Poppin bottles in the ice,
like a blizzard
When we drink we do it right
gettin slizzard
Sippin sizzurp in my ride,
like Three 6
Now I’m feelin so fly like a G6
Banchan
Went to Stop&Shop on the shuttle and made some banchan! It’s amazing how many useful veggies I can’t get there… they didn’t have zucchinis or chives. Womp.
From top left, clockwise: Spam with egg, sweet&sour sausage stir fry (2 container full), cubed tofu.
Every Moment of You
Oh, Mama,
look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama,
fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama!
Wally’s dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway.
We felt just terrible about it –
don’t you remember?
But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama,
just for a moment we’re happy.
Let’s really look at one another!…
I can’t. I can’t go on.
It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.
I didn’t realize.
So all that was going on and we never noticed.
Take me back — up the hill — to my grave.
But first: Wait! One more look.
Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners….
Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking….
and Mama’s sunflowers.
And food
and coffee.
And new ironed dresses
and hot baths….
and sleeping and
waking up.
Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–
every,every minute?
Blarfengard
I have been awake since 7:30 just straight up getting info and emailing for two hours. Fairly certain that I’m going to redevelop my caffeine addiction.
On the other hand, I have not touched a single thing of my workload for this weekend. This is bad.
I Have
Five chapters of reading, an essay and a group assignment due already… WHY LIFE WHY
On the other hand, I more and more notice my need to get out to the gym and go around campus to meet some people. So I will do that today. 🙂
California Soul
There are a lot of really awful music on the Billboard chart nowadays. This is what I noticed as I sampled through countless songs for my D-load Extravaganza Before I Go Off to School.
I ended up downloading a lot more K-pop than I had intended. This was solely because I was so out of touch with American music for the last semester and had no idea what was released then. Meanwhile, my steady keep-up of Korean variety shows means I know all of the latest k-pop releases, dances, etc.. I also took less recommendations from other people than last few times I did this, which reminds me to hang out with more people who have different musical taste than I do.
Few things I learned during this process:
I do not like lead singers who warble or sound faded out. It’s because I want to hear what they’re saying and clearly I have difficulties hearing in the first place.
I’m heavily biased towards male artists, more so in k-pop than american music.
I really like songs in Spanish/Portuguese although I do not understand them.
Pokemon opening themes are really varied in terms of style, really surprisingly.
I like remixes. And most definitely diplo is better than tiesto. Although MasaMix and Alikstae will always share first place in my heart…
Should’ve listened to my friends’ k-pop recommendations in high school because basically those are what I ended up downloading with the new releases.
That song I kept looking for was “Hey Soul Sister” by Train.
I still do not like Big Bang’s music. I don’t know why… Sorry Taeyang, the only song I’ll listen to by you is Where U At, although your voice is very nice.
Eurovision Song Contest… new source of songs for me?
I like that song with KevJumba and David Choi made by Wong Fu Productions better than most of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
Single Best Find:
Cee Lo Green is the truth.
Photos from the Beach
Yesterday, my family and a few family-friends went to Wildwood State Park in Suffolk for a barbeque and a trip to the beach. It’s been a while since I’ve seen salty water, so it was pretty exciting. I took my brother’s DSLR (he had marching band practice so couldn’t go) and took some pictures of the kids and the beach.
It was a nice little park, but I think it would’ve been more fun to camp there rather than just take a day trip. The beach was not crowded and the shore was short enough that we didn’t get sand all over the place. It hurt to walk across some of the more pebbly places. We had a good spot in the shade under the pier and I heard fishing was a pretty popular activity.
For a state park, I felt like it wasn’t kept too clean. There were a lot of bugs, bees, and dirty puddles in the park area and loads of mosquitos all around. The beach was relatively clean, though, and if you had a carful of people, it was worth the $10 you pay for parking.
We went to Tanger Outlets afterwards and I now am an owner of several VS beauty products. They didn’t have Dream Angel Wish, though 😦
EDIT:: with more pictures from Sunken Meadow State Park!
SHINee Has No Luck With Girls
In their first promoted song “Noona is So Pretty (Replay)”, SHINee dates an older girl who makes them feel really cool around other people because she’s pretty, but am about to lose her because none of the other guys will leaver her alone and they’re not man enough to keep her interested.
In their second song “Love Like Oxygen”, SHINee dates a girl who they cannot repel the memories of, drinking in her initial sweetness while being ripped apart and shattered by her coldness while she slips away from their grip.
In their third song “A.Mi.Go.”, SHINee pursue a girl who has cold heart, eyes and is an ice princess but sexy. They thought they could get her, but clearly everything was not so easy. They promise to slave after her and repeat how perfect she is and how good they’ll be to her, but clearly she doesn’t budge.
In their fourth song “Ring Ding Dong”, SHINee are bad boys in pursuit of a girl who is a weak and gentle butterfly yet refuse to yield to their promises of “fantastic ehlastic”. They plead with her to give up her reservations and threaten to go crazy if she says no.
In their fifth song “JoJo”, SHINee laments over some girl who quickly forgot about them. They spend every night crying over this girl and can’t forget her, even getting drunk and throwing up to try to do so. They keep thinking about what might have gone wrong and ask her to stay, although she’s already gone.
In their sixth song “Lucifer”, SHINee is with a girl who has the face of an angel but is really the satan. The girl takes up all of their time and heart and keep them locked up under 24-7 surveillance so that everyone around the boys are leaving. Basically, they’re complaining about the fact that their girlfriend wants to spend more time with them and they’re trying to persuade her that having some time apart actually will make them stronger.
….SHINee really need to find some better girls to hang out with 😛
Finding the Cure
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2008886,00.html
This article really reminds me of just why I voluntarily put myself through science/math hell here instead of taking the easy road. We know enough to do something to relieve the psychological wounds of the soldiers, so why don’t we? Why not more research into war-related PTSD or better therapy techniques for military psychiatry? Why not more funding into therapy and medication for the psychologically disabled veterans of combat?
Because as much as we put emphasis on finding a cure, the cure is useless unless we use it. I’m weary of all of the AIDS and cancer cure research because I know it’ll be a long time before a cure is readily available all the way to the poorest of the poor.
We know that things like medication and therapy exist and we also know how quickly depression can escalate: yet, many ethnic communities continues to refuse to acknowledge medical depression as a serious disorder. We know that psychological therapy doesn’t imply mental disorder, yet we refuse to see one for the sake of saving face. One of the greatest challenges of treating psychosis is that the patient sometimes refuses to take medication, that they turn down a treatment known to improve their mental state.
If a soldier loses an arm, he or she is expected to go into physical therapy. For a broken leg, there is a cast and crutches. We know that there is no cure for the common cold, yet we take several medications to relieve the symptoms. Why is clinical therapy not offered when a soldier has symptoms of depression? Why do we rush off our troops with only a bottle of ineffective medication for their PTSD when their bodies are covered with protection worth thousands of dollars?
Just as the Veterans hospitals need more money to effectively treat physical wounds, more funding needs to go into research and, more importantly, hiring more psychiatrists to treat the soldiers’ mental wounds.
The Uncomfortable Truth
In short, a controversial speech was chosen for Hunter CH’s graduation. The part of the debate was that the middle-class Asian and white students were much overrepresented at the magnet school compared to black and Hispanic students. One big upset was the mention of specific middle class Asian/white neighborhoods against the traditionally poor black/Hispanic neighborhoods and the idea that the testing and entrance requirements for the school are not based on the desire to pick students based on potential but rather the arbitrary standards for four and eleven year olds. Of course, this is a hot topic because Hunter has a long-standing tradition and reputation being challenged by one of their own graduates.
The most predictable negative reaction, of course, are from the students of Hunter, who feel that their individual merits and worth led them to successful entrance, not an arbitrary event. But in the increasingly competitive field of education, does individual merit even exist?
As an Asian-American student who went to a mediocre public high school without the standard tutoring or cram school experience, it’s really difficult to say. However, I’ve seen very little students achieve success without a supportive environment while many make up for a lack of precociousness with good work. The reason Asian-American students tend to do well in testing is that the culture fosters values that create the model student: modesty, hard-working ethics, logical calm, and obedience. What makes a great student is not a superb brainpower but the willingness to stick your butt on a chair for hours and hours in order to continuously improve your understanding. Couple that with the idea that these students were raised by parents who also believe in these values (which are also basis for the model worker) and are willing to create environments where their children can succeed in academics. There is a reason why Asian-American students are grossly overrepresented in elite colleges.
There are things wrong with the entrance tests and one is that Hunter believes that the level of success can be predicted through these exams. (The same principle behind the SAT’s) However, there are prep courses and programs for these magnet schools and an aptitude test should be created in such a way that it would be difficult to ever study for them. There’s no point in trying to argue that the entrance exams can predict your aptitude when all it does is estimate your current abilities.You can sit the dumbest kids down and go through the same problems over and over until they get it right. It doesn’t mean they’re any more intelligent than the kids who couldn’t because they’ve never seen these problems before.
A test cutoff is also not a great way to measure whether one kid has a more of a chance at higher education than the other. Because, really, is there that much of a difference between the kids who just made the cutoff and the kids who just missed it? It’s fairly easy to say that for a part of the students, a single wrong answer could have made a world of difference.
The fact is that nothing that this student said in his speech should be upsetting to the Asian-American communities. Right now, we happen to be at the right spot with the right circumstances for a higher education. None of us got here by ourselves. However, we’re so uncomfortable with admitting that our individual will is not the only reason we’ve come so far.
Why? Because while we have managed to dominate the field of education, we realize that we’re still behind in being accepted to positions of power or having enough force to assert our presence in the American society. We use our high test scores and acceptance letters as a shield for the fact that we’re no more powerful or respected than the other minorities in this country. Because we know that while we may be the majority in the world and supposedly receive better education, we’re really not any more special than the Hispanic student who didn’t get into a magnet school of his choice because of a few questions, or the black student who had no one to show her that such possibilities existed.
Put these eleven year olds into a testing room without a history of racial differences and cultural backgrounds and misconstrued perception and parental pressure and the troubles of poverty. Strip out the different things they’ve learned along the way and the possibilities for chance and circumstances. There are no detectable differences in these students except the color of their skin.
We breed and continue to foster environments where the cultures that are damned have no light to look up to and the kids of successful parents continue to be successful.
iamyoonis 