Adulting, by Kelly Williams Brown

inefficiency

i hate inefficiency.

it's the worst when i know something can be done a significantly simpler or faster way, because it'll nag me the whole time if it's not being done that way.

that's why i despise walking around campus, even short distances, because i'll always wish i could be biking.

too famous for me

i am on a we the kings high right now, after purchasing and listening to their latest album, smile kid. IT IS SOOOO GOOD AHHHH I WANNA DANCE.

...

i really like meeting band members, especially of bands that i am a fan of.

it's funny, though, because the actual process of meeting them and chatting with them is so so nerve-wracking! i am a shy person, and even moreso when it comes to someone that i am a fan of.

i never really imagined i'd get to meet and talk to some of the band members that i did, from the likes of tim be told, lighthouse, david crowder, and one of my personal favorite favorites, amber pacific. and so when i do end up seeing them in the flesh up close and shaking their hands, it's so .. SURREAL.

i end up feeling really nervous and jittery and trying to talk too much while at the same time having no idea what to say. honestly, in my mind, all i'm thinking about is how i can quickly get away and end it on a good note.

silly.

what "famous people" have you guys met? how did that go?

-i never say "um" online. i think it's awkward.

gift-giving

[songs for christmas! 3 of 4]
so here's the deal, i've picked four songs in anticipation of christmas, and i'm going to have a new one up in each blog entry that i post, the four weeks before christmas. ideally one post a weekend. 3 of the 4 songs are by artists that you know or have at least heard of, but i'm almost certain that you won't have heard any of the songs before. so they'll be foreign but in a familiar kind of way.
this week's song is: baby please come home, by anberlin & various artists. push play!



oh you know it's getting to the good stuff, 'cause anberlin is AWESOME. the first time i listened to this song, i was totally thrown off 'cause i wasn't expecting a Christmas song. LEGIT.

i was never really big on getting people gifts for Christmas.

i didn't think it was silly or not meaningful or anything, but rather, i preferred to simply get people their individual gifts on their birthdays. it made it more sense to me because for me, i feel like it's more special when i remember that people's birthdays are coming up and i get to plan ahead in thinking about what they like and what to get for them and stuff. and also, that way, it's easier to make sure the quality and time spent on their gift/card isn't compromised because of needing to get gifts/cards for other people, as it tends to be for Christmas.

well, how about writing or making cards?

at one point in high school, as people got me cards and gifts and stuff for Christmas, i felt bad that i didn't get them stuff. i think, the year after that, i made cards for my friends, but i remember it just felt odd to me.. probably because i wasn't used to the whole getting-people-gifts-for-Christmas thing, and some of it felt obligatory to me because i knew i didn't put as much thought into it as i would have if it were the present for their birthday.

i feel like, with Christmas comes a certain expectancy from your friends. the difficult part is, i'm afraid of letting people down (even just slightly) if we've only recently become friends and they expect stuff from me because everyone else(?) does stuff for Christmas.

so what now?

i still don't know what i'm going to do in the way of making cards or giving gifts. AND this is made all the more difficult with finals being the week before Christmas, prime gift-shopping time. garrr.

haha, what i actually ORIGINALLy meant to write about is..

when i go looking for gifts to get people, for their birthdays or Christmas or any occasion, i often run into a dilemma.

i find something that's so cool that would be a great gift for the person, but i end up really wanting it myself. a few choices pop up in my head.

1) i'll get it for them and only them.
2) i'll get it for myself, and find them another gift.
3) i'll get it for myself and for them!

on one or two instances, i remember getting the gift for both of us because i really wanted it as well. it felt.. wrong for some reason.

that's when i realized something about myself.

good gifts for other people are the ones i would want myself to have.

and it means more to me if i don't buy it for myself, too.

hmm, something like that. lols.

on another note, i hope the "stuff i like" posts aren't boring you guys. they actually take me a mad long time to write because even though the descriptions and reasons of why i like stuff should come naturally, there are like a million thoughts in my head at once and it's TOO hard to organize them.

well, have fun in this lovely Christmas season, even amidst finals and all that stuff.

i leave you with this video of AWESOME. i get chills each time i watch it 'cause it's so awesome, no joke. enjoy!



[ru you know that]
-i need both of my shoes to have the same tightness when i wear them. sometimes i end up having to tie and re-tie my shoes for a few minutes to get them just right, especially with my skechers, which aren't as squishy and mold-fitting as my sneaks.
-i hate it when i eat chicken wings or something at a restaurant, and then i have to go pee, because when i go into the bathroom, i wash my hands with soap first, that way my hands aren't dirty and i can actually pee, and then have the dilemma of wondering if i should wash my hands again because they still feel squeaky clean. i usually do wash my hands again though.
-the best way for me to fall asleep is to think about something visual that occupies my mind. most frequently contemplated: snowboarding, badminton, hockey, video games. i'm speculating it works in that when i get lost in the thought of whatever i'm thinking about, it removes other sounds and distractions from around me to help me fall asleep. it's also fun to just think about fun stuff. so there's that.

stuff i like, part 1

let's start with the basics.

i like pineapples.

come on now, who actually didn't know this?


i'm not sure how i came to like them, but.. i did!

what do i like about them? EVERYTHING.

first of all, it LOOKS cool. what other fruit looks as aggressive and spiky and awesome? it has a very distinct shape/design that is easily drawn and even more easily distinguished apart from other fruits. there's no getting a pineapple mixed up with an apple/peach/plum/blueberry/tomato, that's for sure.

it smells nice. i have a pineapple cologne from bath & body works. and various other good-smelling pineapple products.

it's nice to hold. it has a nice hefty weight, good for when you just wanna .. lug something around .. that LOOKS COOL.

the only thing that is amiss in my pineapple obsession is that i don't like to eat pineapples. if you eat too much pineapple, it messes with your tongue and you get that annoying irritated feeling on your tongue and i HATE THAT! maybe i just shouldn't eat pineapple in droves, but hey, that's what i do when i like to eat something!

all in all, pineapples are awesome. you can never go wrong with a pineapple-related item as a solid choice for a gift.

now, if only i had a baller friend who would get me the pineapple from swarovski...

next..

i like god of war.


so the story goes, one day in my senior year of high school, i was chillin' on the couch, watching gameplay hd, a gaming channel that, well, talks about games. they have this one feature where they show footage of a particular game being played, and as i watching one day, i witnessed the most awesome action game i had ever seen. it gripped me the instant i watched it, and i knew i had to play it. what about it? the violence is so awesomely over-the-top, the greek mythology is very interesting and well-integrated. the graphics are nice. and man, the game is just straight-up ba.

unfortunately, i felt sad because a game with such good graphics had to be on the 360, so i had little chance of playing it. BUT LO AND BEHOLD, it was actually FOR PS2. AND it was like 3 years old already! i jumped on ebay and snatched up a copy for <$20 .. and so it began. story: kratos is a spartan warrior who fights for ares, the god of war, because ares saved kratos' life in exchange for kratos' service. ares cursed (blessed?) kratos with the blades of chaos, a blade at the end of a chain, with one on each arm. however, kratos eventually vows to seek revenge on ares when ares tricks kratos into killing his own family. the goddess athena aids kratos in his journey to kill ares. that's god of war 1. and there's god of war 2. a whole second game. bigger and better in every way. thank you kevin for buying it for me. :] action. violence. challenge. puzzles. pure fun. god of war defines epic. the action, the battles, the story, kratos, the music, the sense of scale. mind-blowing.

although i must admit, i'm scared to play the game by myself. heehee.

i think it resonates so well with me because it satisfies this internal desire that i never even knew i had until i first experienced this game. or maybe seeing the game and playing it created this desire in me. who knows. AND WHO CARES. KRATOS IS THE MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN.

here, look. [WARNING: this video is kind of gory. and by kind of, i mean, immensely.]

More God of War III Info

kratos picks up a man and rips him in half with his bare hands. HOW AWESOME IS THAT.

god of war 3 is coming out march 2010. i am psyched beyond belief. and i am definitely getting the ultimate [collector's] edition, one way or another. mark my words, god of war 3 is going to be beautiful. in every sense of the word.

[wachu know bout me]
-the longest my hair has been is a little more than 5 inches. i plucked this one strand of hair out a few years ago and taped it onto a ruler. it's in my house, you can see it if you want! yay!
-i drape the toilet paper off the top of the roll. the one and only way to do it. unh.
-i only work with college ruled notebook paper. and it has to be 8.5" x 11".

SETTLERS

i love playing settlers. the simple gameplay with multiple underlying layers of depth and strategy played on a randomized game board with different dynamics every game.. golden.

recently, though, i've encountered some settlers controversy with me and my good friend, matthew. we played a lot of settlers together, and it got to the point where we'd be at each other's throats over in-game disputes on "how to play correctly" or "what the right thing to do is" and stuff like that, and we decided that we shouldn't play together. yeah, it was that bad.

ironic, because just a few weeks ago, i was amused by something matthew said:

"i love playing settlers because i get to hate you for those 45 minutes"

this makes me think a bit. what IS it that makes settlers enjoyable? what makes it "ruthless" as many people put it?

there are probably infinitely many different reasons, but here are some of my thoughts..

apparently, there are some unwritten "rules" to settlers.

"i'm sorry, but i have to!"

one of these rules that some people strongly believe in is that you must always do whatever you can in your power to help yourself to win. use the robber whenever you have the chance to, and everything and anything else that can benefit you, you must do.

another of these rules is that you have to target whoever is winning. it's not "right" to target people who aren't winning, because you're upsetting the natural balance of the game. the debate here comes into play when figuring out who is actually winning. some people judge it based only on points, which is accurate, but naive for a few reasons. check it out:

if person A has four settlements, and holds longest road, person A has 6 points.
if person B has five settlements, he/she only have 5 points.
who's winning?
points-wise, person A.
LOGICALLY AND SMARTLY SPEAKING WISE (heehee, i'm not biased at all), person B. why? person B has 5 points worth of settlements/cities, so we can call those 5 "resource-producing" points. person A only has 4 points worth of settlements/cities, so theoretically speaking, person A isn't making as much as person B. by attacking person A who has more points by using the robber and such, person B will be able to continue gathering resources and his rate of production will be much greater than person A because the attention is off of him.

some people also find it important to point out who's winning, or who has the most points, or when someone reaches x amount of points. i don't see this as bad, since some people may slip under the radar and get close to winning, so it's important to "notify" the general public.

here's a big question: is winning itself the only point of settlers?

yeah, i play to win, naturally. it's fun to win! it's a nice sense of accomplishment, especially in an intense four-player game. but, as with many other things, the desire to win can result in a lack of other courtesies that you would normally exhibit as a person outside of the game, such as, oh, BEING NICE.

i don't just mean being nice as in "oh i won't put the robber on anyone!" i mean being nice as in attitude, words spoken, and general play style exhibited. it is just a game.

some people get annoyed at people who take the game too seriously and tell them "it's just a game, stop being so serious!"

it's funny, because then i also see people who take the game seriously provide reasoning for how they play by saying "it's just a game, chill out, i'm nice in real life."

i accept that, and i don't think that people who play meanly in settlers are mean in real life, because i know they aren't. however, i think, whether people notice it or not, the way that people play settlers is also somewhat representative of their own selves.

there's also something to be said about "becoming how you act". yeah, that's the informal way of putting it and i'm not sure how psychology puts it or whatever, but if you play enough mean/selfish games of settlers, there's only so much time that will pass before that play style starts to gradually become accepted (by yourself and others) as traits and characteristics of your own personality as a person.

back to the point, if winning is the only goal of settlers, then technically everyone should go all out and do everything in their power to win, right? meaning being mean in every way possible, being selfish in every trade and expansion and use of development cards, etc.

however, there's the other side of people who realize that if they play the crowd correctly, they can win by being nice. being nice allows you to have a certain veil over you as a player, since less attention is brought to you when you're not putting the robber on other people or stealing cards from other people. and being under the radar is always a key to victory. it's also a good strategy to be nice, because sometimes other people just roll more 7's than you do, at which point, if you got on their bad side, you're screwed!

for me, as well as a few people that i know, i get just about as much (if not more) enjoyment as i would from winning, when i help someone else to win. it's even more exciting when the person i'm helping is the underdog by a big stretch, and together we team up to make a huge comeback to steal the win from the first-place player. kind of a jerk move, but if a team effort results in 3 people working together and winning against 1 person, then the greater good is achieved right?

i remember once in game, me and abel weren't winning, but we pooled our resources together and helped the person in second place to build 5 roads in one turn and steal longest road, and thus the game, away from the point-leader, eric chen. yeah, eric wasn't too happy about that, but the whole enjoyment came from the fact that it was so epic and seemingly unachievable.

sometimes when i build up a partnership with someone else in the game, i end up realizing that i would be just as happy if they won as if i myself won.

i feel like because settlers is "just a game", it provides a cover (or excuse) for the "evil sides" of people's personalities to be free and run rampant. kinda like, it brings out the worst in people. ya know? [not everyone, mind you, so don't get the impression that everyone is suddenly super evil and selfish and mean and ruthless when they play settlers, haha]

what a fun game.

[riii]
-i took karate when i was younger, like in elementary school sometime. i think i generally enjoyed it. i don't think it actually taught me anything useful, though, since i don't remember any of it now.
-i was part of a swimming program at the ymca in 4th grade, and i HATED it. freestyle was the worst. i kept feeling like i was going to drown, hahah. i would occasionally grab onto the floating lane lines to support myself, once or twice while swimming across the pool. i did, however, enjoy the backstroke. it was relaxing, and i didn't feel like i was going to drown. i was just afraid of drifting sideways, and also hitting the concrete on the other end of the pool.
-i played indoor soccer, also at the ymca, when i was in 4th grade. i liked this a LOT. i remember i always played defense, always always always. i was the tallest kid on my team. on the contrary, i remember our goalie was the shortest kid on our team, and many a goal were scored on him since he was so small. noob. i probably saved his butt a billion times. i think i scored like one goal, or maybe two, by kicking it super hard from my end of the field, since the overall field was so small. OH. and one time, i went for a ball at the same time as this kid from the other team, and we collided shins together pretty hard. he cried like crazy because it hurt, and yeah my shin hurt a little too under the shinguard, but the funny part is i specifically remember trying to limp or grab my leg to make it look my shin hurt because i felt bad that he was crying and i wasn't. joke time!: i liked sharks and other marine animals when i was younger, so when we voted for team names, i chose the blue sharks, naturally, since blue was my favorite color. i didn't realize until some time later, since no one told me, that our shirts were purple. no wonder the crowds or parents were always kinda confused when they heard our team name.

there is algebra in gasoline

i'm sad that i haven't blogged much lately. classes, lack of ideas, stuff like that. :[

but it's okay! i think it's safe to say you will get a post from me typically within 2-5 days, max 10. (around the one week mark is when i start to feel bad that pineapple is being neglected.)

alright so..

FINGERNAILS ON CHALKBOARDS. AAJJ A JAJ AJ JA. yeah, i know, everyone's supposed to like, cringe at the thought of that or whatever, but realistically, when was the last time you actually heard fingernails scratching huge streaks down a chalkboard? yeah, not recently, if even ever at all outside your imagination.

however, i am faced with a similar type of feeling quite often, that i think most people don't realize. well, or maybe they just don't share the same opinion about it. so, one day i came to realize that i personally find the sound of chalk writing on a blackboard to be really irritating, in a nearly cringe-ful kind of way. if you listen to it closely, chalk on blackboard is actually very abrasive, and results in a sound not unlike sandpaper being rubbed on a block of wood. the best way to notice it is when you yourself actually use chalk and write on the blackboard. yep.

listen to it next time! makes me wanna cringe. hopefully it does the same for you so we can share in our pain. :]

--

i also got back into weffriddles. for those of you who haven't tried it, www.weffriddles.com. it's worth it. :D

[R3]
-my favorite brand of boxers, and only brand that i wear, is banana republic. i'm a fan of the style, comfort, cool simple designs, and generous inseams.
-i peed on my church (cccnj) once, when i was younger. i was like.. maybe 7 or so? just the day before, i had gone apple picking with my family, and my dad, for the first time, taught me how to pee in the bushes. i guess i decided to utilize this skill the next day at church. (for those of you who would know, i peed on the wall opposite the side door of the grange.) and then ben/michelle's dad angrily dragged me away (after i finished my business) to my parents. i don't remember anything after that, though i wish i could have remembered my parents' expressions. heehee.
-i drive barefoot, and prefer driving barefoot over any other foot modification i could have. i remember it started because driving with sandals on wasn't very sturdy, so i took them off. after that, driving barefoot became what i preferred. to me, it just makes sense. there's more of a better feel for the pedals, and the flex of the foot allows more control for smaller and smoother changes in pedal use. that way, there's no worry about having different shoe sole thicknesses, or any odd clunky heels of the shoe. try it sometime! actually, lemme change that to: try it sometime in a safe place!

chasing shadows as the evening takes me

drinking water from the sink is completely changing how i view bottled water. and it's also getting me through my current cold. thanks katie!

[r.r.r]

-i am a pc person. straight up.

-i am so scared of heights. the scariest hour (or half hour, or two hours, i don't remember 'cause i was too scared to keep track) of my life was the high ropes course at asian young life camp at saranac. holy DANG was i scared through that whole thing. i remember praying a lot. luls.

-when i was younger, like really young, i pooped in the toilets in my house by putting my hips THROUGH the toilet seat, so that the toilet seat like, held my butt. i couldn't poop otherwise. i remember one time, in taiwan, at my grandparent's house, i couldn't fit my butt through the toilet seat, so i couldn't poop. and i couldn't communicate the problem to my grandparents since i couldn't speak taiwanese. (i've since adapted with my much-widened hips.)