Yep. It was either this or a photo of Morgan Freeman. I know, I know… tough decision.

“I’m cat! I’m a kitty cat! And I dance-dance-dance, and I dance-dance-dance!”

Who comes up with these Facebook games/trends anyway? Like the bra color thing and looking up your name’s definition on Urban Dictionary. The online world is bored and unmotivated. I think sometimes that Facebook is coming up with this stuff because its members are running out of things to do on there.

But let’s face it. Ten years ago I was 13, self-deprecating, aiming to be the next Barbara Walters, kind of a nerd, and figuring out what I really wanted out of life. I wrote crappy poetry in my journal (mostly on the topic of unrequited love and always being the “friend”), but I figured one day I’d figure out my writing style.

Flash forward a decade later… damn, it doesn’t seem like I’ve evolved much. Oh, except for that crappy poetry part. At least I moved those online.

In any case, here are some of my favorite memories of the past ten years– my greatest hits, if you will. (If you watch Lost, you know I jacked this idea from Season 3.) A lot of this is college-heavy since that’s all I can think of at the moment, so I know I’ll probably think of better things later.

In no particular order:

1. Befriending April through co-coordinating SPCN 2007, because she one of the smartest and funniest people I know.
2. Finally feeling like I belonged in LCC (my college theater company), and having my script “Peter Pandering” performed.
3. Any class (Art, Mythology, Government, etc.) with Lucy, because it never felt like a long day with her around. We made slacking off and talking in class an art.
4. Becoming closer friends with Grace with every passing year, because despite how different we are, I know she’s a true friend. (I’ve known her since we were 8, and we basically started hanging out when we were 11/12 so she really has been a huge part of my decade!)
   
5. Sitting and talking outside McDonald’s in Steph’s (locked) Volvo with Michelle and Erin ’til the wee hours.
6. Going back to the Philippines in December 2008: I got to know my cousins a little more, saw my Lola again after so long– and was humbled seeing the house where my dad grew up.
7. The week (or two?) Erick and Justin lived with Linny, Kristine, Ninette and me… even though they made fun of how I sleep and my mom almost caught Erick in my room. The day they moved into their real apartment was so much sadder than we expected!
8. Adventures at NYU and living in the city with my favorite Korean princesses, Josie and Andrea. Not only that, we met some fantastic people: Larry, Shen and Miri…
9. Playing RockBand until the sun came up, specifically the night we made Holy Crepe! and got a Jet Plane.
10. Being surprised at how many people my parents got to  show up to my graduation party, especially since it’s so out of the way for most of them. And I was happy to finally be able to thank them out loud for everything they do for me.

Along with the more personal and/or less exciting moments, I have to say life is always a gift and I am immensely blessed to have the people I have in my life. Happy 2010!

(Okay, yes, that Rihanna song is stuck in my head, so sue me.)

“They can say whatever, I’ma do whatever, no pain is forever– yep, you know this.”

Memo to the world: The way to have a successful resolution is to derive it from a pop song. Truth.

So, USA Today just released their list of best books of the decade. It’s a national newspaper aimed at the average person, thus I didn’t think they’d attempt to include any crazy-amazing titles on their list.

But seriously? Twilight is #1? Are they on crack?

Well, I guess I shouldn’t base my judgement entirely on a partial viewing of the movie adaptation. But still. I have a hard time believing it’s not only #1, but beats out Harry Potter. I also have a hard time believing that the top 10 books of the decade are solely comprised of the Twilight Saga and HP books (along with a stray cameo by The Da Vinci Code).

Poor Mitch Albom and those other pop paperback kids didn’t make it on the top 10! James Patterson needs some undeserved literary love, too. They didn’t even include any non-fiction! (Throws hands up in the air.) Okay. Rant over.

Gotta go dust off the book queue for 2010. I thought I could do a book a week this year (a la Kimmie), but it didn’t work out so well. Sadly, I’m not very well-read. (English major fail.) So I’ll probably work on that as I embark on the next phase of my “self-improvement” plans.

Throw book suggestions my way!

I hate trying to explain my general ambivalence to others– they mark me a Scrooge or a Grinch or what have you. Especially because I won’t sit there and enumerate for them the personal reasons I have a distaste for the holidays, they just assume I’m an uppity hater. Somehow you either love this time of year or you’re automatically “anti”. At some point, you just see how routine/fake it is. (Maybe this has to do with the fact that I don’t see snow. But I do see scarves and boots. That’s a different story.)

I’ll tell you what I do appreciate about the so-called holiday spirit. It’s nice that it puts some people in a generous mood, helps people put their past year in perspective and pledge to be a better person for the upcoming new year. It’s a great excuse to patch up differences or show appreciation to those around you. And it’s a chance to forge lifetime memories with those around you. But none of these opportunities are exclusive to Thanksgiving-Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa-New Year’s.

If this holiday spirit is so beautiful, why can’t people learn to feel it the other 364 (365 on leap years) days of the year? On the 25th you’re happily serving soup to homeless people to feel warm and fuzzy, but on any other day you won’t even look them in the eye when they ask for change? Come on. Just be real.

If only we could remove the onset of stress over gift giving, the sales extravaganzas, the unnecessary wish lists and awkward attempts at forcing yuletide memories to happen… and just remember simple happiness can look like this any day of the year, I could be down for the holidays again:

(I wasn’t sure how else to segue into sharing that clip from one of the few accessible Christmas-y things I enjoy. But there ya go.)

Perhaps one day the holidays and I can be friends again. In the meantime I will continue striving to be a real reflection of who I am all year round, and hope that I exude the “holiday spirit” longer than the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

If you’re reading this and celebrate this holiday season, I really hope you have a happy one, and that the feeling spills over into 2010.

Okay, so most people who know me also know I’m a hardcore Karate Kid II fan (not so much I & III, though I enjoyed them). I loved Ralph Macchiato Macchio as Daniel, and of course you can’t beat Pat Morita as the mentor (RIP). So I don’t know how I feel about this revival of the Karate Kid franchise–you know they’re setting up for sequels– but based on the trailer, I have to admit Jaden Smith looks insanely fit for the role. (Sidebar: Jaden was born in 1998, which means he is younger than the first Men in Black. Just pointing that out.)

I’ve read some articles where they refer to this movie as a “remake” but what I hope to appreciate about KK2010 is that it pays homage to the old with a completely separate story line. You cannot retell the story of Danielsan/Mr. Miyagi! (And if you tried, I’d want to shank you.)

In any case, it already looks leaps and bounds different– I mean, it’s set in Beijing with Jackie Chan in the Mr. Miyagi role. I could maybe accept this, even ignoring the fact that Karate is a Japanese thing and they’re in China. (OKAY, people in Hollywood aren’t detail-oriented and gloss over cultural sensitivity what-else-is-new?)

My real concern? I’m partly hoping they commission the current form of Chicago and/or Peter Cetera for some music when Jaden gets old enough for them to tell a decent love story. “Like a knight in shining armor… from a long time ago!” It probably wouldn’t work as well now, huh? I’m sure it was as corny back then as it is looking back– so perhaps this will put the corn over the edge.

Daniel and Kumiko in Karate Kid II: If I had an all-time top list of on-screen romances, they’d be on it for sure.

The real question now is, when are they going to bring back the whole 3 Ninjas thing? It can’t be that far behind…

I’m still posting snippets/incoherent thoughts over on my Tumblr, but it’s probably no secret that my drive to produce original postings is pretty low… besides, Tumblr is blogging for kids with Web 2.0-induced ADD, so verbose musings on my daily activities have no place there. In other words: I’m back.

Considering it’s just been over a full year since I officially graduated from college, I’m surprised at how sporadic my post-grad crisis moments arise. There is a lot going on in my mind right now, it is almost difficult to concentrate on any given situation. I feel like it has also made me irritable/impatient, but I’ve been trying my best to suppress any outward signs of this. Trying to bounce ideas like this off of other people sometimes relieves this stress– but only temporarily. When I realize the person I’m talking to is on a different page, I get frustrated all over again.

So I am learning all over again that I need to start paying attention to my intuition or at least create a decision-making strategy that doesn’t consistently rely on other people’s opinions.

Validation… it should only be necessary in parking lots (even then, maybe not).

Question for the time being: why is it when I strive for simplicity, it all gets surprisingly complex?

The Berenstein Bears and The Messy Room

It’s no secret that I can be quite a packrat (I’m not sure if my old roommates ever read this, but I’m really sorry). It’s nothing too insane, but it stems from my unfortunate habit of attaching sentimentality to tenable things.
I’m not doing a great job at “ridding myself of my worldly possessions” at the moment. I think I established about a dozen different systems for phasing things out of my room. Sometimes I fail because I like to be lazy on the weekends and not deal with my task list. Other times, I fail because whenever I try to get rid of a section of my stuff, someone in my house finds a new place for it/tries to bring it back into my room!

Recently, I successfully got rid of a cabinet full of toy trinkets/Legos/action figures that I forgot even existed. Now I’m targeting a crapload of stuffed animals because I’ve had this room pretty much since I was three. I need to donate them before I start getting sentimental, and I have to be stealthy because I know my mom will find an excuse to keep them in the house. I let myself keep a handful in my room, even though it keeps my room from looking like a decent 23-year-old’s room.

Here’s one I will never give up– my Bartholomew!

Isn’t he snazzy? He’s wearing a piece of fabric I used dancing in Sakuting for PCN. Rural wear = trendy bear wear FTW! I’ve had him since I was maybe three or four, I can’t even remember.

Part of what has motivated me to reorganize/restructure my stuff is that I also want to strip myself of an attachment to the material world. I’m acutely aware of my desires to have certain things, and I think it’s just a fact of life (capitalism/being brought up in America) you’ll want shiny new things sometimes… but I want to draw the line at excess. (You know, like people who have two phones or a bajillion TVs.) I won’t lie– I’m also scared of becoming one of those insane packrat people you hear about on the news, who have pet corpses beneath their piles of stuff.

I also understand the third-world mentality is likely why my parents have this unnecessary urge to keep everything of any kind of value. If you grow up poor, you just don’t throw away stuff. My mom is very picky about things and has learned to pare down our housewares more or less, but my dad still has qualms about throwing away food that goes bad. Since I do the groceries here and there, I have learned to buy smaller items so he doesn’t chug the milk the day before it expires.

But now I should stop talking about this and physically get rid of stuff/organize my life. I don’t know how, but everything I do nowadays seems to be a microcosmic link to my life as a whole.

Ondoy has hit the Philippines (Manila and the surrounding areas) with a month’s worth of rainfall in a mere six hours. They aren’t sure what the total death toll is, as flood waters consume the capital… and as rescue efforts are starting up and the scramble to find out what there is to be done begins, you read that the head of state has squandered emergency funds– not a portion, not a percentage, but all of them– on overseas trips. The New York Post recently reported in its gossip columns that President Arroyo spent $20,000 on one dinner which, for the record, her team denies.

You know, my dad and I have had discussions about the place of our opinions regarding politics in the RP– his as an emigrant who came here decades ago, and mine as an American-born citizen. And though he and I have diverging views on almost any issue you can think of, I think anyone can agree the way money is sucked out by government official in the Philippines is beyond reprehensible.

Arroyo is not the first corrupt, money-hungry president of the Philippines, and she will probably not be the last. In moments of chaos and disaster, when a country turns to the precautions they have made in order to ameliorate tragic situations like Ondoy, how disgusting to see that their funds have been stolen to foot lavish parties and champagne dinners.

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Donate to the Philippine Red Cross, not the American Red Cross for Ondoy victims. You can also donate here, and select Philippine National Red Cross from the drop-down menu.