SoMaNyThOuGhTZ13 on Xanga

Tuesday, 03 November 2009

Package!

Weird things I like to do:
~ map out the route that UPS takes to get my packages to me (based on arrival/departure scans) and try to guess how many days it will take for my package to arrive
~ play package delivery race with my boyfriend and bet on whose package will arrive first (obviously mine because i'm pseudo friends with our mailman "Norman")

I think I like getting packages and tracking their progress to my doorstep more than just buying a gift at a store. The anticipation makes it super exciting when the self-present actually comes. I'd like to think that the guys who drive the huge trucks filled with packages across the country feel a little bit like Santa Claus.
Lazy much?

And I was just about to take a nap from homework when I saw this. :/

Monday, 19 October 2009

Try Not to Jinx It

Sometimes people make predictions about your life that they think are nice normal comments like "Oh I'm sure you'll get into this program" or "When you guys get married/have kids/whatever...". And it makes me really really nervous because I feel like they're inadvertently jinxing my life with their happy thoughts.

I think a big part of it has to do with expectation. I'm scared of expecting good things to happen because I always feel like such an idiot when they don't. When asked about things that are actually really important to me, I try to act noncommittal and indifferent. I hate making big declarations that might not come true so I always tell people that I'm sure the worst will happen instead because I'd rather be surprised than disappointed. Maybe I lack confidence. Maybe I lack faith. Maybe I'm just an incorrigible pessimist.

But that's not true at all. The truth is I hope. I hope all the time and for too many things. I try desperately not to be the girl who lets everyone know that all her eggs are secretly in one basket and she doesn't have a back-up plan. But it doesn't matter. Because even if no one else realises it, all the pretty daydreams that I have about the future linger in my sleep at night and refuse to be dismissed. I'm that ridiculous girl who hopes and dreams and wishes for the silly things she can't say out loud.

So please be careful what you predict or promise or act like is a given. Because once you get me thinking that way, its going to be so much harder to accept disappointment.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

Oh So Cheesy

I think I'd be really depressed if I became lactose intolerant because I LOVE cheese! Feta, gorgonzola, brie, cheddar, swiss, parmesan, provolone... yum yum yum. My roommate and I plan to buy one new cheese every few weeks to try and hopefully by the end of the year, we'll be lovely cheese connoisseurs and hold a wine/grape juice and cheese party. :]

This week's cheese: Gouda (it's so gouda :P).

On my wish list: Camembert, Fontina, Gruyere...

Please introduce me to yummy cheeses you know (and ways to eat them)!

Monday, 05 October 2009

"You're so ambitious for a juvenile"

I am terrified of my graduate school applications.

My entire college career has been geared towards this moment. I remember planning all the classes I would take at orientation with graduate school in mind. I took the entire introductory 10 series with students one or two years older than me. I joined and now (co-)head the undergraduate research journal and the English honor society. I started research and presented at my first academic conference my second year. I applied for grants, submitted papers to national publications, and took the GREs. I worked on my senior thesis this summer and this quarter I got started on Latin, my third foreign language, so that I can learn to do my own translations of texts. I planned for this moment from the very beginning and to a level completely beyond the nonchalant way I approached college apps.

But now that I stand on the precipice, ready to take the plunge, I feel doubtful, afraid.

Everyone I know who is applying is a year older or is taking a gap year to apply. They seem so mature and confident and I feel so young and inexperienced. Leaving college means being an adult and fending for yourself. I won't have any financial support from my parents and I shouldn't expect to. This time next year, I could be all alone in a strange city, paying bills and doing taxes, slaving over 20-pg papers and leading discussion section for students my own age.

I try to convince myself that I'm ready, that life forces us to grow up. But whenever I think about my future lately, I get that anxious feeling in my chest that I get right before a big speech or when something scary is about to happen in a movie. I've been planning for this all along, but now that it's here, I feel like everything is going way too fast and all I want to do is slow down.

I made a decision early on to graduate college in three years. And now that I'm in my senior year, I am seriously freaking out like no other.

I'm afraid of having an insufficient writing sample or not being able to find a good third letter of recommendation. I'm afraid of not getting in anywhere, of being seen as young or green or naive or stupid. I'm afraid of not being able to pull off a long distance relationship; I'm afraid of being one of those TAs that everyone hates or being admitted into a program where everyone quotes Lacan like its Harry Potter and is infinitely smarter than me.

It's Judgment Day. Which side will the scales fall?

"But then if you're so smart, tell me
why are you still so afraid?"

Thursday, 03 September 2009

Hats and Elephants, Cabbages and Kings

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things..."

New background! I haven't been motivated to blog lately so I thought a change of scenery might do the trick. Cute elephants always remind me of the part in Le Petit Prince with the picture of a boa constrictor who had just eaten an elephant, which all the silly grown-ups thought was just a hat. Senior year in high school, Lillian and I asked Jon what it was a picture of and he immediately said "HAT" and we were oh so disappointed in him. Although to his defense, the picture we showed him wasn't in color so that may have tripped him up a bit. :]

As for the quote, it comes from the song "Lifeboats" from Snow Patrol's new album A Hundred Million Suns. My favorite song from the album is "If There's a Rocket Tie Me to It," but that didn't really seem to fit with the elephant ("Set Down Your Glass" is a close second). I have tickets to see Snow Patrol in LA in October with my bestie and boyfriend so I'm super super excited. I hope they play "The Golden Floor" just so I can see them whack a giant plant on a snare drum (just a thought: people always talk about animal rights, but what about veggie rights?).

In other news, there is a mysterious mosquito-like creature lurking in my house that likes to bite me when i'll asleep (somewhat reminded of Dracula where all the characters keep saying, "wow she looks really pale today... I can't imagine why..."). I've been out camping 5+ times this summer and I swear I get more bug bites at home than in the great outdoors. I woke up this morning with a swollen hand because the evil bugger had bitten me on my knuckles and both index fingers. One day I will find the culprit and squish it mercilessly, but until then I will have to type with exceedingly pudgy fingers. :/

So this has been a really outdoorsy hiking-oriented sort of summer. I hiked my first two fourteeners (White Mountain Peak - 14,252 ft - and Mt. Whitney - 14,497 ft) and my first class II peak (Mt. Dana in Yosemite), went backpacking, and travelled around Alaska for a week. I also did some local hiking with some friends, but we only went a few times because I wasn't in town a lot of the time (plus, Junchi got more interested in cooking than hiking as the summer went on.. o.O). I haven't been able to do any intensive hiking for a long time now (mostly due to my lack of a car) so it's been really nice to get back in shape. I never workout as much as I plan/hope to during the school year.

I think one thing I really love about hiking is that there's a destination at the end of a hike and even when you want to give up, you still can't go home unless you finish. You always end up somewhere different from where you started and I adore any sort of travel. Maybe this is why running on a track never really appealed to me; you never seem to be going anywhere.

I've been thinking about a hiking bucket list of sorts and I've decided that at some point I want to do the following hikes:

_ San Jacinto Peak & San Gorgonio Mt. (in socal - maybe sometime during the school year?)
_ Santa Monica Mountains (also during the school year)
_ Half Dome in Yosemite
_ day hike Mt. Whitney in under 15 hrs (i.e. 2 AM to 5 PM)
_ Mt. Langley (second highest CA peak) + Mt. Muir (another fourteener short distance from Whitney trail)
_ Mauna Kea in Hawaii
_ 6-7 day hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,000+ ft)
_ the Inca trail in Peru
_ top 10-12 cultural mountains in China in one trip (a family friend of ours is considering doing this trip next summer with a goal of hiking one every 1-2 days)
_ the LOTR trail to "Mordor" in New Zealand :P

To be considered:
_ 212-mi John Muir Trail (from Yosemite Valley to Whitney Portal) - takes 20-30 days (graduation trip??)
_ Mt. Shasta*, Mt. Hood*, Mt. Rainier*

Also, sometime in my lifetime, I would like to kayak, skydive, and bungee jump - and perhaps learn to mountain bike, just because there seem to be some really great biking trails everywhere (i.e. in Canyonlands). I'm still contemplating whether or not I want to learn how to use an ice axe and crampons yet though.* I would love to climb a class III mountain and do Summit For Someone someday, but I'd hafta get over the super-sharp-dangerous-object-ness of it all. Maybe I'll do it if I can find someone to come with and train with me?

There are quiet days when I daydream about living happily in some tiny house lined with bookshelves, reading by a cozy fireplace with two sleepy cats in my lap. But there are also tumultuous days when I can't sit still and I imagine myself traveling the world, climbing tall mountains and strolling the streets of brightly lit cities. I think I haven't quite figured out which version of myself I want to be yet. But perhaps one ought to forget about dichotomies for a moment and just live life without trying to define it.

"In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June." - Mrs. Dalloway

Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Why I love my boring partyless college life

"Your picture of social triumphs is quite fascinating, Phil, but I'll paint one to offset it. I'm going home to an old country farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I've heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and thin, one short and fat; and there will be two twins, one a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a 'holy terror.' There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like my picture, Phil?"

"It seems a very dull one," said Phil, with a grimace.

"Oh, but I've left out the transforming thing," said Anne softly. "There'll be love there, Phil - faithful, tender love, such as I'll never find anywhere else in the world - love that's waiting for me. That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn't it, even if the colors are not very brilliant?"

-Anne of the Island

Now if only summer would go by faster so I could get back to my Diana and Gilbert. :)

Thursday, 06 August 2009

No.

All the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... And I'll look down, and whisper "No." -Watchmen

There are days when I wish I could be that cold, not just in a moment of anger, but on principle. To not care about the people who don't deserve your pity. But I'm terrible at saying "No" and I do care and I forgive people the second they do something nice because I think, hey we're all human and we all make mistakes. When I'm mad at you, I imagine cutting you out of my life, but I know I'd never be able to actually go through with it because I can't say "No" and so I sit in my closet and cry and cry and cry.

And this is why I am not a superhero, vigilante, or badass.