Almost done

The day is May 13th, 2010 and it’s a Thursday.  The fourth out of fifth day in week 7th of what should be my last quarter here at UCLA.  So much has happened this quarter, yet so little at the same time.  I met three really awesome girls, one of whom I’m dating now and for the most part life has been good.  But I wonder sometimes what things actually are.  I’m afraid at best that it’s just a temporary patch and at worst it’s just a placebo.  Maybe I’m trying to force the wrong shape in the wrong hole, like mismatching jigsaw pieces crammed together in a crude manner to make an incoherent picture.

My head hurts, my abdomen screams in pain, I have so much work to do…

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Prologue of Act 5

Tomorrow is my first day of class for what (hopefully) will be my last year here at UCLA.  I should be sleeping for what will probably turn out to be a long day tomorrow but…I’m not really that tired since I napped for like 3 hours tonight.

So anyways, I think my so called new life has officially kicked off and as a whole I’d have to say it’s going pretty well.  It probably all started two weeks ago with that momentary relapse of everything.  After that bout of emo-ness, I had my house warming party which turned out to be really awesome (despite the fact that I ended up getting pretty sick that day so I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I could’ve).  Luke and Reid drove down from Norcal just for that party, and Catherine, Angela, Kon, and Daniel also came over so it was like a mini high school reunion.  Apart from those guys, Katie, Mai, Mai’s friend Catherine, Ryan, Brian, Eric, Gene, Amber, and my roommate Willie also showed up to join in the festivities.  Unfortunately Annie and Jeanette couldn’t make it but other than that, it was still a pretty freaking awesome all star cast

So after that night of drunken revelry, I spent the next day hanging out with Jamie, this new girl I met recently.  Given the circumstances of how we met, I was a little apprehensive about that day but in the end “nothing ventured, nothing gained” right?  Well, things turned out a lot better than I expected and we had a really fun day building sand castles in the sand (lol) at Santa Monica beach, moseying around the Ikea in Carson, and ending it all with watching “Sars War” back at my apartment.  Dear god, that movie…it was one of those movies that was so bad that it was good.  It’s a shame we didn’t get around to watching it earlier in the year.  Given how Ramsey and I enjoyed watching terribad movies together, I’m sure he would’ve gotten a kick out of it.  Especially the hot school girl with a fire axe.

On Monday, I hung out with Jamie again (she cooked Kim Chi fried rice for us and we watched the first half of “Brick”) and then at night Cynthia, Willie, and Kevin came back and we played some black jack for money.  We started out with fifty cents a hand but then decided that money was changing hands too fast so we slowed it down to a quarter a game, with blackjacks paying out 2:1.  I think at the end of it all I made out with about one dollar.  Not much, but it’s still better than ending down though.  I should probably invest in a poker set…or teach my friends how to play Mahjong for money.  Or do something about my gambling addiction…nah.

I went back home on Tuesday to grab the rest of my stuff and spend time with friends.  In the end, I ended up spending all my time back home with family and since I came back on Friday, I didn’t get a chance to hang out with Bruuja (I like how we call each other by our WoW names) or Calvin and Kimmie.  Ah well, winter break!  My PS3 came back to me all shiny and fixed (probably because it’s a ‘new’ refurbished one)…hopefully I won’t get the YLOD again, cuz 150 dollars to fix a mechanical defect is ridiculously stupid.   I was also planning on bringing back my keyboard to practice and play around with but I couldn’t find the AC adapter anywhere and I didn’t want to deal with getting a shitton of C/D batteries so I ended up leaving it at home.

I got scolded a bit at work for having a low work throughput ><  My fault for being so distracted with life; I never can seem to find the right balance for things.  Anyways, I did what I could for the sales page and it ended up being handed off to our newest designer so I can be put back on the back end tool development, which I’m more comfortable doing.  My current project is to design an Twitter app for internal use. Basically it connects a bunch of RSS feeds to Twitter accounts and randomly tweets out new posts, not just the newest one.  I’ve been reading up on the Twitter API and XTML and have the rough design worked out in my head, I just need to get around finishing coding the damn thing.  I told my boss I’d have it done by next Wed and I think I’m gonna be able to follow that projected timeline.

Katie came by after work today.  I cooked dinner for us and Cynthia also went out to KFC with Kevin and brought back more food so we had a pretty nice feast.  Ever since I first hung out with Katie and Mai back at the beginning of summer, she’s been trying to get me to watch “Moulin Rouge” but for some reason I had always been adverse to the idea and kept putting it off.  But finally, I gave in today and we ended up watching the movie while eating dinner.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of it, other than a musical and I wasn’t paying that much attention to it at first because I found it really distracting and hard to follow.  However as the movie bore on, I found myself liking it more and more.  There were some really good numbers in there (“I was made for loving you baby” Haha…guess where I first heard that song…?) and, though cliche and derivative, I really liked the tragic love story.  Definitely another movie to toss on my “favorite movies” list and one to own on DVD/Blu-Ray.

And that brings me to now.  First day of school tomorrow, steak day tomorrow, some party tomorrow.  Everything looks pretty promising.  Well, everything except one thing.  I know I should keep my expectations low (after all, if life and “(500) Days of Summer” has taught me anything so far, it’s that expectation and reality NEVER align) and I should probably stop over thinking things but that’s a classic case of “easier said than done”.  All I can really do is tell myself “come what may” and wait and see how things unfold while doing the best I can.

Regression

Oh man, today was bad.  I don’t even know what happened, maybe it was cuz of my dream last night which involved her again.  Maybe it’s a culmination of everything that happened the past two weeks.  Whatever it was, I’m going through a serious case of broken heart right now.  I thought I was over this shit.  I thought moving would help.  But I guess physically moving a mile or two doesn’t do much to erase memories.  It doesn’t really freaking help when you have other people asking you for advice for a problem that’s all too similar to what you experienced.  It definitely does not help when they’re oblivious to your history and predicament and the only thing you can do is offer the same advice that others gave you, knowing full well that that those words are useless, meaningless, hollow, and just plain fluff.

I just want to study for my final, but all I can think of is rewinding time right now.  Okay, well that’s not quite it.  I’m also thinking about how I’m being stupid and childish and how I’m the only one who isn’t moving on.  I am willing to admit that the majority of my feelings are selfish and somewhat unfounded but I just need to vent.  I want her to talk to me as she talks to my friends, yet at the same time I know even if that were to happen, nothing would change.

Ah whatever, this is all just meaningless drivel spewing from my finger tips.  I shall finish studying, perhaps play a little Monster Hunter, then sleep and go fail my final tomorrow.  Wait, that’s just my pessimism talking.  But then again, my luck keeps running afoul of bad circumstance.  For example, my headphones broke today.  Come on, really?

I thought about it a little bit and maybe I’m not really having a bad luck streak, but rather I’m just nitpicking all the negative things that happen to me and ignoring the good.  But then, after thinking long and hard about it, aside from being still alive and the rote routines still happening in a mundane fashion, there aren’t many outstanding good things I can pull out.  But they say that everything must balance out right?  So either I’m about to experience some really good luck or this is just punishment for some transgressions I committed in the past.  I really hope it’s the former.

Fresh Start

It’s been a while since I updated.  But…well, now just seems like an appropriate time to do this.  Where should I start?

Well the reason why I haven’t updated in so long was because I’ve just been so caught up with life.  Before, the majority of the updates to this blog was to help me cope with the loss of Amy but around April/May I felt like I had moved on (proven wrong to me later…as in this past week) and I just didn’t have anything to write anymore and so I didn’t.

That didn’t mean nothing happened to me though, quite the contrary.  I barely finished up a tumultuous school year and ended up on STD, my future at UCLA hanging from an uncertain and precarious wire for the majority of the summer.  Luckily the situation resolved itself and I was given another chance, a final chance this Fall to get everything together.

So that was that.  And then there was this week.  Oh god, so much shit happened to me this week that it could hardly count as fair.  The loss of my main set of car keys, the destruction of my PS3 and the ensuing $150 dollar cost to get it fixed, relapse of emotions and events concerning the ex, drama (might be onesided) with one of my roommates, catching the flu…it was all bad.  But here I am.  Still alive and still in one piece at the end of the surge, sitting alone in this somewhat empty…well emptier than it has been this past year…apartment.  Ramsey has gone to Korea,  Gene has moved out to live with his new roommates, Randy has moved back home, and no girls to call over and keep me company

So what am I doing?  Well first I stood in the living room surveying the clutter of boxes, reminiscing about what it looked like over the school year, thinking about the times we had in the apartment when we were all still together, and mostly disbelieving at how an entire year has passed by already.  If so much can happen in this past year, it makes me a little excited to think of what might happen the upcoming year.  I’m going to be moving to a new apartment, living with new roommates, and with the exception of Gene, I have no more friends still at UCLA.  For better or worse, it’s a complete fresh start with little to no ties to my old life.

And with that, I’m going to sit here a lil more, maybe surf the web and play some games as I listen to “Alone” from the Persona 4 soundtrack playing softly in the background.  It’s pretty fitting, being the track that plays when the protagonist is at home at the end of the game and Nanako and Dojima aren’t there anymore.  At the beginning of 2009 when I listened to this song playing Persona 4 it literally made me feel alone.  It reminded me of the emptiness caused by the nullification of one of the biggest relationships in my life at the time.  But now as I listen to this piece of music, I don’t really feel sad.  It feels more like a nice relaxing calm before the storm of awesomeness that’s going to be my new life.

E3

So my childhood dream came true.  I’m going to E3 this year!  I’ve been wanting to go ever since I’ve read about it in gaming mags way back when I was a kid in elementrary school   It’s true that the expo has been considerably downsized since when I first read about them but…hopefully with their planned expansion it’ll still be awesome.  I’m a bit sad that Dead Rising 2 and Kingdom Hearts won’t be making a showing due to the swine flu, but I’m also hoping at least No More Heroes 2 will be making an appearance.  Oh man I’m so excitedddd.

Foundations of Sand

Somehow…I feel like my entire world broke down again today.  Or rather…the glass wall that I thought was my world shattered.  Or maybe it’s more like waking up from a dream.  Well, either way…time to pull back, breathe, and…start again.  I’m getting bogged down by school and this…thing…that I’ve become involved in.  It’s almost too easy for me to just give my life up for someone else asking for nothing in return.  I’m begining to reach the conclusion that the reason I’m always looking for someone to fix is because I hope that one day someone will come and fix me.  Just reminds me of Air and Yukito’s journey.

White Flags

Whoops, sorry, life’s been kinda hectic but I’ll try to get a new update in for my gaming blog tomorrow.  I started Kuzunoha Raidou today so I’ll probably write about that.

Anyways…omg tonight was probably the biggest chain reaction of fuckups in my life.  Starting from bad decisions the moment I woke up all the way till now.   Biggest perpatrators tonight?  Feelings of inadequacy and cold feet, shortly followed by feelings of vengeance and anger.

~~~

“Good night!  Okay, now it’s your turn: say ‘Good night, [name editted]‘”.  When she said that to me, it reminded me all too well of that night.  “Say good night to me, close your eyes, and count to 10.  When you open them again, it’ll be like this was a dream.  A good dream.”   Warped by my memories of course, but that’s pretty much how I remember it.  Like the scene in P4 when you max out Yumi’s s.link: “I’m gonna turn around, that way if you reject me, I won’t have to see you go.”  I wonder if those people know in the end just how much pain the end up causing the other.

~~~

This is one of my favorite scenes in P4 btw, it makes me insanely happy whenever I watch it :p

Hm…relative to closing eyes, on the flip side there’s this scene from P4…another one of my favorites:

“Why close your eyes?  So you won’t have to witness my sinfulness.”

Substitutes

There’s this one particular line from a song that keeps playing over and over in my head lately, that line being “looking for love in all the wrong places.”  Whoops.  I need to pull back and clear my head and focus again!  UNINSTALLLLLL

Cliffs

“You didn’t stop me.”

“It didn’t seem like you cared.  Would you really have stayed if I did?”

“Of course.”

“Then don’t go, sta-”

She jumped off before he could finish his sentence.

It’s Strange

It’s strange. I’ve had a couple different people today tell me that they miss hanging out and doing things with me.  I feel like I haven’t changed at all and that everyone else moved on, but maybe it’s the other way around?  I guess I do do that a lot in the end…jump around from people to people.  Never satisfied and all that.  Lately (Since Friday or Saturday) I’ve been basically hanging out with Kanira  alot.  It’s strange how she’s completely different from what I expected and thought of her at first.

…it’s strange.  I say that a lot.  But maybe it’s because the world is a mysterious and strange place?

I’m so busy with work and stuff.  Aside from the times I raid, I basically spend all my time going to class, programming, and working out.  I’m kinda just drifting along now.  I’m not really searching — okay that’s a bit of a lie –I’m not actively searching for a companion anymore.  Half so because I’m too preoccupied with my current life and half so because I hope/believe that things are usually found when you stop looking.

Ah…my current life.  I’m so screwed for next year.  Apparently I don’t get financial aid, and on top of that Derek didn’t get into UCLA so as of right now I don’t have anyone to live with.  Maybe I can look for a single apt off someplace?  It might be nice to live by myself…just worried about the expenses.  Random roommate then?  I don’t know what to do…If only I didn’t break up with Amy, haha.  But looking at it now that’s a stupid idea.  We wouldn’t have lasted in the long run anyways.  I see her as such a completely different person now, it’s strange.

It’s strange…