crazy realizing how fast time passes. i still remember things as if they happened yesterday but i realize it's been years, a decade even. we just get caught up in cycles of being busy and don't stop to take a breather, even a small one. some times it takes some drastic event to make us stop and look at everything we've zipped past as we rushed forward with our lives. i'm definitely learning to take those much needed time outs, even though sometimes i don't want to. it's really difficult to force yourself to stop entirely, stop the vibration of the zillions of cells that just want to keep charging. then, pick up and carry on.

RENT!

So after almost a decade of waiting, I finally got to see Rent and let me tell you, those orchestra tickets were worth every penny and then some. It was incredible. I mean, to hear that music live and see Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp live onstage was uninmaginably awesome. Half the time I had chills running down my back because the music was amazing. The other half, I was pinching myself to make sure it wasn't some dream. And then there was some audience participation in "Over the Moon" which was just great. (That's the song where Maureen asks the audience to moo with her. So we all moo-ed.) The whole storyline (albeit a modern retelling of La Boheme) is so much more than just about a bunch of gay people living with AIDS. It's about community, friendship, coping with life, coping with loss, finding stability, finding love, finding your dream but not selling out. There are so many songs, little interludes and such, that really touch on these points. Anyway, go see the show. It's awesome.

you can't stop the beat!

i feel like i'm going at a million miles a second. so many ideas, aspirations, desires. so many things that i'm doing and trying out. also addicted to hairspray for some reason right now. so here's a upbeat little number that's on repeat on my ipod.

nerd!

okay, i admit it, i'm a huge nerd, geek, dork, whatever. i can usually pretend i'm normal but then there's that random moment when i let something slip which reveals my nerdiness. it can be a huge turn off, especially when you're trying to impress people, especially if those people are your potential future supervisors! but it's then always nice to find out that the person is just as nerdy as you are, which is a huge relief. ok that's my rant of the day. nothing else new, except for my food poisoning/stomach flu issue. i need to get out of the house!!

Opera!

I've forgotten how much I love going to the opera. The last time I went was four years ago to see Baz Lurhman's La Boheme. And let me tell you, it was awesome! I mean, Baz Lurhman production, Puccini, LA BOHEME!! Anywho, The Marriage of Figaro was really good today. I guess I got sick of listening and playing Mozart that I never got to appreciate his larger and longer works. So I'm glad I went. The UCLA Opera is pretty impressive, some major talent. I realized that I tend to stop focusing on the staging after a while. I just focus on the music. And there's something about Mozart's music that just facilitates philosophical inquests in ones mind. I found myself thinking about so many things, some trivial, some profound. I like that about classical music, it makes you think. Or it helps you think. No wonder I did so well in high school: so much Mozart! Haha. Maybe I'll go listen to some symphonies and boost my IQ.

insomnia!

so i tried to go to sleep early tonight, at 10, but instead i'm blogging at midnight. we can see just how successful that endeavor turned out. anyway, i've been watching csi and doing crossword puzzles for the last two hours. yes, at the same time. i'm getting to be able to finish 75% of the ny times crosswords. that's a C average. working toward a B, but right now i'll settle. i keep having weird dreams. i should try that valerian root supplement and hopefully that'll help. it just get so loud sometimes which is the monkey wrench tossed in to mess up my sleep. did you know that it only takes 7 minutes to fall asleep. the act of falling asleep is actually quite fast. getting to that stage is the long part. oh well, hopefully this time it works.

american idol

Okay, so admittedly, the first episode of American Idol was pretty amusing and entertaining, but how many season's into it are we now? I mean eight seasons of finding the next American superstar just isn't enough. On top of that there's all the other talent contests on primetime TV. Honestly, with all the Michael Jordans, Angelina Jolies, and Brad Pitts to idolize, you'd think we'd have our heads filled to exploding with fantasies about them. It just made me think (and thinking is good because hero worship reveals a lack of intellectual examination) that we idolize and hero-ize them because there's so much we don't know about them. Well that was obvious. But think about it, why do we not idolize our friends or our family in the same way we idolize celebrities. We even go as far as idolizing fictional characters like Superman, Batman, or Gil Grissom and the rest of the CSI team (guilty as charged). But why? Because there's so much mystery to them, so much background about them that we don't know. It's like putting candy in front of a child and telling him not to eat it. These people are dangled in front of our noses and we're dared not to try to know them, to dig into their past, into their interests, their love lives. This aura of mystery surrounding these people is what gets to us eventually because by nature, human beings need connection. We form or seek to form connections with people, to get to know who they are an in turn letting them know who we are. I think it's this drive that causes us to be fascinated with celebrity figures and superstars because we fantasize about knowing them, connecting with them. So what's the moral of this rant? I don't know, just an intellectual investigation of idol worship. It's one of those phoenomenons that happen and no one wonders why it happens. Well, I wondered why.

"If man could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate."
Elbert Hubbard

lack of insight

boredom reigns!! i haven't had many insightful moments worthy of blogging about for the last couple weeks so here's to nothing! *raises champagne glass* well, i suppose there is some news deserving of a mention: 1) got sick. yay! 2) had several interviews. even bigger yay!! 3) getting a wii, possibly. okay, so i'm not so sure about the last one, but it's been "weighing heavily" on my mind. we'll see, but it just might be that i vaccilate back and forth over it, decide not to buy it, and then just buy it on an impulse. that's the most weighty decision i've had to face lately. hopefully that will change if i get hired. then it's which location, salary, benefits, my 401k and ira, blah blah blah. then i officially get to enter into post-college, working world. i get to commute!! but i also get more money. so that's a bonus. but i will have to reschedule my other activities like going to the gym, hanging out with sisters, cooking, shopping, cleaning, and the stuff that falls under the category: nothing. i'm actually quite excited about all that. let's just hope i get the job first.

Self defining consumerism

Jack: I would flip through catalogs and wonder "what kind of dining set defines me as a person?"

What defines me as a person? What defines any of us. Yes we all have our personality and odd quirks, but recent apartment decorating and various mall adventures has led to the conclusion of consumerism. That's right folks, good old buying and acquiring of stuff that we don't need (and some that we do). Like most people, we own things that are just "so us." The more we see what style those things are, the more we buy things similar to them and we acquire a look, a feel. We have to buy things that make us feel like us. I went shopping for a pair of sunglasses. Initially I had wanted Oakleys, but they just weren't me. Well, damn, who am I? Apparently, I'm a pair of Ray Bans that aren't too long or too skinny but just square enough to sit above my cheeks. And I thought I had moved away from being stuck on one brand, or any brand for that matter. I never thought of myself as playing into the whole young, working, money earning and spending consumer. It's just like that quote says, what kind of (fill in the blank) defines me as a person? How do I express my quirkiness and personality through the stuff I own? How does the stuff I own eventually mold me into a certain type of person with a certain style that I'm too blind to see and can't break out of even if I do se it? What about the books I read? Do I really enjoy reading them or do I just do it purely out of an expectation of me because that's just "who I am?" Even our activities and hobbies get definied by the things we purchase because of the associations that go with it. I bought a corkscrew because the old one broke, so now I'm a wine expert. Well, that's a bad example becuae I do find great enjoyment out of tasting wine and being a sort of oneophile. Ok, but my point is made. Well, what's next? A car? Well, I'd better make sure I buy one that's cool lest I give the impression that I'm not. Or even better, I better be cool so the cool car I buy is a reflection of that; coolness personified.