#92 - foreboding

doesn't this picture look foreboding? it was actually a pretty good day when i took it, kristen's friends from japan came over so we took them around, tried to see some turtles at the beach so i snapped some shots at papa'iloa. it was overcast, but not too cold, and not too ominous the weather, but somehow all my pictures came out real trecherous-looking. this one was shot on the reef as the waves were rolling in over the shelf, it was a bit rougher than usual and the crest of the waves over the shelf was a pretty cool sight. it's kind of creepy to see such a large mass of water moving so quickly and forcing itself up on the flat tops of the reef.

anyway, i thought this was a pretty appropriate pic for right now, kind of ominous, see the thickness of the wave somewhat far off in the backgroud, yet rising fast and if not for the snap of the camera and the time it gives you to evaluate this moment afterwards you'd have no way to discern what to think of this moment until it's already upon you. okay, that was too overdramatically stated but i'm not going to go back and erase that. hey if i can make crap up like this maybe i should become an artist...

#91 - marathon

so it's vacation... a very rainy vacation and so no beach or tennis or dog walking right now, and so i've got a lot of time on my hands. good thing there's tons of tv marathons on and i've got dvr! first of all, futurama, every night all night until the new year = sweet. then on the discovery channel every day will be a different show, yesterday it was mythbusters = awesome. hopefully man vs. wild will be on in the next couple of days.


random thought:

i notice now that i'm living by myself and watching tv by myself i laugh out loud a lot more than i used to when i was living at home. i guess i feel free-er to laugh at dumb stuff than i did before.


anyway, today there's true life on mtv all day. i think this show is probably the best on mtv (well, there's not much competition, i think it goes from next --> the real world --> parental control --> made --> the hills --> true life), and probably one of the better shows on tv period. just because it's reality without being very overdone, and of course a lot of the people in/on it are stupid, but there are some genuine people and sometimes it makes for genuine storytelling, so i like it.


so... watch a couple episodes in the morning with breakfast, go to the gym, watch a few more episodes with lunch, go to yoga, and that's what we call thursday.


oops, i forgot to post this one so it continues to friday and saturday... today is saturday and it's a MADE marathon today, woo hoo! i love this show, some people are retards, but for the most part it's actually kinda touching, especially when they take total losers who know they're losers but can't do anything to change it and actually succeed at what they're doing. like i really like that episode with that dorky girl who wanted to be a wakeboarder, she seemed really sincere about everything. i think i would've made a good "made candidate" in high school. right? total band geek wants to be made into a volleyball player or pro surfer? that would've been awesome! oh well...

next post: yardwork!

#90 - nippon!

guess what? i'm getting excited about movies again! woo hoo! it's been a long long time since i've been into watching movies. for the longest time i thought it was the most boring thing in the world, sitting for two hours watching badly scripted lameness. the only thing good was the popcorn (which is super-mondo-ly good, by the way). i think my movie-hating started around when "titanic" came out, because all the movies were getting epically long and i got tired of super dramatic action flicks very quickly. but in the past couple of years i've been probably a handful of movies, i tried to stick to either one of three categories:

1) little thinking required off-beat comedy - e.g. knocked up ("don't you hate it when your baby steals your food, stop stealing my food baby!")

2) super-hyped "must-see" movies that any of my friends would go see, these must be seen drunk - e.g. drunken spiderman 3, drunken transformers from the second row in the theater

3) japanese horror films

i guess it all started with "ringu" and then the american "the ring," and sequels of that... then there was "juon" and "the grudge" and sequels of that. for both of those i thought that storyline and creepiness of the japanese films were better but the movie making and disturbing-ness of the american films were way better, like, you couldn't get the story or the scary level of the american films without the japanese-type ghosts or the relative lack of dialogue that's common in japanese films, but then the japanese films lacked scariness due to the lameness of the movie effects and super-lame acting.
one missed call is a movie i saw at a hawaii international film festival a couple of years back, i thought it was great! it's like, the first half of the movie was pretty typical japanese lameness with some mixed in creepiness, but the second half of the movie was messed up! wow, i still remember being completely shocked at how suprisingly impressed i was by the second half of the movie, i guess it was good that i wasn't expecting much huh?
now they're making an american version and i can't wait to see it... it's been a long time since i've actually been waiting for a movie to open, but this is one of them. i hope it's not lame. it's got some girl who was in buffy for a couple of episodes (not faith, shucks), but that movie poster is just unnecessarily gross.
anyway, after all those movies started coming out a couple of years ago, my aunty started sending me recommendations for more asian horror movies, one of them was this one, "the eye." it was chinese so i think that made it a little better movie-making wise, and the storyline is pretty good so i thought it was great.
and now i just saw a commerical for an american one, woo hoo! and it's got jessica alba (everything thinks she's super hot... i thought she was hot at first, and then she was in fantastic four and i lost all interest, but i dunno, she might redeem herself). so i'll be seeing that one as well.


anyone seen any other good asian horror movies? oh, i've got one more, they haven't made an american version of this one yet... maybe because the story is a little too convoluted... but if anyone has seen it let me know what you think... it's called "the infection" a japanese one...

#89 - what better place

it's hard to keep in mind, sometimes, the reasons behind why you live your life the way you do. it's very easy to doubt and to re-analyze your actions and second-guess your thoughts as well. especially when you're on vacation... haha, too much time to be thinking about stuff maybe. luckily, it's also pretty easy to remind yourself about where your life has been and where it's headed. for me this week, it was as simple as driving out to north shore: how can you drive over that mountain, see haleiwa and the ocean ahead of you and not be reminded how lucky you are to live in hawai'i?
anyway, not wanting to get too deep or introspective right now, i'll just say i had a great christmas day. it was a really long one, felt like three separate days. i woke up super early to go to chruch in the morning (i never go to the 7am mass but thought i would on christmas because there's no evening mass, the early morning would be a lot cooler and less crowded, and simply because i've just never been to it), made some port. sausage and eggs for breakfast, then drove up to north shore for surfing at haleiwa. it was a really nice day, mostly clear blue skies, cold water but clean waves, tons of people in the water but lots of space on the waves for everyone (as you can see on the set above). pretty sweet. then make some potatoes to take to dinner at my aunt's house. okay, well, it really wasn't that long of a day, but it just felt like three different days i guess because of the three very different activities and lots of time inbetween each one. plus i had to get dressed three different times so i guess that makes it feel like three different days.
anyway, like i was saying, it's pretty easy to remember the good things when you give yourself some time to goo and find them. it's also good to create situations that help you remember those reasons as well. for example, now i keep my board straps in my car to remind myself not to forget to make time for the beach and for going surfing, it's my self-therapy technique. and surfing on christmas? where else could you do that?

#88 - birthday karaoke

well, i was gonna post a whole bunch of pictures for our very successful karaoke night last saturday.... but they were all pretty hideous. i guess mixing dark room, with beer, with funny singing faces and open mouths doesn't make for very good picture-taking. there were actually the two best pictures of the lot. oh well, it was some good karaoke-ing anyway, like nicole said, we debuted some new songs, partied with some new people, and even got an extra couple songs thrown in past closing time, score!

thanks again for coming everyone!

ps - didn't anyone click on the "disturbing link?" i expected some reaction, haha, go ahead and click on it, it's funny too...

#87 - wanna see something disturbing?

go on... i dare you to click on this link...

haha, wasn't that the most disturbing thing you've ever seen... and now don't you want to make your own? i got it from my mom, who made all of our family on it (and then proceeded to make my aunties and uncles and cousins too), and i wrote back to her and told her it was lame... and then 5 minutes later i'm putting in my own photos... it's a vicious, vicious cycle.

anyway, just thought i'd put up a little elf thing because i did my own elfing today (why the heck did they make me so obviously a female dancing elf? what the crap? i tired to change it somehow but that didn't work... grr). after a whole-day conference in waikiki instead of fighting traffic back home in rush hour, i spent the evening at ala moana. so, i left home at 6:30 am and came home at 9:00 pm, yikes.

but i had a good time with some of my old classmates at the conference (which actually was not bad, more practical, not stuffy, not completely-bust-your-head-against-the-wall research driven, like every other crappy conference i've been to this year), and i had tons of success finding christmas gifts! amazingly, i've only got four more gifts to get, and i know what two of them will be so that's just two more, woo hoo! and i got GOOD gifts this year, haha, or i hope so at least... we'll see i guess. anyway, just a quick post because i wanna get some sleep!

#86 - comfort

it's amazing how far from comfort you can be before you find it again. and how quickly it can come rushing back. since i've moved in it's been a slow (but surprisingly constant) process of adjusting to living on my own and getting comfortable with the fact that this place is now my home. i never really felt that way dorming at UH (probably because of UH... and also the fact that i went home almost every weekend, hey, free food, free laundry, how could i refuse?), and it's been a slow process trying to gain that feeling here. too many unfinished jobs, too many essentials still to get before feeling that i could live independently. of course, i'll never be completely done with everything, but today was a huge step, the furniture's in, pictures are up, paint is done! here's my new living room: here's the view into my kitchen:
my new queen bed:
and my new guest bedroom/office:
notice my old bed and desk and chair and bookshelf and end table in there? haha.

so even though it was just a simple thing to have the furniture delivered, things don't feel so much in limbo anymore. it feels like i have some sort of ownership of this place, phased out all the temporary stuff and got my own stamp on everything in there.

so anyway, back to the point of this post... on monday i lost all comfort. it was a damn crappy day, just nothing ended up going my way, work sucked (as it always does), but on that day it went beyond sucking. normally i get upset at my clients, sure because they're all dumb, but usually i can say to myself, well yeah they're dumb that's why i see them so nevermind. but on monday i couldn't. monday i got angry. it's not a good thing knowing that you're getting very mad and knowing that you really shouldn't be getting mad and knowing that it really sucks that you're allowing yourself to go past that point of anger where you say, dang i didn't know i could get that mad, but yet you're there. okay, sometimes those days happen, you drive yourself out of your own comfort by your own doing but can't stop it. it would have been okay, but like i said, things just weren't going my way on monday and bad news compiled upon more bad news turned the whole thing to crap. comfort that i (perhaps selfishly) expected wasn't there and that of course made things worse.

but tuesday was a different day and after falling pretty low on monday it's a bit uplifting to know that there's gotta be an upside after that. and even though things change and positives creep up, it takes time to work through them and that's what tuesday was... more living in limbo. just waiting for wednesday.

so today is wednesday. funny how things can change so drastically. comfort found again. so what have i learned?

- self-pity = crap, don't need it
- don't jump to conclusions, you have a thought, fine, keep it at "a thought" and continue living your life until something tells you different
- tv can be pretty useful self-therapy, my guilty pleasure = "the hills," lauren is hot
- i need a piano
- live like you're on tv... like someone's watching you go through the hard times, it'll keep you honest and force you to work things out

for tomorrow... things are looking up, keep at it, don't falter, there are good things to work for.