Cruising through Northern Europe

I'm back from Europe!

Oh in case I forgot to mention (kinda meant to post something but never got around to it), I was in Europe on a cruise with family the last two weeks. It was pretty great. Or rather awesome just for the fact that it was Europe. Cruises have their pros and cons traveling wise, which I will get to in a bit.

This particular cruise was a 14 night trip around Northern Europe. The schedule:

Day 1: Southhampton, England
2: Zeebrugge, Belgium (took a tour to Gent)
3: At Sea
4: Waarnemunde, Germany (took a tour to Berlin)
5: At Sea
6: Stockholm, Sweden
7: Helsinki, Finland
8+9: St. Petersburg, Russia
10: Tallinn, Estonia
11: At Sea
12: Copenhagen, Denmark
13+14: At Sea
15: back at Southhampton to transfer to flight home

-during which I had little to no internet access because the going rate on the ship itself was $.75/minute and we were too cheap to bother with that. Technically a few of the ports had free wi-fi, but the speed wasn't really sufficient enough to do much except to receive emails and not respond to them... and check Google Reader. Speaking of which, I should probably switch to an alternative now that the "ends on July 1st" messages keep popping up...

I'll probably do an individual post for ports later, but for now I'll talk about the cruise itself. Being on a cruise is basically like being on a glorified hotel in the middle of the ocean... It's quite nice. I guess if you're prone to motion sickness, then it's probably not a good idea, and even though the ship is large enough that it doesn't rock back and forth as much while traveling (some days I didn't even notice the ship was moving), it is still possible to get seasick if you aren't accustomed to it. Luckily it wasn't a problem for us this time around, though.

But aside from that, you basically get free (or rather, already paid for) meals on the ship if you stick to the buffet or the main dining restaurant. There's a show every night in the main theater which you can see if you feel like it; casinos are open to anyone over age 18 on the ship; and there's lots of lounges and a few pools and a fitness center and a spa and some other facilities on the ship, with activities hosted by the cruise staff going on everyday. To be honest, I'm more of the type who prefers to relax in the stateroom during an at sea day unless a particular event catches my interest. Someone asked before I left, "Doesn't it get boring?" because you can only do so much on a boat that's at sea... well, I guess it depends on how you prefer to entertain yourself. I've sort of grown used to somehow finding something to do wherever whenever.

I noticed this time around that the majority demographic of the cruisegoers were elderly white people... of course. Although considering that we departed from England and the majority of the other passengers were from the UK itself, it makes sense. It kinda made it so that I didn't feel as inclined to participate in much of the activities going on, though - it's easy to stand out when you don't match the typical demographic of the audience. There were a decent number of teenagers also, probably there with their families, that I'd notice hanging out throughout the ship, which I presume was through the teen club they have on board. It's odd how quickly cliques can form on a two week cruise...

The one thing I like about cruises is that it gives you the ability to visit lots of different destinations at once without having to worry about outstanding traveling costs in a short span of time. 7 countries in two weeks is no small feat if you're traveling by plane/land, and plus you normally would have to worry about finding lodging and figuring out food at each place you visit. At least with a cruise, you just have to worry about making it back to the ship on time, but otherwise you've got a place to stay and food covered for the entire trip.

On the other hand, the fact that you visit so many places in such a short time span means that you spend a lot less time at each individual place, mostly around 5-10 hours per destination/country, which isn't really a lot of time to appreciate each place on its own. Often for the sake of time, our tour bus had to pass by a lot of places without stopping, so I had to settle for taking pictures of some major sites from the window of a moving bus, which generally caused them not to turn out so well a lot. You end up having to practice being able to take decent pictures while moving... which isn't a skill that comes up much for most people I would think. Even with St. Petersburg, where we had an extra day, I felt like I didn't have enough time to fully appreciate it. I've already got a list running in my head of things that I want to do there when/if I ever go back, but that probably won't be for years at least.

[The other thing I don't like is being force-fed so much food all the time. If you're lacking in self control (eh heh) it's really easy to go overboard with the eating since there's so much food available. I mean, I was eating more at breakfast than I usually have at home for lunch/dinner sometimes, and that's not including lunch/dinner on the cruise... But alas.]

I'm probably going to do an individual post per port, perhaps with some pictures and captions included. I was debating whether or not I wanted to just upload an album with captions as appropriate, but there's too many pictures than I'm comfortable with uploading and some things I'd want to write don't fit with any particular picture, so I'll probably end up writing more of summary anyway. I took notes on the tours in order to alleviate the inevitable "what the hell did I take a picture of" moments and also because some of our tour guides spouted enough information to fit an encyclopedia, and I like keeping track of random knowledge. This vacation in particular was a lot more history oriented than past vacations I've been on tour-wise- especially St. Petersburg, which ironically happened to be the youngest city we visited (founded in the 1700's)- so I have a lot more to write about than usual... but what can I say, I love history.

[as a side note, I also managed to finish 3 books, a few Gundam anime, and got somewhere midway through the newest Fire Emblem during the downtime on the plane trips and on the ship... but yeah. I also feel randomly inspired to read lots of 19th century Russian literature now.]

limitations

This doesn't pertain to anything recent other than a random thought train in my head during a long car ride.

I sometimes wonder how different I'd be if I didn't have certain biological limitations. Like the following. 

- I never felt encouraged or motivated enough to actively pursue activities like running or hiking up high altitudes because I have asthma that seems to only manifest after strenuous activities. Actually, the last time I went hiking up a steep slope at Lake Tahoe, I almost blacked out after the first climb. Luckily, we were forced to take a break because of an ongoing bicycle race on the trail we were taking, but thereafter I lagged behind the rest of the group with a friend for most of the upward hike because it constantly felt like someone had dropped a medium sized weight on my chest every time I took a step, and it hurt to breathe even after medication the entire time until we finally got back down to the base 8 hours later. There was also that time with my cousin's wedding in the mountains in fifth grade when I genuinely thought I was going to die because I couldn't breathe.

I'm too afraid of tackling any higher climbs in the meantime. That said, I think I would appreciate it a lot more if I could. Pain or not, Tahoe was a beautiful sight.

- The last allergy test I took... or rather, analysis of a blood sample, told me that I was allergic to dust and pollen (as usual), household mold (also common), and every type of tree and grass on the list (ugh). But not animals- although I remember a classmate's dog in middle school triggered my allergies really badly... but it did seem to shed hair nonstep- and thankfully not food, including peanut butter, which I thought I was allergic to in elementary school because of that poking test and ever since have never really liked much (but since college I like eating peanuts by themselves now). 

I don't have any life-threatening allergies, luckily, but I guess I'm so used to sneezing at home and at work now that I don't really pay attention to my allergies unless it leads to something really annoying like barely being able to keep my eyes open while driving. I think the reaction my eyes develop from daily allergies in particular is one of the reasons for my eye-damage phobia and why I cannot apply eye drops for the life of me; my eyes refuse to stay open even if I'm trying to force them to... and I refuse to even consider contacts for that reason. That and I HATE the air puff test they do at the optometrist. The assistant administering it almost gave up on me one time because I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough for the puff to go in, and the device felt like it was getting dangerously close to my eye so I was mentally starting to panic.

Okay, semi-rant done.

- Alcohol. I don't mind having a drink just to be social, but I can't really partake in drinking games (or drinking much of anything) for personal and biological reasons. My heart rate rises to an uncomfortable level after a little more than 1 drink and I can feel my head pulse. More than that, and I develop a really severe headache that feels more like a terrible migraine. Last time this happened (after having already consumed 8 cups of water), I had to lie down because my head hurt too much to stand up. This naturally also makes me really antisocial... or as I described it to one person, exacerbates a sociability problem that I already feel like I have around people.

The second to last time this happened (which led to... this post), I had a moment of self-awareness of "what am I doing here?" The friends I came with had disappeared somewhere at the venue we were at, so I wound up walking outside to get a fresh breath of air as I couldn't bear to be in that atmosphere much longer, only to run into some other people I knew outside in a moment when I didn't feel like being seen. So after a few minutes of hesitation, I went on an impulsive walk around the block, with my conscious screaming, "what are you doing stop this." Back in college, I'd had a few moments like this (not involving alcohol) where I ran out of the apartment out of frustration into the wilderness that is northside Berkeley (I swear I almost ran into a mountain lion on the street on one of these excursions, but Ryan still doesn't believe me). This was just like those... that momentary hesitation, the voice in my head telling me not to go but my body moving anyway, feeling like something was controlling me and causing me to run against my will even though part of me did want to escape from wherever I was at that moment.

And of course worrying whoever I happened to be with in the process. I got yelled at when I came back ("you almost made us search for you all over SF.") and I deserved it.  I didn't actually wander far - just circled around the block and sat on a stump around the corner and tried to talk to God for a while. To some people it probably sounds crazy... but I hadn't really done it for a long time either. and I suppose I really needed it at that moment. But on the car ride back I felt incredibly ashamed and upset with my own behavior afterwards.

Does it make you think that something is wrong with you? Because you don't feel like you can fit in?

I guess since then, I've tended to avoid most engagements that likely involve more alcohol than I'd be comfortable with (...more than 1 drink) if I can help it - because I don't trust my own behavior in those circumstances and I'd rather not cause other people to worry about me again. So yeah, something like a Vegas trip isn't really an option. I've wondered sometimes, if I could actually tolerate it more, would I be more like some of my other friends and actually partake in drinking festivities more often? Maybe.

Although I'm more for all things in moderation anyway. There's also the moral concerns that come with it from a Christian perspective that I've tended to feel ambivalent about with regards to the behavior of other people, perhaps in part because I find some people really entertaining when they're drunk. (...cow-children hehehe. although that wasn't even a drinking party.) But there is good reason not to go too far, and I've never really bought into the concept of drinking for the sake of getting drunk/wasted otherwise. Or maybe I'm just saying that to justify my inability to drink much and preference not to. But really, I tend to not find it worth it.

All said and done, I am the sum of my parts and circumstances, and I think it's probably better that way. To still be thankful for the things that make you who you are, even when it isn't apparently convenient for you... it's something I still have to work on.

ドナルド

I felt like writing something but it's already too late and time to go to bed. I guess for now I'll just say that I'm finally indulging my long latent obsession with Donald Duck and all things related to the Duck universe with a healthy starting smattering of DuckTales episodes and Carl Barks comics.

It is also partly for this reason that if I had a son I would want to name him Donald, apart from the fact that I like the name so much already. Except given my propensity for appending names with the sound of or suffix -y (which certain people like to exaggerate to no end... stupid MyListy and Ryany) I would probably call him Donny all the time.

...yeah, the prerequisite for any future child names is that they can't sound bad with the -y suffix. I've already started a list in my head.

(Back when I used to be obsessed with Kingdom Hearts and tried looking up news on the Japanese sites, Donald's name in katakana was one of the first things I'd notice. and hence, the post title.)

((For the record, despite what random people, including this one Japanese lady in Japantown, have thought, I am not Japanese. My last name doesn't spell correctly for it to be Japanese anyway.))

title

Went to the grocery store the other day and wound up wandering around the store for ten minutes trying to recall why I went there in the first place. This happens often when I go shopping by myself.

I don't know why I'm so scatterbrained sometimes. I guess it doesn't help that my attention span's gone to crap over the years, which makes it difficult to really commit to anything I start anymore. I sometimes feel like my life's a series of half-formed attempts at starting habits that never really materialized anywhere after. All of these side projects, these lists that I never finish, moving from one thing to another (and feeling like I'm just repeating myself here again). I do a decent job at busying myself by jumping around so much, until moments like now where I suddenly step back and think that it's all meaningless anyway.

This isn't anything new, though really. I've just been going through cycles of busyness -> meaningless -> busy again over and over again over the years... and it feels like cycles on this blog too. It's more poignant now that I'm alone and have no background noise to fall back on. Unless you can count noticing the atmospheric silence of this neighborhood as background noise. I'm not sure what exactly the noise I'm hearing is right now. The remnants of human civilization at night? [I used to think that I could hear the train at a distance from my apartment in Berkeley, except everyone I've mentioned this to thinks I was just hearing things cause we didn't live anywhere near the train tracks on northside.]
---

I've been mulling over the few times random people have asked me why I never talk to them (which happens more than once, which means... a recurring problem?). At this point, I just don't feel like I have anything to say to (well at this moment, almost anyone) right now, including the people I used to talk to most often, and I struggle regularly trying to think of something to say to the people I do end up seeing now. Most nights when I'm self-conscious enough, the thought will come up, "I wish I had something to say to [person x] right now." Maybe not in that exact quote, but somewhere along those lines. But I'm also growing more okay with just randomly talking to people once in a while too. It's becoming the norm.

There was a time when I used to talk to the same person literally everyday to the point where I'd feel like something was wrong if we weren't talking for a day when it was otherwise possible to... and then that just escalated until I just grew sick of being around that person altogether. I guess I'm partly afraid of ever repeating that mistake again, of growing too dependent on talking to the same people all the time... so I don't bother much anymore.

I do enjoy listening to people talk about their lives, though. Or even complain or vent, so long as it isn't whiny like a certain someone I know ("I don't wanna!").
---

It probably seems like I'm always out and actively about right now since I'm somehow not free a lot... but it's never really consistent cause it changes every week. When you don't see the same people on a regular basis, you start feeling like all of your relationships are fragile and could easily fade into nothing at any moment. Look at how easily people disappear from your life the moment they aren't in your immediate vicinity - actually, hell, this year it happened for me on and off with people still within that vicinity, living in continuous fear that what I had was never really there to begin with.

Even now, I have this constant sense that I could just end all of this right now - retreat into this house and cease all contact with people, and it'd all end just like that. This was actually sort of a predicted fear coming out of college, but now that I've been out this long, it really is starting to feel like a potential reality. It would be so easy to just disappear...

No, I'm not planning to. It's just a thought of what could be.

My mind might be exaggerating a bit though. It internally tends toward the dramatic sometimes, which is why I usually try to filter that stuff out before I say anything to most people (and I get weirded out when I meet people who think like me but lack that filter so it all comes gushing out at once). It happens that one of the weaknesses of my personality type is that when people don't respond- to something I say or an IM or don't come out for an event and so on- I feel discouraged to depressed pretty fast. It's unnecessary, and I wish I weren't so prone to thinking that way, but it just happens.

It's why I tend towards being cynical nowadays; it's easier to deal with those feelings when you expect people to be flaky and unresponsive anyway.  But it's not a good way to think, I guess. Not when you're still hoping for something better.
---

Chances are I'm largely reiterating things I've said in the past here. I can never really remember well enough what I've already said or haven't said or where I've said them here since this has been around for so long. My mental life in many respects is a predictable cycle anyway.

Looking towards a few life self-improvements in the meantime, though. Now that the settling in phase is over, time to start getting my act together. And I should sleep earlier.

overload.

A series of somewhat organized but meandering current thoughts after tonight, when I couldn't say anything in the spur of the moment. I don't normally talk about this to most people unless someone asks and I feel mentally able to at that point (of course most people don't really broach the subject unless you're direct and honest like someone who I really appreciate even though I never really responded back the same way). Which is why I tend towards being quiet and someone asks why I'm so quiet at the opportune time. It's just taken me a long time to get from a point of not knowing much of anything to this half-formed state presently. and I need time to process my thoughts into something cohesive and not just an idea that continuously stabs me when I least expect it to because I'm half-listening to a podcast show from NPR or music in the car while worrying about little day-to-day issues like how am I going to talk to these people today.

My first immediate reaction to this is that I should relax a bit more in general (I think I felt my pulse rise and I feel like I'm having heartburn right now), and yes but no, this matters enough to not leave around hanging to dry. Apologies for the post overload.

(For some reason I randomly jumped from second-person to first-person thoughts in the middle. Oh well.)

---

Hey there. You, yes you.

Okay, it doesn't feel quite as authentic typing it into here this way. (I was having a full out conversation-war with myself earlier.) The process of writing-typing means that inevitably, some thoughts will come out filtered rather than the way they usually do when you're sitting there staring at yourself in the mirror. Which you rarely do because you're too afraid of looking at yourself in the mirror. Too afraid to acknowledge yourself for who you are. All your faults and failings and shortcomings.

You're not the kind of role model you'd hoped you'd be, although even the idea of being a role model doesn't exactly appeal to you. Who would look up to you? Who should look up to you? You feel like people are better off with someone better, more upright and stronger in their values and beliefs. That's why you never even bothered trying to work with younger folks, kids, mentoring roles. and good lord, don't even think about discipling someone, because your beliefs probably are too far marginalized from the norm and wouldn't necessarily conform well enough.

Okay. Maybe that wasn't the right term to use, but you know it's true. You're too afraid of sticking out like a sore thumb, being the one voice that dares to question what the leader says even when it springs up doubts in you. But instead it leads you to start thinking more judgmentally about your fellow Christians around you, because obviously you know better (but remember, be humble so not really) and wow you can't believe he didn't know that? No, the Bible doesn't explicitly condemn alcohol itself except when it's in excess as in drunkenness, and with Leviticus it's pertains to specifically when entering the tent of meeting and not in general (but you just read Leviticus so of course you know that now). but particulars aside, it's not about the knowledge so much as it is about what you do with it, right?

[how can you not know your own religion?]

You're too afraid of becoming sucked into an insular community - one that isn't in touch with the lives of those outside it in completely different areas. When people mention that they don't have many people they can pray for who aren't experiencing God and you feel completely the opposite way, and your pray for five is more like pray for everyone and help me I need prayer too. Because you choose to remain in those areas yourself? Because you yourself don't feel like you're experiencing God the same way? It's been a long time since you last heard anything coherent except you don't really know whether you heard anything to begin with or if that was just wishful thinking or you just aren't really trying to listen right now. If it weren't for the past...

[the only thing is that you can ask your god for help. I cannot.]

All you have left is this voice in your head that you think is just you yourself except you aren't consciously fully aware of how much of what it's saying is coming from you. The little things it says that leave you second-guessing and makes you wonder if you're really just crazy and talking to yourself. And when you're going about your day to day, you don't want to listen to it or confront it because it'll just remind you of all the issues you ought to be confronting right now but you aren't because you just want to play your game again or do whatever it is you feel like at this moment. When instead you should figure out what you really believe, and WHY you believe it. and don't just go along with the flow because you want it to be true. Could you look at yourself in the mirror and admit, "this is who I am" ? Why are you here right now?

[he just wants to know that this is the truth.]

You haven't been fair or honest to him, to be honest. And he or it or somebody's been giving you all of these chances that you've been throwing out to just continue doing your own thing. You said to your friend that it's all on the table now, [woe is the life of a skeptic], but is it really? You still can't comfortably talk to someone and tell them that this is what you really believe, and you aren't really acting on what you say you ought to believe, but you're still around here somewhere. You're still here. Waiting for the right person to come up to you and really ask how you're doing, without the pressure of a dozen eyes all watching at once to see or hear your testimony of where you're at right now, at a point where the more you learn, the more you read, the more you grow unsure of the experiences you thought you had and start chalking it mostly up to your own will. I'm here because I decided to be here years ago. And I believe what I did was right.

and that's why... I respect those who came to their own conclusions, because for whatever the reason, I seem to be unable to fully settle. but I stand here on one side of the fence because I still believe that there's still something to be gained by being here that I wouldn't be receiving from were I not. The reliable consistency of a weekly community, the opportunity to talk about personal issues where you wouldn't feel comfortable elsewhere even if you haven't fully broached those topics that bother you. the backwards part of my conscience that affirms that I'm here because I should be here, because where would I be otherwise? Not caring at all, and an indifferent life is by no means a better one.

I wish the answers were simpler. I have no right to condemn anyone, and I feel ambivalent about whether or not God really would also right now, considering the picture that we see of Jesus seems so different from the Father of the Old Testament even though his beliefs may not stray far at all. Of course reading through the OT hasn't been so reassuring. The entire world of that time period just feels messed up like most of human history. And you wonder, was it really all that necessary for this? To teach a lesson to us now? What about the people who went through it then? What choice did they have? And why doesn't history corroborate it so much? It's not flattering, it's not pretty, and it doesn't seem right so much to us now, the picture of him that we get from it.

It was both on them and God, but moreso God. Not so much a Calvinist interpretation, but a sovereign synergist one. But that lends itself towards an non-permanent hell which might not jive with anyone theologically, for where is the consensual basis for it.  But how can you really be debating theology like this when you haven't even settled the most basic question: do you really believe right now? Do you really, deep down inside, want to see and trust him now? Trust in someone you can't really perceive?

I cannot conceive of the ways. The how. The why. I think it's unfair to pin the blame all on God for this state of affairs. Sometimes it feels more like people prefer to stick with being atheist as a reaction because if God really existed then they'd have to unleash a lot of anger and ugly thoughts on him, they'd have someone to blame it all on, and it'd make the situation that much worse to confront. How could you set up this sick, twisted situation, this illusion that compels us to do the wrong thing because it's easy. Because it's appealing. Because we're just messed up and built that way. Job was no better an answer than a bitch-slap to the face. And there's something relieving and comforting about realizing that you don't really have a reason for being mad at someone who doesn't even exist.

But all this talking about God and not really doing anything about it. What do you have to say to me now.

I'm sorry. For being stubborn. and choosing to fall back on behaviors that I know I shouldn't do regardless of where I am right now.

I sat there during worship, my head abuzz like there was a war going on between me, myself, and God. It's like what Sang mentioned about the introvert mind. It just feels like a storm or hurricane that never really stops, when all the external crap is over, it's always still there. I wanted to cover my face right there because I was falling somewhere between asleep and half-dreaming and going mad at the words I was hearing from that voice or saying to myself at the same time, second-guessing the basis of everything in my life and challenging me to do something about it when I didn't have a journal and pen handy to process all of this input because I didn't plan ahead properly for a worship and prayer night after a long drought of all times. Imperfectly played worship music has that kind of an odd effect on me like that... but it's also why I don't like listening to recorded album-quality contemporary worship music either, because it ironically doesn't feel authentic enough to my personal experience even though the music we play is trying to reproduce it.

Have you had enough of your life now? Are you satisfied with leaving it all up to the whims of a seemingly capricious maker who would actually know more than he's letting on because we just suck at interpreting things we can't understand (but why didn't you make it any more reasonable for us then?) and puts us into situations that he already knows the resolution to? It would be so much easier and probably logical to say that it's much simpler than that, and we're just making much ado out of nothing like we tend to do with those conspiracy theories and such. Sagan had a point after all. I have half a mind to guess whether or not a number of the experiences I've heard were as real as others have made them out to be, and I'm afraid of what I hear coming from the words of the more vocally devout of the bunch, those prayer warriors. Passion and ecstasy without total knowledge or the full truth is a terrifying sight to behold... for how it could go wrong. But I still somehow respect it for being passion. and full of life, all be it a somewhat foreign one to me.

Sometimes I worry that we're all just misguided about the truth in some way. I'm almost anti-people-who-are-completely-sure-of-themselves, but that can get annoying fast, because most of the time we need people who are sure of themselves even when certainty isn't there, or else we'd never move aywhere. And that thought in itself is my own certain belief so I'm just contradicting myself.

Thoughts aside, I'm hardly all that loving or even trying that hard on a regular basis, so long as it's convenient to, and I look up to those who demonstrate so much greater capacity to love others as themselves and can give up so much, regardless of who or what they are. And that's what matters foremost to me... And I should act on it more and not just settle for achieving some kind of resolution in my beliefs. Faith without works is dead.

but really, it's been a while.

I've probably said this before here, but apathy is a dangerous state of mind to be in.

I set out all of these mini-side-goal-projects that I wanted to undertake after moving, but naturally, whenever I come home after work nowadays, all I really want to do is just veg out on the couch. Play some of whatever game I'm playing at the moment on the list that never ends, and oh I'm so impatient I have to finish this now because I've been waiting to play this for years!

(well technically, for Front Mission 5, it's been at least since Fall 2010/this post since the original reason I soldered my PS2 in the first place was so I could get it in a working state to play that game, hence the need for a swap magic and a fliptop since the game was a Japan import... which I negated by playing the game on my desktop now. although granted, I didn't have a desktop capable of emulating a PS2 game for another year and a half, by which point I was holding off on the game to finish Front Mission 2...)

Digression aside, I've been in a sort of an anti-people mood ever since moving. It seems that when you actually have all of the time/space in the world to yourself at a place you can call home, the natural thing to do is to recede away from all of those social commitments that you were otherwise so concerned with months ago. It's like now that I don't have to see the same people everyday... I end up just going for a long period without really talking to anyone. But my mind is so preoccupied with the random crap that I usually busy myself with when I'm left to my devices that I don't notice so much except to make an offhand comment in my head about how I haven't had a real conversation with anyone for a while. I mean, I technically still see people around... just not with any sort of consistency or real length. Whatever happened to those deep talks, long walks, moments of self-reflection? I haven't even journaled in a long time either.

I don't really feel lonely like I did when I was struggling with stuff before, though. Now, I just don't really care... or it just feels like an afterthought. The concerns that would've depressed me before just feel like nothing now. But it still doesn't quite feel right.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother doing the things I still do despite of this, though. Like as habit left over from a better time. Still somehow filling up my schedule to the point where the calendar doesn't really look that free after all. Still responding to people (kind of) when they do talk to me. Still going out to church and small group because I just do. Like there ought to be a better reason for all of that, I ought to have better intentions in mind and my heart in the right place and in sync with my head because that's what we basically talked about during the Healing Path. And when I do try (half-heartedly?) to reach out to some folks and people don't respond, I still wonder for a moment after, why do I even bother?

It's clear to me mentally that not all is right, the constant hum-drum of just allowing time to pass by and continuous preoccupation and lack of contact and random dabbling in different activities with no end in sight... because there could still be something better than all of that. There was a time when I still actively hoped for better moments to come and tried to work towards those things, but right now after having random bouts of cynicism and cycles of ups and downs and getting through everything up to this point, I just feel like reveling in being complacent with where I am right now and not caring... because sometimes that's just what the world feels like. Not caring.

I'm able to write this now because just yesterday and today all of a sudden, I feel more awake and somewhat conscious of my current state whereas before I wasn't really even giving much thought on it. (Really, obsessively playing Puzzle and Dragons focusing on anything does a number to your introspective life.) I feel like I haven't really tried hard enough to make the most out of the circumstances I've been given, not really reaching out to people that much and settling for staying up late every night to "consume" entertainment. I'll probably even go home and continue that cycle after writing this if I don't try any harder.

What am I really living for right now? To merely exist? and nothing more?

I've got problems to solve and not enough of a mind awake to solve them so far... but at any rate, here's to hopefully making this coming week livelier than the last.

ongoing

I haven't really had the motivation to write much... of anything lately, compounded with a random dabbling into a bunch of other things that have mostly preoccupied my time for the past several weeks. More serious post to follow later. But anyway, in no particular order:

- Puzzle and Dragons. Coworkers have been obsessively playing this smartphone game that plays like a cross between Pokemon and Bejeweled for the past couple of months, and of course with it being a combination of my two historically worst past obsessions.... (I still can't get over the fact that being late for EE40 that one summer cause I'd been playing Pokemon at home that day cost me a homework assignment that eventually brought me down a letter grade >_>)

But I got tired of farming marine goblins to try and max skill-up my Siren (she's only one skill rank away... and I think I've fed her ~50 goblins already) so I think I'm done with the game for now... aside from logging in everyday for the free pal points and rerolling the egg machine in hopes of getting a blue or white dragon. But enough esoteric game jargon.

- I bought a new laptop on a spring break deal a few weeks back (Lappy2's warranty expires this month anyway) and it finally came in the other day, so Lappy3 is now official. And it's so fast and quiet! I'm starting to warm up to Windows 8 - once you get past the annoyingly unintuitive user interface and figure out where all the configuration stuff is, it plays out pretty smoothly, although it still feels like it really wants to be a touchscreen tablet when it's not. I hear that the newest update coming up is meant to bring back the Start button again, so that'll be a plus once that comes around.

- Yo La Tengo round 2 in SF with Elan and the others was great. Not as mind-blowingly euphoric for me personally as Stars was, although I actually like Yo La Tengo more as a band. They played a mellow acoustic set matching the tone of most of their new album, Fade, following by a rock set in the second half, which meant that my ears were shot after the concert cause I happened to be standing right next to the speakers in front of the stage, and I could feel the sound reverberations pass through me. Most of my favorite songs of theirs are whenever Georgia sings... I love her voice so much. Even better when it's flowing smoothly on top of her constant drumming while Ira's pounding on his rock guitar.

On another note, I kind of have to learn to not feel disappointed when a band doesn't happen to play the song you want them to play, especially for a band like Yo La Tengo that's been around longer than I've been alive (Ira touted it as a joke during the concert haha) and whose discography and repertoire of cover songs is so big that I'm still discovering new songs I like from their older works. I was secretly hoping for From a Motel 6, which they apparently played the day before in LA, or Little Eyes... but they performed Beanbag Chair, which pretty much was high school for me, as a surprise (Ira: "The bad part of having a new album out is I don't often get to say stuff like this anymore... This is a song from I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.") so I'm pretty happy anyway. I also got a second poster of them now! Now how to put those posters up...

They apparently did an encore performance with Damages the day after we saw them, which likely was due to a request made by a guy standing next to us at the merchandise counter when Ira was there talking to us. Ken asked him if the origin of the band's name having to do with a classic baseball story was true, and apparently although the story itself is true, the name choice was more because they don't speak Spanish and just like the sound of "Yo La Tengo." Figures haha.

- Ever since I introduced my brother to Gypsy and Into the Woods over winter break, every time I come home now he's singing songs from musicals. I've gotten him hooked, and I even surprisingly caught him singing from musicals that I'd seen but never mentioned to him before, such as Anything Goes and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. We have our own little inside joke recognize-the-reference hive mind going on haha. He even bought a book that indexes all of the Broadway musicals of the past century that he thought I'd like. :D

Speaking of Into the Woods, I'm really looking forward to the upcoming movie adaptation of it that Disney is doing.  Not sure how it'll turn out persay, but I'm hoping the book + lyrics will at least hold up anyway... even though the Sweeney Todd and Les Mis movies felt a little off in the past. Into the Woods is probably my favorite musical right now [not seen live yet, though] because I'm into those works that combine the different fairy tales into one setting, ever since seeing that one random episode of Rocko's Modern Life when I was little (although in retrospect, that show probably isn't appropriate for kids... I still shudder when I remember the nudist episode. and it aired on Nickelodeon of all places). And yes, I've seen the first season of Once Upon a Time on recommendation... it was okay. I don't really feel like continuing it though... unless I run out of other things to do, which probably won't happen anytime soon.

But anyway, up next on the works that run in this fairy tale style list, I've been meaning to start reading the comic series Fables since Telltale announced that they would be releasing a new episodic adventure game series for it, The Wolf Among Us, after their success with The Walking Dead. Should be fun.

- Speaking of comics, Free Comic Book day was on the 4th (first Saturday of May annually). I checked out a local comic book store and it turns out they just give out free sample issues made specifically for that day, although it's a good way to check out new series that you aren't familiar with and help pay patronage to your local store. I went ahead and bought the first volumes of Fables and Neil Gaiman's Sandman there, and noticed that the store had a decent selection of manga, or least Tezuka's works, and artbooks like Hyrule Historia also, along with a bunch of the Batman trade paperbacks I looked up a year ago when I was trying to figure out the chronological reading order I wanted to go through. I feel a little mixed though cause most of it's cheaper on Amazon... maybe I'll buy a bit from both.

I have a new craving now to add a comic book collection to my in-progress library... that's currently over-saturated with books I haven't gotten around to yet for a bookshelf that hasn't come in yet. But I kinda already started with the complete Calvin and Hobbes and the two volumes mentioned above. I also have a complete set of Tintin books sitting at home in socal from when I was growing up, and I'm looking into more manga also - namely Nausicaa, some Tezuka series like Phoenix and Buddha, Akira, One Piece, and maybe some Urasawa favorites [Pluto, Monster, 20th Century Boys] and Asano [Nijigahara Holograph, Solanin, What a Wonderful World] or Kitoh {Bokurano, Narutaru: Shadow Star] or Yukimura [Planetes, Vinland Saga] or even some Detective Conan for nostalgia's sake. Figured it would be nice to support the industry for once, considering how easy it is to find free scanlations going around online usually. I took a look at the Peanuts collection also but they're really expensive even for comics... but agh, too many to list.

- ongoing series progress:

1. Front Mission. Finally finished the second game, read up on the third and fourth games... which are more standalone and not as interesting to me compared to the first two anyway, and then realized that rather than using the PS2, which had a good life anyway, I could just emulate the fifth game on my desktop with better looking graphics and resolution. And it's so pretty now! compared to all of the previous games anyway; it came out in 2005 so it's still a little old relatively speaking. This will probably preoccupy me for the next couple of weeks.

It's hard to keep track of all of the subtle references that the fifth game makes to all of the other works in the franchise, as it's more of a final big picture kind of game compared to the spatially and temporally focused first four games, but I enjoy piecing all of the puzzle pieces together (and popped open the DS to revisit the first game at the same time). It's like seeing a decades long work in progress finally pay off, big time.

2. Been gradually going through Mobile Suit Gundam from the beginning - specifically the series in the original Universal Century timeline, so no Wing or other recent stuff (viewing order: 0079 movie trilogy, Zeta Gundam, Double Zeta, Char's Counterattack, and then Unicorn; I'm currently finishing up Zeta). It's odd cause when I was younger, I never really took an interest in mecha-related series. I did watch Evangelion and Code Geass in high school, but those were more for the drama than for the robotic suits themselves.

I kinda decided to watch the original MSG compilation movie trilogy on a whim last year and found myself really getting into the combat despite how outdated the art style was (see the original opening - I showed my friend this and he couldn't stop laughing at how campy it was with the music haha). The Amuro-Char rivalry that permeates the series feels very epic and is one of the more classic ones in anime history also, even though Amuro can be kind of annoying at times (but Kamille is even more annoying omg). I have to say seeing him reappear in Zeta for the first time perked me up a bit, if only because I like see continuity between successive works and characters that change over time, here in a literal sense, and seeing both Amuro and Char mature into legendary pilots over successive works separated by years is intriguing to watch.

3. Finished Battlestar Galactica. I enjoyed the ride, although I'm not sure what I was expecting out of the end - it didn't exactly leave a "void" in my heart like some others suggested (although I kinda blame Legend of the Galactic Heroes for setting the bar for that). I mean it ended well, but I guess I was expecting more from the antagonists considering how the series had been building up, for lack of spoilers. But it was fun while it lasted.

4. Rewatching Arrested Development in preparation for the fourth season coming out on Netflix. It's been so long since I last watched it all that it almost feels like re-experiencing the series for the first time, even though I still remember of the more memorable moments. It's even more funny catching jokes and references that you didn't get the first time around: I mentioned earlier that I watched Gypsy, and then in one of the first season episodes Lucille goes on a tirade singing lines from the finale of that musical, Rose's Turn ("Mama's all alone, Mama doesn't care"), and my brother and I both caught it. And even in a later episode she says, "How do you like them eggrolls, Mr. Goldstone?" So great haha.

5. Not really something I'm playing right now, but Ace Attorney 5 is coming to the US this fall!!! It's digital-only though, but I guess it's better than nothing. Aside from Phoenix and Apollo, Edgeworth and Trucy are coming back! So excited! Now if only they'd localize Layton vs. Wright...