Finding Strength

The past few weeks have been harder than I thought for some reason.

Truth be told, this is nothing new. My family has had problems my entire life and more so when I started college - during my freshmen year of college, my dad left for about a year.

Yet, I've always managed to hang on somehow. I think that throughout my five-year college experience, if there's one thing I've learned it's that friends will be there for you if and when you allow them to. It takes the bigger man to accept help than to deny it.

I'm an extrovert. All that means is that I get energy when I'm around people, rather than by myself. I deal with things, solve problems when I have others around me. When I'm down, I need to be around my friends. Maybe that's why I'm always at school, as an escape from home. Introverts, on the other hand, like to be in really small groups or by themselves - that's when they are most productive and have the most energy. Some of my friends deal with things by lighting a candle in their bedroom and reading a book.

I've gotten so much support from everyone with comments, hugs, and all that. And all I can say is that I'm very, very grateful and appreciative of it all. The day after I posted the last blog two of my friends sat me down at school and we just talked. It was pretty awesome. It's the small things in life that get you going through it.

My best friends would take me out to help get my mind off things and it helps, it really, really does. I guess the best way to deal with something is not by dealing with it directly, because that makes the problem seem bigger than it needs to be, but rather, indirectly by doing something else. I'm not saying running away from problems are the way to go, but by getting your mind off of it for awhile is.

Some of my friends go canyon carving, some of my friends go fishing, I hit the gym. There's nothing better than lifting heavy objects to get your mind off of things, in my opinion.

A quote from one of my favorite movies - Into the Wild: "It's not enough to be strong, but you also have to feel strong."

Mr. Brightside

What if you woke up one day and your world entirely changed?

I woke up today and my parents were fighting as usual. Sunday mornings are usually fight mornings anyways for some reason, so I didn't pay any extra attention to it. As I came down stairs for to head to work, my brother told me they were going to get a divorce in about a month, after the Lunar New Year.

It didn't hit me at first because maybe I prepared for it a little bit. My mom and dad have been having disagreements for years and my mom talked about it on occasion. Then at work, something happened and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Having a horrible day at work also didn't help.

I know I'm not the first one kid to have his parents divorce but I can't help but feel that nothing's going right at all. I also can't shake the feeling that nothing I do will make everything right again.

And my favorite pair of socks has a hole in it. =(

*Edit: Please forgive me if I seem bitter or angry all the time for the next few days.*

Racial and Ethnic Identity Formation

I found an interesting article on the UCI webpage that deals with racial identity and its formation right here.

In it, it brings up the notion that identity formation is not necessarily a reflection of personal choice as much as it is a reflection of others' views upon yourself and in turn that influences how you view yourself as well.

To use an admittedly weird example, let's say an African American couple move to Taiwan for work and have kids there. The kids grow up and speak fluent Chinese, act Chinese, but doesn't look Chinese. Would the children's peers treat them as one of the in group or as an outsider, despite being born in that country and speaking the language perfectly?

So that brings up a chicken and egg-type of question - how is identity formed? Is it by the self or do we take in what we get from others first?

I'm inclined to lean toward the latter theory. That we first get our identities from our families and then we respond in kind with our peers. Our peers then would see it one another perspective and continue to give us feed back. All the while, there is dynamic that is continually changing.

New Year's Resolutions

1. Sleep at a more reasonable time on a nightly basis.

2. Get buffer.

3. Pack lunches to save money.

4. Save money.

5. Meet more people.

6. Do something amazing.

Thoughts on Gran Torino

My SPOP homie Vince recommend Gran Torino to me one day when I was his server at Guppys. I remember seeing previews for it so tonight a couple of homies and I went to LA to check it out.

My first thought was, "Wow, Clint Eastwood squints a lot. Man, he curses a lot too. Wait, did he just say gook?" Yes he did, and lots other racial epithets about Asians, Hispanics, you name it, and he probably said it in the movie. That aside, I thought it was an incredible movie. Although it's set in Michigan, probably Detroit, it could be set in any number of areas with a large Asian American population.

Throughout the movie, I kept thinking, "Man, this movie reminds me A LOT about my life." I think my youth paralleled the movie quite a bit. First off, there's a boy by that name of Thao in the movie who's shy and doesn't really know what to do with life and is kinda whooped around the house by his mother and sister - kinda reminds me of me when I was a kid. Another thing was that in the movie was set in a predominately Hmong neighborhood with Clint Eastwood's character as the only non-Asian household on the block - a lot like my neighborhood. I think what really hit home was the gang element in the movie. The gangs in the movie, as they are here, were formed because little kids were tired of being bullied by big kids. In the movie near the opening, Thao was seen walking home from school being harassed by Hispanic gang members and all of the sudden his cousin and his gang shows up to scare them away with an Uzi. I'm sure things like that happened down the street in the 90s in my area. This same gang who saves Thao comes to be the antagonist element in the movie.

Stuff happens, you can watch the movie if you wanna know what happens, and as expected, Clint Eastwood more or less takes Thao under his wing and helps him grow up. Clint Eastwood's character is a Korean War veteran who was a part of the U.S. Army Rangers. What's almost scary is that in high school my neighbor, Mr. Parsons, more or less took me under his wing as well. Mr. Parsons is a U.S. Air Force veteran who served during Vietnam. He went to some of my football games and acted as a sort of mentor for me while in high school.

There's so many messages in the movie, so many things I could write about, I wish I could just write about all of them. However, I think the most important theme of the movie is violence begets violence and it really takes the bigger person to stand above it all. It's truly a movie everyone should see.

Regret and Failures

Experience is built up upon failures of the past and regret of previous decisions. Every choice we make now is due to something happening in the past. One elementary example is some of us as children learn that the stove is hot because our parents told us it was. Some of us, like me, actually touched the thing so we quickly went "AH! PAIN!"

Personally, I've learned a lot of my life experience with the latter method for some reason. Arguably, some people simply learn from others, some others simply learn by doing. Ever since I was a kid, everything I've learned, I've learned because I've actually done it, made mistakes, corrected those, and learned. I still remember some martial arts forms I learned ten years ago because of muscle memories, we learn our ABCs because we still remember performing that song, and in fact, I still have to sing it sometimes if I forget sometimes. Makes you wonder how we all got into college if we still have to recite a song to remember the order the English alphabet.

I never had the birds and the bees talk with my parents, maybe it's an Asian American parental thing or maybe they just plum forgot, but yeah, I never got it. I never got a lot of lessons on girls that I wish I did, other than the fact that they have cooties or something like that. Much of the experience I have concerning girls is because I think I've been through it all in regards to relationships with the other sex. My friends would ask me for advice on this situation or that situations, and I tell them "I've been there..." and I'd tell them a little bit of what happened to me. I feel sometimes I have failed too much in the past and there is too much regret there as well.

Talking to my friend today, I realized a made another mistake and that I just have to learn from it. I've always said that it's only awkward if you make it awkward, that it's only an issue if you make it an issue. And I realized that those words were truer than I thought they were.

Don't Plan, Just Do

The greatest times in my life, the most memorable times in my life, are the times in which I don't really plan anything, but rather, go and do. Granted, there is SOME planning involved, such as going here, or doing this, but other than that, it's all about the doing that really matters.

One of the greatest memories I have was when my best friend was moving into a new apartment. He was trying to find some furniture stores so he could furnish his place and luckily there was one less than a mile away. He bought a sofa from there and we were talking online about how to get it back to his apartment. For some reason, I had this crazy idea of CARRYING the sofa from the store to his place, you know, to safe fifty bucks.

It was the greatest idea in the world! Until we actually did it. Oh man it sucked, it was a sofa-bed thing so it had a mattress and more metal in it, and it was heavy, and it sucked carrying it back. It took us about ten minutes to walk there and about an hour to bring it back. But man, we always look back on it and remember it and laugh about it.

My best friend and I actually have this little motto of ours that kinda goes - "Be awesome in everything that you do." We're just trying to make every day a little bit awesome.