Old Beginnings

I switched back to my first love, my first (of many) domain name on blogspot.

I miss this place

Wow. Having read through these posts, it feels like it's someone else writing it.

What a relic. It's a sign of my past. I used to have so much fun here. I spent a lot of time thinking of new things I wanted to write about. Then editing and rewriting it a thousand times before I dared post anything. Even deleting it because somehow I thought it gave a way too much.

Some things have not changed, much to my regret. Hm.

Beowulf, the movie

Shout out to High School AP English IV. Man, I miss that class. Those were the times. Makes me nostalgia since I've been watching season one of Laguna Beach (which has nothing to do with each other much except LB is high schoolish).

All I've heard about this movie is that Angelina Jolie is supposed to be in it. I think she's a mother of someone. Am I right? Have to check that. [I just read that Neil Gaiman was one of the screenwriters, and that makes me want to see it even more as I just read Stardust and loved it.]

Anyways, I definitely have to check it out. Having read it in High school English compels me to.

You know, this got me thinking that maybe a whole generation of kids who have to read it will just watch this movie instead. Hey, it is has Angelina Jolie in it, then why not, right?

I hope the movie lives up to the book. I loved studying ancient and world literature . That part of the curriculum instilled a life long fascination. It is by far more enriching than American Literature, which I studied as a junior. I don't know if it's the themes or the material chosen, but American lit, which made up a majority of AP English III, was a bore compared to the richness I found in the works I studied a year later.

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School shuns tech, teaches fountain pen

Hey, this reminds me of my former school where they strict rules where we had to wear a uniform, which was a no brainer and not a big deal. But then they continued to restrict other things as well. Like students must use a fountain pen and they regulated what type of pen and color ink. We also had to carry briefcases as book bags. That ok, but not when you develop calluses on your hands because briefcases are not really meant for the average student. I wished the administrators would have taken that into account, but all they cared about was putting up a respectable image.

We would also have handwriting lessons. Don’t remember much except that you were suppose to join the letters in a certain way. Of course, all those lessons went to waste. Here I could write however I pleased. And during my high school days here, I developed what I consider to be the standard handwriting of teenage girls—that big, non-joining style complete circles as dots. I can’t adequately describe it here, but I think people know what I’m talking about.

I think I still have a few left over fountain pens, and some ink cartridges as well. I used those Parker fountain pens, btw. I’ve been thinking about using them again with my moleskine notebooks. I should look for them. I should, but I packed them somewhere up there in my closet. It’s going to be a pain to look for them.

Link

Karma

This is where I tell you I believe in fate. I believe that dreams do come true. (This is so sappy, but I don't care.)

Several weeks back, I decided to try to reestablish contact with one of my oldest best friends. We had lost contact when I moved, and it had been 5+ years since we last talked/IM/or wrote. I couldn't email her; the messages kept coming back to my inbox as message delivery failed. So I went through old letters she sent me to get her home address, and I found it. So I wrote her a letter. It was a weird one considering that we haven't talked in ages, and I didn't know if she had moved or what not. It was more like an introductory letter in an I-hoped-that-you-still-remembered-me type of a tone.

A couple of days ago, I had a dream that my friend got my letter, and she sent me a reply. I was going to post it on this blog, but I only got so far as one sentence in a draft. After having that dream, I was going to ask my father if he had sent out that letter, but I guess I don't need to anymore.

Today I got an email reply from her. Seeing her name was the originator of that email made me squeal with delight and amazement. I am glad for this moment. She's doing ok, and that's what I'm thankful for.

What have they done to my Smurfs?!

Bombing Smufs for a cause. Another idyllic childhood ruined. I miss the Smurfs. Are they still on TV?

Goodbye, Mr. Jones

I just found out that one of my math teachers passed away this February.

God. I went to school overseas, so it's so hard to keep in contact with old friends and pass teachers. I get almost zero news from my past schools. And to me hit with is shocking.

When I first saw the name, I was like, no way that can't be my math teacher. It can't bee. Perhaps there was another teacher with the same name.

The crazy thing is that I was just thinking about math recently and how he taught the O level math class. I was reminiscing about what a hard time I had because I was not a natural at math, and they put me in this advance class that was studying for O Level Math. God, I was thinking about how he thought I wouldn't do very well because I pretty much struggled all through the class, but in the end, I got a B. And he thought that I should at least aim for a C because he knew how I was struggling. I was so happy when I found out about my better than expected grades. I was feeling a sort of "Take That!" Mr. Jones. I exceeded your expectation as well as mine.

Now I can't believe he's gone. I remember coming to class and finding out that he was up at 2/3am (I can't remember) because his wife had just given birth to his 2nd daughter. Subsequently I remember him holding one of his daughters up on shoulders too at sports day or something.

Gosh, I wished I remembered more. Just a few snippets here and there. This isn't enough to capture the man. Or give people who didn't know him any sense of who he was. Gosh, I really don't remember all that much either, and that is what will haunt me.

I never expected this of him. Never.

Foam Partay! Yeah!

Why are some of my most indelible, iconic, memorable moments from childhood ruined by gross stuff?

Man, if I was eight, and someone said, "foam party" I couldn't wait to get over there with my knee-high socks...sundress and bubble making machine.

Carefree. Playing with bubbles with my friends in the sun. Laughing and enjoying being at the prime of our youths.

Say that to me now, and it's like, ew, gross. I don't want to spend time with horny men and women. Who knows what goes on under all that foam?

Gross.

My childhood memories are tainted forever by my adult realizations.

Innocence found; innocence lost.

I love the 80s weekend

'I love the 80s weekend' on Mix 102.9. How I look forward the the weekends when I can turn on Mix 102.9 and listen to some 80s hits. I often wonder how some of these songs even made it on air and how synthesizers ever got that popular... Man, what passes for music then...

I was born in the 80s, but came of age in the 90s. And that's where all my cultural references stemms from. sometimes i get those two decades mixed up.

I miss my Barbies

I'm feeling nostalgic about my Barbies. I no longer have them. I outgrew them ages ago, but my parents kept them to give to my sister, who turns out is more of a tomboy than a girlie girl, so it was left untouched. It got move around a lot. My parents tried to find places to put it now that no one in our house no longer played with it.

I had loads of stuff for my Barbie. From a make shift house of cardboard, to bathroom sets complete with real running water, bedroom sets, desk sets, and tons of clothing fit for celebrities along with Emelda Marcos like collection of shoes. I was never more excited to see new accessories that I could add to my Barbie collection. My favorite aisle in the toy store was where pink greeted me.

It’s true that I outgrew my Barbies. But I’m a rat pack. I hate to throw things away no matter how useless they are to me know, how broken they are, or how unfixable they are. It didn't matter. I always thought I maybe I would want to play with them again. My possessiveness extends to all my belongings. Even though I've learnt to let out of my Barbies and other toys of childhood, I still had a certain attachment to them. I argued that nobody would care for my toys like I did. Nobody could love and nurture it like I had done for so long. Therefore, I had sole ownership no matter who owned it now.

A couple of months ago, my mom decided to give my Barbies to my cousins. I felt letdown by the decision when my possessiveness took over, and for a moment, I hated the idea of giving away something that I had for so long. She had every right to because I didn’t play with them anymore. Still, it hurt that I they won’t belong to me anymore. It hurt that my cousins won't know how much, and to what lengths, I would play with my Barbies. How I hated that someone else might now know how much I had cared for my toys or how much fun I had playing with them. They had never known that, and they can't appreciate my Barbies worth to me. I didn't want my Barbies to be just another toy to them. They meant so much to me, and I hoped that my Barbies means as much as to them as my Barbies were to me. My Barbies were like second friends to me. When I had girls come over, that's the main attraction. I had a whole bunch of Barbies we could play with.

Barbies were my friends. They became a connection back to my childhood. A place I think about often. (Usually, I think about how my inexperience with the world is astounding to me, now at 20.) It’s hard to finally cut that away from your life. My Barbies are gone; they are off to live in another countries, in another girl's life.

I'm going to be in Friends' hell

Missing my Friends

my earlier post on news of Friends' farewell

Well, what more can I add that a thousand other people and critics haven't already said or written. Not much, I suppose.

I can tell you what attracted me to Friends in the first place. I can tell you how it "touched my life" in ways I never thought possible. I can tell you all sorts of things. But, I'm really not going to do that. Not really. I'm just going to tell you how I was able to put my knowledge of all things Friends to good use.

I liked them so much that my senior English project was about them. I made a Friends hell. The assignment was to design your own hell, like Dante's Inferno (because we were reading it at that time.)

That was our project. I got the theme song from a mix tape one of my friends made me, and we (my classmates/fellow friends) created a Friends (scrap) book to illustrate our hell.

In our hell, modeled after Dante's own, there were 6 levels, I think. Each level was named after each Friend. We had to come up with punishments as well. My memory is a little fuzzy. It's been a couple of years. I think each level was full of those who committed against the friend that the level was created for. So, for example, in Joeyland (where the welcoming sign read, "How you doin'"), people who committed sins against Joey inhabited that level of hell, and paid for their sins by way of punishments, which pretty much mirrored what their crime was (as far as I can remember).

It was a fun, nifty, little project that earned us an A. But the enjoyment value meant so much more than the grade. (Ok, who am I kidding. I'm glad we got an A.) I totally enjoyed it.

We went through several ideas before settling on the Friends idea. One was the Simpsons. Now, that would also have been a great project. But Friends was more appealling, and we got our ideas together better than our attempt at the Simpsons hell.

The class’s reaction was positive. I think our class enjoyed it. We made them laugh as well as the teachers.

Some groups went for the serious. Others made a candyland hell base on relationships. Others made a video. That's pretty much all I remember.

We, at least me, felt pretty good about that.

When I thought about doing that project, and in the process of creating it, I never thought I would be here, in this moment, facing the fact that there will be no more Friends. I made my Friends project with my two other friends, and while I already said goodbye to some friends, I'm going to be saying good to another friend, soon. Wow. How weird.

It makes me think back to high school and the people that I knew then. Most of them, I'm not in contact with anymore, which makes me really sad. I'd love to still be in touch with them, but I guess that's not how it works here.

With my friends that I made overseas, I still try to keep in contact with them. (Some more successfully than others. I'm trying, though.) At least, I have most of their email addresses, and if I don't then at least I know someone who would know. I guess, in the US, things don't work out like that. I'm not surprise, really. My high school was really big, so maybe it's impossible to know everyone. It's sad...how everyone goes their own way, and you never really know if you're going to see them again.

You just have to hope that you'll continue to remember them, and they will remember you too, in some small way. (I've now turned it into a really sappy post, which was not my intention, but oh well.)

P.S. We tried hard to incorporate all the tiny little quirks Friends had into our project, like mentioning Gunther, Janice, and Ugly Naked Guy. Our hell map was in the shape of the Central Perk coffee mug (and we may or may not have named the area Central Perk Hell. Alls I know is that Central Perk was mentioned, somehow). Gosh, I wish I had the project with me right now. There were tons of things we refered to that happen to each of them. Like Ross and Rachel's "We were on a break." Ross got put into Rachel hell for that. And his punishment was to have Rachel look-a-likes run around telling him that "We were not on a break!"

All the details is starting to come back to me. I wish could remember it all. I wish I had room in this post to write down all the things we put into our hell.

P.S.S. I'm telling ya, it was the best damn hell I've ever had the chance to be a part of.

May Days

I haven't thought a lot of May lately, but I should. 8 more days till my b-day. No plans yet, and I probably won't have any.

I also have no comprehension of turning 20. None what so ever. Everyone says it's big, but I'm not feeling it.

I need to spend the next 8 days living being 19. It's weird that once you turn 20 or whatever age, you have no recollection of being 19 or your previous age even though the age difference may only be seconds or minutes. Soon I'm going to forget all about being 19, and I'm going to miss it.

Maybe I should write down all the things I learnt while being 19. I think that'll help me see how far I've become even though I may not know it. I'll wait till my b-day to post it.

It's been a really busy week, and also a really draining one mentally and emotionally. A lot going on, and a lot to think about. I haven't resolved any issues yet.

I hate getting older, not because I'm going to have one less year to live, but one year went by in my life that I feel I really didn't do any with. I now have one less year to do something with my life. It doesn't help that I talk a really big game, but never actually put any plans into action, but that loss hurts so much.

I hate being nostalgic because I see all things I could have done. I always look back and bemoan the loss opportunities.

I don’t want to get all whiny now, but I just realized, this morning when my dad mentioned it, how close my b-day is. That’s all.

I wanted to be a planeteer

Cartoon Network | TV Schedule

OMG! I thought Captain Planet went off the air ages ago. This is the reason why I'm so interested in the environment. Silly as it sounds, it is the only reason I try desperately to reduce, reuse, and recycle. It is the reason I'm taking Environ Sci and Earth Sci. coolest. guy. ever! So suave (sigh). Gosh, CP just plain rules.
This is meant to educate kids about our environment. Thank God Cartoon Network decided to show it at 4:30 am central each morning because that's when kids will get the most out of it. Wait. Huh?

Anyways, I'm mighty glad it's still on the air.

know your inner smurf

Awww...such good times. It seems like I'm rediscovering all the cartoons I watched as a kid. Another one of my favorite cartoons. Here's a list of sites that should help you discover or rediscover the smurfs:

• Smurfs Official Website


• Smurf name generator


• Find your inner smurf

I remember I had smurf figurines. I wish I still had them. They were cool. Another cartoon that should be brought back.

a few good movies

I love A Few Good Men. Every time I see this movie listed, I'm happy excited. This is one of the few movies that I can watch over and over again. Jack Nicholson is awesome.

Tom Cruise: I want the truth!
Jack Nicholson: You can't handle the truth!

Also, there are a lot of actors, famous, successful actors now, that appeared in AFGM. They were so young in that movie, and it's nice to see how far they have come in their careers since then.

There's another movie that I remember watching again and again. It was an 80s movie, I think [I just googled, and the movie came out in '92]. Oh, the name just now slipped out of my mind. Toepick, maybe? Well, it starred D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly. He was an injured hockey player and she was a figure skating. They teamed up and fell in love. I remember having my dad check the movie. Great stuff. Oh, now I remember: (The) Cutting Edge, I believe. It was a romantic comedy, and because I was a teen, I totally feel in love with the movie. I think it was a tear-jerker also. Gosh, does that bring back memories.

These two became instant classics for me. Although I don't watch The Cutting Edge anymore, it became another sight, another sound of my past.

eat some spinach and grow strong like Popeye

*image from Kings Features. click on comic for homepage*
Yippeee...I'm glad my childhood cartoons are resurfacing. It gives me a good feeling inside when people are still celebrating the things/events that made me happy as a child. So now, at least, I don't feel like my childhood was a waste.

Come on. Popeye just pure rocks. Don't forget Olive Oyl, Sweet'Pea, and Brutus.

So he turns 75 this year. Totally awesome.

The Ninjas are BACK!

COWABUNGA!
The most amazing thing happened. I was transported back into my childhood when I saw THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES on TV again.

It's about time. But I think this is the NEW AND IMPROVE version. What's with their eyes? Before the turtles were lovable creatures and now they have turned into dark and mysterious (and kinda creepy) super heroes. Plus, now April is a brunette. Ohhh...I get it. I've only seen one episode and not in it's entirety either, but I hope they still are still their-pizza-loving-self.

*Because the turtles are named after some of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance (I'm not sure about Donatello; doesn't reading that conjure up weird images? "Turtles" and "greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance."), it only makes sense that they would like pizza. Right? Came up with that all by myself :)

Plus, I loved their old theme song but all I can remember are the phrases if I remember correctly: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...So catchy, and ultimately, very effective! I was hooked, and I'm sure many young minds out there were too.

Images are TMNT Wallpaper from TMNT's website

Quotation of the Day:
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
--David T. Wolf