Black Hole

Everyone has a black hole, whether it's a big one or a fairly small one it's implanted in their heart. It's something that can't be healed but only replaced with other some what meaningless, materialistic objects. It's temporary.
What's your black hole?

What about the time you realized that your father bailed on you just before you were born?
What about the time when you first met him when you turned 8?
Was it everything you expected it to be?

What about the time when all the men in your life have done everything else except treat you the way you should be treated?

It's unfair.
It's all in the past yet you can't forgive, therefore it still posseses you, controls you and brings you back down to that miserable self you once were before. Is it your fault that these memories haunt you at night or maybe it's no one's fault at all. Maybe it was meant to happen to make you stronger, to prepare you for all the good that are meant to come your way, or maybe you are just that unlucky.

Does all of this make you a weak person?

Is that why you can't sleep at night?

The Secret Garden of being a college student

What's the deal with FAFSA anyway?
The fact that there are so many damn papers to fill out is just mind blowingly annoying. I'm sure every student knows that picking a major is a pretty tough thing to do because if you are undecided and just taking random ass classes, then obviously your tuition money was for nothing.

One of the tougher scenarios is when parents pressure their kids to do what they want them to do. Just because their occupation is a doctor doesn't mean their kids are meant to be one too. For example, my mother swears that I was born to be an acupuncturist and I have a "talent" or a "gift" or whatever, it's kind of hard to understand her in English because I have no idea what the hell she is saying. When it's fricken obvious that acupuncture is something that I don't wanna do, I mean I guess it's cool to stick numerous needles in people but after a year and a half of working around it, I'm sick of looking at old people's asses. Seriously, it's not even about the elderly's asses, it's just asses in general.

My ideal career would be to write for a health magazine or some sort, in my home office, the snow piling up on my windowpane, a cup of awesome, kick ass coffee next to my laptop and a dog. Okay, scratch what I said about the dog, maybe a cat. Or just no animals in general and my sweetheart in the kitchen making me breakfast. End of story.

Not to fucking look at bare, wrinkly asses for the rest of my life.

The sad part about this is that it's totally possible for me to do this, but I'm way too scared to disappoint my mother.

Ah..


Rats..

The Secret Garden of crap that girls do to torture their men

Yes, things have been rough and I was gone for a while but I'm back. Still marching on whether people read this crap or not. Well, I won't necessarily call it crap because it's my thoughts and beliefs that I share in this blog.

I've recently resigned from the Kapio and is not currently just filling the spaces in this blog with stuff that happened to me in between those times. Make sense? For fun, I guess?

There is something that I want to share with all of you and it's connected to the huge earthquake that happened in Haiti not too long ago. I was driving to school one morning with the radio on, I heard a super romantically sad story of an American woman who went to Haiti couple years ago to do volunteer service work. She was trapped under couple feet of concrete and to her surprise she was rescued by her husband. Talk about knight in shinning armor. Seriously.

Only if our everyday lives were like that, right?

Listening to that made me think about my boyfriend and how I should cherish him more because one day, Oahu will have a gigantic earthquake and I will be trapped under couple feet of grass and mangoes and I won't be able to see him ever again. That's a really sad thought.
OK, for real this time. It made me realize how easily we take our loved ones for granted and how short and cruel life can be. Fortunately, this woman was rescued but thousands of others were not.

Even something small that people do for us, like when our boyfriends hold our purses during sidewalk sales. Those acts of kindness are rarely thanked for and vaguely remembered because we are programmed to believe that when people reach a certain level in a relationship or just because they are this or that, it's their responsibility to do such things for us. Another example; toilet seats. Who made it a rule that they are meant to stay up? Who made it a rule that guys have to put the seat down for us girls? Maybe the girls should stop bitching about the toilet seat not being down for their convenience and put that shit up once in a while for the fellas. Just a thought.

It's understandable if the boyfriend is an asshole and expects way too much from the girl, then yeah, fuck em and don't do shit for him. But when your guy is a sweetheart, it doesn't hurt to watch ESPN once in a while with a fatty homemade chicken salad sandwich to keep him company.

OK, I know I'm defending the guys way too much here but maybe girls screw each other over by sticking with these rules and shit that apparently is like "the law" in relationships. Women feed each other with useless stereotypical analysis of the "different types of men" and we screw ourselves over by listening to it and believing that all [fill in the blank] guys are all [fill in the blank]. Then when women "take a chance" and date these men, in the back of their mind they feel like they have to be in control of the relationship and be aware of what those kind of men are known for.

That's why men say that we are crazy.


In reality we are just too bloody brilliant for our own kind.

Therefore giving off the image that we are crazy.

When you think about it, it all makes sense.





It's it funny?

 
All of these thoughts came to mind just because of that 45 second news break on the radio.

The Secret Garden of fooling ourselves

I guess at some point in our lives it's going to get tough and we are going to want to give in to the easy way out - leaving, walking out, quitting, whatever you want to call it. That one point in our lives where everything we worked for and everything that we were holding on to is no longer a priority. Then we tend to drift off and behave in certain ways that we would have never dreamed of doing, whether we are looking for a way out from the bottom of that wine glass or brainwashing ourselves into thinking that the mountain we are climbing now has no downhill, so there is no point in pushing on. 


When things get so hard we misbehave and become our alter ego, just someone that's totally 180 degrees from who we really are. Because we don't want to face what's in front of us, what we have to wake up to every morning and the unsatisfactory thoughts we have towards the circumstances that we are living in, it blinds us from how we truly feel. To me it's like losing weight, we try and try but there are no results being shown. Then we get disappointed and discouraged because we are not patient enough for the weight to come off. We have an image of how we imagine ourselves to look in the mirror when we are skinny but every time we look in the mirror the person staring back at us don't fit the image. 


In my opinion, leaving behind our lives to start fresh is the definition of lust. Thinking about that reset button rushes adrenaline through our veins and got us fantasizing about how our lives can be molded into perfection. However, perfection does not exist. There is a difference between cutting out what we don't want from our lives and chasing after something that we want right now but won't be needing later; like trends. 


If we followed trends we will never be able to have our own sense of style and individualism. We won't be comfortable in our own skin, we'll just have to continuously change our look to make ourselves feel like we are fitting in with society.


Instead of correcting the way we think we try to replace the parts of our lives that define who we are. Like the people who love us when times are hard with people who we think that will love us more when times are hard and thoughts of "if I stick it out through this rough time it's going to make me stronger" with thoughts of "if I leave now I won't have to deal with this anymore."


Now the big decision is how do we know if staying with our current situations is the right path to take and what if, just what if, things would have been better for us if we did leave everything behind?

The Secret Garden of getting into the holiday spirit

READY OR NOT, HERE COMES THE HOLIDAYS!!

What's more great than our birthdays, carnival rides and the first day of summer?


THE HOLIDAYS!!!!


It's the most jolliest time of the year! The turkey and stuffing, red stockings and reruns of Christmas specials all day long, it's the time of giving and being with our loved ones. The decorations and awesome sales at the mall, everything about it just makes our hearts melt. So how can we prepare for the festivities? Here are some suggestions on how to get into the holiday spirit and also my personal tips on how I get myself ready for the big 25!

1. Decorations.... and lots of it!

My inspiration was the movie Elf with Will Ferrel as the human Christmas elf. In the movie, he decorates the mall into a white winter land, everything made of cotton, paper and possibly maple syrup. I love to decorate by myself because I like to decorate it the way I like it but decorating is more fun with other people. Stick a popcorn in the microwave, a couple of sodas and let the magic begin! What I found really useful was printable Christmas decorations, I googled "Christmas coloring pages" and with a click a whole list popped up on my screen. Santa Claus, Rudolph, Elves you name it! After coloring it I cut it out and stuck them all over the house, yes, it's a bit cheesy and kind of kiddish but I had a great time! Also there are loads of ideas on Christmas decorating online such as Christmas lanterns and printable gingerbread houses. Decorations don't have to be expensive, of course there are the traditional decorations; the Christmas tree, the lights, the yard decorations but I found it more fun and meaningful to make the decorations myself.

2. Christmas movies and specials + Couch + Snacks = Love

When December nears the television stations play hours of Christmas movies and shows every day, it's nice to sit back on the couch, feet up, cuddled up in our favorite blanket that just feels so smooth (or a snuggie, I don't judge) and unwind while our minds are fed with cartoons, jolly songs and Will Ferrel running in tights while eating cotton balls. Yup, that's the life.

3. Sing your heart out.

Who cares if it's still November? Go and bring out last year's Christmas CD and play it in your car, play it loud, play it proud! It doesn't even have to be in the car, play it in the office, download it to the ipod, listen to "Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer" while you jog, heck, turn up that boom box playing "Frosty the Snowman" while walking the block with that swagger. To make this look really work, tie a bandanna around your forearm, forehead and stick it in your back pocket while fashioning a wifebeater and baggy blue jeans with raggy white shoes. Oh, don't forget your "I Believe in Santa" pin!

4. Last but not least, presents!

They don't even have to be big or expensive, what really counts is the sentimental value it holds. For my sister she poared her heart into the wrapping, she would wrap it with sparkly wrapping paper and made the bow herself. You know the ones from stores where it's nice and curly with a big flower looking bow? She spent hours wrapping them and she really enjoyed it. Not once have I ever seen her do a half ass job on a present.


YAY CHRISTMAS!

It's what counts :]

The Secret Garden of past friendships

/frɛnd/ friend-ships
  /ˈfrɛndʃɪp/ [frend-ship]

1.	the state of being a friend; association as friends: to value a person's friendship.

2.	a friendly relation or intimacy.

3.	friendly feeling or disposition.

The foot prints left behind by the people we've encountered are numerous and most of them fade after a short time, but what happens when those foot prints come back? What happens when forgotten friendships come bursting in our lives once more just like the ghost of Christmas past?

The feelings we felt, the smiles we shared, the stupid things that we did flashes through our minds like the silver surfer from Fantastic 4. The smooth sail of long lost memories take us back to the school yard, the cafe on the corner and to the days when we promised to be there for each other. But while this ship is in motion, we drift away from what's keeping us grounded-- reality.

Everything is destined to change, we can't stop it or slow it down but to realize that it's happening. Old memories do that to us, it implants a small piece of hope to make us think that even though 5, 10, 15 years has passed that person will remain the same. It hypnotizes us to forget what years of separation can do to a person. All we can think about is how great it'll be to be reunited and pick up where we left off, to revive the friendship that was once believed to be dead.




Just as much as a person's feature change, so does their personalities, their values and hobbies. Things we once had in common with them may have changed. The sad part of it all is the fact that the comfort we found in that person and the memories that remind us of how carefree our lives once were are dismantled. Like an old picture that's discolored and cracked on the edges.
Unless the picture is constantly looked at and taken care of we won't be able to notice the changes it goes through. If we have it close to our hearts and hold it once in a while, we'll be able to witness the small nicks and tears that happens to it over the years instead of seeing them all at once to realize that it's a damaged picture. If observed frequently the changes the picture goes through are not as noticeable to us.

Does that mean we should grasp tight around our friends when it's our time to say our good-byes? No, definitely no. If it's their time to stray away from our lives then it's their time to go. I look at it as a part of a cycle, friends come and go but if they were meant to be in our lives they'll always return to us like a boomerang but if they don't, then maybe they weren't meant to be with us from the start. That's no reason for us to stop going on with our lives and focus on that particular person, it means we need to move on and better ourselves with the lessons they taught us, the smiles they brought us but most importantly those precious memories that we can look back on when we encounter rough climbs throughout our lifetime.

"What is a friend? A single soul in two bodies."
- Aristotle

Our acquaintances, friends and best friends.. If they were meant to be our companions, they are still here or will return to us when the time is right, but if they didn't return, maybe they weren't meant to be with us after all.

The Secret Garden of uneasy vacations pt2 - pictures

Jon-- we were dropping off Sue at the airport when we realized it's only her and Jon (with the lei) going off to boot camp but none of his family members came to say bye. So we hugged him and told him to kick ass. And brought him Hawaii snacks and lei.








After graduation.








waiting at the outdoor stadium for the graduation ceremony to begin, it was 45 degrees with wind and light drizzles of rain. We waited almost 2 hours for it to begin. The soldiers were standing on the field longer than us.






-- A dinner at Olive Garden after the graduation, my sister and her friends, their families, and us. It took us about 2 and a half hours to find Olive Garden.







Mac, Orange, Kline, and I'm sorry I don't remember all the names. At Olive Garden








--After family day ceremony.








































I ran into a friend of mine that I knew since 8th grade, didn't know he was in boot camp with my sister. We brought lei and snacks for him too but didn't get a chance to give it to him.

































Being reunited... Very first time seeing her and it was emotional-- she lost a lot of weight and her voice was hoarse.