First day

After much anticipation & waiting, I finally began my first day of Summer Quarter here at the University of Washington. To be honest, I never quite realized how so much bigger UW is when compared to Washington State University. It turned out to be a rather nice first day of classes. For some reason, I copied down the wrong building & room number for one of my classes held at the health sciences buildings and so I kind of made myself lost. But thanks to a kind female stranger, I was given directions and was on my way. Aside from that, all of my classes went perfectly well. It feels kind of strange sometimes to attend a rival university but you gotta do what you gotta do...and in my case, none of that rivalry stuff matters when it comes to me getting my education.

Afterwards I met up with Daisuke & a girl I just met named Aya. We had lunch at this Korean place on The Ave called Yummy Bites. After my last classes ended at 8pm (yeah...crazy, right?), we headed down to University Village to do a little shopping. The heat from the day slowly died down and was driven away by this soothing eloquent evening breeze that just totally makes you wanna linger outdoors. Later on that night, me, Leanne, Gina, Erin, Zack & Nikki just had a couple of beers and popped in a movie and it was a good way to rewind from the day.

My goals for today:

• Grab some Vietnamese sandwiches on The Ave (I love them so much!)
  
• Get a little studying done at Odegaard or perhaps at Starbucks
• Head down to the salon and get a bottle of Paul Mitchell hair-styling balm
• Work out at the IMA with Anthony, Tony, & Minh
  
• Cook dinner for my roomies

Right now, I'm currently studying (or what appears of it) on campus. Thanks to Gina this morning, I didn't have to wait for the bus. She dropped me off at school on her way to work. Oh, did I tell you she also got me a bag from Banana Republic?

Anyway, this song has been stuck in my head all morning. "Cute Girl" by Jay Chou...

Moved in

Last night, me and Anthony got into Seattle at around 11pm. I met up with Breckie (who's room I'll be taking over during my 2 months stay in Seattle). Afterwards, I spent the night at my Pullman room mate's house up in Bothell, where his mom made some delicious Vietnamese food for us. After 4-5 hours of driving across the state, the taste of home cooked Vietnamese food just simply enlightens the soul.

So finally today I moved into my new place in which I'll be living during the summer here in Seattle. Currently, I'm living in a house near University Village with four other girls named Leanne, Erin, Gina and Keri (who's currently in Italy). They are all really friendly. I am very happy to have settled in their house. I'm hoping to get to know all of them better and become friends. Hopefully summer will allow us to do some things together. Tonight we all actually went out for dinner together in Shoreline. We later dropped by Home Depot to pick up some paint for Leanne's bedroom and finally to Hollywood Video to grab a copy of the movie Breach. I decided to stay in tonight on this rainy Seattle night just simply so that I can get more settled in and relax a bit. I was suppose to go to two birthday parties and meet up with one of my friends to do some farewell drinking but I'm way too tired to go anywhere right at the moment.

A letter from a time ago

For the past couple of days, I've been slowly cleaning up & packing things here and there at the home. The reason is that when both me and my room mate return from Seattle in mid-August, we both have to move out from our current place and into our new place.

As I was cleaning out and boxing up belongings in my bedroom, I stumbled upon my old biochemistry 303 notebook from Fall 2006 semester here at Washington State University. When I opened it up to look over my past exams, I realized that I stuck a letter in there that originated from the beginning of the school year. It's actually a letter with very nice handwriting that's written on notebook paper which was folded twice. I still to this day I don't have the slightest clue as to why I decided to keep it but,...I may do now, but for the longest time...I ended up keeping it anyways.

The first time I read it, I had this horrible build up of anxiety and finally when I reached one line of that letter...

...my whole world just somehow came crashing down upon me. I was just in disbelief. I felt this slow calming of myself as if everything around me went silent and I was traveling 1,000 miles an hour in my mind. You begin to start getting that choking feeling. Finally, it's when you slowly exhale...you feel something inside you have just shattered. And that's when you pick up your senses and realized that you have become broken.

I think the reason why I kept it was to compare it with the future and one day perhaps come to an understanding that everything in existence in this world, present and future...proved that the letter to be false & just an imaginary inanimate object.

There had been a few times in which I've somehow managed to re-read the letter a couple of months ago and I think every time I finished reading the last word, I admit that I slightly become teary-eyed. And yes, today...after reading it...I couldn't help but begin to choke up and a part of my eyes became a little misty.

But this was for the last time. I later finally tore it up and threw it away...

Plans

Well, it looks like I've only got like 6 more days until I'll be (once again) living in Seattle. This time though, it's going to be with four other girls near University Village. It'll be an interesting summer, don't ya reckon?

Things (but not limited to) I'm trying to accomplish for this summer while I'm in Seattle:

• Workout everyday at the IMA.
• Fly down to San Antonio for June 21-25 to be with my family. Parents are dying to see me!
  
• Take road trips down to Seaside, OR and make a lot of appearances up in Vancouver BC. Don't forget the night market up in Richmond!
  
• Play some tennis & do some kayaking on Lake Washington.
• Chinatown! I need my weekly dose of dim sum.
• Do a lot of shopping! I need some new threads. UrbanOutfitters is a must!
  
• Get back into clubbing mode. Trinity, Level 5 & War Room...I'm back!
  
• Concerts! Lots of them! Definitely have to see The Fray on July 28th.
• Take my MCAT in August.

Summer classes at the University of Washington starts on the 18th. This whole upcoming week I'm pretty much going to be wrapping up stuff at work and also doing some packing up of our apartment so that when both me and Anthony return in August from Seattle, we'll have less to deal with in terms of moving to the new apartment. It's going to be a pretty busy week. Tomorrow, after I get off from work, we have to head up to Spokane and meet up with Kelly and one of her girlfriends for lunch. It'll be fun! Later on into the night, me, my room mate, Sayano and Anley are all having dinner together for one last time at our current apartment. It'll be a nice, cozy and relaxing way to end the weekend...

Facebooked!

I think most recently, I've begun the extreme gradual shift from MySpace to Facebook. A lot of friends that I know are doing the exact same thing. First of all, MySpace has one of the biggest problems with users getting spammed. Second, logging onto (and staying logged on) has become one of the major problems these days. It seems that I always get some sort of error message everytime I perform some sort of task! Third, the features and designs on MySpace are really archaic in comparison to Facebook. Facebook is built to last because it enables real life interactions. MySpace is built to die because it enables irrelevant, non-friend communications that empirically kill online communities.

Facebook’s utility puts it in a class of its own – MySpace is not in that class. Facebook’s privacy options enable users to share only what they want to share. Facebook is the biggest photo site on the internet and has achieved that because friends share photos with friends they otherwise would not share with anyone else. Facebook users are comfortable with sharing in the Facebook environment. In contrast, MySpace has to deal with friend, comment and messaging spam – as a result, MySpacers are restricting their profiles to just their friends. Even with that privacy, MySpace does not and will not have the same structural advantages as Facebook.

It is too late for MySpace to change. Any adjustments they make now will only patch underlying competitive disadvantages to Facebook. Facebook, in the long run, is the only network that matters. Beyond that, Facebook can build useful tools MySpace simply cannot. I'll still have my MySpace account but I'm keeping it only to keep in touch with friends who don't have Facebook. For me, Facebook will be the essenital and the standard.

Oh, by the way,...Facebook me!

Regina's bulgogi!

It seems that now and then, I end up eating dinner extremely late. It's definitely not good for me, but I do it anyways. Well, tonight my friend Regina came over pretty late and cooked some bulgogi for us. I love bulgogi! We totally scarfed it down with some rice and afterwards, we threw some Polish sausages over the small grill on the balcony and had some of that as well.

Oh, and I also realized that Regina used to never liked me when she initially first met me! She told me tonight. I thought it was very funny. She ended up apologizing and felt really bad. I told her it was alright. Hahaha...but now that she's got to know me and my room mate Anthony better and that we've all spent lots of time together...she finally admits that we are a bunch of cool guys and her dislike for us is TOTALLY gone. Silly girl.

Right now we're watching some new episodes of Naruto at our place. Can't beat new episodes! Well, she's watching new episodes with Anthony. I'm heading to bed. Gotta wake up at 5am to go to work! Eww!

The two songs in my head

So all day, this song called "Back Here" by BBMak for some reason just started to get stuck in my head ever since this morning when I first heard it in a friend's car. I guess the fact that for songs that you haven't heard in such a long time, when you finally hear them again; they tend to become attached in your head. At first it's like, "oohh..wow, haven't heard this song in a while...sounds kind of good!". Then hours later, your mind is like, "shit! get this damn thing out of my head!".

Speaking of songs, have you heard of The Clientele's "(I Can't Seem To) Make You Mine"? Well, it's a song that I've been recently listening to quite some time and I can never ever get tired of it. The song has this good feel vibe and is nostalgic and melancholic, autumnal, hauntingly reflective as well as painterly. The song kind of draws upon feelings and images in your mind the same way a past experience does. It was actually featured in the movie The Lakehouse. Here's the music video for it:

Sayano & I

Earlier this evening, I finally bumped into my close friend Sayano ( we call her "Saya") who (two days ago) just recently came back from a visit to her parents in Japan. I haven't talked to her since early May. She lives right across from me and so most of the time we end up bumping into each other as we both open our doors to leave our apartments at the same time. This is something that isn't planned but somehow it's eerily synchronized and has been happening throughout the year. Anyway, so me and my jetlagged Sayano talked for a bit and planned out some stuff we were going to do together for the upcoming the week, which included a bunch of random stuff. She also happen to have got me a pair of chopsticks from Japan while she was there as a gift.

This summer, as I've mentioned before, I'll be living in Seattle for a few months to attend the University of Washington as well as prepping for my MCAT that I'll be taking this August. As a result, I won't be able to spend much time with Sayano this summer and so we're both trying to cram as much spending time as possible within the next few days. We had a lot of fun together last year. Sad thing is, this July 3rd I'll miss her birthday (again) for the second year in a row...

Some Diesel jeans and some char siu

Okay, so I couldn't have just waited until I get to Seattle to go into the downtown UrbanOutfitters shop to buy my jeans and had to buy them online today so that I could wear them in the next three days. Anyway, I ended buying these Diesel Zathan 772 jeans. Damn, I love them! For me, most of my clothes are a combination of Nordstrom, UrbanOutfitters, Armani Exchange, Express and Abercrombie & Fitch. Living here in Pullman, non of these places exist and as a result, I end up not being able to shop for clothes unless I find myself in the Seattle/Bellevue area. This is pretty tragic. But hey, this summer I will be living in Seattle and attending the University of Washington and so I'll be having the chance to grab me some nice summer threads.

Anyway, last night it finally rained here in Pullman and so it felt really insanely satisfying to get a little change of weather scenery. I must say though, the complimenting mix of a hot summer night with the warm and cool feeling of showering rain, along with thunder and lightning feels all too much sensual. Me, Anthony and Paul pretty much just barbecued some char siu on the small grill over the balcony,...safe from the rain and thunder. I love char siu almost just as much as I love roast duck.

We had our char siu with rice and pretty much just called it a night. I later on crashed on the futon out in the living room.

Water...

Today proves to be certainly one of the most scorching hot days here in Pullman. As we are speaking, it's exactly 5:00pm over here and the temperature is around 92 degrees Fahrenheit. To seriously withstand this type of dry heat, it's always best to be safe by hydrating yourself with lots and lots of water so that your body can keep cool and be hydrated and this will less likely cause you to get heat stroke or become fatigued. For me, I've been pretty much armed with water all day. Water keeps me on the equilibrium with this type of weather...and by all means, water is what keeps me going throughout the day. Of all the compounds, water is the one that most mixes with us. We begin life in an amniotic ocean in our mother's womb and throughout life, water has always been an essential part of us. Water itself goes through so many cycles. Cycles that are eternal. And like us, the cycle is an endless process of transformations.

Ice, water, vapor, solid, liquid, gas. Water is the element of change and transformation

We are one with water. We are water and water is us. Just like water, we end up getting dirty. Sometimes we are too cold. Sometimes we are too hot. Sometimes we are frozen in one place. Sometimes we are wasted by others. At other times, others see us as the most precious thing. Others might see us as essential in their lives and others might just only see us as resource. Sometimes we can become refreshing for others and other times, we can also drown them at the same time. Most of the time, we try to stay somewhere in between. We also become purified. Our lives revolves around it and our paths are intertwined everyday and every moment.

Life is the path of water. Transformation is the course it takes. And the only way to go, is to flow.

To me, water is sexy. I love the warmth. I love its translucent features. The way it feels on me on a hot scorching day at the beach and the way it envelopes me during a hot bath. Sometimes I love its absolute passivity. It's versatility is beyond admiration. It can be very dirty and very clean. It can have shape or no shape. It's unpredictable and independent. I adore the way the sun is glimmering in the water when it's on your skin. However, the most sexy thing about water is...

it's the best excuse for getting undressed.

I am so thirsty.