All the Small Things

Before I forget them:

• Rolling across roof lounges
• Salt, Sherlock Holmes
• Invitations to practice kicking
• "Shooting" water, chips, pretzel sticks, rock candy, crackers, Pineapple Crush, green tea, ketchup, string cheese, etc.
• Playing cards and room key cards stuck to faces
• Climbing through wilderness, lost in the arboretum, going in circles, finding our way out
• Lunch at the Manoa shopping center
• Midnight trumpet playing "happy birthday"
• Always instinctively hitting "1" when going down, "E" when going up
• Tuesday, before math class, that girl walked down the stairs by Grace and I, and said things about us being so shocked about someone who had jumped/fallen down the stairs and how we were too shocked and saddened to tell anyone about it or even move (because we were both kind of blanked out looking down the stairs)
• Dinner "hellos"
• The rabbit always loses to the turtle =/
• "Panga"
• Nutella with whole wheat Ritz crackers
• Dane finished his paper, Alice and Jeffery (and Romee!) did not start
• Discussions in Anthropology verging on topics of racial divisions, invisible coasts, the possibility of a future of everyone being mixed and looking alike, the lack of the ability to go backwards to purity
• Lunch in Holmes shooting birds with imaginary guns
• Paradise Palms with Myungjun & Josh
• Hiding in Annie's closet and not managing to conceal laughter
• Less than one whole sip of coffee (plus what remained of the sweetener packet) leads to an hour-long "coffee high"
• 1 am calculus homework wrap-ups, with a brief calculus converstaion Jordan's roommate passing by the E-lounge ("I give you props!")
• Rachel, Rachel and the other not-Rachel all live on the 12th floor

Imagine

I'm in Hamilton right now, Louis Landon's piano cover of John Lennon's Imagine playing, wireless capability of laptop being put to use, battery slowly draining. I came here to work on the ANTH paper draft due on Friday, and to hopefully get books that will help me out with it. So far, the studious environment, in these oh-so nice cubicle things with relatively comfortable chairs has not done so much (I'm kind of hungry now) for my studying, but it's nice, and I feel ready to work. Also, yay for piano music. (:

I want to write about this weekend's adventures, but I feel that would take me an inordinate amount of time, so I shall refrain from that until I have done more work. But, on a bright note, I pretty much finished all the work I needed to do for the beginning of this week (minus ANTH), so I don't feel that stressed out.

I will write more soon.

But I leave you with one thing:

Imagine a more accepting world: Today is National Coming Out Day.

You have your own life to shape. Shape it as you wish. Accept others' wishes, as long as they don't intrude on your own. Once you're alive, you have a right to live and chase after happiness, and obtain it. I think it'd be nice to support others in things that make them happy. This world needs  more happy. Please.

Portal

There was once a book entitled THIS IS NOT A BOOK,
which gave rise to a dorm room adventure.

 The portable portal was cut out carefully along dotted lines with a pair of yellow scissors.

At first the portal found home amongst the multitude of fake portals.

However, the portal was relocated to a shiner, more noteworthy location,
the endless storage area of delicious items.

Relevant to College Life:

Coincidences, colliding opinions, camaraderie.

Life works out in silly ways.

My Sparkling, Shining Wishes

Have slopped in with my worries. (HTT)

I don't think it's conceivable how much I love this song. I woke up this morning and started whistling it. Though the language is one that I can't really understand at all, and though the outfits they're wearing are slightly questionable in this video, I am so in love with it. I cannot get this melody out of my head. Cannot. This song makes me tear, but it's not that I'm terribly sad because of it. Something about the melody just carries on that feeling of moving on, even though things aren't turning out the way you wanted them to. Optimism. A little sadness, but an acceptance, a solution, the prospect of a better tomorrow despite what has happened today.

I'm so very in love with this song. ;_;

Sinking Like A Ship in the Blue

Doot doo do doo... (This Providence)

After Sunday's lazy day, the nice few moments seeing my family (and telling my mother not to freak out about the price tags on the bag of new clothes I bought), I had a bought of unhealthiness eating the pizza and old taco bell chalupa they had handed me. I felt unclean as a result of that, and so on Monday I bought a salad for lunch:

I had run into Annie on the way back (she was stopped in the middle of the walkway watching a girl try using a fire extinguisher at the display they had by Campus Center), so we walked back to the dorms together, and she informed me of her plans to go out again to Wal-Mart, and possibly Ala Moana. If either Megan or I had gone along, she wouldn't gone and gotten the turquoise, blue, and black Hello Kitty purse she had so spontaneously decided to get. XD Alas, neither of us did go, so she bought no bag. Next time, she will. And there will be pictures.

THE SHIRMP CRACKER IS LARGER THAN MY PORTABLE PORTAL!

I had eaten one of the giant shrimp cracker things the night before, sadly disappointed by its lack of taste and deliciousness. Come Monday morning, however, I realized that might have been due to my lacking taste (I was so TASTELESS, hehe!). I was eating breakfast on Monday morning and things really didn't taste like much.

The Hawaiian Studies exam was considerably more nit-picky than I had expected it to be. I found that the test-taking skills that have aided me all throughout high-school are essentially now useless, except maybe for that rule to "double-check" your work. Do you remember those activities in Highlights Kids magazine? Do you even remember that magazine? My family subscribed to it for a very long time... Wow.

I wore these striped socks yesterday, hoping their purple-ness would help me out a bit in staying alert and driven. They worked... slightly.

With the whole afternoon free, I actually worked on things, and actually finished my lab report before nightfall! On the contrary, though, I didn't finish all the things relating to the lab we had to do today (including pre-lab questions and reading the procedure) until this morning. Though I tried to be ultra-prepared for lab today in order for it to hopefully go quickly, it was the same as usual. Or rather, even worse, I ended up leaving 30 minutes later than the set end time (5:20pm), and was the last to leave. I really think our TA thinks poorly of me. I laughed at his comment on the most recent lab report we got back: "A little wordy." I think a little is an understatement, haha.

I should have been more productive yesterday night and this morning, but, well, things go as they go. There was a leak in my cereal bowl this morning so milk got everywhere. That video of "My Love is a Stapler" with the actual voice actresses made me tear (because that song and that anime, for some reason, pulls so much love out of me for it). I crossed my fingers a lot. I was drowsy through 30 minutes of math class today, but very alert for the other 45 minutes. I poked a baby gecko with my pink highlighter and confirmed its continued life. My wall is now smothered in photos, taken from tons of people. Scrapbook paper from Alyssa is up there too. (: I wrote a letter I need to put in the mail. I feel okay. I just have a lot of homework to do.

It's good that even though I'm kind of struggling to stay afloat, there are those little things that lift me up, lift up the corners of my mouth to bring me to smile, like mealtimes and silly secrets. Oh, and xXxHoLic. Most recently, I've had to think about this:

Lying because you can't see, or aren't able to make out the form, conducting yourself as if you can do something you can't, is just rude to those who are serious. - Yuko (ep. 4)

I think this kind of relates to why instead of trying to BS some answer on an exam, or in conversation, I prefer to leave things blank or just not say anything. I don't want to pretend I'm someone I'm not. People already do that for me. Like, I can't really swim, even if my location leads you to expect that I can.

It's okay; I won't let you just stand there and watch me drown (from misconceptions).
Learning. Adapting. Overcoming things. Hey! This is college life!

Lovely Day.

After Friday's Kahala Mall adventure, the shopping bug became contagious.

I came back from the TAG Team service project on Saturday with the RAPSters pretty early, and failed to call Annie and Megan to let them know that I had already finished. Their team had actually done painting! Jealousy! As a result, they came back, and were like, YOU'RE COMING WITH US, ALA MOANA, 1:30! We were supposed to get Annie some new flip-flops and a SEXY PINK BAG, but alas, both of those missions went unfulfilled.

Prior to leaving, I got myself locked out of the room by leaving to go use the bathroom (I had a bottle of soap with me and my UH ID), and did not intend to wake Claire, who was napping in the room. I dealt with that problem, got a new key card that I have already cracked (I did not crack the other one in the whole month or so that I had it, though =/). We ended up running to catch the A as it was arriving at Sinclair (LOL at Annie trying to run without creasing her shoes), and noticed that each of us had a bag that matched the color of the shirts we were wearing, hehe. Coolness.

GAP

Macy's: Annie shaking hands with monkeys and modeling a STUNNING Hello Kitty bag

At the mall Annie ended up shaking hands with a lot of the mannequins. We went into a lot of stores (scarily, due to my encouragement), and dealt with Annie saying GET IT! GET IT! GET IT! It was fun. I actually tried on sunglasses (we all did), but I still haven't the real need or yearning for anything, especially because I can't wear them without getting contacts, first... The food in Shirokiya was so enticing. Clothes everywhere were so alluring. With money to be spent... Man, that was an adventure.

When we got back the sky was moving on, moving into the sunset. It was moving itself. I thought it was beautiful. The sun had just started setting and everything was tinged a little pink, but I didn't mind.

Walking back on Bachmann Lawn, we just needed some sort of picture together. We attempted to do a jump shot, but with my poor camera and our inability to time our jumps with the timer correctly, we ended up staying grounded and blurred in these things.

...Raising the bar?

We must've looked ridiculous, and these photos came out being so pathetic, but it just felt so good to be insane along with other people. We were all crazy just the same, and I worried not about everything I have to worry about today. Goodness, it just made me so happy. (:

The sky was like this when we got up to the dorms. So beautiful. We went and spent our last meals for the week at the cafeteria. Kalua pork. I tried to eat a spinach crepe... but seriously, SPINACH CREPE? I only took one bite. It wasn't going to work after that. I said, "I should have gotten the fish sticks!" which Annie had gotten, and so she told me to eat one, but I refused. Then she said, let's do rock-paper-scissors, and if I win,  you have to take one. Still being on a shopping craziness high, I threw SPOCK, and oh the workings of life had miraculously led Annie to throw ROCK. YES. After that, Annie was like, "And I thought I was a nerd." and I could only smile happily to myself and high-five Megan.

At PacSun, they only had large bags left. I have no idea why I still got one when I only had one shirt and it didn't take up any space at all in that bag, but it's a nice bag, neh? As we were walking through Macy's, I heard some of the women standing at counters saying, "Wow, that's a cute bag!" When I paid for my things in GAP, the guy at the register (who looked like a college student, and was super Asian-looking, but cool) said, "Wow, that's such an artsy bag." Sparse conversation ensued, but it was the first time ever that I even attempted to continue conversation with anyone that I didn't really need to. Joked around like my father.

There had been a problem with the transaction, in that when I left, I checked my receipt 'cause I felt something was funny (after calculating cost of the purchase prior to standing in line) and I thought, no way all of my card is gone! -sobsob- I caught the mistake and the three of us returned (Annie threatening along the way to be the one to do it and go and yell at the person at the register and ask for the manager), but I insisted that she stay away and be calm, while I went and got it fixed. I guess I really sound and look honest because the different guy that dealt with me that time didn't even look inside my bag to see that I wasn't lying, ahahaha. Either that, or he was just out of it. Annie said, "SEE, THEY'RE BAD WORKERS!" It was nice being able to find a problem and get it fixed in a non-panicky manner.

LtoR: PacSun blouse, GAP net top, GAP cashmere two-button...thing

I surprised myself by buying things that I would just be too embarrassed to go shopping for normally. I also bought lip balm that is TROPICAL PUNCH and smells delicious, but I know I shouldn't eat it =P. I also bought ginormous shrimp cracker things. Mmmmm.

And yes, for Grace's sake, this morning I tired camwhoring for a little bit to get pictures of the things I bought, but majority of the photos came out looking terrible (especially since I was still sleepy when I took them, and I just look terrible in general (crazy unruly hair and icky legs! -fwapack-).

That is the blouse from PacSun that just completely drew me in. It was in black, too, but I thought, nah, I'll go with white. That way I won't look so glum and dark as I usually do. (: I bought it with the money that my grandmother gave me for my birthday, so I shall write her or call her or something so that she will be happy that I bought something that is pretty useful and necessary.

Furthermore, this morning, Claire cooked pancakes and gave me some. Delicious. I am so crazy thankful to her, especially after last week's eggs and hash. So so so delicious. Also, I ate the giant tangerine that looked like the two mini-tangerines (that are still in the refrigerator) that Grace gave me. For  my current state of health's sake. I also drank milk. Claire doesn't drink milk; how is it possible that she has such strong bones for her Army-ness? I'm so jealous. My roommate is amazing.

Today will be a long day. I'm wearing all black and it's comfortable, hehehe. SO seniors pride, yeah! I miss that orchestra.

Another Winter is on repeat. I am still very much in love with this song. Also, this song.

I want to put more things on the door. Like, the molecule for serotonin, and suggestion sticky notes.
I'm forgetting about judgments and letting go.
I feel like I'm getting older.
Good.