Archive for November 2011

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6 Steps of a "Fool-Proof" Strategy

'Tis the season to be stressed.


Usually, November is the month when I have a million essays to write, and since it's the last day of the month, I'm going to celebrate by not writing any essays today (and blogging instead).

Over the course of my undergrad, I've developed a "fool-proof" strategy when it comes to essay writing. I know a lot of people have their own methods, some write their essays the night before and get awesome marks (*coughHannahcoughYong*), while others finish it the week before hand and spend the week before its due to revise their essays and get awesome marks as well. Anyway, I put fool-proof in between quotation marks because it doesn't always work and I don't always follow it, but nonetheless, it's the only strategy I have developed.

Ok, so hypothetically, my strategy is:

1) Get essay topics, pick essay topic, research.
2) Talk to professor about said research and get the ok to start essay.
3) Write essay like a beast, have it done at least two days before its due.
4) Get Peter to edit essay (Peter is my handy dandy editor).
5) Hand in essay.
6) Sleep easy.

Sound simple right?

But what actually ends up happening is this:

1) I get the essay topics, pick the topic, think about it a little bit, and then forget about it until I realize I haven't started on the research and then research frantically.

2) Realize researching took too much time, and come up with a loose essay outline. Go to see my professor, where my outline is basically massacred and torn apart. I leave the professor feeling dejected and hopeless, realizing I will never get this essay done. This past semester my professor actually told me to re-start my research and pick another topic all together, and because of this, I didn't have time to get to see my other professors to think talk about my other essays.

3) Write essay(s) like a beast, staying up late at night and sleeping in the next morning, skipping church meetings and end up watching 11 episodes of How I Met Your Mother and 9 Episodes of the Big Bang Theory, not knowing how any of this happened. Plus, I start having Ted's voice narrate my life in my head: "Kids, have I ever told you that one time in November of 2011 when I dreamt that Sheldon yelled BAZINGA! when I manage to completely fail all my essays? And then he proceeded to talk on and on about why on earth people would even waste their time studying literature."

4) After having managed to finish my essay a day before its due, I email it to Peter asking if he could edit it ASAP. The day it's due, I sit by my laptop all day waiting for him to email me back with my edited essay, all the while imagining end-of-the-world-doomed scenarios of what would happen if I don't hand in my essay in time. When I finally receive his email, I read over the edited version and thank God for Peter.

5) Hand in essay. This part of my strategy always goes smoothly.

6) Sleep easy. I never have problems with this part either.

So lesson learned: just because you have a strategy and plan doesn't mean everything will go smoothly and accordingly. And also, I vow to start step one of my plan sooner next time (I make this vow every time).

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Bittersweet

A lot of weird things have spurred up this week, and I've come to realize that sometimes, good intentions can end up disastrous.


Recently, I had the good intention of planning a small get together for Johnny's birthday, and I had the good intention of only inviting his close friends but somehow along the way, my good intention turned sour.

On that note, I've had the good intention of keeping my thoughts about other people to myself, but again, somewhere along the way this turned sour because I was trying to work the problem out with myself, thinking all the while that it's my own fault for having negative thoughts about people.

I've heard from two different people in separate occasions now that Satan will do anything to stumble people, and in this occasion, I suppose he was using my good intentions to stumble people. It's kind of ironic. It's also ironic how being involved in the community of the church is the sweetest and hardest life to live at the same time. It's sweet because you grow to love each other, but it's hard because you have to love each other.

This entire situation reminded me of my chronic problem of a being a friend dropper. When I get to the point of extreme annoyance with a friend, or when I find myself in a relationship with a person who causes me more grief than necessary, I either 1) verbally take out on them or 2) stop talking to that person all together.

I've lost many close relationships this way. Truth be told, I don't regret doing this, since I feel like it's unfair for me to have to put up with relationships that cause me grief, but I know this isn't the right method to go about it either. Plus, these kinds of relationships are exhausting emotionally.

But of course, I'm talking about relationships I have had with people outside of the church. Friendships you build in the community of the church are tricky, because you have to kill your pride and let yourself die a bit so that situations don't explode and affect everyone else. It's also tricky because you have to look at things in a three dimensional way, as in, you have to take the entire problem into consideration, and not be consumed by your own point of view.

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Quiet Corners and Cookies

The best place to sit at Gerstein is on the very top floor, at the end of the long study hall right next to the window. If you sit here long enough, you can watch the sky get darker throughout the day, and if you're bored enough, you can count the minutes someone spends sitting at the bottom of the random giant statue on top of the small mount of a hill. For me, it's all about the squirrels. I just sit here absentmindedly staring at my book, until a squirrel scurries along the fallen leaves to perk up my attention again.


It's usually either the hardcore napers or the hardcore students who sit here though. I've watched people march all the way to the end, plop themselves down on a chair and nap. Then I've witnessed people sit here for 12 hours straight studying. It's always either extreme.

I discovered this spot when I had made the bad joke of going on an unofficial reading break from church activities because I had too many things to get done for next week, so I found this quiet corner to ease my panic. The sunlight, the happy drooling napers, the hard working students, and plenty of squirrels to stare at - I guess it really doesn't take much to appease me.

Anyway, I was reminded yesterday of what happened on Sunday when Tabi and I were on for Children's Service. A few weeks ago when we were over at Colin's place, he gave Tabi and I two boxes of cookies which we saved for the kids, and I was recounting the story to them in a more exaggerated and whimsical way (party done to entertain them so they won't get restless).

Me: Kids, you're all very lucky today because Tabi and I have a friend who works in a giant cookie factory! And he gave us these cookies because we're friends!

One kid's response: Can you make friends with someone who works in a chip factory instead? Because I like chips better and I don't like cookies. I want chips next time!

Note to self: Go to the friendship store and find a friend who works in a chip factory. Got it.

Generally though, the kids are cute and well behaved. Just make sure you don't give them glue to play with.

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The End

Last post for the Happiness Challenge!


Nothing exceptionally happy happened today, which is a tragedy because I was hoping to make the last post for this challenge epic. In fact, I was in a severely sour mood this afternoon and kept on complaining about how boring my life is (let's just call it retail withdrawal because ever since I quit Sears my life has been boringly unstressful).

So tonight as I was crossing the street, this random tall and lanky asian guy was waving at me. I must have stared blankly at him for ten seconds before saying, "Ryan!"

To which he says, "no, his brother ... Matthew."

Woops. I guess I should feel guilty because I just put him in that awkward situation I'm in every time someone says, "Annabelle!" And I have to lamely say, "no, just ... Ann." (Sometimes I'm too lazy to correct them and just pretend to be Annabelle.)

Anyway, back to the story. So Matthew is my brother Matthew's friend, and for the sake of avoiding confusion and just for this post only, I'm going to refer to by brother as 'Muscle Man' (a very fitting nickname). The last time I saw Matthew was when he was a puny little kid. He's been friends with Muscle Man for a long time, and back then Matthew would always be over at our place with his brother, Ryan, causing havoc. One time they had a water gun fight indoors and I was severly upset at them.

Matthew just seems very grown up now, running around with his girlfriend and working 50 hours a week. I suppose my encounter with him just made me feel nostalgic.

Before parting he said, "I want to be like Muscle Man. He's my inspiration."

I just thought to myself, "great, another kid who's aspiring to be like Muscle Man." Being brothers with Muscle Man, I hear this a lot, which is probably no surprise. I've caught Clement, and sometimes Johnny, say this often enough. "Muscle Man! We must work out together!"

Something else that made me feel nostalgic, but really shouldn't since it hasn't happened yet, is the thought of my own convocation, which I probably will have to skip out on. Gloom. I realized this tonight when my proff cut class 45 mins short (a pity since I was just starting to get into The Waste Land) because convocation just ended up and a mad amount of people started chattering and filling up UC and we couldn't hear over their voices.

Have I talked about something epicly happy yet?

Today I finished Leviticus, and the only possible explanations as to why I finished it within a week are:

1) This is a testimony to how much I commute.
2) I've been well trained by U of T to trudge through dense and boring literature.

Is this a happy enough thought? If not short of epic .... ?

Oh well. I guess now that the challenge is over, I'll go back to blogging once a week. We should think up of a new challenge soon!

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Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

I was feeling very dejected this evening, as if all my hard work had gone to the pits and had plummeted, and the reasons for this being:


1) I feel like I have little support.
2) I am the type of person who is hyper sensitive to everything people say - or not say - and unfortunately, I only catch on to the negative comments. I'm also hyper sensitive to people's lack of action.

On the commute back home tonight with Armin and Annabelle, I unleashed my multitude of problems to them, to which they simply answered, "don't worry about it."

Sigh.

Ok I won't worry about it, it's just hard when I'm emotionally invested in my problem.

Happy thought: that I'm happy I have good friends like Armin and my sister who will always be there to remind me not to sweat the small stuff.

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Digging Deeper

I have a two day reading week this week, and Armin was kind enough to throw some wise crack jokes my way, you know, the typical "some arts-sci student decided not to come to class today, he told his friends, and his friends told his friends, next thing you know it's national skip day for you guys."


Har, har.

So I had a bit of free time today (ok, more like a lot of free time), and was feeling bored so I read a good chunk of Leviticus. Not surprisingly, I was very confused, but not about the oddly repetitive rituals of how to check for proper leprosy and skin diseases, which was actually interesting because I got the impression that the Israelites were a hairy bunch, but about why God would think that we, humans of the 21st century, would care to read this.

Does anyone even have leprosy anymore? It seems like such a mythical, far away skin disease that no one in North America really has to worry about.

Then, because I really did have a lot of free time, I brushed up on Ruth since we're covering it for GST tomorrow and realized why God would possibility put Leviticus, with all it's weird obscurities, in the bible. See, Leviticus lays down the laws of do's and don'ts. It's very black and white. You do this, sacrifice this lamb, you have this disease, sacrifice two turtledoves, you accidentally drink blood, sacrifice a cow.

If we didn't have this dry background information about the Israelite society, later stories of prophets and women like Ruth would loose its significance. In Ruth chapter two, Ruth tells Naomi she's going to glean the fields since it's barley harvest season in the land of Bethlehem BUT Ruth is a Moabitess, which means she's a foreigner. Why would the Israelite's let a foreigner glean in their fields?! It's because in Leviticus it lays down the law that foreigners and those in need are allowed to glean in the fields of the Israelites.

And why did God lay down the law that foreigners are allowed to glean in the fields of Israelites? It's so Ruth would meet Boaz and have a magical love story, duh. Ok, I'm partly kidding. Ruth happened to be gleaning in Boaz's field, out of all the other fields out there, and Boaz happened to notice her, out of all the other people there.

According to Titus, "... never complain for everything in our lives happens as it should be."

Though Ruth could have complained many times, she didn't. The laws laid down in Leviticus eventually were able to cover Ruth and provide for her.

So lesson learned: Leviticus is deceivingly more profound than it appears to be on the onset. It's all about digging deeper.

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Dump(l)ing Party

Although I'm Asian, I really don't do anything Asian related (majoring in English is as unconventionally Asian as you can get) because I'm super white washed. I usually don't mind when people speak Mandarin or Canto in front of me even though I don't understand it since I'm used to it, besides, when you live in Toronto, you're bound to come across many different languages you don't understand.


My coworkers at Sears used to hate this, and found it extremely rude, especially when customers or other coworkers would start conversing in another language in front of them. At work right now with the kids I teach, there's a big emphasis on only speaking English in the classrooms, especially in front of the teachers since we don't understand Korean, because it's extremely rude. I do agree it's rude, but honestly, sometimes you just can't help but want to shut other people out of your conversations. I wholeheartedly sympathize with people when they do it, especially in a group setting. Besides, sometimes things are better explained in other languages since English can't adequately explain it.

So Heng kindly hosted a dumpling party for some of the girls which I was super happy about since it's my first dumpling party. Tabi sent me a text message the other day saying, "I'm excited for the dumping party!" Gotta love auto-correct.

Hannah and I had trouble making our dumplings look like dumplings though, since our dumplings ended up looking like empanadas. My parents went through this phase at one point in time where they were in the business of making and selling empanadas to various Filipino stores, and would always forcefully employ me to help them. Maybe Hannah will host an empanada making party one of these days, I'll bring my parents empanada maker.

Heng's parents are really nice, and I can't believe Heng's dad remembers Matt when he was still a little scrawny kid. That was at least five years ago. Heng's mom kept feeding us and insisted we drink wine. I love cute, doting parents. The best part was that they seemed genuinely happy to have us over, invading their kitchen and dining space.

This is one of my favourite things about having a church family, where people are just genuinely open and happy to have you in their home. One day, when I have a kitchen of my own I'm going to invite a bunch of college aged people over to make dumplings (or empanadas).

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Disney Princesses

I love Disney Princesses and I'm just as completely mesmerized by them as I was when I was a kid. I found this on the interwebz:



ISN'T THIS JUST STUNNING?!? I love the realistic interpretation even though I'm a die-hard fan of old school Disney animation. In fact, it's all thanks to Mulan that I learned to draw Asian eyes (hence learning to draw realistic interpretations of myself, haha).

I'm not sure what it is about princesses that I'm so mesmerized by, I suppose it's because there's always something so tangible about the world they live in even though there's always the singing mouse and dancing teapot. They just lived in such a happy go lucky world, where emotions were somewhat black and white, and of course, in the end they always ended up with a dashing someone, but that all becomes secondary when you really think about how their hair always looks fantastic, their skin never sags, the fact that they never got tired or seem to need to use the washroom and how they always wore such pretty dresses.

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Emasculating Halloween Cupcakes

I was hurriedly marking essays today (and because I happen to the be the master at procrastination I ended up with 35 essays to mark) and realized that I'm a lot harsher to the girls than the guys.


Dwelling on this thought, I realized that I apply the same thing to some of my female friends as well. Why am I so much more condescending and harsher to girls?

Happily, I realized that guys, and people in general, probably do this as well: that people will tend to be more judgmental to someone of their own gender.

For my students, I don't know why I do it. Perhaps it's because I know what their potential are and when I see them slacking off, I get frustrated. Or perhaps it's because I don't like it when girls define stereotypical images of women through their actions - you know, passive, reading floofy romantic literature, exhibiting a generous amount of cuteness. Where are the hard, unbending, willful girls?

Anyway, I realize there's a fine line between modern conceptions of women who are emasculating and women who are passive and meek.

Ok I don't know what the point of this blog post was, I think I just wanted to rant.

On the side note, I've been eating a lot of left over halloween cupcakes recently.
Yeah, you just need to know that.

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Fragments

Is it better to stay or run away from our problems? Life is so fragmented that even our problems are chopped into pieces.


Happiness. chop. Problems. chop. School. chop. Happy again. chop. More Problems. chop. Even More Problems. chop chop.

But even problems aside, life is still fragmented. On the subway we're separated from what's happening outside of the steel bullet we're in. What's the weather like? I don't know, I think it's raining. What station are we at? Not sure, we're passing by the city so quickly.

On itunes, it's all about singles instead of full albums. Our text message inbox displays fragmented conversations with ten different people. In school, the different classes we go to chops our days into one hour, two hour, three hour classes - each about something different.

What's happening with the war? Not sure, it's so distant and far away. Don't you watch the news? I would, but there's so much fragmented information for me to read first. You know, during WWI everyone was involved. But it's the 21st century we're in now, Kim Kardashian just got divorced.

But maybe it's better if my problems were fragmented after all, that way it'll stay just like that, a fragment, and not all consuming.

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Pleasant Odor of Fat

Ever since GST yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about faith. It's something so basic and yet, I had such a hard time comprehending it and even remembering the basic facts about it.


Essentially, during GST our discussion led to random tangents of whether faith could grow or not. After we dispersed, everyone seemed to have consulted someone else about the topic: Jenny asked her dad, Ariel talked to John, Tabi asked Clement and Selina said she'd ask Ian. Anyway, it seems like I was the only one who didn't bother asking anyone, and the probable reason is because I am stubborn and wanted to find out the facts for myself.

Actually, I've been beating up myself for not reading the bible on my own time for a while now because of two reasons:
1) Everyone in literature alludes to the bible, and by reading the bible myself I would be able to understand these allusions better, such as whenever Blake refers to Isaiah. (I've recently had a change of heart about Blake, he isn't that bad after all.)

2) I would have an answer to give if someone asked me a question that's based on actual biblical facts.

Today I begun reading Leviticus, since I figured I should pick up where I left off when I finished Exodus last winter. I was forewarned that Leviticus is dry and boring, which it is in some ways, but I figured that if I read it with a smile and enough caffeine in my system I would get through it (now that I think about it, this is probably how I had a change of heart about Blake).

So in the midst of reading about atoning for sins through animal sacrifices, I came across this verse:

Leviticus 4:31:
He shall remove all its fat, as the fat is removed from the offering of well-being, and the priest shall turn it into smoke on the altar for a pleasing odor to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement on your behalf and, and you shall be forgiven.

Call me weird but when I read this verse I burst out loud laughing. I was trying to imagine what the smell of fat was like, and how it could be a pleasing odor in any sense. An image of a giant nose sniffing the fat odor popped into my head and I thought, "wow God has a sense of humor."

I told Ariel this and she told me this is not literal, and I agree, it's most likely figurative. Still, I'll stick to my giant nose interpretation since I feel like it gives God a sense of humor.

So lesson learned: don't think too much when reading the bible, read it with a light heart and take it in as you understand it. Personally, I don't think the bible is very complicated at all, it's just our own thoughts and personalities that make it complicated. But if you really don't understand something as you're reading it, consult and ask someone if it's really bothering you. I'm planning to read the bible more than once, so if I don't understand something now, I won't dwell too much on it because when I read it for the fourth, fifth, sixth, or tenth time it'll gradually become clearer to me.

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Slight Amnesia

I don't even remember what happened on this day, I've had it for so long in my drafts that I can't recall any of it. Let's just say the sun was shining, the squirrels were not dead, I packed a good lunch, got some readings done, went to the Eaton Center, read a bit about Ruth, questioned faith and stayed awake in class.

I do remember singing along to this song though:

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