No more!

I've always had a tendency to quit or take the easy way out of things. Rather than really man up to issues, I just kind of recede and sit back, and for the most part it's always worked out alright. I think the only reason why it's worked out in the past was because life never really interested me much. It was just something to participate in, but never to really have a stake in.

But now things are actually really important to me. Not like "It'd be cool to have that last slice of cheesecake but no matter I can always buy some more" important, but "worth holding onto and never want to lose" important. Part of this is my own renewed drive to really be happy with my life, but I think a large part of it is because I have people who rely on me and whose happiness relies somewhat on my success. Maybe rely is a strong word to use, but I guess what I'm saying is I'm sure they'd be pretty bummed if I failed at life or offed myself.

So let's talk goals:

1) Don't chicken out and doubt myself; get into med school and become a kick-ass doctor (no really, I want to be a doctor who knows martial arts)

2) Make the people that love me happy, and make them feel loved, well, because they are. I've finally got a hold of some really great people to be my friends, and I don't want to let them go.

3) Get good at Korean. I owe it to my family, here and in Korea, to be able to communicate with them.

4) Get good at SSF4. May seem like a silly goal, but if I can't be good at a video game with fair, fixed rules, how can I expect to be good at life, a game with constantly changing rules that are never in your favor? This goal goes a little less with the theme of "people around me," but it is a personal obstacle that I really want to overcome and not just quit. Plus, David needs someone to be his rival.

I have the people around me to thank for this, because when your actions have consequences beyond just yourself, you tend to be more mature and well-thought about things. I was afraid that I would spend my life stuck in "me me me" world and end up alone, but I don't think that's so much of a problem anymore. I think I'm finally growing up a bit.

I'm an adult! >:o Hope somebody gets that reference.

Silly Alex -_-

-Slaps face-

So I guess that "New Habit" post failed in its duty... Well I foresee more blogging in the coming future, especially with summer coming up. Maybe I'll start actually playing guitar again. Until then, hello again, blogosphere.

New habit?

I've noticed as I get older and more and more things are introduced into my life, I have a harder time keeping track of it all. It'll be a good idea for me to blog about these things, whether they be pivotal moments in my life or just the movies I've watched recently and what I thought of them.

That's all I really had to say. After not blogging for so long, probably a big upset to the few people who actually follow this blog. Actually probably not even that big an upset, for obvious reasons. Well, that's my heads-up to those of you in the blogosphere keeping up with me. See you around.

Movies seen recently (kind of):
-Avatar (pretty with an elaborate universe, but stupid)
-Sherlock Holmes (fun, flawed, Robert Downey Jr. was awesome, probably enjoyed it more than I would have since I watched it with cool kids)
-Invictus (inspirational, good pacing, not exactly my cup of tea though, well-known American actors doing South African accents is awkward, and as always Morgan Freeman is a badass)
-Men Who Stare at Goats (amusing but overall disappointing, George Clooney's performance was strong but rest of cast was bleh)
-Up (finally got around to seeing this; was sweet, original, heart-wrenching, and thrilling)
-9 (like Avatar, pretty, but a lot of the artsy elements served no purposes, plagued with plot holes and a stupid plot, but humanoid dolls fighting sentient robots is always kind of cool--I would say "original," but the movie is based on a previously made short-film)
-Law Abiding Citizen (just plain awful, so please never watch this movie)

Movies I want to see:
-Fantastic Mr. Fox
-Up in the Air
-Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (an old movie, kind of a random urge)
-Where the Wild Things Are
-Youth in Revolt (not going to expect to much, though)

Music of interest at the moment:
-Ronald Jenkees
-The Shins (not so much a new interest but just can't seem to get sick of them)
-Ingrid Michaelson
-Mondo Grosso (Shinichi Osawa)
-Spoon (I've always had their albums on my hard-drive, but only in the last year did I realize how good they were)
-Nostalgic video game and cartoon music (I blame David and Andy, respectively, for this)

That actually ended up being longer than I had anticipated. Cool!

Career / Life Complex

I've always been opposed to having a career; I'd much rather work many different jobs in a number of different places. It sounds commitment-phobic and this fantasy might reveal my aversion to complicated/stressful work, but I think such a life-style would be a rewarding adventure. But that's just fantasizing. That would never fly with my family, and I'm too attached to the idea of (relative) career and economic security.

That aside, I was thinking about how careers tend to influence how we are as people. Thinking of the preceding spiel actually didn't temporally precede what led me to think of this topic in the first place...

Today I got my hair cut. TFS, right? No, shush. Anyway, so I go to the hair salon with my brother and I'm up first. It's obvious Grace ajuma remembers cutting my hair before, as she asks me if I want it cut like last time. But the funny thing is she doesn't remember me; she just remembers my hair. Grace knows how long each area on my head was cut, and can remember roughly around when she last cut it, but she doesn't know a goddamn thing about me. In fact, she asks me if I'm Alex or David, and if I'm the one who just finished Law School.

Obviously it's understandable that she can't remember personal details about the dozens of people whose hair she cuts. However, what I found interesting was the extent of her knowledge of my hair. That got me thinking about jobs in the service sector, and how professionals must remember people mostly through the way in which they serviced them. Hair cutters remember hair, lawyers remember cases, dentists remember teeth, prostitutes remember penises (I'm only guessing so), etc.

Then do doctors remember illnesses? As someone considering a career in medicine, I felt a little depressed at the prospect of remembering people in my life by their ailments, benign and fatal. Tom? Oh the guy with heart disease. The woman paralyzed from the waist down. Leukemia kid. Tasty Coma Wife. I wonder if this is the path I want to go down.

[Edit: I forgot to add that nobody in my extended family that I know is David; my brother, who was with me at the time, is named Christopher. He graduated from law school at UC Hastings, not me. Also if you don't get the "Tasty Coma Wife" reference, I realize that sounds really offensive. Sorry to anyone with relatives who are in a coma.]

Broken?

So I'm finally here at college. Yay. It's turning out to be a decent amount of what I'd wanted and expected. Especially the freedom. But what I didn't expect was how odd I'd be responding to this new freedom. I almost feel anxious about having an unregulated, self-planned schedule. To have almost complete control about how one goes about one's day is kind of a scary thing for me. Today I decided to have lunch at 3 instead of at 12, the latter being the strict time that my grandma adhered to. And it was awesome. Now I'm going to go eat dinner, and I'm actually hungry, unlike usual when I'm just forced to sit and eat at the same time every night. But I still feel anxious for what I have--I mean want to do tomorrow. Hopefully this anxious feeling will go away and I'll be able to embrace my freedom better.

"The best rape whistle is your voice!"

This amused me, that's all. No special commentary or anything; it really speaks for itself.

-Sigh-

I want to meet the 17% who got this problem wrong -_-. 17% of 39,609 people is 6733.53 people. So 6733 people and 1 midget got this problem wrong. -Sigh-...