a couple of nights ago, i saw the movie “13 conversations about one thing". the movie was made up of several loosely intertwined stories that showed differing viewpoints on happiness and what it means to people. i gotta say that this was definitely one of the better movies i have seen in a long time. it was very interesting, thought provoking, and emotionally powerful. it really hammers in the point that your happiness and fate are really what you make of them.

i’ve been watching a lot of Survivor recently (yeah, i’m pretty addicted), and find it so funny how Rupert is having such a different experience on the island than everyone else. most of the castaways see living on the island as an ordeal that they have to struggle through. they constantly are depressed and complaining about lack of food, shelter, and whatnot. on the other hand, Rupert is just looking at it as an incredible vacation in an exotic locale. he is loving every minute of it. one man’s hell is another’s heaven.

of course, for most people, no matter how happy and excitable they may be, the amount of fun and interest that situations bring about also depend on the newness of the situation. things that at one point excite and interest people to no end, eventually usually fizzle out after being experienced a ton of times. humanity’s constant striving and searching for something better and new may have helped us over the centuries as a species, but in a lot of ways i find it really really sad how we can never be satisfied. we can spend months anticipating something: that new house, a drivers license, whatever…. and soon enough we couldn’t care any less about it.

i once read an article about a wandering group of refugees in Sudan. these people had lived their whole life in the hot climate of africa and had never experienced modern technology. these people had never experienced cold. yes, cold. they did not know the meaning of cold. all temperatures they had ever experienced ranged from warm to hot. the article describes how the refugees, upon arriving at a red cross shelter, were given a iced beverage form the refrigerator. they were totally amazed and shocked. could you imagine that? cold is something we *completely* take for granted. everyone knows what that means. but what if that was a new and exciting sensation to be experienced? something totally unheard of and enthralling. it must be the most amazing and crazy feeling in the world to feel something cold for the first time.

if something as trivial and mundane as coldness can be new and exciting for someone, it really makes you think about how everything around us must be interesting for at least *someone* out there. i’ve driven the commute from SJ to SF a kajillion times. maybe even more. everyone takes that drive for granted and grumbles about it. but i always try to stop and think about how for someone who’s never driven it, it’s probably a very scenic and nice drive. and shit, for someone who’s just gotten their license, driving that route (or *any* route) is an exhilarating adventure. i’ve gone to santa cruz a ton of times too, and yes it’s fun, but i always try to wonder what it must be like for people who have never seen an ocean before. someone who came from kansas or something; someone who, during their life, has seen pretty much nothing but flat plains… and all of a sudden you stumble upon this incredible gigantic mass of blue unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

the list goes on and on. imagine seeing the snow when your whole life has been lived in a hot climate. or flying in an airplane when you’ve never known what it’s like to be a million feet in the air. or taking an escalator if you’ve lived your whole life in cambodia and haven’t ever seen such a weird crazy thing. all these things can be so new and thrilling…. and yet for the most part, we dont let them be that way. it’s always “shit, i can’t stand this 9 hour flight, when is this damn thing gonna land” or “goddamn, it snowed again, i can’t believe i have to shovel that crap” or “sheez, why is this stupid escalator so crowded".

we rush through our lives treating everything like a hassle or inconvenience. anything that isn’t new or rare goes by either unnoticed or unappreciated. there’s so much stuff out there… so much *not new* stuff. so many things that are just begging to be enjoyed. we rush by those things, constantly searching for something more exciting than the last thing we tried. something flashy.. something cool… whatever. we just keep on searching for that ever elusive thing that’ll make us happy when we just need to realize that we can make *ourselves* happy by enjoying what we have.. because it’s really only the perception of what we experience that is important.

-v

when i finished school a few years ago, i was so relieved. thank god! no more studying. no more busy weekends. no more constantly being stressed out. i was so glad to have gotten that part of my life over with. i was so psyched that from now on i would just work at a job where the work stopped after business hours, and i would not be working during nights and weekends.

strangely enough, all of a sudden i’m starting to feel very differently about all that. i’ve been kind of missing school lately. i miss learning new things on a daily basis. i miss being pushed into examining the world around me more closely. i miss trying to figure out the answers to complex questions. it’s nice to have something to stretch your mind to its limits on a regular basis.

in a lot of ways, work used to do that for me. programming was tough. i was constantly learning new things everyday and struggling to keep afloat. most of the engineers i worked w/ had at least some formal training in web programming, but i had to just pick stuff up as i went along. of course, everything i was learning was all on the same topic, computers, and not diverse as the learning in school is, but at least it was new and interesting.

now my job doesn’t really seem to have much more to teach me. i’ve learned most of what i need to know to do it well, and therefore am not pushed to find out new things. dont get me wrong, i still love my job. it’s a lot of fun. the people are cool. it’s *great* to have projects you work on be seen by over 10 million people a month. bt i definitely miss the learning….

-v

for the last year or so, i have not been eating at home. pretty much ever. almost every single meal i ate was at a restaurant. now that i’m trying to actually stick to a budget, i obviously can’t keep that habit up. so recently i have started eating at home and cooking more. it’s actually been hella cool.

this weekend caryn and i cooked up a storm. we made a ton of good meals. saturday morning, she had the idea of trying to make “mcgriddles” at home. mcgriddles are a new kind of breakfast sandwich at mcdonalds that are basically a sandwich w/ eggs, bacon, and melted cheese in between 2 pancakes instead of bread. dude, these tasted soooo damn good!

the following morning, we made eggs blackstone. they are a poached egg on top of an english muffin w/ cheese, grilled tomatoes, and hollandaise sauce. i’ve never tried to poach an egg before and it turns out it’s really not that easy. each time i would try to pour the egg into boiling water, the egg would just dissipate and flow all over the place. i fucked up a bunch of eggs in the process and had to start over a couple of times. in the end, i pretty much got the hang of it though.

then, sunday night, we decided to make sashimi for dinner. we bought some green tea, miso soup, rice, salad, and some raw fish. the dinner was soo damn good. it’s funny, when you go to sushi, the best part is the sashimi and it’s sooo damn expensive. i usually can only afford to get a little. but if you just buy the fish at a store, you can get a *ton* of it for way cheap. the meal we ate would have cost a zillion times as much if we had ordered it at a sushi place.

-v

ack! i’m once again lagging on writing in my LJ. dammit!

last week catherine and i went to go see a play called Nickel And Dimed. it was based on a bestselling non-fiction book by Barbara Ehrenreich. She was doing a lot of research on just how difficult it is to scrape by in the world if you are a single mom with no means of getting a high paying job. to write the book, she went undercover and got jobs that uneducated single moms often get. she would move to a town, and try to live only off the income she got from her jobs.

what she came to realize very quickly was that it was basically impossible to pay for rent and food with the income she would get from just one job. in all 3 cities that she tried to live in, she had to get 2 jobs just to scape by. she did work like cleaning houses, waiting tables, and working at wallmart. every single day she worked like crazy doing difficult and unrewarding work only to get off of work and go to her next horrible job. after that she would really only have time to sleep.

i’ve always realized that a lot of people have it really rough. but i dont think i grasped just how bad it can be. this play was definitely a real eye opener. i didnt know that restaurants could claim that your tips are “part of your pay” and therefore pay you well below minimum wage (she earned $2.15 and hour at one place!!). i didnt know that wallmart, in order to pay it’s employees less, would ask them to punch out after working 8 hours, and then continue to work for several hours unpaid. i didnt know that in a lot of places, even with *2* jobs, it’s still difficult to afford to live in even a trailer!

it was just so sad to watch these people struggle. and to think that that’s how they have to live day after day after day. the reporter could barely afford to take care of herself, and couldnt even begin to think how someone could afford to fee their family on these salaries. *sigh*

-v

erica, yan, and i went to our rommate brandon’s fashion show last night. brandon’s major is fashion and he’s way into it. it was pretty fun to go to the show. but it was *short*! in just like 10 or 15 minutes it was all over! it’s crazy to think that him and the other 2 people that worked on it spent several months designing clothes for this show, and it all ended so quick! the clothes were pretty cool. very indie rock scenester style.

-v

The thing i really hate about keeping a journal is that i’m much too lazy and am too much of a procrastinator to have one. i always end up not writing for a couple of weeks at a time. then, when i finally get the urge to post something, i end up trying to post about everything exciting that’s occurred since i last posted. By the time i write all of that, i’m tired and bored and dont have the energy to post about what i originally wanted to post about. i kinda want this journal to be a recording of my day to day thoughts, feelings, and other stuff and not just a description of things i did. unfortunately i just cant pull myself out of this endless loop of procrastination, and when i write about the past, it’s really only easy to remember what occurred as opposed to events *and* thoughts and opinions. oh well…. anyways, here’s what’s happened in the last 2 weeks.

last weekend caryn and i drove up to Rocklin to visit her dad, step-mom, and brother. this was the first time that i would be meeting them and honestly i was hellza nervous. i really didnt know too much about them, and wasn’t sure what to expect. what if they didn’t like me for some reason? what if i ended up fucking up and making a bad impression? also, i’m usually super shy and quiet around strangers… so what if i just didnt have anything to say to them? ugh! since caryn lives fairly far from them, it didnt make much sense for us to just go up there for a quick dinner. instead we went up there to spend the night and hang out with them all day. yikes!!

well, surprisingly, everything went totally well. we got up there late on Friday night, chatted a bit, and since it was late, everyone went to sleep fairly soon (phew). the next day, her dad made a really good breakfast and then we just kicked it for the rest of the day. her family was hella nice and pretty easygoing. we spent most of the day there and i didnt make any crazy blunders. afterwards we also took her little brother bowling which was pretty fun. he’s a total superstar bowler who’s almost bowled a 300.

Saturday night we came back to my house cause my roommate Brandon was having a birthday party. he had only started inviting people to the party like 3 days before, so i thought the thing was gonna be a total flop. well, i thought totally wrong. fairly quickly the house was totally packed full of people. unfortunately i didnt know like 95 % of them, but overall the party was still fun. Brandon’s friends are pretty nuts. he passed out at the end of the night, and woke up later to find that someone had poured hot sauce all over his lips and smeared cake all over him. ew! one of his friends was actually a total bitch at the end of the night, but that’s to long of a story to go into here.

the weekend ended w/ a bbq at li’s house. li tried to kill us by feeding us raw chicken, but luckily caryn caught it just in time.

this weekend was Halloween. i always totally look forward to Halloween. it’s such a fun holiday. this year it happened to land on a Friday, which meant that critical mass was that day. joey and i rode in it and it was really cool. everyone was hella dressed up in costumes and stuff. afterwards, i picked up caryn from the airport and we went home to get dressed up. we then met up w/ joey, tom, jamie, Alex, jenny and some other people. we headed down to Castro. this year we heard that they wee totally cracking down there and that cops would be searching people and not allowing open containers of alcohol. because of that, we didnt actually go to the center of the castro area but instead just went to some bars and hung out there. of course, i heard later that people were totally not being searched and that open containers were totally fine. doh! unfortunately, my memory of that night is kinda hazy,. so there’s really not too much to report.

this morning, caryn, heather, and i took a flying trapeze class. dude, it was so crazy!!! after a quick 10 minute demonstration and practice on a low bar, they told us to just go for it. yikes!! so we made the long climb up to the platform, which was 25 feet above the ground. now, i’m *deathly* afraid of heights, so this was no easy feat for me. i was so damn freaked out the whole time up there. basically what we had to do was grab the trapeze, swing out, hook your knees on the bar you were swinging from, and then let go with your hands and swing hanging from just your knees. sheez. it was so crazy to be doing all this so high up in the air (over a *huge* net and with safety harnesses of course though). then you swing your body back up, grab the bar, unhook your knees, and then drop down into the net. caryn and heather managed to get it on the first try, but i wasn’t able to hook my knees till my second time. heh, no matter how many times i climbed that ladder, it was so freaky each time.

the next thing we had to try was to do a catch. we would do the same thing as before, except that there would be an instructor swinging on another trapeze in front of us, after hooking the bar w/ just our knees, we were supposed to swing out, grab the instructors arms, and let go w/ your feet and just swing out being held by the instructor. caryn, being a total superstar, got this on her first try. i totally fucked up my first try. on the second try, i hooked my legs correctly but just narrowly missed holding on to the instructor. damn. SO CLOSE! but then the lesson was over and i didnt get to try it again. now, as i write this, the palms of my hands are totally sore from the lesson and so are my legs. i’m definitely so glad that i did it though. such a rush!!

-v