End of Year

Well, we made it. I never thought this day would arrive, but we actually survived junior year at Oxford Academy. Congratulations to everyone. We have (only) one year left. And for Andrew, congratulations on entering college life.

I think we should take this time to look back at the pleasant memories from the year. Don't think back to the shoulda, woulda, coulda's - it doesn't matter now. Treasure the good memories and give yourself a pat on the back for a break well deserved.

Yesterday I went to go watch Kung Fu Panda with my homie Allula. It was a pretty good movie, considering I didn't know what to expect. The opening was the funniest scene in the movie because it was like hearing Will Trinidad talk. I won't spoil it for you by quoting the line. I went out to the movies with my Spiderman tee and Ecko jean-shorts (my "outfit", as Sheena would say). At school and the bonfire, people mentioned that the jeans were definitely cool. Especially the white pockets in the back. They really make my butt stand out by drawing attention to its toastiness and excellent protrusion. My butt is like an Ursa major in a clear summer sky. I think if I try hard enough, I can look like a centaur.

Anyway, an interesting incident happened when I stopped by Marie Calendar's after the movies to pick up a pecan pie. As I approached the entrance, I saw an old white couple and their family members starting to make their way out the door. The woman saw me and my outfit and eyed me warily for a second before turning her eyes away. I think she was suspicious of my character. So I quickened my steps toward the door and held it open before they had reached the door. The woman's eyes widened and she said thank you with the most surprised expression ever. I thought that was great. I am going to continue putting on this outfit when I go to places just to see what kind of reaction I get from people. But then again, maybe just as wrong as stereotyping other people is assuming that other people will make stereotypes. Whatever, I still like my applebottom jeans.

So I promised a post on girls last time I wrote. Unfortunately, I don't have much to say about them anymore. The strange thing about me is, I hit puberty when I was like in 3rd or 4th grade. So now I think I am at a stage where girls' attractiveness doesn't hit me on the head. No girl is too cute or hot or pretty anymore. (Been around the world, seen so many girls...) Starting a few years ago, I used to really dig girls with cool personalities (nice, honest, funny, etc) and I still do, but I think the immediate physiological effect of an encounter with a female has worn off now. I'm getting old. I am pretty sure it will take something special for me to fall in love with a girl again.

Not to make myself a fucking saint here but what I've discovered this year is that I have an irrational concern for the futures and well-being of girls who are cool. Remember that passage from Catcher in the Rye when Holden worries about Jane getting with Stradlater? That's the case for me. I am not concerned about the girl because I am jealous of her meeting up with another guy. I am concerned because she is cool and doesn't deserve to be treated like trash. I also have a tendency to think of girls as emotionally fragile and I always hope that they are protected from emotional hurt. Sometimes, this paternal instinct gets in the way of my interactions with those girls. In online conversations, it's easier/less awkward for me to ask them how they are doing or give them sincere encouragements/advice and stuff, but in real everyday interactions with someone, it's harder to do that. I joke around with girls most of the time and it's fun sometimes but really I would rather be listening to their problems and offering them my help rather than kidding around.

Anyway, on to other things... I suddenly remembered a conversation that I had with Vy , An's older sister, a while back. For anyone who doesn't know Vy, she's a true genius. She is two years up on me in the educational ladder, but she's still younger than me. She had a quote in her profile about how logic trumps feeling: "Reason is also our potential salvation from the vicious and precipitous mass action that rule by emotionalism always seems to entail." The rest of the quote had something about how making decisions based on logic is better than acting out of feeling. I agree with the quote in that logic is clearly the better choice in maintaining an organized society. Laws are possible because of reason, and they secure our cherished ideals like freedom and equality. Reason prevents unfair treatment of others- if all of us thought logically, we would have less wars, less misunderstandings, more productivity, better social relations, etc.

I can't help but think, though, that we should stop drawing such a stark line between reason and emotion. We should learn to employ a healthy dosage of both and not always in disparate situations. Reason teaches us to make the decisions that have the most favorable consequences by mathematical odds, proven cause + effect relationships, previous life experiences, etc. It increases the chance of us achieving the goals we want. For instance, if I'm trying to impress a girl and I know that she likes an apple-flavored perfume and she hates getting flowers, I'm going to make sure I wear an apple-flavored perfume and don't get her flowers. That will increase the chance of me hooking up with the girl. But notice how the reasoning process is directly linked to the emotion. Why am I trying to hook up with the girl in the first place? Because that's my goal. Why is that my goal? Because I like her. You can't use reason to explain that. Reason can tell you what decisions you should make but only your feelings can empower you with the ability to make those decisions.

I am going to be gone for the month of July to study bioengineering at UCSD... but let's hang out before or after then. PEACE.

This will be a long post. A lot of things have happened in the last few weeks.

First and foremost, my computer was infected by a horrible spyware last Sunday. I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to protecting the computer and all, but this was one tough bastard. What an epic battle. So this is how it went down. I left the computer for about ten minutes and then came back in the room and then saw this mob of huge black cyber beetles crawling all over my screen. They were like those beetles that invaded our school, except these sons of bitches secreted semen. That's right. They were skeeting all over my nature wallpaper, covering my sunset background with blue love juice. Which sick bastard would create such a spyware? Anyway it turns out that the beetles are part of a screensaver... except I don't have a screensaver.

So as you can imagine, I was panicking and busting out Spybot and Ad-aware. I managed to get the spyware out but then somehow it sabotaged my Internet connection on its way out. So I gave a call to Time Warner Cable, which I hate doing. A young woman answered the phone, and I was wondering whether she was Indian or not but I couldn't tell. She started walking me through the basic crap like restarting the modem and unplugging the router.

And then the moment of truth came. She told me to run "ipconfig" on the computer. To help me spell that, she said: "I for India... P for Peter..." Right when I heard "I for India," I half-grunted and half-laughed. I for India? Really now? But then it got better. She put me on hold for 30 minutes... and then transferred me to a customer representative in Maine. The guy in Maine had to laugh when I told him my address because, you know, Maine is not even close to California. One call back to the California station got me in touch with a different customer representative. I thought I could detect the Indian accent and sure enough, the woman on the phone said "I for India" as she spelled out "ipconfig" for me again. I wonder if this is their way of retaining their cultural heritage and bonding as a group against the vicissitudes of immigrant experience. I sure hope so.

A few days ago my mom got into a car accident. While I was at school, a dude ran into her bumper at a parking lot. The car only suffered a few bumps and scratches in the back, and my mom wasn't hurt. It was the dude's fault for bumping into her, and they apparently negotiated for a settlement of $100. My mom is very sharp when it comes to these things, and she made sure she got the compensation (she followed him to his house when he said he didn't have his checkbook, then she didn't trust his bulky checkbook so she had him give the money in cash). Then after talking to me about it, my mom started feeling sorry she took the money.

You know that quote in The Catcher in the Rye about all mothers being slightly crazy? Well my mom is pretty crazy. She has these completely false theories about how the world works, and she makes hasty generalizations about things based on the first impressions. So she starts describing the guy to me: he is middle-aged Caucasian male, he was wearing a shabby gray shirt, he lived in an apartment home and his car was old so he was probably single and poor. But based on his facial expression, she thought he was a nice person. He submitted meekly to her requests after the accident and made sure she was all right. Then she tells me that the guy's nails were all chewed up, which means he was probably a nervous person and therefore had lots of things to worry about like relationships and financial security. She remembers the top of his hands being slightly darkened and oily so she thinks he was a car mechanic maybe. By this time I knew my mom was going off on her extrapolations but I was quite impressed by her observations. And I was starting to feel pretty sorry for the guy too. My mom is thinking about returning the money since she knows where he lives. I suggested she buy him lunch instead.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be human. Really, what sets apart humans from other living creatures? The first and foremost thing that comes to mind for me is morals. Humans have come up with this thing called morals, which force them to hold back their instinctive behavior and desires so that they can "do the right thing." But it's interesting that the human morals are different across time and place. You look at the past and some parts of the world today, and people tolerate things like abuse against women or persecution of a religious group. And really, that's why there are so many conflicts and wars. We fight over which set of morals is correct.

Still, if you look at the progression of human civilizations over time, there is a general consensus forming about the desired set of morals. Toleration of differences, treating others the way you want to be treated, freedom of speech are just some of the morals that prevail in most parts of the world. This gets me thinking then, just how likely is it that today's semi-universal set of morals prevailed? In other words, what were the chances of humans creating a world like the one today, where they value things like freedom, equality, and respect toward each other? Is it in our nature to create such a world or did it happen by chance? Could humans have created a ruthless competitive society rife with violence and guided by Darwinism alone? It's funny, all humans have is a more complex nervous system than other mammals. Can we attribute a bigger brain to the creation of a collective set of morals?

Sorry about the long boring post today. Next post will be about girls.

Bye bye AP Tests

We're finally done. Ok I still have AP Lang tomorrow but I am going to just wing it because I am a fob and one night of cramming won't refine my linguistic sensibilities. In retrospect, Calc AB was ok, APUSH was pretty hard, Bio FRQ was ridiculous, and Chem was pretty hard. At the beginning of the year, it seemed that the year would never end but time's been moving pretty fast now that I think about it. Now we are ready to be seniors. Scary.

Dining in the Dark last Friday was amazing. We were expecting around 100 people to show up and got about 260. We started running out of tables and chairs so the extra guests just dragged tables and chairs from some other rooms and formed their own communities. Props to Peter Kim for getting volunteers for the event. Without them, serving the food for that many guests would have been impossible. I stayed in the kitchen for most of the event. The volunteers and I formed our very own child-labor assembly line and prepared the dishes. I was the bread and butter guy and damn good at it. But really, serving food for 260 people was much more time-consuming than I thought. I was standing there with bread and butter for what seemed like hours, and then someone came in to say that 75 guests still needed to be served. We ran out of meatballs but I think it worked out all right.

The best part about the event was the talent show. Peter and An delivered an awesome performance. It was actually my first time seeing Peter play the guitar and I thought he would look funny but he looked natural. An's voice really surprised me above anything else. I don't think most people are aware that An can sing damn well. What I will always remember is that during his rendition of What a Wonderful World, a blind girl in the audience just stood up and swayed to the music, despite her mother's chiding. A blind girl and a choir director sang after them, and they were amazing too. Just an awesome experience overall.

When I look back at my experience at Oxford, one thing I will definitely remember is eating lunch by the basketball courts. It started in either seventh or eighth grade, and we the original founding fathers of the sacred playground are still upholding the tradition. I remember about two weeks ago, the basketball courts were shut off so that new courts could be built, and I felt like a displaced refugee. The basketball courts are our natural habitat. There are many memories from those courts that I cherish: Peter Kim breaking Jun's ankles in seventh grade, Alan Nguyen going through a week of shooting superstardom, Chad being Chad. Good stuff.

Recently I've been wondering about whether or not I really care about other people, whether there are common characteristics in people I do care about, and what my motives may be for caring. Because the act of caring is strangely linked to my psychological health, I've been questioning my intention. But I think I can safely say now that acts of kindness I do for others are inspired only by the act of caring. I wonder what the origin of all that is. Whatever it is, I'm glad humans have it.

Things

For everyone getting stressed out about the upcoming AP tests, let's keep our heads up for two and a half more weeks. Really, that's how much time is left and it'll all be over before we know it. Then it's PARTY TIME!

Today I got a haircut and it's really pissing me off. My barber must have had a spurt of creativity and decided to experiment on me as a guinea pig. Basically it looks like I have a fucking propeller on my head. Symmetrically it makes no sense at all. I have a Berlin Wall at the left side of my head and then a much bolder and outrageous Great Wall of China at the right. When I got home and took a closer look (I was sleeping while getting my hair cut), I started yelling out names of ethnic headwear that my hair resembled. Man I feel duped.

For those of you who didn't have a chance to read my article in The Gamut, the Dinner in the Dark Event is on Friday, May 9 from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. Teenagers at Braille Institute are holding the charity event to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. If you are interested in coming, you will be served dinner blindfolded to simulate what it's like to be blind. Tickets are $10, but the food will be awesome, and there will also be musical performances by students from different high schools. Let me know if you are interested.

So I asked Kat to prom last week. It was really a spur of the moment thing (at midnight before the ticket prices rose) because I never gave prom too much serious thought. Anyway I had no idea how I was going to ask her so I thought about it in the shower the next morning. Then I remembered Will Nguyen's idea about using Common's I Used to Love Her and then figured I may just rap it. After all, I've listened to the song tons of times so it shouldn't be that hard. I would just have to change some words around (I almost missed the line "A few New York niggas had did her in the park" ) and then set it up for APUSH class.

I woke Will up at 6:45 in the morning and he was kind enough to find me the instrumentals. Then I set it up with Casanova and all was good. The actual "performance". It's really hard for me to describe what I was feeling up there. It was easily the most nervewracking experience in my life. I was scared, pissed, frustrated, embarrassed all at the same time. This beat out all of my previous failures in life and all of my previous embarrassments including the time I accidentally read my diary aloud in elementary school. This beat out Kobe's adultery expose, Bill Clinton's White House affair, Nixon's humming over Watergate tapes, Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Kwame Brown being drafted first, etc. But nevertheless, I'm glad I did it and I hope Kat has fun.

Song of the hour: Masta Ace- Brooklyn Masala

Life Goes On

It's been a month since I last wrote in my blog. Time is passing too fast.

Some recent events:

A couple weeks ago, I received a surprise visit from Paul Song and his dad, a pastor. They were going around the apartment complex telling people about their church community. But this was one evangelical encounter I didn't mind. Paul's dad just talked to me and my mom about our family and then their family. They weren't trying to convert me or force me to attend their church service. We just shared a little bit about each other's lives, like a normal conversation. And then Paul's dad genuinely wished my family happiness and luck. This made me think again that this is really what religion is all about. It's about bringing people closer by engaging them in discussions of real life experiences and encouraging them to look out for one another.

Lakers have been playing terribly. Without Gasol and Bynum, they are shooting way too many 3's. Odom is actually playing well, but he still uses only his left hand. For God sakes, he drives to the right with his left hand.

Yesterday was the bonfire at Huntington Beach. I should've worn shorts because guys were playing tackle football. But then again it got pretty cold at night. It was nice seeing Todd and Kunhee again. I didn't have as much fun as I hoped to because I was just damn tired. I remember standing in front of the fire next to Justin (he was bizarrely indecisive about serenading with his guitar) and just staring at the fire. I was sort of in a state of trance, and I remember thinking deeply about something but I don't remember what it was. That pretty much sums up my life.

Recently I've been thinking about this girl I've known for a while. For some reason, we've never gotten to know each other well. The thing is, she's one of the few people whose personality and character are complete mysteries to me. Even though I may not talk to some people, I at least know what they are like by listening to what they say or observing how they act. Not with this girl. A big part of that is I haven't talked to her that much. It's strange, I think we have many many similarities. We can both talk a lot but somehow find something in each other that prevents us from talking to each other.

Song of the century: Common- I Used to Love H.E.R.

February 27

Farewell, my youth and innocence. Farewell, Hannah Montana.

Basketball, Forgiveness, In N Out

Yesterday, I had a lot more fun than I've had in a while. I met up with Ashish and we played basketball at Central Park. Ashish is pretty skinny still but apparently has been going to gym to prep for track. Even though I reminded him that he is genetically inferior, he kept trying to do the Dwight Howard superman dunk. We played 21 with this middle-aged Korean man and he kept making 3-pointers from the very deep corner (almost behind the backboard). My stroke was horrible but I still won somehow. Then we played 4 on 4 with what looked like guys in college. They were pretty chill. There was one big guy on my team that they kept calling DJ Mbenga. They also called Ashish "Jubran" every time he got the ball. We played two games up to 15 and split.

After basketball, I went over to Ashish's house and watched the second half of the All Star Game. I was getting pissed because I wanted Kobe to take over the fourth quarter and skeet all over Ray Allen and LeBron. Oh well, next time.

I've been thinking about it for a while and I've decided I'm glad that humans can forgive other people. If we stayed mad at each other for too long, the world would be a lot messier. Hurt feelings go a long way, but I don't think hatred or anger lasts as long. I occasionally get very angry at people and I will take some sort of hostile action then and there, but the anger tends to fade. Then I get a chance to reevaluate the situation when I'm clearheaded.

Oh, and this made my day on Friday. Strange things happen when I go to In N Out. First, I lose my interest in Latinas. And now this. I was standing in line to get a double-double when I overheard a group of girls sitting at a table behind me. Amazingly, they all seemed to be of different nationalities like it was a Toyota commercial. So as I am standing there, I suddenly hear them whispering about something. Then I hear this: "His calves are big." I was wearing cargo shorts but I didn't pretend to hear. I wasn't sure it was me anyway. Then this: "His butt is pretty cute."

Now wait a minute (good ole Mr. Cullinane) you gotta understand something. I've been getting lots of crap about my gluteus maximus lately. In fact on Friday, Kathleen told me in APUSH to "move my booty" because it was preventing her from reading something. In other words, my buns are quite toasty and they won't lie about it. But the girl's choice of diction "cute" was what really struck me. I've heard girls describe some of the damnest things as cute, and this was another instance. Blessed with a visual learning style, I then tried to picture my butt for a millisecond and wondered whether it was indeed cute. As I became conscious of all this chaos swirling in my head, I began cracking up. Then the girls started cracking up behind me. At that moment, I couldn't decide whether or not to turn around but I was saved by the counter lady who took my order. Then as I walked out with my order, I grinned at them and they cracked up again. I have to say that was once in a lifetime experience.