Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Professors

I wish that there were more capable professors in my university. Or at least I would hope that I would be more likely to stumble across them. The problem I find with my experience is that I have never been challenged on a consistent basis. My last post was on my quip about how easy Information systems was. I don't want to sound so repetitive but the course work was not very demanding at all- even when the professor said it was going to be demanding, or maybe that's because I'm so damn comfortable doing presentations and coming up with ideas for a project in a case-study.

Today marks the last day I will spend in an Accounting course, besides doing the Final (I also noticed I begin blogging when Finals roll around, lol) next week. The professor I had for the course was exceptional. I enjoyed it despite hating Accounting through and through with all my heart. I like it when professors actually give a workload that you would just about expect going into "coolidge". Not to say that this isn't the case at many other universities and different fields, but being a business major, you just don't get enough work. I feel like there's still room for small projects, or just anything to tickle your brain. The brain needs activity, some stimulation.

I like to look at it like I look at running long distance. You can't just get out there and run 6 - 10 miles a day and act like it's nothing. It's easy once you've built up that endurance and the know-how of doing so. In real life there will be many times when you will be stressed.and you'll just want to quit. Sure there are people out there who can just keep chugging along and do their thing, but there's so many more who cannot. "Stress Test" that's what I'd like to call it. School should be a stress test, if you can handle the stresses in school life, and even develop enough maturity to grasp the reality of it all and subdue that stress, then you're going to have better approach to life than most.

But yes, unfortunately we all haven't had this type of education, or maybe we simply weren't disciplined enough to take it. In my case I certainly wasn't disciplined enough. In high school all I ever did was sleep in class, I probably clocked the most hours slept in school in my year. So I never had to deal with much stress besides tensions with my family members. So as a result I had the problem many of us have, procrastination, the avoidance of something that is causing you stress even though you have to face it sooner or later. Learning to deal with it is not an easy process, it takes time for most. Gradually however we begin to realize that doing shit sooner rather than later is so much better than do it last minute.

However I'm a bit of a hypocrite since writing this blog when things need to be done is technically procrastinating haha.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Finals week

Quite a lot of things on my plate this week. A presentation tomorrow, an exam on Thursday, and tooons of studying to do. How much of it do I want to do? Hm, none of it haha.

But there's always a limit to laziness, or at least my own self-imposed limit. Eventually I sit down and grind everything out. I'm also really glad that enjoy typing out long papers. The analysis, the delivery, it's a nice a tickle to the brain. Anyways I was thinking to myself today about how easy my Major is compared to many other majors. 

Information Systems is different from Information Technology. Or should I say the term IT is basically an umbrella term for several branches of Computer Technology related "stuff" and IS is sitting just under it along with Computer Science and Computer Engineering. Although I say IS is relatively easy to work with in University, that doesn't mean it's not important, because really if it weren't important then why is it in the curriculum.

It's an odd relationship of how the workload of a Major has is compared to what you would actually do out there in the world. For example I've noticed that my friends whom are medical students, and grads have their work cut out for them pretty straightforwardly upon stepping onto the plate in the world. One of my friends is a pharmacist, he works late night graveyard shifts a few times a week, simple (yet important) work and he gets paid loooooads. But getting this job required more years in Uni and a ton of actual hard studying and exam taking to achieve. Going over to my field, Information Systems, all I really do is play around with some big conceptual things in business and system development. Then I have use the concepts I have learned to analyze data, and mold it all together into my own short thesis. According to how well I can conceptualize will determine how well I'll do when given actual project to work on in a corporate setting, supposedly.

The only problem with that is the fact that designing and developing a system software is very broad plane to walk on. A lot of things can happen, a lot of things go wrong. You can't effectively train for it, you just have to experience it. Maybe for that reason IS seems so easy as a Major, maybe people haven't found a good way to gauge your competency in IS.

This all only occurred to me once I swapped over to Computer Science for my minor. That shit is hard as fuck.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

This Blog

Yeah, I knew it was nice to keep this blog. I don't post anything much anymore which is plainly obvious here but having that thought in the back of my mind that it is here is nice.

It's almost like it was yesterday when I first started "coolidge". Up to this point many things have changed... and many things haven't. I try to approach this blog with positive outlooks. I've noticed during my freshmen year I was a little overly pessimistic and unrealistically ambitious. To counter balance it all, I became more optimistic and far less mister conquistador. But that didn't work out either, I became lethargic and stupid. So once again I have come to this blog again with my mind full of regrets and restless thoughts.

If I had a timeline, with an embedded graph gauging how much maturity I had over the years even including high school, it'd  be a horrible looking upward climb to where I am now. When I look back it's like goddammit what the hell was I thinking? Whether it was years ago, or a few months ago, the question had remained the same.

Pessimism is a necessity, optimism is a luxury, and ambition is something you can have once you understand the first two concepts. That's something I've come up with in order to better protect myself.

When I look around me and I see happy people, I suddenly realize that only 1% or most likely 0% of these people are actually happy. There's always something egging their minds. There is always something. For a select few their issues may be jokingly called "First World Problems" but for many others it's far more morbid. More likely they are only smiling to protect their sanity. Depressing ain't it.

I used to set personal goals for myself. Whether it was drawing, writing, gaming... I do it for a while but now I can't seem to focus entirely one single personal self-improvement project. After a bit of thought I'm thinking to myself "Is this what I really want to do?" The thing about that question is that I believe it may be a trick question. I've answered this in the past with the logic: if it is something you enjoy doing, do it and keep doing it!; but I didn't answer the whole question. Is this what I really want - that is what needs to be taken under consideration. I can't answer that right off the top of my head, it is one of those damned philosophical questions that can't be completely answered through logic and rich linguistics. I think that this can be only answered with actions and once the dust has settled, the thought of "Is this what I really want" should never come up unless someone walks up to you and asks you that specific question. You simply just keep doing it. And in writing this I realize that people can do this already are truly blessed. Without being able to understand this concept I feel like you're just doomed to some empty feeling in your Heart sooner or later in life.


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Done and bored

Finals are done, the semester is over. Now I'm bored out of my mind. Still no job yet =_=, but I haven't gone all out on my job hunt quite yet so I'm sure when I get my engine running I'll be able to snag something for the summer.

<3 

It's been a few days since I finished my last final, I didn't do well in one class and it ended up tainting my GPA for the term. I'm pretty bummed out by it, but it's too late to beat myself over it now. It feels pretty weird. I thought I would be so preoccupied with playing video games and whatnot but instead these days have been incredibly stagnant. I went to a LAN party with my fellow comrades on Saturday which was pretty awesome, nothing better than having some beer and dro with your best friends while playing some games. I was actually supposed to go to a family friend party that night as well, but I absolutely cannot stand them anymore. I don't really know any of the people my age there so I was already way outside of their social circle. I probably could have made an effort to fit in but the process of doing so would be pretty damn awkward.

The random shit I draw when I'm bored

I've been drawing a good bit on my bamboo. It's typically a lot of random stuff- hands, arms, legs, torsos... I've found that I needed to go back to my foundations and work on them even more. I don't have a lot of variety when I draw people. Usually it's just a guy or a girl standing doing nothing in particular. Not only that but I also unconsciously avoid trying to put more than one character in the same image. Its odd, but I figure that I'm just not comfortable enough to draw out people like I draw faces. 

More Coloring

Progress is slow with coloring. I'm still a big noobie with the software itself, and then with the concept of coloring it's difficult to make everything go together well. I decided to go back to reference drawings and copy over the way they color in and shade their images. It really depends on the lighting in the drawing, I've seen some super advanced toning and shading done to some images and it looks amazing, trying to copy it is  one hell of a job. 

But practice makes perfect. I like singing as well. It took me like 2 years singing alone in my car before I realized that I was starting to recognize different tones and octaves and began to mimic them. I began understanding what sounded right, and what didn't. In fact it was really easy once I realized that I could just copy the exact notes in a song on the radio to know whether or not I was singing the right note. If it sounds like I was singing in the same voice as the artist in the song then I'm doing a good job, if I clearly hear my voice separating itself from the song, then its awful lol. Now I'm pretty confident in my singing ability. It just kind of happened, because I and probably everybody else enjoys singing their favorite songs. So if I keep working on drawing different things I'm not so good at right now, I'll eventually get better at it.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Finals are almost done, and I bought a Bamboo

Just finished the toughest final for this semester. I breezed through my business ethics and advanced statistics courses easily earlier this week. The real final boss was my accounting final. I hate accounting with a passion, of course it is REALLY important to businesses but it's just an awful subject to study. I really don't know how accounting majors deal with having 2 - 3 courses of it per semester. But alas I studied for a week in advanced, took careful notes to review, and finished it like a boss.

I did every single calculation without second guessing myself, so I'm really confident of at least getting a passing grade for that course. On the other hand, there were a few curve balls on the exam I wasn't expecting. The exam consisted of just a handful of chapters we had gone over at the end of the semester, but the professor had included some material from the very beginning of the semester. It was some sort of debt to asset ratio problems so if I divided the right numbers I should be fine... but again you just never know. You can study your heart out and then end up with a mediocre grade.

Wacom's Bamboo

I seriously don't know why I didn't go out to buy this thing sooner, especially during my artsy phase when I was so motivated to draw and practice my craft. The bamboo is basically a tablet that let's me sketch and draw stuff right onto my computer. So I no longer have to constantly scan and upload my sketches. Plus by doing this it opens up a whole new opportunity to actually add color to my drawings, giving it a finished look. 

Very first sketch with the bamboo

It's pretty difficult at first to try to adapt and adjust to drawing with a tablet. First of all you're no longer looking directly down at your pen or pencil while you draw. It was so awkward to crane my neck up to the computer monitor, my neck actually began to ache a bit too after an hour or so. Also using the pen and maneuvering around the screen is a very tricky endeavor. I spent a good hour just doodling random stuff before settling down to draw out this small picture of this girl. A lot of this is credited to the program I used to sketch in, AutoDesk SketchBook. It did a really good job to simulate how the marks I made would look if I had used a real life medium. So my nice "sketchiness" can be seen even on the image rather the typically dark hard lines you would get if you had used paint. 

Coloring...

My biggest challenge right now is learning how to color... I failed to make myself practice at least painting out random scenery like your typical art student would. It was really embarrassing when I was in my art courses when I had to do some painting with various colors. Coloring and drawing are two huge skillsets. Coloring requires a huge amount of knowledge of how different tones work with each other, and how colors  can be combined in many many different ways to give your image different themes and moods. Like for example you can any image and color in a way to make it either look super realistic or very comically. Plus there's also the technical aspect to this as well since I'm using the software to color in my drawings. Being a complete newbie to both aspects makes coloring a very daunting task... but I'll work on it bit by bit. I was terrible at drawing when I first started but I slowly worked my way up, so it's not an impossible thing to do.

Latest drawing

I'm starting to understand how to use layers... which I believe are one of the core fundamentals to coloring on a computer. I'll have to take a new approach when it comes to doing hair. I tend to include a lot of visible hair strands because I like the look of it but it's not so great when I add color to it. When you look at anime characters they always have their hair filled up with solid colors and only variate when there's a need to show what areas of the hair are affected and not affected by sunlight. That and just learning how to use the software is probably the first step I need to take... 

It's a nice motivator, and it's really fun and fulfilling to draw again after not having done so for so long. I'm also glad my skills haven't decayed too too much haha.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Productive Day

This is what I felt like today.

There are different phases people go through when the Finals week is coming as I have described before. The worrying, the procrastinating, and finally the acceptance and real work. Thanks to my group members being very forward about our final project, I actually got some real work done early for once. I mean I've done work early before, but it's always a nice spectacle to be seen when it does happen. I even wrote out two more cover letters to send out for a job as well, I just haven't actually sent them yet lol..

It's funny how some of the things you need to do are prioritized in such bizarre ways. My applications for internships and jobs are by far more important than preparation for an exam, because once you get your foot in the door- you're set for life (unless you screw up of course). Since I'm a Information Systems Major, I had to do case work and develop a system proposal for a company. I like the project since it seems pretty legit. I mean according to my senpais (grads) the work we've done in class is very very relevant to work in the real world. Hearing that from an actual analyst at a financial investment company is very promising, but of course landing a job like that will be tough.

So while I'm working on that project with my group mates, there's also an odd Sudoku paper I've got to write where I need to explain how I systematically pick apart the puzzle and solve it. I never really liked Sudoku but at least now I can finally say that I've completed a Sudoku puzzle. What I'm particularly worried about right now is my Statistics and my Accounting courses. The grading that was done in my stats course is so weird that I just don't know where I stand in that class anymore. The professor tells me that I'm doing fine, but my grades don't look that way, unless the values are all different. As for Accounting I just need to do very well on this Final in order to get by safely, because I bombed my last exam miserably ;_;. Accounting is so painfully boring, it's probably the most tedious thing to prepare for this semester. 


Besides that my friends have gotten so restless that they've decided to try out another game. One of my friends bought Aion in the past but none of us thought it'd be any good (we thought right) but now that its Free to play we figured it would be a fun way to burn some time. I honestly don't know how I got caught up in it but why not... I need to take breaks and try to have some fun anyway so I guess this will be my outlet for the end of the semester.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Busy Finals Week

Distractions... Distractions everywhere!

It's that time of year again, the few weeks before finals where everyone starts to become a recluse and do nothing but either worry, complain, or actually study for the finals. Honestly I'm not quite too sure what exactly I did this past week either. It felt like an entire month with what I've been doing.

Wake up -> Goto work -> Hit the bar

I think I mentioned it before in one of my blogs since I've come back, but my friend's awesome extravagant birthday party was last week. It was really fun. I don't even understand why it was so much fun, but I guess when you get so drunk with your friends things are more fun than they should be. I remember just chatting and playing a few games of beer pong. A few of my other friends opted to just smoke A LOT of weed. I mean they must have gone through like 6+ joints in that one night, crazy guys. Towards the end of the party I remember just walking around and eventually hung around my poker buddy who was playing heads up texas hold 'em with like $300 on two tables lol. I couldn't believe he was playing with that much money as he drank, but somehow he actual made a profit which was pretty mind blowing haha. Then once most of the crowd left I vaguely remember playing a 1v1 game of Starcraft 2 with him, and it only hit me then that I was probably going to pass out cold. To avoid sleeping on the floor I walked over to a bed and just fell over and passed out. I didn't know at first but as morning came I realized that I was sleeping next to a girl I hardly even knew, and she kept stealing the damn blanket... My buddies teased me for sleeping next to her the day after but it's really not much of a deal.

I wish I had played more beer pong, beer pong is a great way to get to know people and socialize since it breaks the ice for you. I remember just walking up to people and just talking to them at the last party, but it's a lot easier to do when you're more sober. Plus my Asian glow is very noticeable and I feel like it's kind of unattractive lol. But all in all it was fun, it's just a shame I couldn't get to know people more. There will be more opportunities at least.

Now I'm sitting in my school's library again, trying to study, but of course I am distracted by this and various other forms of media. I also still haven't heard back from companies I applied for internships for, so I hope they at least respond to me sometime before the semester ends.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Anime Boston 2012

So I just got back from going on a massive shopping spree during the three day duration of Anime Boston. I must say it is nice to have money at this point in life lol. Yes... I could have saved that money to pay off debts but man you just have to let go sometimes.

I bought a TON of stuff. I bought 4 volumes of Twin Spica, several artbooks, a bunch of T-Shirts, a few small posters, an autographed poster of Ito Kanako along with her latest album that literally came out a week ago, and three HUGE wallscrolls. I also managed to get a few charms here and there, an awesome Sena bag, specifically designed for convention life if I may add.




These wall scrolls were a lot bigger than I thought they were...

This year's convention was one hell of a harvest for me. My walls are completely decorated with stuff, it's really a great sight. The scrolls make up for their lower quality for their large size. I don't remember the exact measurements but it went along the lines of 44 inches x 30 inches, something like that. Having three of those around my room really made it much more colorful. At times like these when I want to take some pictures for whatever reason it is I wish I had a real camera (Canon). Because my camera phone just isn't all that great.


A medium sized high quality print

Besides the wall scroll I also had several of these smaller prints. They look just fantastic. I think this year I was just very lucky to bump into a dealer that had good connections to getting legitimate merchandise from high level circles in Japan. There was also a Sena artbook that I had bought with some amazing pictures. It really blew away everyone out of the artists alley here in Boston. I kinda felt bad for the artists next to the dealer because me and my friend were just raving about how high quality her goods were. I even got a free print because of my referrals =). 

A K-ON! Music Box
(lol @konata in the background)

The K-ON! music box that I bought was probably the most endearing piece of merchandise I took away from the convention. It plays a really melancholic tune with the traditional chimes from a typical old music box. That chime in conjunction with one of the tamer songs from K-ON! makes me feel really relaxed, it's quite nice. 

My gaming setup and MLG Mousepad

While I was taking pictures around my room I decided to take a picture of my desk as well. It's been a while since I took a pic of it, because I remember doing so a long time ago to post it on a teamliquid thread where everyone showed off their gaming setups haha. I'm pretty happy with what I have got right now. I've got an Insignia speaker setup for some awesome surround sound when  I play Starcraft or watch Starcraft. 

In fact on the monitor is the IPL tournament broadcasting live. I was in the middle of putting up my posters while I watched it. The keyboard is one of my prides as well, it's a mechanical keyboard. I bought it for $129, pretty hefty price for just a keyboard but it was well worth it. There are definitely better alternatives out there, but I just settled for the slightly cheaper Black Widow. It changed my typing experience forever, people's reviews for mechanical keyboards VS normal regular membrane keyboards are 100% right. You'll never want to go back lol. 

My MLG mousepad is stained with wine and various other foods unfortunately... I'm really disappointed in myself for getting it so dirty, but it's tough not to when you're drunk tbh. I have a ton of pro gamer autographs on it, if it weren't so dirty this mouse pad would be worth quite a lot of money.

Well that's it for now, it's starting to get late so maybe I'll put up the other stuff I bought later. 

Thursday, April 5, 2012

What a Wonderful World!

What a Wonderful World by Asano Inio

So I finally found it. This is the manga full of short stories about how morbid life can be for some people. I couldn't get it off my mind after mulling over it in one blog post a week back. As I said before I left off the manga when it came to a short story about a college student that spent most of her days lazing and occasionally going to work, then at night she would drink, relying on the drink to put her to sleep. What scared me about it was how strikingly similar it was to my own life. The reason why people drink at night after a long day of work or school, is to get their worries off their minds in order to fall asleep safely and soundly. Which is why I drink alone at night, there's a lot of things I worry about.

But really it's just another escape unfortunately- I must admit it. When I finally dug this title back up from the huge library that is mangareader.net, I went straight back to where I left off. The short story was actually shorter than the others, maybe for a reason. It was really anti-climatic, because I was looking for an answer to my anxiety, and my lackluster lifestyle of being laidback as fuck. The answer was really simple I guess. The main character of that story met up with her boyfriend the next morning after a night drinking. The had some small talk, and without any dialogue the girl came to a revelation by herself after reflecting on her own life and the lives of people around her. Finally she turned to her boyfriend and said "I'm going to quit drinking".

It was that simple, just stop drinking. When you drink in the way she and I have been drinking, we're basically running away from "Tomorrow". We're looking for a way to freeze time just so we can live in the present and enjoy our carefree lifestyle. But by doing that, it halts our progress in life ever so slightly, and the more you do it the more you're stunting your own growth. 

So guess what I did last night? I didn't drink. The past week I've been drinking everyday. I missed a few classes because I simply didn't need to attend them. But that's the wrong attitude to have, because again like I said- drinking and not moving forward to your "Tomorrow" is going to stunt your growth, and hell I'll say it, it might even ruin your life. 

Today was an amazing day, it really was. First of all from a dietitians standpoint, I'm not devouring 2 glasses of empty calories so it was great for my diet and my workout. My mind was also not cluttered with thoughts of being lazy, I wanted to do work. It felt great to have some motivation after sitting on my ass all week. Just  now I just wrote out another cover letter and sent my resume to another job opening! Hopefully I land this one...


Saturday, March 31, 2012

Touch Typing

"Shingeki no Kyojin"
A great shounen manga I found, it has won some awards as well, fully deserving of them

Thought I should at least what I've been reading for each of my entries to spice it up. Walls of text are so unattractive although they are my very own. Anyways back to my topic today.

Lately the past few days I've been getting more and more accustomed to touch typing. For as long as I can remember I've always been typing with a tiger claw like stance lol. Which is basically just three fingers from each hand. It seems like the WPM for that kind of typing caps up at around 60 WPM. I say that because I've been typing this way for years, and naturally I'd assume that I'm pretty damn good at it lol.

The toughest part about adjusting to touch typing is the fact that you need to use all of your fingers. With my tiger claw style my index and middle fingers saw the most action, that leaves my ring and pinky fingers out of the loop- especially the pinky fingers. I have to hit "a" and "p" for the most part with my pinkies and also of course shift, quotes, and apostrophes. So it was really tough in the beginning but as I keep practicing my fingers gradually get used to it.

Touch typing easily the superior way to type. I mean even when I was struggling I was still managing to punch out 30 - 40 WPM, so once I'm up to speed the sky is the limit for my WPM. Exactly do I want more WPM? Well for one thing I want to be able to deliver trash talk quicker when I play games lol. Another is obviously for  just the overall convenience of it. You're always typing, and when you touch type and do it well in class or at work, it makes a good impression. Employers like productive employees after all. As for writing papers and such it's not exactly that important to type fast, but if you're like me and you just know what you need to hammer out onto your Microsoft word, having fast WPM helps. It's also more accurate for spelling as well.

Even after spending years of typing improperly I still make tons of mistakes, because often I make a typo and do realize until I look up at the screen. Right now I'm doing this entire blog with touch typing, and so far it's great practice since I shit out a wall of text each time I blog. Other than that there's not much to talk about today. It's been a long day at work, I've only got 3 more hours before I get out @_@.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Another end of the week

This week has been quite uneventful. Usually something comes up that completely blindsides me. I remember last week after returning to class after skipping just one day, an exam was to be done on that day. I didn't do a lick of studying. But to be honest I didn't really need to. It was a statistics exam so it dealt with regression analysis, forecasting, and weighted moving averages to project information for next year's business period. It's very easy stuff once you understand what it's used for. It's just a tool to help out on making financial decisions. Like for regression there's these r^2, F-values, and p-values those are very intuitive ways to just determine just how accurate your regression model is, but people look at it like its poison.

Ok to be honest if you had to do the calculations out yourself and not on excel, it'd be a pain in the ass, and it would take a good amount of practice to breeze right through the calculations. However, the course I'm in is the next level of statistics, the level where you put that math to real use. In the real world we don't have to do those calculations, they are already done for us through the means of excel and etc. But people are still terrible at it. When the professor stepped out the room (I still have no clue why he does it) nearly everyone except for the two sitting next me start asking for answers from each other blatantly cheating. IT'S OPEN BOOK AND OPEN NOTES FOR CHRIST SAKE! The professor just wants us to fully understand the concepts we learn in class, because he's just being real, when you get the job you just need to know how to use your tools.

Well that was a little off tangent, but there's not much else going on this week since my random episode of anxiety. I've been drinking a little more than usual this week since I knew for a fact that I didn't have any obligations the following morning, although it would be nice if I could wake up earlier and spend that time productively. The drinking also destroys my diet. Each glass of wine I shove down my throat is around 250 calories. I've adjusted by eating very little during lunch and and dinner, but I'm still getting very poor nutritional value out of it overall. Not to mention I slacked off on running for the week as well @_@. Which is even worse in my opinion.

I've set a goal to run around 15+ miles each week. About 3 miles every other day and a mile in between is all I ever needed. So this week I've only done three, I've been meaning to do 3 yesterday but my friends intervened and I really didn't want to go running at 11 PM at night. Hopefully I'll be able to get out of this slump by running hard today and tomorrow. If I can at least get 9 miles done, then that'd be fine. On a good note I've worked out my upper body at least since it takes up significantly less time than running.

I really can't wait for nest week to come. Because it's that time of the year again, the time when the Anime Convention rolls around. More specifically Anime Boston, which has a great ring to it. I've got more money this time around so I'll be sure to purchase some more goodies, like a K-ON! clock and more posters. My friend keeps bugging me to try to cosplay for this year, but cosplay really just isn't for me haha.

The Magic Words

"Don't worry" - Those are the magic words an adult says to a child to calm them down. It's as if everything in the world will go back in order with those words. However, when a child is no longer a child it's quite frightening to see that magic become broken. I actually came up with these magic words through reading a light novel. I'm really glad that I've moved from watching anime, to reading manga, and now presently I'm reading light novels- basically the real origin of all our favorite shows.

Right now I'm reading Toradora!. Reading a light novel is pretty no different from reading a book, except you're reading a book heavily influenced by the Japanese culture. Thinking about my taste of Anime since my middle school years, they've evolved according to how I matured.

Of course back in my middle school days I was enamored with ecchi lol. Well that shouldn't be a surprise, every boy going through puberty will start getting extremely interested in the opposite sex, although I can't say that that's the healthiest way to be interested haha. Going into high school, my taste broadened, and being the higher level nerd than most I began taking great care to dissect the shows I watched and promoted the great shows that came out from the 2000 - 2007 era. I basically watched nearly everything and also began reading mangas. I even checked out a ton of shoujo series, which was fun since my girl friends were really able to relate to them rather than my other genres catered towards men.

My early college years were horrific. Especially freshman year, one way to describe it is just me being pessimistic in a really facetious way. Quite embarrassing really, but that's not to say that when I get all moody it's not as equally as silly lol. I partly blame it on my lack of foresight and the ridiculous satire manga I read. The shit I read was poison. It was really scary, I mean at one point I remember very clearly that there was one short story (the artist followed a short story format) about a woman around the same age as I was who had the same issues when it came to drinking, half-heartedly taking classes, and basically just living a very a carefree lifestyle.

That scared the crap out of me lol. So I stopped reading brooding gloomy mangas full of satire. Although now sometimes I feel like returning to that one short story and seeing how it ended... yeah it was that frightening close to my life that I just had to stop. Nowadays I just read and watch comedy. Laughing is great. Laughing is one of the best remedies to a salty mood. But if I ever feel like digesting something more potent, I read light novels. Although the story and setting seem albeit a bit childish, the author is not, and when they share their thoughts on some things in life it's an interesting read,

Toradora!, despite it catering to high school students- the author really tried to assert himself into the book. His own life questions and such, so it was a really surprisingly good read. I've been reading it for the past month now, just on my commute to work and school. I shouldn't be too surprised that the book is finally coming to and end. An hour worth of reading everyday is enough to bring me to the end of the book. I just hope my next book will be as enjoyable.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Getting Back

Well it looks like the work/school week has started up again.

After the whole ordeal over the weekend I was left feeling pretty rattled. I really needed to decompress. Sometimes I just don't know why I get caught up in things. It doesn't happen often, but when it does- it sucks. But as I have stated before, maybe I just need to learn how to enjoy life more than grumbling over to silly stuff. The problem with that is, by trying to release all your stress, either by partying and drinking, or just shutting yourself up away from the outside world, you're avoiding reality.

However, as pessimistic I am, I can't deny that there will be a time when I seriously just need to relax. Maybe I'll be a happier person if I had a girlfriend. Or maybe I'll be even more miserable? If I really had to choose a type of girl that I would want then it'd probably would be one that could understand what I really want to say or how I really feel. Fuck me for that being my number one priority in a girl, all my other guy friends just want to have sex, no surprise there. Unfortunately for me that approach is probably the only way to get a girl interested at this stage in life. It'd be too weird to have a guy who likes to talk so pessimistically. After all most people are just looking to have fun... didn't I talk about this before a long time ago?

I'm going to go to a party in a few weeks. Knowing the way my friend likes to run his parties, it'll be a wild one. I just want to see how I am now when it comes to drinking with a large group of people. In years past I'm known to get violent when I'm drunk.  Since then I've avoided parties for that reason, and going to a party without having a drink yourself fucking sucks balls. So I drank alone. I don't get completely shitfaced but I do get relatively drunk.

I just looked up the subject of drinking alone. It seems I'm not the only one, in fact I'm far from the only one who thinks that this whole drinking alone habit is a bad thing to do. It really just isn't. In fact I'm 100% that this it's just a taboo created by society to give judgment to those who practice such a thing with great prejudice. It's like hey, I drink a glass of wine every night, "YOU'RE AN ALCOHOLIC OMG" that's the average reaction you get when you tell someone that you drink alone.

But whatever that not's the point. The point of this blog entry was to outline the nice stuff that happened to me this weekend.

I went shopping with a few friends. Got drunk, friend drives me home. I'm nice and cozy and content. The end.



Saturday, March 24, 2012

Aftermath

So I got it over with my parents.

Should I be surprised at their reaction? They've had the same one when I confronted them before with this issue. They tell me "don't worry, just focus on your life and we'll take care of the rest." but really I know that this is more than they can handle... Yet they still insist on handling it themselves and excluding me from everything.

Having a well paying job right about now would make things a lot less complicated, right? Would I be a happier person? That's hard to say to be honest. I mean even if I did get myself a real career job I'd still would have to deal with all the hardships of working in that type of job. Undoubtedly there will be obstacles that I will have to come to face with. Even with the confidence in my ability to work hard in less than 1st world conditions, there will be things that come along my way that will shake my sanity- things like flat out failure.

I'm confident that I'll be able to face these obstacles however, in the past I know that I may not be brave enough to face them. In high school my dream was to become an artist. It takes an incredible amount of courage and talent to become a successful artist. I didn't have that courage, to be quite frank I was simply just a coward.

I remember having a friend back in high school whom I would talk to occasionally about art and art as a career. She was very confident in her decision to pursue art. I remember asking her "Aren't you afraid of how tough it'll be to succeed?". I don't quite remember her answer, whether she was afraid or not, but I remember clearly that she told me that if you truly love art you'll pursue it regardless. So perhaps I'm lacking not just in talent, but also in passion.

Coming to this stage in my life I can openly admit that the art I made in high school days were partially for showing off the ambidextrous skill-sets that I had developed so casually over the years. I think that a real artist wouldn't have a shred of that type of desire. They would just make art because something within them compels them to.

You know what's funny I just realized that the manner in which I write out this post is very much like a certain character from a manga full of morbid satire. Although I'm not directly attacking society itself with my rants, it's still pretty gloomy to read through it. I guess I need to learn how to enjoy life more. I was never one to go out partying and all that jazz but I'm quite sure that doing so would have helped to mold me into a much more normal person than I am now- which is a person who is agonizing over things that nearly everyone has to deal with at some point in their lives.

I wonder how some other people deal with it. You can't exactly go with the flow, because not taking these issues seriously will end up ruining your life very easily. From what I can tell, just looking into the eyes of people who have endured these dramatic life events, they just glaze over. In a sense they plow through their issues with as little emotion as possible. Again, I think they simply just become boring people.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Reality

It's been a year.

So much can happen in a year its quite shocking. Sometimes you just need an outlet to gather up your thoughts, because storing them up all in your head will create a huge mess.

I guess I was a lot more immature than I originally thought I was. Or maybe I was mature, but not mature enough in certain areas of my persona. By nature I was really laid-back. Really laid-back. Now it has come back to haunt me. The truth is you can't live a life with a laid-back attitude. It simply doesn't work. I tried, and forced my way of living for so long that the repercussions of it are bringing me to the brink of... insanity perhaps? Well I don't know, but it's a god awful feeling.

So what have I been doing this past year... Well to start off I've made some improvements in my life, particularly in my academia. My grades were absolute shit during my sophomore year, for no good reason. Now as I try to salvage my GPA and bring it up to a reasonable level, so that my employers don't crumple and throw away my resume, it's nearly an impossible task- but very doable. So okay I'm getting back in line with my fellow students who want to succeed in life.

Good... right? No, there are still other things I have not dealt with yet. I've always been internally conflicted. I don't have anyone to talk to, not even my family since I've done such a wonderful job isolating myself from them. I cringe as I look back on my other blog posts. I think I'm a decently interesting character a year ago, still full of dreams, ideas, all stemming from my light-hearted high school days.

Adults have to be boring in some way or another. I can feel myself getting boring. Today was the worst.

It's like a foot race between you and reality. When you're young and bright you've got tons of energy. Reality being as old as the human race itself has quite the cumbersome pace. So naturally you're flying way ahead of reality, it's almost as if it'll never catch up to you. But as you get older and lose energy yourself, reality starts to catch up. Eventually it'll be mouth breathing down your neck, ready to bring you down.

I never really blogged at all this past year. I guess because my life was starting to look pretty good. Up until now things were looking amazing. I'm doing well in school, despite the shit GPA. I work out on a regular basis finally. I've also given more attention to my personal appearance, buying new trendy clothes to spice up my wardrobe.

I should have known something was going to crawl out to shit on my face. Actually I did know, but I never actually confronted it. Now my entire lifestyle is in jeopardy. Tonight I have to tell my father the bad news. I hate to break the good relations we have had the past few months, but fuck my life I guess terrible dramatic things are inevitable.

All I ever wanted... was to live a carefree life. I bet everyone does. But the definition of carefree is very deceptive. To what standard does your "carefree" hold up to? If I truly want to live a peaceful life, marry a wonderful woman, have a family- I need to fucking sit up in my chair and stare my demons straight in the eye and tell 'em that I'm ready to play.