Monthly Archives: January 2010

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Reading Day

Today was my reading day.  I covered about 200 pages worth of Chinese poetry readings.  It appears that I overestimated my reading speed.  I was covering much less than a page per minute, as is my usual rate.  Unfortunately, I will have to finish this textbook tomorrow.

I’ve learned that I tend to learn in a two-pass fashion – the first time through, I’ll read or listen or watch and build an index of the material in my mind.  The second time, or third time, or however many times I feel like repeating, I’ll fill in the details.  Not the most efficient, but for now I’ll run with it.

I really enjoyed the Chinese quatrains (绝句), though the more I read, the more I realize how little understanding I have of the Chinese culture or language.  Even if I could read the characters, the context of China’s expansive history would elude me without many more hours of dedicated study, hours which I am not likely to invest.

Five more books to read before February.  And then maybe photocopy what I need for class?

Hope to get everything done.  Think my cool for the day streak officially ends here.  I’ll have to make it up later.

晚安

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Feel Good Neurotransmitters!

Oh SHIIIIIIIIT!

I can feel my brain running out of whatever neurotransmitters are responsible for regulating my mood.  Again, I am becoming despondent because my Reddit comment karma sucks ass.  And let’s not even mention my Slashdot account.  I think a huge reason why I transferred into Electrical Engineering was so that someday, I could chum around on /. and actually know what the hell everyone was talking about.

I will never amount to anything!  Failure is my way of life!  The end is nigh!

Whoa, nelly.  Calm down.  First, floss and brush your teeth.

Oi, fair enough.  Cue commercial break.  Queue?

Mission accomplished!

Check reddit.  Check synwolf reader items.  Neurotically check Facebook in between every step.  Throw in Xanga and LJ.  Check draklyne reader items.  Download Chromium OS.  Neurotically check Facebook.  Throw in Musefy.  Close Facebook.  Check school/official reader account.  On second thought, no.  Not enough intellectual curiosity on low sleep.  Starting music theory lectures.  Zoning out.

Whoa Nelly!  Just woke up.  Passed out at 4:30/5, convinced myself that I was just gonna snuggle in my blankets to warm up.

Huh.  It’s 12 now.

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10 Feel Good Moments

Every once in a while, my cousin will say, “Let’s play the Feel Good game.” And invariably, it will make whoever plays feel good.  Why?  Simple.  We just take turns saying what makes us feel good.  So let’s play!

Since turns take longer this way, I’ll put up 10.  This isn’t “of all time,” but it’s 10 that I can think of.

  1. Waking up warm and refreshed, ready for another day…and then going back to sleep
  2. Falling asleep in the sunlight on the floor, in bed, or on the couch
  3. Cooking something random and then realizing it tastes good.  It’s like winning the freaking lottery.
  4. Winning the lottery.  Well, since I haven’t done that yet, how about winning that game where you have to stop the light on at the top and you win 1000 tickets.  How about winning it 9 times in one night and having random people give you coins to win tickets for them?  Aw, yeah.
  5. Two weeks in Canada with your best friends.
  6. Making someone laugh.  Making someone smile.  Reversing someone’s bad day.
  7. Fixing someone’s problems, or helping someone reach their goals, their dreams, and their aspirations.
  8. Completing a Tetris.  Or a sudoku.
  9. Getting a new move.  Er, I’m talking about real life, like breakdancing or tricking, but I guess Pokemon counts too.
  10. Gathering all 150 Pokemon.  Screw the other three hundred or whatever – Red & Blue forever!
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Weird Little Moments

I had a dream where I minced cilantro and mixed it into the ground beef I’ve had defrosting and then fried that with some mystery sauces from the refrigerator and ate it with rice and seaweed.

So I did it in real life, because I was starving.  Well, it’s edible.  Better than I can say for some of my conscious creations.

I also had a weird little moment where I thought reality was bending, but it turned out to be my hair causing diffraction patterns.

My fish had a huge crap the other day.  I put it in my potted plant. It actually looked kinda like a beetle.  I can’t find it anymore.  I think it melted.  Or crawled away.

I may be going insane – I started laughing out of nowhere a few moments ago because of something I remembered.  Laughing by myself as I ate my cilantro/ground beef/mystery sauce/seaweed combination.

I was supposed to go shopping for supplies for lunch/dinner, but I slept instead.

Just some weird little moments in my life.

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Oh shit! Last Minute Cool!

I have ten minutes to convince myself that this post is “cool.”

I think I will spend the first two minutes putting lotion on my hands, because they are abominably dry.

I’ve been reading a lot of translated Chinese poetry lately.  Perhaps I’ll try some poetry?

Child, do you remember me?
You sat upon my lap some nights
Child, is that spark of life I see
The one I saw so long ago?

Father, do you remember me?
I sat upon your hard-won hearth
Father, the fire of late has sadly dimmed
As the wood returns to earth.

Brother, Sister, call my name
I wander in this darkened forest
And I’ve lost my guiding flame

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Winter Retreat

…and damn, is it wintry.

So, I escaped from the holiday season with nary a scratch, and a few resolutions.  No, let’s not call them resolutions – too stigmatized.  I came out with a mission.  I’d known for months that I would be returning to the apartment early, and for two primary reasons: to make use of rent that I was spending on it, and to settle myself.  And by that, I mean that I had recently decided to quit Engineering at the University of Illinois for good.

I’ve come to realize that the less I expect of myself, the more I do, the happier I am, and, ironically, the more productive I am.  A poor fit for Engineering, which has a great deal of expectations to live up to, which I merely put off and in many cases simply didn’t do.  All this created was anxiety, and not a productive anxiety.  Let’s face it, I went into Engineering as an experiment to see if I could conform to these expectations, and I was headed for a disappointment, so I jumped ship.

Anyway, settling myself involves just that – being by myself in my apartment and attempting to maintain some sort of healthy, creative rhythm, balancing what responsibilities I do have with developing myself in the ways that I want to develop.  Time to myself has meant that:

  • I sleep early. Generally around 11-12 at night, though there are exceptions.  Or rather, there has been one exception.  Got caught up in video editing.
  • I wake early and eat breakfast every day.  I think about what to make for lunch and dinner.  Then, I make it.  Then, unfortunately, I must eat it.
  • I make an attempt to play guitar…or rather, I pick up the guitar and see where that takes me every day.  I also pretend to watch lectures on it.  The bits and pieces of music theory that I learn, I learn in order to free myself, and liberating it is.
  • I sing every day.  But that’s not out of the ordinary.  I guess following the directions on voice lesson videos is out of the ordinary, though, so that’s worth mentioning.  I was skeptical at first with the Arceneaux Approach, but I saw immediate improvements.  Anyone else have experience with this?
  • I have been immersing myself in Chinese lessons (Pimsleur and CCTV Learn Chinese) and media (music videos, CCTV 新闻20分) a few hours every day.  I really need to start studying next semester’s characters – hell, I need to study all the characters we’re supposed to know by now, because after a 2 year hiatus, there’s not a lot I remember.  It’s strange, as a result of this immersion,  my mind tricks me into thinking people are speaking Chinese when they’re not.
  • I’ve been dancing most every day.  I missed one, so far.  Don Lee gave me a  few bboy toprock videos to work off of, and I’ve been working on that.  I’ve also been working on my dance sharingan, analyzing Taeyang’s Where U At.  I wanted to get this before break ended, but it looks like that’s not going to happen.  Oh, I think I’m on the verge of nailing flares and windmills.  I just have to take days off between practicing those because my shoulder can’t take it.  It’s a sign of poor technique – I don’t think my shoulder should be taking that much pressure.  Naturally, I’ve also been enticed into doing some tricks, because it’s fun.  Oh, while we’re on physical status, I injured my ankle last semester and I’ve been waiting for it to heal.  However, after doing rehabilitative stretches and exercises while idling, I think my ankles are better than ever.  They still twinge, a bit.
  • I have ordered all of next semester’s books through interlibrary loan.  I am about a quarter through the first one on Chinese poetry.  I should finish it soon, because I have five more to go.
  • But most of all, I’ve been trying to live up to one mission: To make something cool every day.  Something that I think is cool, anyway.  The Sean Hsu Diaries, the Apt21 video series (ep01, ep02, ep03, ep04, ep05), the making of which, by the way, made me realize how awesome my roommates were last semester, and the Mini Trick Montage linked above.  Thankfully, I think that covers every day of this year.  I was somewhat anxious to know if I’d truly lived up to my mission.

Living like this has given me hope for a future that I can look forward to, no matter what major I graduate with.

Well, that’s it.  Just a little of what I’ve been up to.

Now to pay the bills, somehow.

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The Sean Hsu Diaries – Day 2

Dear reader,

I have been given the unique pleasure of being allowed to publish Sean Hsu’s personal diary. As you may know, Sean Hsu was my roommate and a close friend of mine before he graduated and moved on to bigger and better things. Much bigger, and much better things.

Without further ado, I present the real Sean Hsu.

Dear Diary,

Last night was a mess.  I was tossing and turning, caught between a blond and a brunette.  Between the blond muttering that she loved me every time she shifted and the brunette molesting me, I got absolutely no sleep.

Regardless, today has already been a success.  After abandoning sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I practiced guitar with Spanish guitar legend Carlos Santana.  He complimented me on my finger picking.  I taught him some John Mayer songs.

On the flight back from Mexico, I successfully held a conversation with a Korean businessman about the location of the washroom.  I also learned how to play tennis on the plane, thanks to the video series that my roommate gave me.  He may have been a pain, but he had some uses.

I expect to take the Roland Garros next year, in between studying for my MD.

One thing still irritates me about my life…but I can’t pinpoint it.  It digs at me.  I am as perfect as any human could possibly be…what else is there?

Bah.  Forget about it.  I will just continue learning Korean.

Signing Off,
Sean Hsu

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Forgot to Mention

“Make something cool every day.”

I think that’s my resolution.  Or at least, a resolution I happen to be enamored with at the moment.  Who knows what that will turn into?  Hopefully, it shall result in cool things, but my definition of “cool” is suspect at best, convict at worst.

It appears that I edit video compulsively at around 2am, which is bad because, as so happens to be the case today, by the time 3 or 4am rolls around, I’m starving.  It doesn’t really matter how much I consume for dinner.  Now the real question is, do I feel like eating the twice-baked two day old pasta?  It’s as old as 2010 is.

I am clutching my laptop’s AC/DC power converter box with my right foot for warmth.  At least, I believe that’s what it is.  Another unfortunate effect of being awake at this hour is the blood draining from peripheral body parts like feet and hands.  Thankfully, my productivity enhancing computing machinery emits inefficiency in the form of warm bliss.

Who the fuck talks like this?  I certainly do not, at least not aloud.  I blame the hour of day.

Hopefully, I can maintain creative output for 365 days.  Right after that, I’ll NaNoWriMo every month.

Got my time all queued up for me.

Boy does that word have too many vowels.

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The Sean Hsu Diaries – Day 1

Dear reader,

I have been given the unique pleasure of being allowed to publish Sean Hsu’s personal diary.  As you may know, Sean Hsu was my roommate and a close friend of mine before he graduated and moved on to bigger and better things.  Much bigger, and much better things.

Without further ado, I present the real Sean Hsu.

Dear Diary,

It is a new day and a new year, but more importantly, it is a new me.  I have decided to keep this journal as a historical document for the peoples of this world when they pause to wonder, “How did Sean Hsu do it?”  Of course, they’ll never really know – the Sean Hsu Effect is indescribable.

I have work to be done and my goals are like arctic hares cowering in an Arctic Tundra, and I am a Soviet SA-7 heat seeking missile.  Let us not take this metaphor any further than; I will blow them into tiny bits.

I am in the midst of mastering the Korean language.  Those Koreans, so smug with their peninsula of pop stars and R&B crooners.  Little do they know, Taiwan is both smaller and mightier.  In order to prove that beyond a doubt, I, Son of Taiwan, will descend upon their peninsula from heaven, held aloft by a nimbus cloud, and conquer their popular music scene with my sublime guitar and voice.  Once they have gifted me their country in awe and stupefaction, I will claim it in the name of Taiwan.

But first, I need to know how to ask for directions to the bathroom.  Important things must come first.

I fear I must go.  Being penned up with those savages in that miserable apartment and having had to fight claw and tooth for food and sleep has weakened me.  I may not be able to clear the hordes of lustful women from my resting place as I am now.

Signing off,
Sean Hsu