Failure is not the end – it can be an opportunity for growth, for learning, for new beginnings.

And why is it that when we say that something is a failure, more often than not, we mean ourselves?

Perhaps that word shouldn’t be in my normal vocabulary and instead, I should look for ways on how that situation can be turned into something for the better.

How do you feel about that word? Do you consistently use it? For whom? Do you feel that it provides a negative connotation or do you use it in a positive way?

Those are the people you want in your life and/or the people you should try to be.

“Go back to your own country.”

“We don’t need more immigrants here.”

First off, the country would not be who it is without immigrants. I’m sure that those same people who say these comments learned about the Native Americans and how a bunch of European immigrants massacred their people and stole their land. [The Mexicans in California too got pwned.] At some point in the family history, somebody had to be an immigrant.

To say that this is their land and that immigrants should leave, then they should eff’in get off their high horses and look at their own histories. This land is just as much “mine” as it is “yours.”

So eff you to those who think they’re all high and mighty for being eff’in White and owners of this land.

I thought about it for a bit and thought that perhaps the reason people have this misconception is the way that we act around each other. We’re not super lovey-dovey, we don’t partake in obscene amounts of unnecessary PDA, we can hang out with other people without being “the couple” that keeps to themselves, and the list goes on. I think that perhaps we’ve reached this level of comfort with one another that in general, most couples don’t reach until much later.

Maybe it helped that we were friends, maybe it helps that our parents like our significant others, maybe it helps that due to my being at school, we were “forced” to do a few overnights together.

Actually, I think that helped a lot. One of the most stressful things about a relationship is the first night you spend with the other person. What if he’s a light sleeper and wakes up when I snore? What if he kicks around? What if I kick around? Will he still like me in the morning with no makeup on, with morning breath, and some crazy hair? Is there a discreet way to handle morning wood? Do we shower together or separately?

All that anxiety was soon cleared within a month as his and my weekly visits became more normal. Within the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to spend as much time as I can with him before he goes to school, so after work, we hang out and I occasionally sleep over (and totally surprised my parents say nothing about it).

Some wonder if we still have anything to talk about – but sometimes we don’t need to. Or we find something to talk about as we flip through channels or surf the web. We talk about our days, even if it was boring. Sometimes (or many times) I rant (or rave) about the little things, just to get it off my chest.

But yes. NSG and I have only been going out for less than a year but sometimes, I feel (and show, I suppose) that we’ve been going out longer because I’m that comfortable.

When do you start feeling comfortable in your relationships? Does it start with something small, like pooping for the first time when you’re hanging out, or does it start bigger, like a week-long vacation?

I was distraught and since it wasn’t smooshed to oblivion yet, I was afraid to think that it could get further smooshed. I called animal control so they would come remove the cat from the road.

After I dropped of NSG, I had the option of going straight to his house, but something stopped me. Instead, I went back to the intersection where I found the cat. [It was in the middle of the two left turn lanes] I wanted to wait until animal control came, but thought that it would be horrible for me to watch it to get run over, so I ran to find an orange cone. Once I found one (from the nearby car wash), I placed it in front of the cat so that cars would avoid the cone (and cat).

I sat and watched it for an hour, waiting for animal control, all the while thinking about how awful it was to die in the street like that. Whether or not the cat belonged to someone, I don’t know. I just know that as a cat lover, I couldn’t allow for this one to get run over and over again.

I called animal control again and they told me that because it’s deceased, the cat isn’t a priority for them. They said if I wanted to, then I could move it.

…

It was traumatizing. I’ve never really had to deal with/touch a dead animal/person and this… was quite unpleasant. I did the best I could, but the cat was stiff and hard to place in the plastic bag.

I cried. I cried because it was traumatizing. I cried because this poor cat should not have died such a horrible death. I cried because I couldn’t do more for this cat.

I always thought that good deeds were supposed to make someone feel better, but this one made me feel so much worse.

I later ran into him again and commented on his big win (he hit the jackpot on that revolving light game). He saw my big wad of tickets and asked how I ended up with them – I said by the coin games, then left. He later found me, sat next to me, and played on the adjacent machine. Again, to me, it seemed quite friendly. After that, we walked to the ticket deposit area. On the way, he showed me a ball game. He played first, then swiped for me to play. Still, in my naivety, I didn’t think much of it.

We turned in our tickets, and then started walking elsewhere. I wasn’t sure if he still wanted to converse with me, so I continued to walk with him. Then he made his move to leave; I turned another direction and played a new game. He returned and offered me his number so that we could meet up on Wednesdays at DnB’s.

Yeahhhh………….

I never have the heart to turn someone away. I suck at it, I really do. I wish he had a business card instead so I could have easily forgotten it, but he didn’t. So after some hesitation, I told him that I’d accept his number on the basis that we were friends because I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. I put his number in my phone, saved it, then he left.

I ended up telling NSG about it and he ended up upset. I think that he believes that all men want to date a girl that they talk to. I believe different because I like to believe the best in people. However, he asked me how I would have felt if a girl had done that to him. And well – seeing how jealous I am, I wouldn’t have liked it at all. I mean, I understood where he was coming from, so I apologized and gave him my word that I wouldn’t call him.

I guess the reason I didn’t think about how I’d feel if the situation was turned around is because 1) I know that NSG wouldn’t be in my kind of situation and 2) I do believe the best in people – which I guess doesn’t always work out.

All of this somehow lead me to think about hypocrisy – people can be hypocrites because they often never take the time to think about how they’d feel if they were in the other shoes, how’d they look, etc. How many of us are hypocrites in our own lives? Do we know it and yet refuse to change ourselves?

Also, as advice for me – how do I politely turn down a guy’s number? Or do I accept it and never call?

This term also reminded me of the bystander effect, when those who witness an emergency fail to take action because they believe that either 1) it’s not an emergency or 2) someone else has already done it.

Both of these concepts are related to the diffusion of responsibility (yay wikipedia) – where people don’t believe that they are as responsible when in a group than when they are by themselves.

What brought me to think of these concepts was a lady I heard when I was walking back from the post office today. She was screaming out loud and most of her phrases were what you would consider to be responses that someone would give if they were being raped or sexually assaulted. Unsurprisingly, no one really did anything.

For starters, she was walking alone. Also, she was walking on a busy street in broad daylight. The bystander effect would have kicked in by now – suggesting that either 1) because it’s broad daylight, someone would have done something and 2) because it’s broad daylight and she’s still going on, that it’s not really an emergency.

I don’t know what the woman’s story is – whether she had been raped herself or something else – but her behavior sickens me. I don’t want people to fall prey to the bystander effect – I want people to feel empowered to take action, to call for help, to do something when it’s needed. Her walking down the street yelling phrases like that make me feel as if the residents will get accustomed to it, so when something does happen, no one really takes charge and helps the situation.

But then again – we all can’t be good Samaritans. We can’t stop for every broken down car on the highway or street, we can’t hop out of our cars to help the elderly across the street. At what point do we take action? When should we take full responsibility and live up to our potential? How do group leaders motivate their members to take more action, to put in more effort because the leaders know that the members are capable of it? How do we motivate ourselves to work harder, not for the group, but for ourselves, so we can be content with the work that we’ve done?

With that said, you know it’s very interesting to see how much information you can find out about someone. I recently came across a post that received a lot of attention because of the flame war that broke out in the comments. The short version is that one girl had an opinion about a practice and another woman differed, then called the girl out on it, calling her a “twat” and basically, an idiot (though to some extent, I may agree). I continued to follow the drama because, well, it’s entertaining for me, especially since my life currently has little drama.

Anyway, the girl finally received wind about the woman’s post and decided to write her own, in which she complains that the woman publicly listed the girl’s websites, twitter, etc. To that… I say… really?

Do people not understand the publicness of the internet? The information that the woman posted was information that anyone else could have found had they decided to spend the effort to do so. The internet is public. Once it’s online, it’s pretty much online and in many cases, forever. Somebody somewhere will have the information that was once up for public viewing.

It’s amazing how much you can easily find out about people just by using the internet and knowing a few tools and tricks – all of which are free, by the way. There’s nothing that says you can’t do a search about someone and publicly linking the information that was available anyway.

Did I tell you that I once found out the address of a friend’s ex-boyfriend simply by doing a few clicks? Apparently his phone number was listed too. Though after going through his blog, I realized that he pretty much gave everybody the keys to his apartment anyway when he posted up the Google Map to his apartment… (smart, right?)

Anyway, just food for thought. Be careful about what you post, what you create, and what’s listed about you. Be aware not just for yourself, but for future employers, future stalkers,

After going through some of the comments, one pointed out that the anti-feeding blogger is 16. A mere sixteen years old. Now, I know that there are a good set of teenagers who are quite mature for their age, but I’ve run into, seen a lot of, and feel an utter disgust for many who don’t know any better. Was I one of those teenagers? Who knows – I did my best but probably faltered somewhere due to my lack of wisdom.

What I don’t like about this new generation of teens is that everything is very “me, me, me.” Maybe it’s the way that society has raised them – we focus on their abilities and their strengths and what they inherently already know. We tell them to follow their dreams, their desires. If they aren’t happy, then they must change that for themselves. No longer are the days where many feel they have certain duties to uphold – we’re supposed to let them live and learn on their own.

In a way, yes, I’m saying that we’re breeding a bunch of selfish brats. How do we fix this? How will this effect us in the work force? How will this effect our own children? I do not want mine to grow up already feeling entitled – I want them to work for their privileges and understand that they are privileges, not rights.

Anyway – just my mini-rant I guess.

JL came up for the weekend. She drove her tiny overpriced Honda up and then met me after I went through my job interview, where I got sick because the AC was on too high and I caught a chill. We ate dinner at BJ’s as she caught the last end of the Lakers game. I guess she’s happy they won.

The plan was for us (JL, NSG) to go up to SF to club, but considering how sick I was and how quickly NSG picked up my sickness, we compromised and went to a sake lounge, followed by a hookah lounge instead. At the sake lounge, Koji, we saw a group of people with badges who were drawing comics. Yes, they were drawing comics at a sake lounge. But in their defense, it was Fanime weekend and their badges confirmed that.

Sunday was a lot of driving around. We had lunch at Nordstrom where we spotted NSG’s ex-gf with her mother. Thankfully we switched seats so that neither of us would see her. I did tell him that if he wanted to say hi, he could, but he probably knew that it would be too awkward to do so, especially since her mother didn’t like him anyway. If she saw us, then who knows. Hopefully she didn’t, but if she did, hopefully she saw that he is much better off now. Nyehhhhhh.

We walked around a little bit to kill time, though I sensed that JL wasn’t really feeling it. I did feel bad because it was supposed to be her weekend and I wanted to do stuff she wanted to do, but seeing as how we needed to get up to Berkeley for me to finish moving out, we couldn’t plan too much. We did however, land at a indoor gokarting place in Fremont. It’s expensive! $40 for one race!

So we got to the place, realized we needed closed toed shoes, so we stopped by Ross to buy some cheap ones. Upon returning, we realized that we’d have to race with a bunch of Japanese boys, who ended up kicking our asses. These go karts drive relatively quick and the track didn’t have a lot of straight-aways for me to feel safe enough about passing people. I ended up getting black flagged a few times and I ran into JL. She was going around the curve, but didn’t make it and by the time I realized it, I rammed into her. Some plastic part in her car fell off. After that, I played it safe and drove as safely as I could. I did 20 laps when the others did 30.

Got to Berkeley, finished up my apartment, then walked around the Rockridge area because they weren’t hungry yet. Since it was Sunday, a lot of stores were already closed by then, so we just decided to eat early. We drove back to the South Bay where I dumped my things, then headed back to NSG’s to crash.

Monday, JL left early in the morning and drove back to SoCal. I ended up with a manicure, ate sushi, then napped with NSG – it was a relatively uneventful day.

Throughout the whole weekend, NSG and I realized how easily we got annoyed at JL. I mean, they were little insignificant things, but they bugged us. Like when we were trying to explain how to parallel park, she sorta understood, but didn’t. JL also has a tendency to assume things – which didn’t work because she kept assuming the wrong things. I totally didn’t like her driving style. She believes almost everything people tell her – like when her brother tells her because her car is newer, she doesn’t need to let her car warm up in the morning as much as older cars. I think NSG’s biggest annoyance was her waking up so early because if she woke up and showered, he woke up too and wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until she was done. I mean, sure we love her, but we did notice all these little things that irked us.

Anyway, I suppose I should be heading to sleep, but we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot on my mind.