I wish to say....

Dude, you're always there and you are really a kind dude. You take everything in and is naturally cool about everything. You don't judge, just hints at me if I'm doing something totally uncool. You have an insanely insane sense of humor and the physical expressions to express who you really are. I applause your courage to go for what you love and truly step out of way to follow your passion. You're super patient, cool, and funny. I admire you most of the time.

Kind of like the guy above, except I know in the inside you're really a girl. You have a man's body (the buffest I can think of), but the way you talk and how you exaggerate every emotion tells me you secretly are a girl. You follow your passions or infatuations =) with a burning intensity and you really don't care what people think as long as you like it. I admire that about you.

Although we hang out a lot and we've had deep conversations, I really don't feel comfortable around you. I get the sense that you're looking for a friend but it really feels like you're just trying to get on me. Whenever I happen to look around the classroom, you glance over and something about your eyes make me feel pressured. It's like you expect something that I don't have. The way you talk makes me feel you want to be cool and sound like the popular people. But you're really not, so why not embrace your true self?

You take everything with grace. Everything you do seems natural and nothing is forced. I admire your loyalty to friends even when they don't seem all good and especially when they're having a bad time. You're like a mother, except a little more independent. I really wish I just got over myself and got to know you better, but I think I'm too dreamy and stuck-up as of the moment. I hope to meet again in the future!

Dude, you are the sensitive giant. You can't bear it when people don't laugh at your jokes and you feel best when everyone's outwardly laughing and having a good time. Sometimes you can get a little carried away (I mean, you're like 6 2 dude, every movement is exaggerated for you) but mostly you're always there.You know when to work and when to mess around. You're a good brother to your younger brother and I think you're a good guy.

I really admire your ability to understand my culture. It's not even your native culture but you understand like everything! We once had a fierce love for the music of my culture (sorry I lost interest!), and it was awesome to know what each other were humming in class. You are a good good friend.

Your humor and your personality cracks me up. I've never heard such humor before and when your face lights up its really does. You relate stuff to stuff I've never heard of and it's like I'm being enlightened. You really are cool about everything, you take everything with a grain of salt and it's never discouraging to be around you. Thanks man. You'll probably be playing that Starcraft game, but whatever.

We just understand each other! You're more sensitive than I am but we go through the same stuff. It's amazing how most of the stuff we notice are almost the same things. Beyond the rap and black music culture you surround yourself with, I know you're a kind guy. Sometimes, I wish you'd show a little bit of that, but still you're awesome.

You are the hyung I never had. At first, it was annoying and bu-dam-seu-ruh-wut-suh to have you put your arm around me at church but it turned out I could depend on you for almost anything. You've changed so much in the last few years! I'm really glad you are who you are now.

Dude, I love you. Other than an amazing soccer season and exciting times at math club, I'm really surprised at how you grew up. The only right thing to say seems to be Dude, I love you.

Narcissism? Exactly the Opposite

Writing a blog about useless stuff at 12:28 AM instead of doing my extra credit writing assignment is not too wise, but to hell with wisdom. Oscar Wilde once said, "disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." I intend to take that as far as possible without violating my core principles.

So, when people say that "person's so full of himself", that "person really needs to tone it down", or "wow, fuck that douchebag", it is believed that the victim of these words are really narcissistic, meaning they are in love with themselves. Well, I'd like to reverse the thought that say those who are speaking are full of themselves. Usually, these kind of comments are heard in the hallways of high school, which I am in the senior year of, and it's a common thing to say. I have one specific friend who I always used to think, "that guy is a total durche" or "if I could punch him, I would punch him so hard I'll punch through his brains". He's a good friend but he is one self-loving animal. Nothing can discourage his ego nor his pride in every aspect of himself. But, as I reached the final year of this secondary educational experiment, I realized that I was just being too full of myself. 

I realized that I was hating on egotistic people because I was jealous. I wanted to be sure of myself and I wanted to be proud. But at the same time, I didn't want to lose my core belief in modesty. But as it seemed in high school, modesty wasn't the way you got popular and social. To be social, you need a particular personality, and with that personality comes a certain amount of self-love. I really was jealous of how he emphasized his positive attributes and ignored what people said of his ego.

Now, I'm not being hypocritical or counter-logical. I don't mean that the victim of the aforementioned phrases ("that person's so full of himself") aren't necessarily narcissistic. I just like to focus on the speaker, who I would like to clarify tends to be narcissistic. 

Okay, so back to me and this one dude. I realized I really was just in love with myself and my values. I was too proud being modest, and too proud of me being the anti-ego person that I was actually hating on the guy. If I truly was not in love with myself, I would probably have ignored him. Who really cares if a guy is narcissistic? In truth, I was being too proud and him, well I think he was being a socialite. I wanted to be like him, and I hated that he was able to be self-loving without succumbing to nasty looks around him.

Well, that whole story wasn't supposed to be told. I actually wanted to discuss how humans dislike other humans that possess similar characteristics. But I guess that isn't being narcissistic, just competitive.

Tennis

Tennis has been my passion for my entire life. It's a sport that changed so much in the past two, really one decade. Those short shorts are long gone, wooden rackets have become carbon, titanium, graphite, or what have you, and its not much of a loser sport anymore. 40 years ago, it was considered a sport for people weren't coordinated or athletic enough. Now, to be above average, you have to have excellent coordination, relatively excellent fitness, above-average balance, pin-point concentration, and more agility than what you require in football. Anybody can throw a football, bounce a basketball, kick a soccer ball. Hitting an apple-sized yellow fuzzball with a racquet and getting it over a net waist-high is harder than it seems. It still is a pretty conservative sport - meaning that its athletes don't have tattoos all over their body, get arrested for dog fighting, don't cheat on their wives with 13 other women, and betray their hometown to join up with other big players in Miami. It's really one of the few sports that live up to the reputation as classy and suave. Well, it does have the raw intensity people look for - Rafael Nadal. To me, tennis players are how people should be. They have a balanced life and they don't lose their head. They know what they're doing and they enjoy it.

Bruce Jenner injured his knee playing high school football. Then he won the gold medal at the 1976 Olympics

"If you want to take your mission in life
to the next level, if youre stuck and
you dont know how to rise, dont
look outside yourself. Look inside."

For a long time, I've been wondering why I am here and why I deserve a lot of the things I get. That long time was a good 2 years, 2 years in high school I could have spent much more wisely establishing a foundation for my life. For those two years, I did what a lot of my friends did - I went exploring, reading, watching, talking, laughing. Everything was so new, as they should have been, and I thought I was having the time of my life. And then, I turned around (physically) and saw my own brother looking at me like I just wasted a good chunk of my life. I turned back around (physically) and saw where I was. The familiar blue screen greeted me back to its web of complex social interactions where everything in the real society, I could experience there - Facebook. That's when I realized, Mark Zuckerberg is a child of the internet devil. He knew how addictive this Faithbook could be, as if it was the bible of my social life. Well, I realized my actual, real life was crumbling to pieces and I wasn't happy with myself. Other sites, like Youtube, MSN Messenger (not technically a website but a potential BIG time waster nonetheless), and other sites I cannot site due to viewers like you corrupting your minds until the point of no repair. I like to think I haven't reached that point yet, but I know I'm awfully close.

Thus, I quit Facebook. Well, I quit for a month and logged back in because so many of my contacts had no other convenient (*cough*) way to contact me than through Fb. But, I'm over with the whole addiction thing, and it's not a bother anymore. Youtube still will take time and so will my other "subscription" sites. And no, not those subscription sites (not entirely). Sites like Wired and Engadget where it's like I subscribed and it's obligatory for me to visit everyday.

So, this internet addiction has been going for about 2 weeks now. I am more energized in my actual life and I am not glued to the computer anymore.

But I still don't feel happy. Often, I'm moody and I'll feel the urge to lash out at my brother, mom, cousin, or whoever stands in my way. For fun, I typed in the question on Yahoo! Q&A (which is actually very useful) : Why am I so moody? It came up with all this bullshit about me (the questionnaire) being a girl in the middle of my PMS. I filtered that junk out and noticed a particular point. Someone said that being moody and angry is a sign that subconsciously I may not be happy with myself and where I am right now.

 I am not happy with the way I handled those 2 years. I blame my wasteful years all on my Mom for enrolling me in a gifted program so I'll be forced to work on the Internet and thereby waste my time also. I am not happy that I am in my parent's basement everyday of the week (almost). I am not happy I think of sick thoughts almost everywhere. I am not happy with almost everything actually.

I realized this has to change. College is next year, so it'll take of the "where". But as Bruce Jenner said, I have to look inside myself to find my next mission. The fact that I wasted 2 years (not completely! I got my IB diploma and I played varsity Tennis all 4 years of high school) doesn't undermine my stand in society. I realized that at no time should a person be so down on himself - there's ALWAYS another chance. Nobody can say anything to you if you're happy. The way to be happy is to be content where you are. Being a business tycoon is NOT necessarily better than being an interstate trucker. Sure, the tycoon may get a lot of respect, but he definitely doesn't have the chance to cross all 50 states of the U.S. and appreciate all he's been through. I'm telling you this because I know an old man who was one of the best athletes in the ABA (forerunner to the NBA), but quit mid-career to become an interstate trucker. He's now one of the happiest men I see around. Respect is all relative. Society is not one general group of people who you have to barely hang on to - no, its the people who you surround yourself to live the most meaningful life you can possibly have. If you're happy where you're at, don't even think about listening to others around you inviting you to that "partaaaayyyy" or that sophisticated "opera" or that "hangout" that smells like weed and pot. It's a bunch of lies because it's something NEW. Sure, you have the right to try new things, but not at the expense of you losing that deep, inner sense of peace and happiness.

All that, I must now point it directly at me and say, you've got to change. It's been a long time I've been sad and disappointed. It's been too long I've glanced at what others are doing and how others act so that they're happy. Hell, most of it's just an act. All I've got to do is appreciate. That's the only way I'll be happy.

Being "Special"

I guess you could call it puberty. Maybe all the anger that's been pent up in me is just slowly letting itself go as of the moment. I think all the guys in the entire world has this "fuck-i-don't-care" and "i-hate-everything" period where basically anything makes him angry. I guess I'm going through the phase and it's so annoying to have friends and parents who expect better of you.

I'm "gifted." It's really a word to describe a group of people who took an aptitude test in 1st grade and were enrolled in "gifted" classes, which really aren't hard. I got into this gifted shit in 8th grade. Oh, before that I was in a gifted program in Oregon. Yea, my parents were hardcore Asian. They still are. I was a straight A student for 5 years. For 3 of those years, all my grades in all classes for all semesters and trimesters were above 100%. When I got my report card, I gladly ran my little ass up to momma and chirped "look at my grades, momma!". Then she would give me chocolate or something to make me feel like I've done something good. I felt content. But I was shielded and protected as a fucking princess. Snow White. In a boy's body.

When I got to sophomore year of high school, I discovered new things like talking with friends and sports. Yea, I didn't know how to have relationship with a person. It was more like hey, you wanna check answers for that math quiz? I'll meet you at math club. Actually I was pretty competitive so it was more like hey, you wanna check answers for that math quiz meaning your score? I'll share my score with you, but only if you gimme the paper first. Anyways yea. The whole socializing and sport thing was pretty competitive for me. As the firstborn, I was given all the attention in the family and I never learned how to hang in the background. I always had to be in the spotlight even if I wasn't funny or good-looking. So, when I started playing soccer and having this whole high-school social ordeal it was like, I have to be the best. I essentially ignored people who were better than me at soccer, and ignored people who were funnier, better looking and nicer than me. Yea, I was happy but I was a stuck-up bitch.

Now, why am I telling you all this? It probably makes you feel better reading someone's life being turned completely upside down. But the truth is, high school makes you do that. I guess it took a harder hit for me. I was raised in a Christian group called the "Lord's Recovery" and it had this whole notion of being "special". My brothers and sisters in the church told me, yes, you have more truth than most other Christians in the entire world. And that gives you a sense of pride, humanly speaking. It's really hard not to feel any pride when you're 12 and you're told you are special, maybe 1 out of 10,000. That pride combined with my status as "gifted" swelled up my pride to the max. I didn't realize what kind of a douchebag I was until really last year. I guess douchebag isn't the right word. Just someone who doesn't know his place in society.

So imagine this. A kid about the size of a bean with narrow shoulders (with a huge head) comes up to you and tries to be nice to you. In high school, the usual reaction is "Dude, go back to elementary school, twerp." But, being super nice as Interlake High School is, people didn't call me anything. Especially in the gifted group, nobody calls each other names (To "gifted" students, the only authority they have is in the world of education. They realize they're socially awkward so they try to be nice to each other. Yea, they're smart, but they have no social awareness at all.).

That small kid is me. I lived under this illusion that I was nice, I was popular and I was good at sports. My parents, my fellow classmates and my church friends all helped build this fake reality around me.

Last year, in my junior year, the bubble popped. And I was fucking angry.

It turns out that I wasn't very popular and I wasn't good at sports. Being nice is a subjective opinion and thus I will refrain from commenting on the matter. But, it was the truth - I was socially awkward, I wasn't too athletic and I wasn't the smartest guy out there. To me, that was a hard hit. I've lived under this illusion for 16 years. To have that world crumble around me is a huge wake up call. I hated my parents for raising me up that way. I really had no childhood because I was always studying, always trying to get ahead. I can remember no special moment where I spent it with a close friend. It was always in a social gathering of "gifted" students that I had fun. There was no reality there. I grew up in the belief that I was special, that I was the best.

But the fact remains, that I am not. To realize that and have no idea what place in society I'm in, it makes me angry. I rather have been socially awkward in middle and the first half of high school and realize which place in society I am in. My brain is burnt out from doing loads and loads of homework.And to think, here comes college. It's like hell.

And being angry in this "gifted" class I'm in now, it's so annoying. They all live in this fake reality. It's complete bullshit. The only confidence that have is in their brain. They get pleasure from being able to talk faster than other people, from being able to trump you with logic and witty comments. Get over yourself. Give people some respect and listen.

Some people are actually gifted and they deserve respect. But for the most part, being "gifted" and "special" doesn't mean anything. We're all human and we're all in this together.