As Time Stood Still for Us

I wish I could see your face,

Just that one more time.

I brush at the misty screen,

But it fades away from sight.

Could you dismiss the light,

On our youthful adventures,

As stars and moons flew by,

As time stood still for us.

The white blinds me all around,

The blue languishes in my mind.

The red gravitates with potential,

The green radiates with life.

Where have all the years gone?

Like a raindrop in the forest.

The shelter has crumbled to dust,

As time stood still for us.

My train has arrived at its stop,

The platform glittering with paths.

I should have taken a backward glance,

But the untamed wilderness sprang forth.

The source of life's laughter and joy,

Spun around, completely delirious.

Prismatic layers of vitality,

As time stood still for us.

The links have broken apart,

But not of nature's essence,

I close my eyes and try to imagine,

The dubious innocence.

My spirit remains earthbound,

As yours take wing to the heavens.

Gliding about in obvious freedom,

As time stood still for us.

FCDH - 12/01/09

Dedicated to life and creation.

But most importantly, to everyone who makes life bearable.

Here's to the wonder that is life.

Cheers.

Winter is Neither Here nor There...yet

Ahhh I don't know what to do for winter break!

I just found out that I could shave off $200 from my plane ticket price to Vancouver if I chose to fly to Seattle and take the bus up....and now it only seems to cost $350 for a round trip ticket to Van. I've got people pulling me to go back to Van, and god knows I want to so badly...my snowboard is over there after all, and I kinda want to bring it back to campus so I wouldn't have to worry about equipment rentals when I want to go snowboarding here.

I really want to go back to snowboard and hang out with my old friends...but at the same time, money's an issue right now. If I stayed, I could probably save the $350 and spend much less going snowboarding in Wisconsin instead. Plus I could probably get a job on campus during winter like last year and save up. Downside: I get to face a ghost town. For a MONTH. *Flashback to last winter's emptiness and loneliness*.

Decisions, decisions. Ahhhhh! I wish I could just be like one of those preppy American middle class people who don't give shit about money and go on trips to Cancun and Florida for every break. I know I have enough money to go, if I wanted to, and that my parents would give me more if I needed. But I just feel like I need to be thrifty about money, and not be like one of those preppy ppl that I disdained against above. My tuition IS like 40 grand a year...a horrible figure.

I need to figure things out. And fast. Well I suppose it doesn't need to be fast, only if I want to go back to Van.

-FCDH

Black Friday

A term that has different meanings in the West and the East. Let's take a look:

In the US, Black Friday refers to the shopping frenzy that comes the day after Thanksgiving. I partook in the frenzy...though not as frenzied as others were. I deliberately brought only $25 with me so I would not spend so much, and I ended up buying 2 long-sleeved winter running shirts from Finish Line for $20. Score!

In Asia, "Black Friday", as dubbed by major Asian media sources, refers to the crash of all East Asian stock markets today due to the news of Dubai World's debt troubles. Dubai World's announcement today that they wished to default on 6 months of interest payments of their $59 billion debt raised serious concerns about nationally-backed corporations defaulting on their debt. Honestly, I don't think anyone should be at all surprised by this development. One only needs to take a glance at Dubai's ridiculous real-estate investments, from the environmentally-insensitive Palm Jumeriah Islands to the Atlantis hotel with the whopping $16 million opening ceremony, to see that Dubai was basically courting trouble. The sky-high fantasy has finally collapsed on Dubai...but I suppose they could always go skiing in the ski slope they built in the middle of the desert.

Just a year or two ago, Dubai was being lauded as being a "financial foundation" that all Arab countries should follow. Today, it's being compared with Argentina and Russia for their financial mismanagement that led to hyperinflation, as two nations that have defaulted on their debt. But hey, as Americans, we should expect it and live with it...as one day it will be us.

Dubai's debt - $59 billion, or $26,106 per capita

US's debt - $12 trillion, or $39,099 per capita

Now won't that be a glorious day..."Hey World, can we stop paying interest on our $12 trillion debt for 6 months?"

-FCDH

My First American Thanksgiving!

Granted, I have had 2 prior Thanksgiving dinners in the US. But today was the first time with traditional Americans! And this time there were finally no stir-fry noodles lol.

After going to my first pep rally (with hilarious football moms playing musical chairs!) and ice skating with Erin yesterday, she invited me to her family's Thanksgiving celebration after hearing that I didn't really have anywhere to go. I accepted =) and almost cancelled cuz I was so exhausted in the morning....but it was definitely worth it! I met her family and cousins, who were really nice and funny =). I had a blast there with all the cousins, playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band for most of the afternoon lol. And the Thanksgiving feast was pretty awesome as well, two types of turkey and loads of other food. I was pretty stuffed.

And now I'm going to fall into my long-awaited food coma which I've been holding off the entire afternoon.

-FCDH

It's Turkey Time!!

...in Ankara and Istanbul anyway. Here it's Thanksgiving. =)

I would just like to congratulate myself on successfully baking a 10lb turkey this year, a 50% increase from last year's 5 lb turkey. Seriously, baking a turkey is one of the easiest things one could cook. I'm a horrible cook, and if I could make a turkey without any mishaps 2/2 times, everybody should be able to do it.

It's easy. Here are the steps (I'm writing this so I remember the next time too).

1) Rinse turkey in and out with cold water. Make sure all the necks / gibbets / whatever else they have craftily stuffed inside the turkey is removed...check all the crevices!

2) Put turkey on "shallow turkey pan". Or in this case, on a reused old aluminum cake pan since someone is too cheap to buy an actual pan.

3) Rub: butter, salt, pepper over turkey. Remember not to touch the stick of butter next time or it'll be ruined again.

4) Put turkey in oven. Set to 325F. Every hour, baste the turkey in its own juices. When golden, cover with aluminum foil. 15 minutes before completion, remove aluminum foil to brown turkey.

5) Eat. Try not to stuff self.

My 10 lb turkey this year!!

And voila. Thats it. Hope everyone's having a great Thanksgiving!

-FCDH

A Shattered Future...

Before I start in earnest, I'd just like to say that I just found Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" today and I am completely hooked right now. Theres just something about the beat that gets me...i see others in the computer lab giving me furtive glances as I bump around in my seat to it. Oh well.

I got an email back from Jun today, and she was...amazing. She accepted everything I said, and said that she understood everything and appreciated the truth from me. She was so supportive...oh how I wish things had worked out. How I curse the fortunes of fate that it did not work out.

I am so glad that I have such a great friend in Jun...I feel like I don't even deserve it. Looking back, it was foolish for me to start the relationship with Jun in the first place, but...in those months, I learned so much about myself. I'll always treasure the good memories with Jun. Those late nights in Engineering Hall, that trip to Chicago...

The other day, when I went to Chicago for the ECE alumni event, we drove past Navy Pier and the harbor buildings. I was surprised by the emotions that came over me. I actually shed a tear...good thing the van was dark. That cruise, Blue Man Group, the hostel...all back in such a dark period of my life. Now I can only reminisce on what-could-have-beens, an entire future gone up in smoke.

My life finally seems like it is moving back on track. The past two years have been such turmoil, and if I did not have engineering to keep me sane, I don't know where I would be now. I've suffered two crashes into severe depression, lost track of the number of times I've thought about suicide, and now I've finally regained my footing.

I have one more hurdle to go: my family. I doubt they will understand...how their treasured son could have failed them in such a fashion. I'm absolutely dreading the day when the truth will be imparted on them. The day of reckoning. The day when I'm either accepted or cast out of my family, for being who I am.

In the past two years, my imagined future has been shattered, re-glued together, and shattered again. This time, I'm going to leave the broken shards where they are. A memento of the past, of simpler times, when the future seemed perfect, even if it were only a hallucination...

Thank you so much for remaking my life, Jun. I owe so much to you...you have absolutely no idea how you have changed my life. I hope I can make it up to you, one day.

-FCDH

God, Thanks for Screwing with me.

Some of today's highlights are below, in this incoherent blog post.

I bought a 10 lb turkey to cook for Thanksgiving. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it...

Went to the gym (3 mi run + lift), then did exercises (50 pushups + 140 situps). I think I'll start the pushup and situp program in earnest now...it's been a goal and I want it to happen.

Finally wrote the email to Jun, about everything that happened in our relationship. I'm afraid that our friendship may not survive the email, but that's something that I'm willing to sacrifice, for the truth. Others may disagree, but I've made my decision. I pray that I can look back on this message fondly rather than bitterly. Sigh. Why does life have to be so complicated?

Uploaded a bunch of photos onto facebook. Still thinking about Jun. Sigh. I know that life's not fair, but...sigh.

Ok it doesnt seem like THAT many things after all. Hmm. So apparently I will not be able to do laundry until my new debit card comes through, since our laundry room operates on a card system. Which I always found to be easy and convenient, but now is just annoying, since I won't be able to do laundry and will now have to re-wear my dirty clothes for a little while longer. Ugh.

Oh right, I should rant a little about Ubuntu.

Yesterday, I tried to mess with Ubuntu a bit, and hit a wall on the first thing I tried: screen resolution. I don't know if its because im using VirtualBox, but it just wouldnt recognize the 1028x800 resolution, instead maxing out at 800x600. I tried using both xrandr --newmode, --addmode codes to add the 1028x800 resolution in, which worked, but when i tried to set it, it kept giving me this frustrating "CRTC 0 failed" error message.

I'm starting to doubt that the cvt and gtf commands are working correctly. I looked up the VGA line signals for 800x600 for both horizsyn and vertrefresh, and it doesn't seem to match up with either the output of cvt and gtf, used with 800x600. Another day, I'll have to find the regular line signal for a VGA operating at 1280x800 resolution, and manually input it without cvt and gtf.

But my first foray into Ubuntu was exciting! Linux is pretty addicting after all.

I so wish life was different. I'd like to thank God for messing with me, and everyone I care about. The sarcasm is somewhat there...but I suppose, what doesn't kill u makes u stronger, right? Sigh. Do I even believe that BS?

Just remember everything and everyone you love and believe in. It'll keep you sane. Now if I can only take that advice, I would be set. Coldplay, you rule my world.

I'm going to dedicate my next blog entry to Jun's response (if it ever comes), and...my life? I suppose. How pretentious of me to think that it merits an entire post. Ok that's probably enough self-pity for today, even I'm disgusted with myself now.

Till later, my blog.

-FCDH

United against HW!

....Or not really. Facebook and gchat are up to their antics again...and those noisy girls from the Society of Women Engineers and Alpha Omega Epsilon are really really really chatty. But at least no horny lifestyle stories from across the wall today. Not that I would've heard since I'm blasting Coldplay on my headphones right now anyways.

I've gotta find a way to finish all my hw for Friday tonight, and finish my KSP and Schowalters Award apps. I'm gearing up for war. Still need to study for ECE 444 exam on Friday too.

Grr..

Tomorrow I'm going on a trip as one of three ECE students to an alumni event in Chicago. It's a bowling event, and hopefully I'll have the chance to meet other talented students and alumni, and have some fun along the way. Plus, free dinner and bowling! Down side: whole day gone. *snap*.

But need to finish stuff tonight. BRING ON THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD! Or I suppose Leningrad or Verdun will be more appropriate since the hw is fighting a war of attrition. Time to dig those trenches and....cross those lakes of frozen ice with food and equipment?

If you have no idea what I just said, don't worry about it. =) Im a nerd after all lol.

-FCDH

Do I Discriminate??

11/12/2009

Today, I had a good day: lecture, lab, field trip for my civil engineering class, and then I went to a leadership workshop after that. Or what I thought was a leadership workshop...it turned out mainly to be one of those long personality tests, where you answer a bunch of questions and it tells you your personality at the end.

I was slightly annoyed by this, but the free Jimmy John's sandwiches and chips calmed me down =). After taking the test, my test assigned me my personality: a Specialist, with a placed importance on friendship standards and competence. All of the descriptors of Specialist were accurate..basically, the test completely nailed my personality from 28 questions. After assigning me this personality, I had to scratch out areas on a page, and it would give me my traits. I eagerly (well, as eagerly as one could be for a test like this) scratched out my box, and it contained one word: "Discriminating".

My mind did a backflip. I was like "WTF" and proceeded to scratch out the boxes around it, which had nothing but praise ("observing, convincing, confident" etc etc). I was sorta stumped...and slightly peeved that the test had managed to guess this aspect of my personality. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, but I feel like I do discriminate subconsciously. I always try and block out all discriminatory material from any of my interactions with other people (and probably succeed at it), but the point remains...I still feel it.

I think it has something to do with the fact that I've been around many others who have broken out of stereotypes, but I feel intolerance towards people who fall into the stereotypes of their gender or race. Asians always talking in incomprehensible languages, engineering girls gossiping about who got drunk or who got horny or who got felt up last night (i might have a blog post about this later), to name a few. I don't know if I am justified in feeling this way or not, nor how much I am able to change the way I feel, but I certainly feel extremely fake when I interact with these people. I can act accepting and all that, but down inside I still have those stereotypes, and the negative connotations they bring.

Even though I can recognize that it's wrong and that I shouldn't feel that way, I still do, and I can't control that. I think this raises an important issue: could liberals, in our ever-expanding efforts to make society more open for minority groups, be making society a more repressive place, forcing people to carry on "fake" interactions with each other? For conservatives who are against abortion or gay marriage, it seems like it's no longer a issue of WILL they come around, but rather COULD they. Of course, the current society is by no means a non-repressive society, but it seems that those who were repressed or non-repressed would have their roles switched around if liberals get their way.

But I think one thing still remains clear: that of acceptance. I understand that my views are flawed, and I consciously work to mitigate that in my interactions with the people I would discriminate against. Now if only conservatives can be more accepting of pro-choice or gay people, regardless of how they actually feel, the world would seem that much more accepting and welcoming.

-FCDH

First Time for Everything

Good evening to my blog and any potential people who might be reading this,

I'm FCDH, and I'm pretty excited about starting a blog. It's one of my goals, that I never seriously pursued. But this semester, I'm open to everything. After my brief foray into fblogging, which probably scared the shit out of some people and annoyed many others, I thought i'd give a real blog a try.

Right now I'm just taking a break before the barcrawl tonight. I'm pretty excited about it, I'll finally be able to take a break from my electrical engineering work. This'll be my second barcrawl ever...my first being this semester as well. I find it somewhat ironic that, as a junior in electrical engineering, I actually have more free time to party and have fun compared to my sophomore year. That's just the way life rolls, i suppose.

That's all for now. I will probably be spilling out my innards on here soon enough, that can wait.

FCDH