#122 - toxic people

wasn't going to post today, but since brandi was waiting for my weekly american idol post i decided to do it anyway! wasn't too impressed with the performances this week... except for this one:



well, i thought he was being all super original with it, but actually this slow version of billie jean was done by some other artist and that's the version he used. so, he didn't make it all slow and fancy by himself, but that's okay because it was still a cool pick and he sings it cooly. i also liked brooke white (i love it when she's on the solo piano like that, sweet) and of course my little bro david, but that song he sang was weird and kinda creepy. anyway, in the end, i feel kinda bad for chikeze, but whatever, he can go already.

anyway, i wasn't going to post about toxic people but since i'm already doing the american idol post i'll go ahead... toxic people suck. no, wait, that's not it. in life there are toxic people and you just need to avoid them. my "boss" taught me that my first year of working because i was stuck with a VERY toxic co-worker who was bringing me down day after day and making me really hate my career choice. i was thinking, if this is what life is from now on, that sucks the big one. but you gotta see the situation for what it really is sometimes. there are, unfortunately, people in the world who for some reason or another are not out to perpetuate happiness and spread the goodness around. instead they suck it all up and bottle it away until they can steal more from someone else. these people you need to avoid. it's like a disease, you get contaminated... as much as you try to let it roll off your back, just the fact that you're telling yourself "just let it roll off your back" contaminates your thoughts, bleeds into your mind unpleasant thoughts. it's a very sad thing that some people need to thrive on spreading unpleasantness, they get themselves caught up in it and let it carry them. i feel sorry for them, i'm sure if they could take an objective look at themselves they wouldn't like what they see, but would they know how to change? would they be willing to? would they have the courage to? is there anything i can do to help these people?

unfortunately probably not. that's why you need to avoid toxic people. when someone hits you with meanness, see it as an opportunity to reaffirm your own commitment to spreading happiness. it's too bad that it takes someone else's mean actions to gain more peaceful perspective on human relations, but that's why you need to avoid them. the other day i was driving home in traffic and behind me some lady cut someone off by jumping into the lane i was in right behind me, the car who was behind me honked and the lady waved and blew extremely sarcastic kisses into the rear view mirror (first of all, why? what's the point? there's absolutely no need to do that. second of all, never blow sarcastic kisses, you just look really ugly doing it). i was in the far left lane so there was a shoulder lane on the left, so the car who was behind me before the lady cut him off sped up into the shoulder lane and re-cut her off and started doing the same thing. now we were in traffic, but my window was down and i could hear the lady yelling f-bombs from two cars away. what's the sense? you're just making yourself angrier for no good reason, and now you've gotta follow that car the whole rest of the way in traffic? then the other day i saw some guy get out of his car in the middle of the road at a traffic light, walk to the car in back of him and start yelling some crap at that guy. it makes you think, look at how much power you have just driving a car? you have the power to make someone completely put whatever plans they had on hold for two minutes so they can go absolutely out of their way to be angry and spread meanness to you. kinda makes you feel like you'd wants someone to come out and yell at you right? look what kind of control you have over another person. i think that's hilarious.

anyway, examples of toxic people. we don't need it.

#121 - spring break...

... is great.
just came back from a sweet day at hale'iwa today. since i've been on break for last week and this week i've been scoping out the north shore breaks one by one, of course, it's been kinda small, but that's okay because the weather's been awesome. which means that the water's been super glassy and even when there's no waves it's great to be out there in the ocean. i'm getting kinda spoiled though, i can't go down to white plains anymore, that water's seems so crappy compared to up north, and on the weekends it feel so crowded because there's not a lot of people out during the workday.

surf was up just a little bit today, the sets were pretty sweet, head high for me (but not for most people, i guess), super clean and glassy. i love it when you're on a wave and you can see all the way down to the reef heads beneath your board, that's the perfect kinda wave. there were some friendly people out there today too, it was a long wait between sets so there was some chatting going on, it's fun to meet people out there, all kinds of people surf, especially at hale'iwa it's cool to hear people's stories about how they're on vacation, or skipping work, or took like a week off of life to rent a house and live up north for a bit, cool.

i'd say one of the best things about going surfing though is how you feel for the rest of the day. i mean, surfing and being out in the ocean on a perfect day is pretty sweet, but it's not all downhill once you leave the beach. afterward you feel completely relaxed, like you've got a new perspective. plus you're kinda tired, and when you lie back a bit you can still feel the waves under you. and the sun makes you happy and sleepy at the same time too. it's a nice place to be. well, gotta soak it all up right now because next week it's back to it for like 8 weeks straight without a holiday! i don't know how you 12-month workers do it... i'd die without my spring breaks.

#120 - koko head crater

so i didn't even know this place existed (well, i knew koko head, but didn't know there was a hike in/on it), so when my friend shannon invited me on this hike, i thought it'd be pretty cool... but i really should've asked a little more about it... cause when we got there this is what i saw: and i said, holy crap we're going up there?
the whole way was just one big stairway, like some old railroad track that went straight up the side of the mountain, pretty cool actually. i wasn't anxious about going up, because even though it was steep, there was brush on each side unless you look straight down the way you came you can't really tell you're that high. but once you turn around...
you get to see this... you can see all of hawaii kai and honolulu (even the waikiki skyline in the background). off to the other side, as you get higher and higher you can peek over the mountain into hanauma bay. of course, if it were just one straight stairway all the way up it'd be no problem, sore legs the next day but easy right? nope, it can't be that easy... about halfway up there's this "bridge:"
you can't tell from the picture (or maybe you can by the creepy smile on my face) but i'm scared outta my gourd right now. the wooden crossbars are pretty thick, but they're also pretty far apart, and below you is just air... i'm sure no one falls, but you definately could, and that freaks me out. i wasn't even gonna go beyond this point, but frickin' shannon just starts climbing the damn thing and as i'm freaking out she's across already so what am i gonna just sit there and wait for her to come all the way back down? nah, it was good thing, i think if i had sat there any longer thinking about it i wouldn't NEVER went across that bridge... but i did! woo hoo! and that's how i did it, the whole way, the whole agonizingly slow and terrifying way. after that it was all gravy, i was damn sure gonna make it to the top if i went over that scary-ass bridge (on the way down we talked to some lady who ran up and down the whole thing twice daily... made me feel pretty dumb, but anyway she showed us a way around the bridge that was pretty simple, so next time i'll definately do that, it was no prob).
so here's my reward for forcing myself over that bridge, the view was sweet!up at the top you can see all the way to waikiki... and on the other side of the crater you can see sandy's too. it was cool, up top there were some old shelters, or maybe military lookout posts or whatever, pretty cool.
overall pretty damn awesome though. and look, i didn't even know this place existed... i'm gonna have to get out a lot more!

#119 - st. patty's day

who knew green beer on st. patty's day would be so hard to find? last year mike and jeremy and keane and i went around looking for some green beer, we figured mai tai bar would be a safe bet but we got there and there was none! what's up with that? we looked around all over but finally gave up and just went to eat at bubba gumps. but it was st. patty's day and we felt defeated so we asked the waitress if she knew anywhere else we could get green beer and lucky us she was so nice she made us some green beer special.

so this year, my friend jill invited me to the block party downtown. perfect place to get some green beer right? i thought so. walking around (actually trudging through masses of drunk white people) none of the beer stands (which were like only 10 feet apart from each other) had green beer! finally we saw some girl with one so we asked her where she got it and she led us all the way through the street to the ONE stand that was making green beer.

way worth it.

pretty cool though, tons of people, kinda lame but that's how st. patty's day should be spent right? speaking of, irish girl did pretty good on american idol tonight i thought... don't know why simon didn't like it. but she was about the only one i liked, i guess i'm not a beatles fan because i thought all the songs were way crappy. the only beatles songs i know and actually like are "let it be" and "yesterday." i was surprised that no one picked "yesterday" last week. and what's up with the double theme weeks? LAME! and they proved it too because everyone was crappy tonight. only i like the irish girl and little bro (he should've sang "yesterday," i bet that would've been sweet), but since i didn't recognize his song and since it's st. patty's day i'll post irish girl. well... i didn't know her song either, but i kinda recognized it because the beginning is like the end of that lame "boyz in the hood" song... "punk ass trippin' in the dead of night.... hommie scored a key, he's gonna fly... punk ass fly." haha.

#118 - screw lost

let me tell you something about lost... lost sucks. okay, well i actually realized that halfway into season 3. i was a fan for all the second season (i didn't watch the first season at all, my parents watched it so right before the second season started on tv i watched the whole first season on dvd, which was great because i didn't have to wait a whole week between episodes so i actually remembered what happened), and half of the third season, but then i realized that the writers don't know crap. they've got no fricken' clue what they're doing. then they got all high and mighty with all their ratings and they figured, "well, since we have no clue how to finish a dang storyline, let's just put a bunch of secret crap in each episode and keep the nerds guessing." that's crap. who likes to have their brains played with intentionally? no one. that's who.

plus i can't stand when they make those commercials that say "and you won't believe what happens next!" or "and by the end, one of the survivors will die!" that's total crap. the whole point of killing someone off is shock value, well, goodbye to shock value! you're not gonna lure people in just to see someone die, and even if you do, they're only gonna watch like the last five minutes, reward the people who actually do watch. which, sadly, is me. i still watch, but i yell at the screen like a black person in a movie theater (or a white army guy in a theater, but surprisingly, NOT like a black army guy in a theater, they don't do that). like, "just answer the damn question biatch!" or "will someone just shot the fricken' loser already!" haha. i mean, who cares if they kill off half the cast already, do you even remember ben's daughter? what the hell happened to these people? would you care if any of those people in the picture kicked it already? at least that'll clear up some people and we won't have to bother with them anymore, i mean really, we don't need anymore new people on the damn island.

that being said, yeah, i'm gonna watch it again next week, because what else is on tv on thursdays?

#117 - top 12

okay, so little bro flubbed it this week. oh well, only the first week, 11 more to go right? but, i was actually pleasantly surprised with how good everyone else was. even the ones that i didn't like i had to at least concede something. like even though that country girl sang that craptacular song and still did that hideous eye thing, if you just listened to her voice, all the notes were actually spot on, or maybe i was just hypnotized by those horrid purple stars in the background.

anyway, i really liked brooke white this week, just the perfect way i like to listen to music, singer with solo piano, sweet! plus it's so crappin' hard to play the pian-uh and sing at the same time... which reminds me, i gotta get my piano. they all use yamaha, i'mma gonna git me a yama-haw too! but i need money first, hmm, still, that electric thing ain't gonna last long so i'd better start saving up. anyway here's my new list of favorites:

1. david archuleta
2. carly smithson
3. michael johns
4. brooke white
5. david cooke
6. ramiele malubay

so here's my question... why does everyone like jason castro? i don't think he knows how to sing loud. plus his dreads creep me the hell out.

#116 - pushing the limits

i love the discovery channel. there's a new series called "pushing the limits," basically it's a look at human anatomy, and more importantly physiology, and how we're engineered for survival and doing things that seem beyond human capabilities. the thing is, as amazing as some of the feats sound, it makes absolute complete sense. like how someone can survive being picked up and dropped by a tornado with just a few bruises (obviously you go unconscious and all your muscles go limp, then your bones become more flexible and you can survive horrific falls). the science of physiology that they use to explain everything i think is absolutely fascinating, but completely believable, like, how come you've never thought about it that way before. i mean, humans have been around for how many years now, obviously our bodies have figured out ways to survive in this world. one of my favorite examples was a man whose boat capsized and he was lost at sea alone. he survived for a week or so catching fish and eating the meat, but he wasn't getting a lot of the vitamins and minerals that he needed just from eating sushi. so his brain told him to start eating other parts of the fish, gross parts like the liver, scales, eyeballs, etc. and he said that those parts just started looking yummy to him. haha. but doesn't that make complete sense? like pregnancy cravings right? your body is telling you that you need something and it knows what it wants. how does it know that those essential vitamins are in fish eyeballs? who knows? that's the cool part.

but that all goes to support my theory that we're generally dumb because we don't listen to our bodies more often. there was a previous post that i talked about the "second brain," the one in your stomach... totally makes sense huh? so you gotta listen to "your gut," literally. we know what we want so listen to your body.

here's another cool thing, in terms of vision, our brain sees in snapshots, like at 30 frames per second, but in times of great stress that rate increases, which is why it feels like time slows down. makes total sense right? like when you play tennis, and there are those days when the ball looks as big as a basketball and you feel in control of everything? now just imagine if you could manipulate those stress chemicals to use when you needed them? well, maybe not "manipulate," but maybe the next time you're in a match or you're playing guitar hero, think about yourself in a stressful situation, and maybe you'll do a bit better.

another thing this series does is emphasize the importance of biological functions, like sleep. sleep is SO important! it's when you consolidate the memories of the day (filing in the important stuff and filtering out the unimportant), the theory is that when you're dreaming, that's your brain categorizing and filing away the memories of the day, the reason why you dream is because those memories are being refiltered through your brain without the aid of logic to hold everything in place, that's why they all run together and get wacky. cool huh?

i think i could talk about neurophysiology all day. such natural processes are so intriguing because it's completely universal... it relates to everyone, yet no one ever thinks about them. science is cool!

#115 - waste/sickness

i have a problem with these two concepts. on one hand, i've learned to be very conscious about the concept of waste. in terms of consumerism i think that's why i don't buy a lot of stuff, because i think, oh that means eventually i'll have to throw things away, and that feel like a waste. but more importantly, the concept of wasting time has taken a much more prominent role in my way of thinking. obviously we're all getting older and now i have to admit that i'm in my mid-late-twenties (boo), but there are still tons of life stuff that i've yet to do. and as well as i think i'm doing in trying to find those new experiences and everything (and i do think i'm on the right track), i find it very hard when i'm not making all the most efficient use of my time, on an everyday level. and that leads to trouble because then i feel guilty when i'm NOT doing that. sometime i feel like if i'm not filling every minute of my time with something useful, then i'm cheating myself out of life and that makes me feel both guilty and depressed because i'm missing out on potentially so much.

so this past week i got sick (really ironic, i was at the doctor's for like a annual or more than that check up and he was asking me if i had allergies, which i thought was weird because shouldn't he know? and i don't have allergies but he kept asking, and then that night i got sick) and so i had to skip working out and yoga and even took a half day off and spent the day on the couch. and through those days i kept thinking that i've gotta just push through and do what i'd normally do because then it would be a waste, but of course, when you're sick you just gotta take care of yourself and get better. somehow i can think it, but then i still feel guilty about it afterward. and that's how i get sick in the first place, because i try to do so many things and don't give myself time to rest and recover, going too strong for too long. anyway, now i think i've identified some of the things that trap me in this cycle, i write down everything i do on the calendar, and then if i don't see something green (i write in green pen), then that's a disappointment to me. then i went to that HMSA healthpass thing and they told me to log everything i do on a website, but then i think i'll stop doing that because it turns everything i do into a number and that's now why i do it, right?

anyway, i think that this sickness for me was a good thing because it made me slow down and reevaluate the rate at which i'm going right now. but on the other hand, something really funky happened... on friday night, when i was all sick-being, i had a freaky 12 hours when i was medicated, not feeling great, sleepy, and for a while there i actually had a really hard time telling reality from dreaming from memory. it was so weird. i couldn't sleep for more than two hours at a time so i kept waking up not knowing what time it was or if i should get up or go back to sleep. and then i got this weird pain in my stomach, not like a regular stomachache, the pain was higher, like in my upper abs and it was like really a lot of pressure. it was really bad, i couldn't lie in certain positions and i think i remember thinking "what would happen if i called the hospital?" could i drive there? it was kinda freaky, i couldn't tell if i was dreaming it or not.

so that sucked. i don't want to be sick anymore. so i'm taking sunday off, completely. that's a huge change for me, i've been doing something active everyday in the past three months and i've been loving it. i feel like i've got more energy, i feel fitter, more healthy, but i guess i overdid it a little and didn't let myself recover enough in the past few weeks, so i'll have to alter it a bit.

on the bright side, today a watched a whole marathon of "beauty and the geek." haha, that show is hilarious, but more important, it's a show about trying to make yourself better, both the beauties and the geeks. as retarded as some people think these shows are, i love them. it might be a "reality" show, but it's a good-hearted one because it's about trying to find common ground with other people and trying to improve oneself as well. plus it's just frickin' hilarious.

also, since i've been all sick i've got a chance to watch that american idol rewind, like they show all the old american idols with interviews and everything, man, it sucked back then. haha, like they were showing the performances from season 2, they were crappy, haha! so when the judges keep saying "this season is the best talent ever" it may sound like a line, but damn it's true. i can't wait for tuesday now, haha.

#114 - minimalist

sure, i've known for awhile that i'm quite a minimalist... well, when it comes to most things at least. like art, and music. i really enjoy music that's very simplistic, well, that's not the right word. i like when you can hear every note of music, not when everything's all mushed together in a big glob (also why i like japanese music so much, the orchestral kind like mononoke hime and stuff, not the pop kind). so david archuleta and brooke white on american idol have absolutely made the right moves in my mind. well, for that david guy, i just think everything he's done so far has been just spot on. phrasing, musical embellishments, song choice, i just think that everything has been right on both in concept and in actually-carrying-it-out.


brooke was one of my initial favorites, but i thought she was pretty bland and straight a couple of weeks ago, but i think i'm getting to like her again. once again, it's all about phrasing and making the right choices. both david and brooke very much remind me of katharine mcphee and melinda doolittle, all of them make all the right choices musically, which notes to sustain, which to change, where to break. like katharine mcphee's "over the rainbow" and melinda's "my funny valentine" and david's "imagine." they just do things right, and that makes a tremendous difference. of course, none of those people that i mentioned WON the darn thing, but that's tv eh? makes it all fun.

#113 - novelty

so i was feeling kinda tired and bummed this week for some reason. i thought it was just because i wasn't getting enough sleep. plus i've been more active than usual, but actually, when i am more active that's when i usually feel MORE energized, and when i don't do something active everyday that's when i get lethargic. but anyway, so i was talking to a co-worker about it and she gave me some unusual advice. at least i thought it was unusual. she told me that i need to get myself some new friends. haha! well, not that i should dump all my current friends, but she said that new and different types of social interaction keeps us energized. she said that even though i'm active in doing physical things like exercising and playing sports, she told me that i need to energize my social side. and it makes sense, in neurology the thing that keeps your mind active and healthy is regular use and exposure to new stimulation that keeps your brain adjusting to different thoughts and sensations. that process of making adjustments is what makes your brain grow, like mental exercise. maybe that's what i need.

but see, i've been trying to do it. new home. new experiences. and i have been participating in new activities (i'm playing volleyball with very different kinds of people and i just joined a tennis league with new people too), but maybe it's not enough. or maybe it just hasn't taken effect yet. my co-workers have always been telling me to "put myself out there," for a variety of reasons, finding a girl, finding new friends, establishing myself in the world (because they think i'm so young and impressionable, haha, yeah, i laugh at that). so they're probably right, right? because they're old and know more stuff than me (life-experience-wise). so i'm trying... but i guess i haven't gotten there yet.

anyway, i found these pics i took when brandi was here last week, okay, so not really "new" experiences and people, but very fun, nonetheless. this is the "after" picture of a day of surf:


lunch at en fuego in kapolei, very yummy.

and here's the point about new things, in order to do new things you've gotta let go of the old things. here's my problem: everytime i go to en fuego i get the lau lau plate, because it's good and comes with lots of different things (lau lau, brown rice, mac salad, ahi poke, lomi salmon, haupia), so whenever i go i think "why get anything else when i love eating this?" and it's not like the other things on the menu don't look appetizing, i just think, "i like the lau lau plate so much and i only come here so often so why WOULDN'T i get it?"

okay, well that's probably putting too much introspection into a lunch decision, but my point is in there somewhere. just gotta keep looking for those opportunities for new experiences, and then have enough balls to take them huh?