February 28, 2010

Hey look, we’re one-sixths of the way through this year already. That’s absurd.

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I’m on spring break. SPRING. I’d love it if there wasn’t a foot of snow on the ground. But whatever.

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Went to Rutgers last night. Didn’t really do much there. Couldn’t decide if I wanted to go party or not, so that kind of kept getting pushed further and further back. So just ended up seeing a bunch of people.

Jackie’s friends are insane. They’re not just the typical college students that party and drink and smoke. The things they do are crazy. I don’t get how they live like that. I guess there are people who are willing to live life on the edge and have no fear of killing themselves or anything.

I’m even more convinced now than ever that no one has changed since going to college. Not even the sophomores. I saw Alex and Chiou. They’re still the same. Played ping pong with Alex. I suck now. But it’s okay. I’d rather be good at tennis anyway. It was fun looking back on old times and the weird things that happened and the people we met along the way. I love it that even though we hadn’t seen each other in a really long time (must be a year or so), things just pick up where they left off. No awkwardness.

Saw Sam and Leo afterwards. Not for too long though since it was already 3AM by then. Chatted for a bit and went back to Ruth’s place. Oovooed with Kalvin…

THEN WENT ON CHATROULLETE. That was the revelation of the night. That website is hilarious. Basically it’s omegle with video. So you video chat with a randomly assigned person. Almost all of them are sketchy guys asking to see tits, just a penis hanging there, a guy masturbating, or some fat slut. It was thoroughly hilarious. Some of the people we met were actually legitimately interesting. (This all happened somewhere between 4:30 and 6AM). One kid was a theology major at Fordham and he had a crazy mustache. He’s trying to grow a Fu Manchu. So funny. He just seemed like an intriguing person. Then there was Tanya. Hilarious story. So after the stream of creepy guys, fat old guys, penises, masturbators, and ugly sluts, it came to my surprise that the next person we got was a really cute Asian girl. Naturally I wake up from my half-asleep state. Talk to her a bit. Found out she was doing CommonApps for transfer. To what school? BOSTON COLLEGE. Yes. I got really excited. We talked about that for a bit, etcetc. Then the stupid chat thing stopped working but the video kept going, so we were writing messages on post-its and putting it in front of the camera. That got kind of annoying so Ruth proposed giving her my number so she can text me. That happened. We had a whole texting conversation going on before we realized it’d be easier if we just called each other. So I ended up talking to her for like half an hour on the phone before she decides she needs to continue working on her applications since they’re due soon. Wished her luck. Hung up. And realized how bizarre that whole situation. It’s definitely not safe to give people your phone number on a sketchy video chat site. But it’s all good. I’ve been texting her sporadically throughout the day.

The end. That’s my story.

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I think it’s almost time for me to make a confession. Or else I’m just going to die keeping it in. Maybe sometime this week.

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IF ANYONE IS IN PARSIPPANY AND WANTS TO DO ANYTHING, HIT ME UP. I’M DOING ALMOST NOTHING ALL BREAK.

KBYE.

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Oh crap, I forgot to mention how nice it was to get to spend time with Ruth. It’s been a while since that’s happened. I like that she tries to pry things out of me that I normally wouldn’t be apt to admit. It’s good to get things out, especially to someone I trust.

formspring.me

Shoot. http://formspring.me/clamchaoder

February 17, 2010

I’m so unaccomplished. In every possible sense of the word.

 

Sigh.

February 13, 2010

Wow, rough week. It almost seems as if nothing went right. I just wasn’t really emotionally invested into anything that was going on during the week, and that has to change. I can’t afford to lose focus like this. Everything seems to have gone by in such a blur. By the end of Thursday, I was hoping for a nice night to relax considering that the only work that I had was to study for a short linear algebra quiz. But no. My computer deices to crash. It literally took me all night to figure out that I wouldn’t really be able to recover it and I’d have to reinstall the operating system. Naturally, I don’t have the Windows 7 disk since it came from the school, so I had to go to the help center the next day. As most people know, I’m pretty anal about my computer and I don’t like people suing it. The idiot guy tried to convince me that they couldn’t just hand me the disk and let me do it myself, and that they had to do it for me. So I sat there for a good fifteen minutes arguing with him trying to pry the disk from him. Finally I get it, reinstall Windows 7 and all was fine. There are still some strange glitches that I can’t quite figure otu…But whatever. It’s operable. I’ll figure the rest out as I use it. So right after all of this computer fixing, I head to my linear algebra class. With all the computer mess, I barely had time to study. Naturally I mess up a question. I realize the moment I leave class and I was ready to kill myself. It was so stupid. Yeah so. Emotionally, I just wasn’t there. My luck wasn’t there either, judging by the computer. And I had to pay for that crap.

So I was hoping to relieve some stress last night after recovering a lot of the stuff on my computer. I decided to work out. It was great. I did two hours worth of P90X. Twenty five minutes of upper body stretches, an hour and a half of cardio, and finished it off with apripperx. The cardio was intense. I felt great. I felt much fresher.

I did most of the workout while watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony. It was pretty good. I loved the part where they set up the fake mountain and had people float down from the sky as if they were skiing down. That was cool. It was hilarious at the end when there was the technical malfunction.

Unfortunately, my attempts to try to forget this past week costed me a bunch of homework and studying time. I was supposed to study for multivariable last night and I didn’t get much of a chance to. Whenever I sat down to really do work, my mind would drift. Hopefully being home this weekend is just what I need to reset myself.

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Chinese New Year is tomorrow. I can’t wait for dinner tonight. It should be great. I hope my parents prepared something awesome. I ended up deciding to go home since my cousin and his wife wanted to go. He rented a car. Free ride back home. I’ll take it. Not to mention, I get to isolate myself from civilization on Valentine’s Day. Blech. Not a fan.

February 11, 2010

We're all always surrounded. Even when we are alone, we have access to other people and resources. Technology has brought about a huge change in the dynamics of daily social interactions. I often feel that I'm literally carrying the world in my pocket on a daily basis. From my cell phone, I can easily access thousands of people through texts, email, and the internet. Social networking in particular links people from all stretches of the world together. These networks are supposed to help us, right? It's nice being able to say you know 500 people. It's nice to be able to keep in touch with old friends. But, honestly, how many of those Facebook friends do you actually know? It's scientifically proven that the human brain can only handle social circles of up to 150 friends and even these 150 friends probably aren't true intimate relationships. Also, if you really want to keep in touch with someone you truly care about, wouldn't it be a better idea to make a phone call or video call, or write a letter? If you really cared, you would make that extra effort to express that care. The sporadic "hey how's it going?" "it's going great" conversations on Facebook walls don't exactly inspire sincerity. The same goes with texts. Texting is a great way to keep up with people, such as figuring out when and where to meet, etc. But to hold a full out conversation over text? That just seems kind of sad. What can you say in the 160 character limit? There's no room for any expression of emotions and ideas. This lack of expression essentially renders the conversation useless. Moreover, over-obsessing with these forms of communication results in losing the ability to hold on-the-spot, expressive conversations.
I love technology. There's absolutely no doubting that. But , I feel that our traditional ways of communication are much better. They allow people a chance to actually express what they want to say, and this expression is a huge aspect of human nature. It might be tough to think of what to say and put it to words on the spot, but that's more or less what makes life interesting.
I know that I've somewhat fallen victim to this, and the more I notice it, the more I want to change. I've felt more of a need to express my feelings and thoughts lately, and using texting and social networking isn't cutting it. Just because it's easier to communicate with technology doesn't mean that it's the best way.

February 9, 2010

This past weekend was wild. Dipika, Jackie, Lil, Ryan, and Maria came up to Boston to celebrate “the birthday month of Dipika.” Rather, it was just an incredibly nice reunion. Between Thursday to Saturday, I was literally all over the place. Thursday morning started with my writing seminar professor complimenting the rough draft of my paper on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (although I’m not sure how much credit I can take from those comments now after reading the other “really good” essay). Anyway, my 9AM course was followed by an hour commute to Northeastern University for an interview for a volunteer program call Math Stars. It’s essentially a tutoring/mentoring program that involves playing tennis with the kids afterwards. The interview went over well, although I don’t think it could have not gone over well. I’m going to Dorchester this Thursday to see if it really is something I want to invest my time in. Afterwards, I went to the Boston Public Library to get some studying done before the grand arrival. The Boston Public Library is so ridiculously nice, almost like a museum. I wandered through several large empty marbled corridors before actually finding the “reading room".” I never actually found where the books were though…which was strange. After sitting in the library for a few hours, my normal fear for libraries took me over again, and started getting uncomfortable. Naturally, I ended up at the Starbucks at the Barnes & Nobles inside the Prudential Mall before finally heading over to Back Bay Station to pick everyone up. We all headed back to BC, ate dinner, chilled. Alexa, Christina, Parita, Jaime, and Dips joined us later in the night. I love being able to spend a night with great friends without the use of alcohol. Sleeping that night was interesting. Alexa left so we were only left with…I think 11 people. Of course sleeping 11 people in our nice little dorm room made for a bizarre situation: three people in each bed and four on the ground. Not very comfortable. Anything to see good friends, though.

Woke up at 7:30 in the morning to bring Christina, Dips, and the NEU girls. Had breakfast, went to the library to get a little studying done. Ended up passing out in the library, BUT I made it to class! Came back from class at noon and everyone was still sleeping. Jackie and Ryan were displaying a nice ensemble of snores. It was quite amusing. Anyway, we cleaned up a bit and headed out around four. I dropped everyone off at the T stop to head to BU while I headed over to Tufts. We then had our big reunion dinner at Bertucci’s out in Longwood. I was so exhausted during dinner, but it was still fun.

 

NOW HERE COMES THE INTERESTING PART. We took a cab back to Northeastern to pre-game. We got rid of a bottle of tequila and half of vodka, but all that food we ate during dinner caused none of us to feel anything. That was unfortunate. We headed over to an MIT frat party. MIT frat houses are classy, to say the least. Classy frat house almost seems…paradoxical. It was pretty fun at first, I suppose. Was not drunk at all, though, and once more and more people started piling in, I just started to get annoyed. People were spilling stuff on me, everyone was sweating; it just wasn’t…preferable. It was a fight just to get to the bar every time I wanted a drink. I basically just gave up after a while. I was really happy when Christina asked me if I wanted to go to an Indian party at Northeastern. So, we took a cab there. Got in. Everyone was super hospitable. Literally as I was walking in, people were offering to take my jacket and hang it up for me while pouring me shots. I took two shots of some unknown blue alcohol and all of a sudden, I was gone. It was so weird. I had five-ish shots of tequila, two gulps of vodka, about a cup of “punch",” and two cups of beer and didn’t feel drunk at all. All of a sudden, I had two shots and I was gone. Anyway, I took two more mixed drinks and I decided I had to stop because I had to wake up at 7:30 the next morning. So, I stopped drinking and I started getting phone calls from Jackie asking me where I was. A while later, I got several texts from Lil and Jackie telling me that they were raped. Naturally, I was terribly worried and freaking out. In my drunken state, my mind was just being extra dramatic about everything. I kept apologizing to them. I tried to stop thinking about it, and I danced a bit and was apparently talking a lot to everyone. I remember having a heart-to-heart with Vin. Funny. Anyway, by around 2AM, Christina and I left. On the cab, I kept asking her “What’s wrong with me?” because I was still thinking about how Lil and Jackie had been raped. I was beginning to have my emotional breakdown at that moment. It was strange because during this whole emotional breakdown, I couldn’t stop smiling whenever I had some random happy thought. When we got to Christina’s place, she went to sleep and passed out immediately, but I ended up laying there for nearly an hour.

This is when I started to have a huge mess of emotional confusion. For a few seconds, I was smiling at the most random things. And then all of a sudden, I had an emotional breakdown. IT WAS SO WEIRD.

Anyway, I had to wake up just a few hours later to go to a nine hour PWC seminar about accounting. It was interesting, and the morning after wasn’t as bad as I expected. Nothing really exciting. I was supposed to go to a Harvard party that night, but decided against it when I realized how exhausted I was.

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So here’s the thing. My emotional breakdown seemed to highlight what seems to be some kind of emotional confusion I have had over the past few weeks. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve felt a big jumble of blechhhh within me. It’s tough to fix that when there’s something you want but you know you can’t get. I actually think that my confusion stems from not knowing if it’s what I want or not. That internal conflict is enough for me to tear myself apart. I don’t know. I need some time to sort out my thoughts and figure out what it is I want.

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Another thing I realized over this weekend is that I’m not really sure of who or what I am. Christina says I’ve become another college student. Is that who I want to be though? I’m not sure. Yet another thing I can’t really figure out about myself. I’d like to think of myself as better than that, but maybe it’s inevitable.

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Yeah I know that it’s not easy
I know that it’s so hard
Follow the lights to the city
And get up and
Go, take a chance and be strong
Or you could spend your whole life holding on
Don’t look back just go,
Take a breath, move along
Or you could spend your whole life holding on
You could spend your whole life holding on
Believe the tunnel can end
Believe your body can mend
Yeah I know you can make it through
‘Cause I believe in you
So let’s go put up a fight
Let’s go make everything alright
Go on and take a shot go give it all you got

 

-Boys Like Girls, Go