Ramen Runs

The stages of life are like the sweet layers of filo dough in fresh baklava. It's the 27th day of the June. My ability to write with lucidity and imagination has been dried up for the last 30 days. Here's the list.. 30 thoughts for the 30 days of June.

1. The new TMSR album is amazing. Not as great as population, but still heavenly to the ears.

2. Liverpool finally signed a decent Englishman, who is better than their current right back. And now Arsenal must do the same or again settle for another trophyless season in the CL, EPL, FA Cup and League Cup.
3. If I would have stayed in Utah last month, I would have been eating wedding cake atleast twice a week, every week.
4. I don't know what freedom truly is, but listening to Ulrich Schnauss whenever I ride my bike, gives me melodic inklings of what it is.
5. Women are born in love.
6. Why did the Redwings have to lose to Pens in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals?! I've been fasting from the hockey news since than and now all of suddenly I have more time and less to talk about with the old polar bears at the pubs.
7. 2 years since high school graduation and do I still miss those days? I used to occasionally, but now not anymore.
8. This year there will be Christmas in July.
9. Being back in the PNW has been rejuvenating. People recycle. The drivers aren't offensive. Other stores besides 7/11 and Walmart are open on Sundays. The air smells like coffee. The water is tasty. The beach is right there and the mountains are only an hour away. Asians are just about everywhere. Falafels are cheap and easy to find.
10. Every university kid should have a flask or wine bottle opener.
11. Rain is my "creative gasoline". There was never enough rain in Utah. I love you Matt. Someday, we'll raise our families right door to each other in Richmond.
12. 颐和园 (Summer Palace) is a steamy film with many of life's lessons. Watch this film and your appetite for romance will be put through a sieve of bitter-sweet reality. Love and Romance are two separate things. Often times, we forget that.
13. Both samurai champloo and cowboy bebop series were atleast 5 episodes too short.
14. Why can't cadbury eggs be sold all year round?
15. Sometimes, I get so engaged in the aesthetic experience while looking fixedly at a work of art, I just wanna walk right into it. These are the only times I wanna get high.
16. In the future, I'll look back the early & mid 2000's as the time that I was wishing I went to college during in the mid 90's or mid 80's.
17. I have a personal testimony that Joseph Smith was a.. genius? prophet of god? iconoclast? overly salacious mad-man? It doesn't matter to me anymore.
18. 青岛国际啤酒节 is in 2 months.
19. It's the nature of the experiment, the patterns of my temperment. I would kill for a Tokyo Police Club membership app right now.
20. I've spent too much money at New Town Bakery this month.
21. Being homeless for a day on the streets, should be a graduation requirement at almost any university
22. The average man thinks about sex every 7 seconds, that's about as often as I think about 中國. It isn't coming soon enough.
23. America is no longer a melting pot, but rather a salad bowl.
24. I can't see myself spending more than a semester in the Holy Land. Other than amities and the accounting program, there is no reason to stay.
25. Kitsilano beach is where dreams come true.

26. Utah Mormons in general are some kindest, yet most judgmental and hypocritical people I've ever met. They remind me of mainstream christians that stain the reputation of their respective church branches. The similarities between the two groups are striking.
27. The best dance practice always happens in the shower.
28. Every thursday night, the ends of my mouth are stretched up the heavens and I am in solicitude.
29. I owe myself another 4-day fast and a trip down to South Africa soon

30. Feelings are often misleading, religion can be poisoning and faith is frustrating at times. It's always important to grow within one's faith and make sacrifices in the process. But I don't care. I've seen small glimpses of God's greatness, yet it's not something I truly yearn for at this stage in my life. I attend church. I read scriptures. I worship with my christian brothers and sisters. But I feel nothing and for some reason, I am content just being at this stage. Why should I pray that I hunger for something, when I don't exactly want it?

Mooncake Marathons

where is it? the motivation? the desire? the passion? the dedication? all gone. I sit in this kirby vacuumed, two-story 'brary packed with ghosts of students that lost their academic sanity last winter semester, with my eyes gazing at the study materials of my independent study course, while my mind is dumped in its self created clink. The lack of purpose constantly hacks away at my psyche but it's catching me like a dear caught in the headlights resulting in my inability to escape. Instead of actually doing the required assignments for completion of the course, I find myself running or biking on concrete oceans to the point where stoppage doesn't happen till it feels like someone took a baseball bat to my knee caps. Even though my body begs for a break, the feeling of exhaustion is so cognitively gratifying it makes me crave for even more milage on the concrete oceans. After the 8th mile, the measure of distance becomes meaningless and the battle to physically out do myself until I no longer have the strength to mentally continue on with my narcissistic ways becomes the centre of my desire. Yet ironically, this entire process of making love to the concrete oceans is the painting on a canvas of narcissistic thoughts. It has only strengthen the monster of the independent study course, that I have created through my procrastination.

hymnal riots

this is it. this is really it... why must I wait till July for the new Most Serene Republic Album to come out.. shit. They make us wait like little kids in line to see Pikachu at the Emporium. There's so much other music I could be indulging my musical palette with, yet its the zany and organically symphonic sounds from this Ontario band that I crave the most. That reminds me, I still owe Camille, Briana, Kristy, Danny, Dave and Phil music.

you know.. ever since I've come back my headphones have been making love to my ears for about 60% of the time that I am out of my twin-size and over-blanketed divan. It seems as if my ipod does almost a better job of isolating me from the real world than BYU does. Every time, I put those headphones on I feel as if the music has lifted the ban of embarrassment on public dancing and has killed my body's ability to cease running after 4 miles on concrete oceans, even when my heart feels like it's gonna burst out of my chest. Whenever I think about the 2 k's, the music flowing through my headphones acts like joint straight from eugene and puts my persona in warm blanket and redirects on my attention away from those sunk emotional costs. Strangely enough though.. this music also makes me miss the Y.

It was so easy to hate and complain about that place. But, I think this is just a reflection of my "wtf" attitude on life. The Y was like my second home and the LDS, for the most part, didn't treat me like a non-lds. It was like they took me in as one of their own. Being a non-lds at BYU wasn't as bad as it sounds, but it was still culturally raping more times then I can recount. Sometimes, I would occasionally mutter to others "I have no reason to be LDS", but truthfully, that is a lie. Every mormon that I get close too, every time the hendersons allow me to stay in their home and treat me like one of their own, every mormon girl I fall for, every good feeling I get from reading the book of mormon, every time I hear from friends on their missions, every time I see a friend get married to their best friend, I get more reasons to become LDS. Yet.. no matter how many reasons there are, I could never become one...