graduation

im pretty tired from going to bed so late yesterday night and waking up so early this morning so this post will most likely be incoherent.

so college graduation is a lot different from high school graduation. i think the biggest difference is that i dont know most of the people graduating with me. most of my [very limited set of] friends either are in different schools (college, comm school) or just not graduating this year. so while high school graduation was all about hugging friends who youve hung out with during lunch time, classes, and after school activities throughout 4 years of high school, college graduation was just you being thrown together with random group members that you awkwardly smile at as you pass each other on grounds.

regardless, stepping onto the lawn with 1294028305 people cheering [not] you on was pretty surreal. while walking down, dan asked this lady in the front row of the audience what time she got there and she answered 5:20..am that blew my mind. why would you wait 6 hours to get a glimpse of your son/daugther/whatever for 10, 15 seconds max?? and what about the people that fly all over the world just to watch for 6 seconds as their kid's name is called. i just find the whole thing inefficient. i think the whole idea of watching graduation is weird. i feel like i would almost prefer it if they just gave me the diploma in a back room on the last day of classes (this is probably the hermit side of me speaking). i also feel really bad for making people sit through an hour of names and random awards before im called. i mean, if i find it incredibly boring, i cant imagine what its like for others.

also, they messed up my diploma so i have a piece of poster paper with a 8x11 IOU taped on it from eschool. yeah, haha.

cool. got a couple weeks to chill before work. gonna be in cville this week by myself so it should be some good quiet personal time before i start work. i plan to get fat now.

peace.

my day just made your day look like cspan2

i woke up today around 9am, crushed some special k fruit n yogurt, finished laundry and went to asian fusion (always satisfying). got home and drank 934582435 glasses of water. shortly after, i went to the gym to work out, then shot around after i could no longer lift my arms. this was a bad idea. i got challenged by this white guy to one-on-one, and for having really sore arm muscles, i was doing okay at first.. until that kid realized he could dunk. yeah so stupid.

so right after that i left afc (sans dignity), i picked up a "mango something something blast" smoothie from smoothie king with my roommate (buy one get one free coupon). sometimes i wonder why smoothie flavors are so much more in your face than regular beverages. theyre all like "strawberry kiwi explosion" or "banana berry blast". its like, whoa, whoa, calm down. i just want a drink, not fourth of july fireworks.

anyways, after that, we went rock climbing at this joint downtown. it was tighttt (esp. the butt harness, haha). so it was my first time and im mildly terrified of heights but it was awesome. its sort of like snowboarding in how once you get used to it, you get desensitized to the danger and become more and more reckless. for instance, towards the end, id just jump off to see if my roommate was still paying attention while holding the safety cable. we climbed until we could no longer feel our hands.

then we went to chipotle. i downed a steak burrito bowl and immediately after, we went to the afc pool (yeah, good ideas all around). i suck at swimming. like really really suck. i tried to swim a lap but came to a critical life decision that if i were to ever get stuck in a swim or die situation, id choose die in a heartbeat. after this realization, i went to the hot tub to get mad wrinkly. once raisined, i went to the sauna cause i wanted to feel sophisticated, but honestly, i have no idea what the purpose of a sauna is. i decided to leave once i started questioning whether the water dripping down my back was water or sweat.

my muscles are obliterated right now. tennis in 15. if i die, ill die like i was born.. awesome and beautiful, ahahah.

summertime and the livin's easy

haha. summer is awesome. my summer routine is pretty much guitar, eat, gym, nap, guitar, eat, gym, sleep, [repeat].

this kind of reminds me of that verse in Matthews thats like: "do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. "i love how during the summer, youre free of worries. theres no small thorn in your side or weight on your back due to some upcoming midterm or looming project. i also like how i have no idea what day of the week it is (apparently it's wednesday but i could be convinced otherwise). additionally, i like how when i pick up a pen to try to jot something down, my handwriting sucks because i havent written anything down weeks. this may sound horrible, but i can actually feel myself fading into worthlessness, and it's glorious, haha. summer is so necessary and unnecessary all at once.

2 months til work

life is good. God is great. craisins are delicious.

pomp and circumstance sucks

bam. just like that, college is done.

people keep asking me how i feel. i think i feel anxious.. anxious to start doing something bigger. problem sets are cool and all but i really want to just get out into the world and do something for more than just self-validation in the form of letter grades and report cards. this anxiousness is sort of like those "first day of school butterflies" but with much more momentum behind it, if that makes any sense.

while i think the biggest individual lesson ive learned is to stay humble or be humbled (thanks to my second year roommate, raghu rajkumar, who would beat me by 1 point on every single test no matter how hard i studied (raghu, if you are reading this, i hate you, haha), i think its the small things that each of my friends have taught me that have really changed me.

its sort of like, imagine your life as an asteroid hurtling through space, and each relationship/experience as a collision which shapes and refines you as a person. these collisions wear off your outer facade, reveal your inner self, and change your ultimate (earthly) destination.

or something like that.

whatever. thanks college, its been fun.


-x-

bonus feature: i went to my livejournal and found my post on my high school graduation thoughts. its pretty funny:

"damn. its crazy how fast life moves. its like one minute youre this insignificant freshmen looking up at all the seniors thinkin they are so old and then all of a sudden BAM youre one of them. and sometimes while walkin down the halls id wonder if the freshmen look at me like the same way i looked at the seniors back then. Ok, so this kinda ties into the last entry but its basically like, we can only take life one second at a time, but before we know it, a month, a year, or a freakin decade has passed (i mean youre probably lookin really foward to summer right now but cherish every second of it cuz before you know it its gonna be august, youre gonna get dropped off at college all alone and ur gonna get in the fetal position and cry). and i think time seems like its moving so fast because we are always looking foward to something. but then, that moment passes and you have a new thing youre lookin foward to. we're never really cherish what we have going for us during the present, which is something we should do instead of constantly lookin forward. man, i wish i were better at articulating stuff."

haha, high school me is so stupid.

very rational fears

here is a list of things that currently terrify me:

approaching a door only to have it slam into your face as you get there because someones exiting at the same moment

developing ridiculously sensitive allergies to pollen, etc

north koreans

identity theft

north koreans attempting identity theft

forgetting a credit card payment

trying to fit in too hard once i start work

overall, today has been a good day. i wonder what would help you overcome a fear more, facing it, or just trying to ignore. i think the latter because if a door slammed into my face, i would be 93459345 times more terrified of doors.

whatever. also, i am going to bed later and later. im going to enjoy being able to call a 10:00am wake up, "early" as much as possible before i start work.

what can separate me now

after experiencing possibly one of the worst praise team crashes of all time in my penultimate large group (i put up the wrong version of "in Christ alone" for the powerpoint), i started to think of some of the greatest/worst moments in ccf praise team that i was fortunate enough to be apart of and one particular memory came to mind..

it was a ridiculously hot and humid day in august.. like a, you step outside and are immediately slapped in the face by humidity so you go back inside, day. we were preparing for my first welcome dinner on praise team (second year). the songs selected were who am i, still, and a chinese song "yo ee way sen" (10 points for anyone able to figured out that butchered pinying). everyone in ccf decided to advertise all throughout the irc since they all lived there. the flyer went something along the lines of "Free Chinese Food, Wesley Foundation 6pm" etc etc.

so 6pm hits and about 20 french international students walk over from the irc, mad hungry for some kung pao chicken. hardly any of them speak english and all of them are coming up to me and saying, "neeee haw". i am mildly offended, haha. some more people come in and by the time we start, i say we have a good 50-60 people filling up wesley (keep in mind the 20 french people off to the side).

anyways, welcome dinner starts and it gets to praise time. heres the set-up (from left to right): ruth and ning were on vocals, i was on guitar, judith was on the keyboard, and lily was on violin. in addition, each one of us was standing at least 10 feet apart (so imagine all 5 of us evenly spaced apart up at the front). youre probably thinking "thats a great idea since everyone will be able to hear each other okay and nothing will go completely wrong".. haha, so stupid. anyways, we start playing and of course, no one can hear any one (instead of practicing beforehand, we scrambled to figure out how to get 5 trays of food from yuan ho over without a car. answer: walking).

so we start playing and RIGHT OFF THE BAT, everything crashes. like this may have been the fastest collapse ever witnessed. i think each instrument was playing in a different time signature, and to top it all off, theres 20 french people standing right in front of me, dead silent, glaring at me in confusion, as we're try to teach them how to sing, "there is only one God" in chinese. worst idea ever. right after we finish, lily, who had never spoken a word to me before this point, goes "we suckkkk!!!" haha. judith's hangs her head in shame and is mumbling "aii yoooo" and im like "yo seriously, where did all these french people come from??"

moral of the story: when you suck, like really really suck, you don't have to worry about anyone getting the glory other than God.

7:45 easter service at trinity tomorrow for the winnn.

ethically immoral

two buildings are fire. one of them has three children in it, the other has one. you begin running towards the one with three children. as youre running, you glance over once more at the child standing alone and realize that she is your daughter. what choice do you make now?

-x-

The tale of an Eastern sage and his young disciple from my ethics book.

The young man asked, "O Wise Man, what holds up the earth?" The sage responded, "The answer, my son, is a very strong man." After some thought, the young man asked, "What holds up the strong man?" The sage responded, "A large stone, my son." After further reflection, the young man returned and asked what held up the stone. The sage, growing impatient, said, "A turtle, my son." When the young man persisted and asked, "What supports the turtle?" the Wise Man snapped, "Look, kid, from there on it's turtles all the way down."

haha, so many ethical turtles.

-x-

i bet ethics class would be much more fun if everyone was blazed.

(interesting tidbit that no one cares about of the day: my linear algebra professor, Paramamasamy Karuppapuachamy (worst name to have when signing something ever), used "-x-" as a symbol for a break in thought. it was the only applicable thing i learned in that class.)

the day is mine.

this is a long epic story of failure. it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it might give you gas, but mostly it will make you want to want to never read this blog again.

so yesterday part of my thesis (my lit review on 15 of the most boring sources ever written- im talkin 500 page books about the history of the bicycle) was due in my 5-6:15pm class. I finished it a couple days back and printed it out and so i was ready to turn it in. i love dropping a thick paper onto a professor's desk and hearing that *plop* sound. its like, "yeah, you hear that? each decibel represents 5 hours of sleep lost and 1 hour of me thinking about slapping you in the face."

haha so anyways, i get to class and i realize my english binder isnt in my backpack. and so im like, "dak;lfj;laksjdf;as" <-direct quote. since im mad tight with my professor, i go up to him and talk him into letting me turn it in after class.

so after class, i run over to stacks to print out my essay and turn it in (his office is right behind stacks).

when i get there i turn on the computer, open up my email, open up the attachment and hit "print". i go over to the printer and right after i swipe my cav ad and lose 64 cents, i realize the printer is non-stop excrementing blank white pages. so im like, "aunt jemima" <- also a direct quote. being the genius i am, i run over to the capstone lab (across eschool) and decide to print it out there, then come back and turn it in.

i get to the lab, print it out and after page 3, it stops printing because its OUT OF WHITE PAPER. so im like "WHWHTTwe;lkkja;lwekjf IRONY PWNNN". so this scene is perfect because at the exact moment after i hang my head down in utter dejection, i shed one single tear because im standing under the air duct and its blowing into my face, and im like, dang, as upsetting as this is, this is mad poignant, haha. so to finish out this horrible story, i run back to stacks, grab a couple pages of blank white paper from the nice pile thats formed since i left, go back to the lab, finish printing my paper, then run back to stacks and turn it in under his office.

my life makes the notebook look like a family circus cartoon.

the bee's knees

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen."

-Oscar Romero

random lines that strike me in the book im reading:

"Today men are consumed by desires to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like."

"America was founded by men who sought spiritual freedom to worship God. Where are the descendants of these men?"

fearfully intrepid

do you ever think that everything you're chasing in life might just be a faint facsimile of fulfillment?

what is it that, when youre lying on your death bed, makes you think, "yeah, that was awesome" or, "man, i wish i had done more"?

socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, but i would contest that it is equally important that we examine how we examine our lives.

recently, ive been asking myself, what exactly am i trying to accomplish with my life? i think im asking this question out of fear, out of fear that when i look back at everything ive done, ill have a deep-seeded regret that ive wasted all my time chasing an empty promise rather then spending it on the things that matter.

ive arrived at the conclusion that life isnt about anything you do, ie the awards, fame, fortune etc, but how you do it. its about giving everything, leaving nothing, enjoying all that God's created and genuinely loving and showing God's love to everyone around you.

or something like that.

"There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice." - John Calvin

word up.

try to contain your excitement

list of news years resolutions that undoubtedly will not be resolved:

1. get jacked, take a picture to show my grandchildren, then gorge myself into a diabetic coma.

2. learn how to read lips

3. figure out how to text faster than 7 words/minute

4. change my handwriting to all caps (i think it looks more professional)

5. pay off my student loans

6. get that "check engine" light looked at on my car

that is all. i realize how lame these are but maybe its like, the lamest shall be the coolest in the kingdom of heaven. (edit: nevermind that doesnt make any sense since Jesus was mad cool and is def still the coolest in the kingdom of heaven)

"I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil-this is the gift of God" --Ecc 3:12-13

tru dat.