[insert clever title here]

The cheerful caller

2008-11-14T23:21:00.000-08:00

Me: Hello?
? (in super cheerful tone): Hi may I speak with Dawn please?
Me: This is Dawn.
? (in super cheerful tone): Hi Dawn. I am calling from Florida to tell you some exciting news!
Me: Are you a telemarketer?
? (in super cheerful tone): Yes I am!
Me: I would not like to talk to you.
? (in super cheerful tone): Okay. Have a nice day!

Telemarketers make me want to die. Cheerful ones just boggle the mind. Guess it would make me feel bad if I were to curse her out.

Finding courage in your convictions

2008-11-14T22:42:00.000-08:00

Someone once told me that it is necessary question your own beliefs, not in a sense doubt them, but reaffirm them through defense. It is easy to accept something as gospel and lead a life blinded to other perspectives. It is only what that something is questioned do we actually consider our own motivations. The idea here is to not be so afraid of having your belief shattered for if it is so easily taken away, the belief was not one you truly held dear. Of course through this defense, many will find courage in their convictions and stand even more firmly.

My life so far

2008-09-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

I guess I haven't updated in a long while and so much has happened in my life since my last post. I am back in school again and taking 5 classes each more difficult than the next. Again I am working as the head TA for CS1316 and even helping as a TL for GT1000. I also entered into a long distance relationship with a girl I met over in California. If you think I am pretty busy most of the time, you are correct. But despite the stresses that come school, TAing and TLing and the difficulties with maintaining a long distance relationship, I am really happy in my life. I hope everyone can be happy for me too. My friend talked with me the other day about my current situation and she warned me that life will be really hard and that I must be prepared for a lot of the challenges that the world will throw at me especially with regard to my relationship. I guess my advice to anyone reading this right now is really to not be afraid of pursuing what it is you want in life. If you really love someone and she or he loves you back, then who cares what society thinks of you? Since when did their opinion of you ever matter anyway?

Best of luck to everyone in this semester.

This is the way we eat our food

2008-07-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you find pleasure in the smallest things. I just spent the better part of an hour and a half preparing meals for tomorrow (I eat more than one meal a day so I need to take more than a lunch to work). since I am not really experienced at cooking, I try very much to mimic the dishes I remember from my mom's cooking. My neighborhood Trader Joe's just started carrying more Asian vegetables worse some of my favorites and warranted a little more than excitement from me. "Fresh" baby bok choy, shitake mushrooms and green onions are now available to me less than half a mile away. The big college dilemma for parents and college students alike is what in the hell is there to eat in college? For Georgia Tech, cafeteria/food court style foods are offered through two dining halls, Brittian and Woodruff, and food courts within the student center. Restaurants can be found in the student center, in Tech Square, Atlantic Station and other places. Grocery options are more limited. There is a campus grocery store on West campus. Great place to go if you have absolutely no where else to go. Prices are insanely high. Do not expect to get much other than frozen food, milk and bread from there. The next closest grocery store would be Publix right near Tech Square or you can hop on the weekend grocery shuttle to Atlantic Station's Publix.

I personally think that if I ate the way I did now when I first entered Georgia Tech, I would starve. For one thing, I am a strict vegetarian which means I'm basically a vegan who still wears leather belts. I would move away from using animal products but as a poor college student I can't exactly afford to buy better stuff just yet. Okay what does this mean strict vegetarian? Well a strict vegetarian is the same as a classical vegetarian especially in Buddhist way. You are not allowed to take any lives. No killing anything basically (I'm still working on not killing bugs and spiders). Strict vegetarians also do no consume animal products such as dairy, honey and eggs. The reasons here vary, but I personally dislike the current American system of producing such products and am boycotting these products until humane treatment can be obtained for these animals.

So okay back to the point at hand, how do you actually follow these beliefs in an American university such as Georgia Tech where your dietary views are clearly in the minority? I do not really understand how is it so hard to offer vegetarian options in the cafeteria. First thing if you just offer salad you ARE NOT vegetarian friendly. I have a serious disdain for salads now because places think they can just get away with offering that. I see that as a major SCREW YOU VEGETARIANS! That's one reason I love living out here in California is that most places offer a vegetarian section though they may be just a few dishes. As a college in Atlanta, Georgia Tech really needs to consider the "alternative culture" in its student body. Offer vegan menu items and label it as such or suggest changes to current menu items that will make them vegan.

Anyways I can tell you what I made for fooding tomorrow:

- Chinese style eggplant with fresh minced garlic, soy sauce, a little bit of organic sugar
- Stir-fried baby spinach with chopped Shitake mushrooms and green onions and a little bit of salt
- Stir-fried organic baked tofu with sliced organic carrots and chopped green onions
- Fresh cut papaya
- Two oranges

Sound good? All it takes is a little willingness to experiment to find dishes that you like are easy to prepare. Here is a very easy recipe:

Organic Baby Spinach and Garlic
-One bag of organic baby spinach salad mix (only contains baby spinach)
-three cloves of fresh garlic
-Organic extra virgin olive oil
-Sea salt

1. Take out however much you want to eat (I usually do about half the bag). Wash it gently in cold water and leave it in one of those big plastic round things with the holes in the bottom.
2. Take the garlic cloves and smash them with the flat side of a knife, remove the outer skin, cut off the nasty hard tan bits at the ends to throw away.
3. Take a frying pan and put some olive oil in it, just about a nickel sized. Spread the oil across the bottom of the pan with a spatula.
4. Add a little bit of salt (I tend to add more salt because I need more sodium in my diet but you can use as much or as little as you'd like).
5. Add the garlic first and let it cook for a few second before adding the spinach.
6. Cook the spinach until the leaves sort of shrivel up
7. Serve and eat! Remember to drink the juice that comes out of cooking the spinach 'cause that where all the nutrients are!

Living up Ubuntu

2008-07-14T00:39:00.000-07:00

After my third reinstallination of Vista SP1, I basically told Windows to go to hell. I am dual booting with Ubuntu 8.04 and living up. I had never tried setting up a dual boot system on a computer before and there was a lot of fun googling around for information. I didn't really know what Linux version I wanted (Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc) but I did remember Mark Gudzial showing the Ubuntu operating system on his computer when I worked with him one summer and my fellow blogger Phil recommended Ubuntu as well.

First things first. I reinstalled Vista (*shakes fist*) reformatting and partition the hard drive for my second operating system. I googled around on my other laptop and started downloading and burning Ubuntu to a CD. After the CD was burned I just booted from the CD drive and there was happy little Ubuntu waiting to be installed. I went through all of the instructions and installed Ubuntu on a portion of my hard drive. The process isn't too painful even for me who is probably the least computer-savvy CS major I know.

I spent a good amount of time playing around on the new OS. I have to admit Ubuntu is really pretty and treats me like less of a child than Vista does. I remember my co-workers talking about the various cool names they gave their linux machines (such as cyclone for the one that deals with wind data and monsoon the one I work on). My laptop's name is actually Nemo after the Pixar movie Finding Nemo and after the great Captain Nemo. It's a pretty appropriate name: Nemo in the movie had a good fin and a bad fin and Nemo the computer has a good OS and a bad OS. Har har har.

So why didn't I just leave Vista off completely? Well I have been working on a Windows machine for some years plus all of the dell driver software I think actually likes Windows. Maybe I will see some issues with Ubuntu as the weeks progress, but so far I'm loving it. I will try to write an entry about the rest of the interesting weekend later today.

Exploring different worlds

2008-06-29T23:17:00.000-07:00

I challenge you to explore a different world.

People always talk of traveling in other countries to experience a different society. However many oversimplify the facets of the society around them currently. I have been hanging out with the latest batch of JPL interns and by chance; one discovered that there was a big rave called the Electric Daisy Carnival going on in LA on Saturday with major headliners like Paul van Dyke and Moby. I am actually a fan of electronic music and upon hearing Paul van Dyke's name, I was sold.

You could feel the vibrations of the event before you ever saw it. We surfed with the massive crowd pushing to get into the event and slipped our precious items into our front pockets. We lost part of our group right from the beginning, but the rest of us vowed to return to the entance by 4am if we heard no other news.

Part of the event was decorated very much like the name suggests with carnival ride such as a ferris wheel. The only difference is that each ride was wildly luminous with riders outlined with various shapes and types of glowsticks. We wandered around in the main stage, the LA Memorial Coliseum. One guy in our group commented that he was amazed to be standing on the same field as some of the greatest atheletes of our time did during the 1984 olympic games. I commented back that I doubt very much that people surrounding us actually came for that fact.

The grounds was definitely a poster child for debauchery. Marijuana and cigarette smoke wafted through the cool evening air. People littered the ground sucking on glowing pacifers with their eyes glazed over staring at a lightshow. Half naked people getting more naked to the music. Questionable sexual acts being commited in the opening. Dancers rocking out on the port-a-potties.

However despite the ludeness of the general surroundings and a rampant drug use, I could not help but find a respect for the electronic music itself. Say what you will about electronic music. I saw out into the crowd and found a full of spectrum of people dancing, rocking to the music. Everyone got closer and closer together until the crowd became a giant moving mass with a heart pulsing with the heavy electronic beat. Our screams became one voice. There was no way to separate yourself from the music because you could feel it inside of you beating on your chest. This was an entirely different world that I had never experienced.

I can't say I love you if I don't mean it.

2008-06-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

It is really impossible to do anything but thinking while lying on the beach. I tried reading my novel but the warm sunshine and cold ocean breeze kept stealing my attention. I wrote for a bit in my small personal journal mainly of this discovery and trying to ask how it came about. I think the past weekend was one really filled with introspection. My friend Amin began chatting about the question of motivation as many people were starting to ask me to put them on diets to lose weight because I recently lost weight through healthy eating and exercise. However I have quickly discovered through some of my consultations that people wanted fast results, weight lose in a matter of days, and without those results they soon surrender and return to their former habits. But weight lost is merely just a goal in life and like any other goal, you must be motivated to achieve it. Many seek out personal trainers, dietitians and organizations such as weight watchers for outside motivation, but what of personal motivation? How can you really achieve anything if you youself do not want it? I think what many people today lack is personal motivation. It is so easy to give up and tell yourself that you tried your best, but how can you lie to yourself knowing the truth? People always make fun of the inability of making a commitment in a relationship: I can't say I love you if I don't mean it. However how you considered the relationship you have with yourself? Can you commitment to yourself and finally say I love me? Do I love myself enough to consider what I am putting into my body, mind and soul?

People are social creatures; this I know all too well. But do we keep the company of others in order to silence our own minds? I have always believed that people need to talk to themselves to find peace. At one time, I was forcibly placed in a position where I could not be social. I could go the entire day uttering one word. Instead of becoming more and more depressed, I found an audience within myself and spent the time having conversations in my head. I usually phrased it in such a way so that it seemed like I was bouncing ideas off another person for a short story but I always ended up in deep conversations mainly about how to go about living life. Now I have the chance to be social, but I do not always take it. I remember the conversations within my mind and sometimes satisfied with them. However, I must warn that self conversation is not an adequate means of pursuing new knowledge for you lack varying viewpoints to change the whole picture.

After much conversation with myself, I discovered that my atheism was actually a reaction to many attempts of Christian conversion. However I asked what is my religious position, I usually reply that I am non-religious, which is true in a sense. I actually found religion to be a substitute for faith in oneself. Religion attempts to explain many aspects of life especially with regards to morals and death. I find my faith to deeply based in a sort of hodge podge of logical reasoning.

1. I believe in actions and consequences. I know that my actions will carry consequences and try to probably weight the difference choices before choosing. I understand other's decisions will have an impact on me as well.

2. I believe in morals based in logic, love and respect. Yes religion is typically a basis for someone's fundamental morals and many champion that a strict set of morals is necessary for a functioning society, but if you truly understand the terms logic, love and respect together, you find yourself with perfectly fine set of beliefs too.

3. We live on through our actions. For many religion is a comfort knowing what is waiting for them at the end. I do not know what is at the end and I will know when it is my time. I know that I will live through my actions. All of our actions impact the world now and forever.

4. I accept responsibility. I know that somethings are within my power to change and that something are not. I accept responsibility for all of my actions. Faith is double edge sword. Positive and negative things come from the same source. I learn from good and poor decisions as they were mine to make.

Of course after reading all this, you may think me to be a crazy, self-absorbed lunatic that talks to herself. I am just trying to convey how I finally came to love myself. This is how i came to be where I am right now. Because I am finally content with who I am, I can finally direct my efforts into greater things. But I should say all beliefs and opinions are subject to change :D.

Time to deliver the secret to happiness

2008-05-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

In case I have some sort of a readership going let me catch everyone up on the latest. I am currently in Pasadena, California for my third co-op tour with Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For those that are geographically disabled like me, Pasadena is in Southern California (SoCal) near LA. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is NASA funded research center managed by Caltech. All of this sort of makes me a NASA scientist, but I never really feel like one. The general atmosphere of JPL is very laid back sort of like college where work is eventually done but only after you're done visiting all of your friends on site.

I belong to one of the Data Engineering divisions where I do random tasks mostly dealing with the automation of data extraction from various sources. When I have time, I remain a TA from a distance (though I am not paid) and will do some TA thing such as answer questions or give input for drafts. I am actually supposed to finish my product this week and deliver the finished version. Let's hope I can do that.

After the work day ends, I usually launch into my latest exercise routine be it walking or jogging for 1 - 1.5 hours. While I am try to make use of my time in terms of getting myself in better shape and at least maintaining my current weight. In case you are not too familiar with me, I lost around 40 pounds last year. People always find it funny that I had to buy completely new clothes. I actually donated all of my fat clothes. It was actually a great cathartic experience to see all of those clothes go. I tried on all of my clothes before tossing them and I was so amazed to see and feel the change. I looked like I was drowning in those shirts. Don't even get me started on the pants.

It's fun to see how I have changed over the years. On the very left is me in 8th grade (~15), next is me in senior year of high school (18) and last is me just about 7 months ago (21). One of my friend that has only met the current me commented that she might not have wanted to hang out with the previous stages of Dawn. I wonder how many people feel the same way. My old friends, thanks for sticking with me.

And grades are posted...

2008-05-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

Grades for the Spring term were posted early Tuesday. I did better than I expected in two of my classes which was quite a pleasant surprise. My effort to bring my GPA up are still not working out so well. Maybe if I completely eliminated clubs, exercise, commuting, jobs, volunteer work and my social life could I actually bring my grade up.

I wonder about the students whose lives are completely composed of school work and classes and wonder why? College is not only about the pursuit of knowledge, but also about finding who you are, discovering new friends, experiencing the world and giving back. I have seen so many people drop out of Tech in my year here. Some cite that college is a waste of time, that what we learn here does not matter in the real world. I hear it especially from CS majors, because you just end up having to learn all sort of new things in the real world that you would never learn in school. Strange I don't see how that is a bad thing at all. You should never stop learning, because the moment you cease learning you have either given up on learning everything or have deemed yourself knowledgeable on everything; neither of which is particularly good. It must be the teacher in me that believes everyone should be learning up until the very end. I believe all classes have some worth even if their worth is not immediately known. I remember reading a book on working with 3 and 4 years old in a preschool once. There are all of these different techniques for teaching children and all results the techniques are designed to yield. I was looking at the book wondering there was no way at that age could I even comprehend these results. Even if you told me the big picture, I doubt I would know. I see the lowerclassmen at Tech and I can tell that they don't even wonder about the big picture at all. What are you going to do when you get out of college? What does this class even mean for your future career? You can't just live in the moment. You need to have at least some idea of where you are going!

Okay enough ranting. Stay in school kids. Peace.

How do you be a better TA?

2008-05-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

Life, as you should know by now, is a strange collision of events. Finals last week marked the end of my 3rd year here at Georgia Tech and I think to myself where has all of the time gone.

I finished my second semester as a head TA for CS1316 too. Some students baked me cookies the other day which had never happened to me before. From a TA's perceptive I thought this gesture was very sweet, because it was done with appropriate timing. Had the students actually given me anything while I was still in a position where I could change their grade in the course dramatically, then the gesture of making me cookies can be construed by some obviously demented individual as bribery. The idea is to never put yourself in such positions so that they can never be used against you.

I am still trying to figure out how to be a better TA which is harder than you can imagine. I have to figure out all of the right channels for doing this. I personally think that courses such as CS 1371 and CS 1316 which are CS courses for non-CS majors have a difficult time convincing their students that the concepts in this courses are very much relevant to their future careers. However I believe that we have a difficult enough time convincing ourselves that very same thing. CS 1316 is basically undergoing a major identity crisis. It was originally designed for CM majors as an extension of 1315, more media based computer science. However the ISyE department decided to require ISyEs to take this course too, because of the sheer amount of ISyEs failing of what was then CS1322 (what is now CS1331 and CS1332). The media aspect is supposed to make you make to learn the material so that your animation or similar will look exactly to your liking at least that is how it is market to younger students in other schools. The problem I see with that is the target is way too young. Here we are at a top school in the nation and the medium for the material we encounter is directed for a much younger audience. Maybe the idea is that it looks like it should be for young children then I, as a college students, should be more than capable of handling this. I don't really know the psychology behind it all. I think college students already think a lot of the classes they are taking are a big waste of time. The way that CS1316 is presented right now, I would categorize CS1316 as kind of useless. It really needs to get the message across that it is indeed an important course and step up the curriculum.

Okay I think that's enough for today.

Life tastes bittersweet

2008-03-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since my last post which is probably why I should update more often. The Friday before last, my sister, our friend, Trang, and myself went to the Atlanta Humane Society just after Environmental Engineering Principles class. My sister was in the mood to look at puppies and I had nothing better to do. Trang tagged along as well even though she is actually allergic to dogs and cats, but anyone that knows Trang knows that she's allergic to everything. We wondered into the shelter and was instructed immediately to wash our hands so as to not get the animals sick. Good policy I think. My sister took a gander at all of the puppies on display and decided she wanted to hold one. One of the humane society workers/volunteers questioned her age and demanded to see identification.

At our age, people typically get annoyed for being mistook for a younger kid. I believe you need to be at least 18 to handle an animal without parental supervision. This reminded me of the time I went to buy cough medicine for my friend and ended up getting carded. You need to be 18 to buy cough medicine apparently. I being 21 felt wronged. The American society need to learn how to recognize an aging Asian.

Okay back to the story at hand. My sister gets this puppy from its cage. Now this puppy must be the most brilliant strategist or a quick study because the first thing he does when she picks him up is lick her face to death. We played with the puppy in the hall for a bit. Even Trang played with him for a bit while watching her hands start to swell a little. What can I say? My sister fell in love with the puppy.

She's always felt a bit of resentment towards my parents for getting rid of her dog some time ago. His name was Max and he was a boxer, great dane mix meaning that Max was huge and looked a bit like Scooby Doo. My parent got rid of him, because we were moving to a smaller house and didn't have enough room for him. At least that's what they said. With my parents off in Taiwan, we had an opportunity to completely bypass their opinion on the matter.

As you can tell, we ended up getting a puppy! Because I paid the adoption fee, I called dibs on naming the puppy. My sister and I decided on "Remi" after "Remy" from Pixar's Ratatouille. "Remi" is actually short for Remington because he looked so intelligent in his sweater. His favorite hobbies are licking your face, nibbling on your fingers, eating your nose and playing with his many toys.

Of course you can never have good news without bad news. Since I had to take Remi to the vet for a puppy checkup, I decided to take my other dog, Sassy, to get her eye checked out. I took them both on an early Friday morning to Lavista Animal Hospital. Remi was fine and got some shots. Sassy, my 13 year old Beagle, has to get her eyes checked out. It turns out she actually has glaucoma in both of her eyes. One eye is almost completely blind while the other is starting to go too. The fact that made me very sad is that, glaucoma is very treatable and I let it progress to this state. I felt horrible for my old friend and guilty not getting her help earlier.

I got the pets back home before heading off to Tech to proctor a quiz. I was in no mood to proctor, but I was not about to make that known. I made sure my tears were dry before I went into Klaus, before I faced the students. *shrugs* That's how life goes.

Can you interview in Chinese?

2008-03-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

I actually got an email from this company in China wanting me to interview me last week. I was definitely a fine mixture of negative and positive emotions. Because it was a company in China, I was pretty sure that the phone interview would be in Chinese. While I am in fluent in Mandarin Chinese, I have gotten a bit rusty since my mom went back to Taiwan in January. My older sister used to speak mostly Chinese too until she met her latest boyfriend who does not really know how to speak Chinese at all. So here I am completely out of practice. Completely self conscious about my American accent while speaking Chinese.

I had my older sister come over and prep me on possible questions that the interviewer could ask me in Chinese. Essentially they were all the same questions as a regular old interview but I had to be able to formulate my answers in Chinese. This was actually quite difficult and I ended up trying to memorize the Chinese translations for computer science words.

I ended asking my sister a day later if it would be a good idea to cancel the interview since obtaining the job would only make my life more complex (since I am a co-op student already with a co-op job). With unprecedented wisdom, she told me to just go for it, because you can never have too many options in life. I realized that I will cross that bridge when I come to it and decided to go ahead with the interview.

Today rolled around and so did 9pm interview (13 hour difference from China). One Mr. Zhao, calling himself James, called me on my cell phone. I actually did the interview from one of the classrooms of the IC because I stayed late after recitation helping students and meeting with Candis about UWAB. I was surprised because he talked to me entirely in English. Warranted it wasn't very good English but still English. He asked me to introduce myself and I did for bit talking about my majors, specializations, TA job, co-op job and my various involvement. Then he asked how I felt about going to China and working there? I answered that I felt fine with it and was actually excited about it. He then asked if I have ever been to China. My answer was no but I added that I had been to Taiwan and was actually born there. I could tell he was actually really surprised at this point and asked if we may continue the conversation in Chinese. We did. It was not actually so bad. It wasn't until I asked him what types of jobs they had available did I notice the huge language difference. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about beyond software implementation and software testing and I told him this quite straightforwardly. James told me that actually all of their business is conducted in English so that it shouldn't actually be a huge issue.

Then came the actually coding session. I have actually never had an interview where they actually tested my coding in real time. Some have requested samples of previous projects but never did I have to code in front of them. We ended up in a Microsoft Live Meeting where he proceeded to ask me questions:

1. What is a difference between a struct and a class?
I had no idea what the answer was to this, because I have had limited experience with C and no experience at all with C# and C++. I told him this honestly and just answered what a class was.

2. How would code the following method that returns the K smallest elements in an array
Given some array = {3, 7, 0, 1, 2, 9, 4}
K = 3
returns {1,2,3}
I started off just giving him the algorithm I would follow but he actually wanted the exact code. It took roughly 15-20 minutes for me to give something for him in real time. I was disappointed in how long it took me but proud that my solution actually works. This was about the time the interview finished because the time he allotted was up. He and I exchanged thanks for the interview and parted ways.

Am I still a guru?

Interview Guru?

2008-02-21T12:51:00.000-08:00

My friend Ev instant messaged me the other day and she asked for help regarding her impending internship interviews. I don't know I how gained the reputation of being some sort of interview guru (perhaps I started that one myself) and when I tried to refute that fact, she thought I was being modest. Her words screamed of her fear of the interview, the fear of saying all the wrong things. I knew this fear all too well; the same fear muddies your thoughts and suffocates your self-confidence. Horrible crippling fear. The best advice I could give her was to relax.

The interviewers can smell your fear.

We college students are so notorious for being incredibly high strung and stressed out. It takes a little while to finally realize that you have sometimes accept what happened.

I learned from it. I move on.

One moment that has always stuck out among my memories is one from elementary school art class. The art teacher, Ms. Sumner, had no real classroom and instead taught from either her cart which she pushed from room to room or the random table set up in some corner of the school. The assignment is to draw a picture any picture in pencil, but you weren't allowed to use your eraser at all. No eraser!? I freaked out a little.

"Incorporate your mistakes in the picture," she told us. What's done is done. There is no eraser to use to fix the mistakes you made. You just have to work with them. This teaches you to be more careful about each mark, each movement of your pencil. As long as you didn't use an eraser and you tried your very best, Ms. Sumner gave you full credit for a stick figure drawing or an artistic masterpiece. So stop dwelling on your mistakes. Keep drawing. Don't ever throw it all away. Keep drawing.

Structural Integrity

2007-04-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Rambling Incoherence
Few people actually know that I run all sort of scenarios in my head, so that I may be better prepared to handle a seemingly new situation. Sometimes it seems to others that I may be acting in the spur of the moment, that my action required little forethought. I rarely act without at least some consideration of the circumstances. Even with all this pondering of possible future occurrences, I still sort of freeze or ramble on incoherently when someone asks me what I want to do with my life. This question may be the single hardest question one will ever have to answer in the course of one's life. You might find me clutching my knees in some fetal position rocking back and forth mumbling "What am I going to do?" and maybe even attempting to pull my hair out. Does anyone really know? I think it's difficult enough just figure out if you would rather be proactive or reactive in your life. Basically would you step in shit or have it flung at you? Either way you've got shit... depressing, ain't it?

Chimerical Ideals
We tend to idolize certain characteristics in people and try to create or improve that characteristic within ourselves. We, in effect, create this horrible chimerical vision of our ideal selves and then strive to become that ideal. If we ever become that ideal (or damn close to it), we realize that we haven't achieved happiness. We often, however, fail to merely be ourselves. Is it only when we are truly content with ourselves can we be happy.