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Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Tuesdays with Morrie

The book has been on my to-read list for years. And after finally picking up the book and reading the first page, I can't put it down. The final teachings of a wonderful teacher and loving individual grace the pages of this book while narrated by a young, unhappy mind aimed at the general audience. I relate to the frustrations of the author as he asks his dying mentor how to live a happy, fulfilled life in our current society. We all had our idealistic college days but all too easily it is lost as we enter the stark reality. We get swamped with trying to survive. We throw ourselves into our careers to build stability. We throw ourselves into relationships when we get too lonely from constantly working. We buy pretty things to prove that we're successful. Yet there is an overwhelming pulse of sadness and loneliness as we ask ourselves what is missing. In American society where it appears we have it all, it still feels like something is missing.

Morrie points out to us: "The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." As much as I believe and see the truth behind those words, the lack of financial security behind this way of thinking scares the bejeezus out of me. How do we balance our spiritual health with our everyday needs. Our current society does not financially support this way of thinking. Should sacrifices be made in order to achieve our goals? Yet isn't it those same sacrifices we made the reason why society is the way it is? How and where do we draw the line?

I hesitate in my job search until I spend some time learning more about who I am and how I will choose to live my life.

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Ever flown a helicopter? YES

Okay, last post for today I swear.

Yesterday, I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I FLEW A HELICOPTER. A Robinson R44 to be exact. Let me back up a few steps and give you the background story...

Couple of months ago, I woke up early (complete accident, must be fate waking me up) and I couldn't fall back asleep. So I did my usual morning routine which included checking my email. On this fateful morning, Groupon's daily email read "Introductory helicopter lesson -- $69." My mouse was in the middle of deleting the email out of habit when my brain hazily chimed in and I did a double take. WHAT?! Immediately clicked on it and read all the information. What an experience! I could learn to fly a helicopter for $69 instead of $220! Who knows when I'll be in a helicopter and the pilot has a heart attack and I need to land that thing...

Still, $69 is a hefty price for a graduate student with no source of income and a mountain of student debt. I let the browser window idle on my desktop for a few hours as I busied myself with other tasks and waited for my usual partner in crime Dinah to wake up from her nocturnal slumber. I needed to coerce convince someone into doing this crazy deed with me. I checked in on the site again at noon. 2200 Groupons sold and now they had imposed a limit of 2500 Groupons. Oh crap, time is running out as I watched the numbers rapidly increase in increments of 2's and 3's. The time to act is now. Well, recently I learned about the importance of taking risks from an acting class so, with eyes squinted shut, I gingerly clicked the "Buy" button for 2 Groupons.

Fast forward a few months, Dinah and I (yes I managed to convince her to accompany me) cashed in on that Groupon. Damn, what a ride. After a grueling 100+ page reading for self-study followed by 3hrs of ground school, we were able to take the bird to the sky. It was terrifying at first. I thought I would crash the helicopter for sure somehow. After going through the class, we knew all the different things that could go wrong. And it sounded pretty easy to mess up. Thank goodness there's no fire hydrants floating around for me to hit... A few minutes in though, once I convinced myself I couldn't stall the helicopter or crash into anything, I loosened up and checked out the scenery. Wow.

Not gonna lie, I am completely hooked. If it didn't cost 10k to get a private license I might be tempted to get it. It was an absolute rush being up in the air in a tiny aircraft and having complete control over where you go. Everything looked more beautiful viewed from the sky. For the first time, I got an inkling of man's fascination with flight. It was liberating, refreshing, and beautiful to be up in the sky unrestrained.

Mommy, I got bit by the flying bug.

-Kat
Life of Fear -- revisited

This post is in response to my own earlier post on August 7th, 2008. I'm incredibly happy to find out that I acted on what I wrote about and attempted to get over my "fears" these years. I can honestly say I'm more confident around people and have lost a bit of the tension and nervousness when talking to strangers. Not too sure how it happened but mostly likely the idea of getting over my shyness lodged itself into my mind and I actively worked to get over it. The most concrete example of this happening is that this past semester, I took an Intro to Acting class. Initially I hoped to learn basic public speaking skills from this class and I didn't think I would stay the whole semester since I had so many other things going on, ie research and classes. But after the first few classes, I decided that I wanted to push myself. This class put me way outside my own comfort zone. And by the end of the experience, I'm really glad I did it. After memorizing two 10 minute partner scenes and one 5 minute monologue, I am way more confident speaking in public and less nervous about making an ass out of myself. I mean, really, the things we did in class are probably way more embarrassing than anything that can ever happen talking to a stranger, for example the Dance of the Mountain Gorilla. If you want to know, ask the next time I see you and I'll tell you about it. It needs visuals. Also, I learned many new life lessons from the experience. Briefly:

- take RISKS. It's okay if it doesn't work out. Life never works out how we intend to. But it is only through taking risks that we learn and find something new

- STOP thinking. We learned how to think from our classes and professors. But sometimes it's okay to not think so much and just act on your gut instinct

- Breathe. Breath is life. If we stop breathing, we stop living. So take a breath once in awhile and enjoy life.

- GOTE. Every action we make has a Goal, Obstacle, Tactic, and Expectation. It comes naturally but the better the tactic, the better the outcome would be

- also learned some great vocalization exercises in addition to the importance of being in "neutral" before a performance!

- have FUN. It's called a "play" for a reason. Okay, not a life lesson but I thought it was an interesting fact.

It's rare that you can find specific instances in which you can point to and say, "Oh I changed in this aspect." But in this case, thanks to Xanga, I have evidence that I have grown from the me two years ago in a very substantial way and I didn't even realize it. This came up during a chat with a friend but we thought we're more or less the same person but that's because we see each other all the time. What if we didn't see each other for two years? Would the difference be apparent then? How do you think you've grown over the years? Do you think you realize it?

-Kat

Usually I resurrect my Xanga with a general post about the current state of my life. This overview will include updates on career/academic life, dating life, and current happenings along with any insight and lessons learned along the way. Sounds like it will be a long and rambling post? Yup..

Career/Academics

Currently I'm about to finish my Masters in Biomedical Engineering. It has been a hectic year with research and classes but it's all about to end, finally. For real. I can hardly believe it. It has been like pulling teeth trying to write my thesis. I have lost a lot of my youthful motivation to pull long hours to get things done.

In the meantime I've been applying to numerous jobs all around the world, mostly focusing on the New Jersey and California area. However due to the lack of responses I've started looking in the Boston area as well and that's been seeing more success. Yet a dilemma presents itself here. I'm really done with Boston. It's about time to head off and either go back home to NYC or explore a new city. But here is where the opportunities exist. Knowing myself, the prospect of a good job would be more than enough incentive to persuade me to stay in this town city. If a decent opportunity doesn't present itself elsewhere, it seems likely that I'll be chained here for another year at an internship. Currently there is a promising opportunity at Allergan, formerly Serica Inc before they were bought out. The company uses silk based products for surgery.

In a side note, I'm setting a goal for myself to save up as much money as possible (target: 10k) to go BACKPACKING through Europe. Due to the lack of parental support on this idea and their reneged promise, it's left to me to make this dream come true. Thus I plan to look for a temporary job to gain some experience for my career, either through a contract job or internship, and work odd jobs on top of that to save up money. The odd jobs would also double as gaining experience to help find side jobs as I'm traveling to sustain my living expenses (and make my trip last longer). The deadline is to have enough saved up by my next birthday, my 24th birthday present to myself.

Another side note, the other day I met a nice middle-aged retired couple in a restaurant. They were sitting at the table next to us and somehow we struck up conversation. I ended up sharing my backpacking dream with them and they were incredibly supportive, to the point of leaving me their contact information and an open offer for housing if I were to go to Sweden, Italy, or Hungary.

Dating Life

This part of my life has done a complete 180 degree turn. The last time I updated I believe I was still dating Shuo. That ended after almost two years together, with him going off to Chicago for medical school. The breakup happened mostly because I didn't want a long distance relationship. Wow that sounds like a terrible lie. Okay since this is a blog to myself I need to be honest right? The truth: I felt the relationship was starting to fall apart at that point. We tried having a long distance relationship that summer but the distance exacerbated the problems between us and the relationship came to a swift end soon after. I still loved, love?, him... but it just wasn't working out between us. More on this later.

Soon after, probably too soon, Tony Zhang entered my life. His attraction to me was blatantly clear and, one thing led to another, we ended up dating for a year and a half. Since there isn't a single post about us here, I'll take a moment to describe it and recount some memories. Go to the next paragraph to skip the mushiness. Anyway, the relationship started slow but turned out great. Tony aka Oinky aka Oinky oink aka Oo had never been in a relationship before so I was his first everything. I taught him the relationship basics and he showered me with love and adoration. What more can a girl ask for? He really went all out. Home cooked 4 course Greek dinner for Valentine's day, bedtime stories, self-portrait sketch, love fern, secret sticky notes, hand-knit scarf, learned to play the guitar, watched Waterfire in Providence, endless flowers and chocolate... the list really goes on forever. Imagine every typical romantic thing you see in movies and he did it, or attempted to. He even tried to book a surprise Gondola ride into the sunset on the Charles as he played the guitar and serenaded... The turning point in this relationship happened on a trip to Vegas, a trip without Tony. It was the first time in awhile that we did anything apart. And during the trip, I felt chained down by Tony. Not because he wasn't okay with whatever crazy things I was doing with my friends but the fact that I had to report to him every day acted as a sort of limiter because I knew he wouldn't really be okay with it despite what he said on the phone. I got tired of trying to get a hold of him (time difference) to ease his conscious everyday (after 2 days, oops). I was on vacation! I just wanted to let loose, have fun, and not be stressed. Also there were a few conversations where I obtained a few pearls of wisdom from my older friends. Apparently their female friends were starting to panic because they weren't married yet and they were 25. They were starting to "settle" for less than perfect matches because they were in a secure spot and didn't want change. It made me realize that maybe that's where I was going with Tony. It was the security (not the "I need to be married part"... heavens no). He made me happy with his affection and overly spoiling me. I felt comfortable around him. But, he doesn't complete me. He doesn't provide the mental stimulation that I crave. He prefers agreeing with me and preventing an argument to having heated debates over the latest issues. I knew that from the beginning, yet I still went along with it. I loved him and he's a great guy. He's just not the one for me. I gave up too much of myself, my personal identity, to be with him. Even if I felt happy with him at that moment, it lacked real long term potential. Once I took a step back I realized how different we were. We always joked about it but even the important aspects of the relationship were polar opposites. Our priorities are completely different. He wants a family and kids. I want a career and put off family. He's looking for a serious relationship and ready to settle down. I'm just looking for companionship. There's so much I want to do with my life. He enjoys doing everything together, I value my independence. Plus he's a hypocrite, he knows it, and could care less about it. I absolutely hate that. All in all, I decided to make a clean break once I got back from the Vegas trip. I stopped calling him during the trip too so that was a clear indicator things were not going well between us. As you can probably guess, he didn't take it too well. It took a lot of work for the both of us to get over it and I'm happy to say that we're good friends now.
RIP: October 5th 2008 - January 16th 2010

Which leads to the question: What now? To avoid serious long term relationships, I've adopted the attitude of casual dating. To learn more about it, I did some research and found some great dating blogs. One in particular I enjoyed reading was honeyandlance.com where "Lance" outlines his adventures in picking up girls. It's also the first time I really learned about "the game" and it is absolutely fascinating. I'm glad I don't have to learn it to pick up girls but it's useful to think about when guys use those techniques on me.

The idea of casual dating intrigued me and it's my current experiment. Taking baby steps into a new world, I hope to learn more about myself in the process. Being with different guys lets me explore and see what I like and don't like. At the same time the casualness makes it easy to drop and move on when it gets old. Over the past few months there's been a few different guys... (Waffle, Fancy Hat, and Pinky)

So what have I learned? A lot. No really, I did. The main points:
- I learned to stay away from guys who gave off an aura of wanting a serious relationship. Side note: they would have turned out clingy/boring anyway. correlation?
- I like my guys assertive and confident and can stand up for themselves and say no to my shit
- Asian guys tend to be too passive and it was one of the reasons my past relationships didn't work out
- "Nice" guys also tend to be the needy and clingy guys so that's another type to avoid
- Tim has a nice amount of confidence which makes it fun to be around him. Not LTR material but good for short term fun. And he has some pretty cool date ideas.
- My current ideal guy is going to be damn hard to find. I want Fancy Hat's mix of intelligence and confidence, Pinky's social charm, and Tony's romance. Plus he has to respect my independence and be taller than me. He has to be smart enough so we can expand each other's horizons but not so smart that he makes me feel inferior or that he lacks social skills. Yes, he has to be socially ept as well. He also has to clean up after himself or I will strangle him when we start living together.
- I am a strong independent feisty girl apparently so I need someone strong enough to handle that or else I would end up chewing him up and spitting him out completely whipped as Iris likes to put it. And completely whipped = boring.

Is that so much to ask for?

Summary

That's my current life in a snapshot. Overall, I'm in the middle of a transition. Going from academia to looking for my first industry job. Changing gears from LTRs to casual dating. Hopefully changing living location too but that's TBD. It's an interesting period in my life since change usually means learning a lot about myself. And I plan to keep blogging to keep track off all that's going on. Cheers!

- Kat

Mortified inspired

Recently I watched a live comedy show at Oberon in Harvard Square titled "Mortified" where people read snippets of writings, comics, diary entries, etc that they wrote during their younger years. We the audience got a peek into their embarrassing childhood, complete with the requisite atrocious portrait photos. As we all laughed along at the absurdity and overblown drama of teacher crushes, boyband frenzy, and first loves, a tinge of nostalgia also permeated the air. Those were the simple days where "OMG he just LOOKED at me" would brighten up your whole world and have you dancing on cloud nine. We were so precious and innocent back then.

Anyway, "Mortified" inspired me to look up my Xanga again, my only somewhat regular (several year gaps exist, sorry) diary over the years. This is my attempt to resurrect the soul of this blog. As I scanned through my earlier entries, the emotions as I was writing those posts would flood back into me. These are the events that ended up shaping who I am today. And I am so glad now that I wrote them and this wonderful modern invention called the internet stored it indefinitely in the clouds. And now I hope to keep writing so that a few years from now I can look back again and see how far I've progressed from this point. A diary is a most precious keepsake. It keeps a snapshot of our personality on file, much like a physical photograph recording our physical appearance. I'm glad to know that I have grown over the past few years and hopefully will continue to grow and learn over the years. Or at the very least be able to say my writing has improved.

Enough corny and sappy comments. Let's kick off this blog's resurrection with a post!