Rethoughts

[I just wrote a whole post and now it’s all gone and I am really pissed. I forgot to Ctrl+C before I clicked Publish.

Okay so, second try. This is much less coherent and where did my syntax go ugh.]

I am going to come back. Sort of. I haven’t been on here since forever and I don’t really know what to say most of the time, but I guess it’s my own little niche in this vast expense of sheer Internet and it’s precious to me if only for that.

Maybe I’m going to be too judgmental and too serious and too literal and too opinionated and too everything. But this blog carries none of the social conscience that Facebook or Renren does. Most of the people who follow this don’t know me in IRL and most of the people who know me IRL either don’t know about, don’t give two fucks about or can’t get onto this blog because Great Firewall Of China.

I use Renren, the Chinese version of Facebook – right down to the Timeline. It felt like a social platform for the first few days. The rest of it became frantic “sharing”. Clicks of buttons, reblogs of posts. Nothing but reblogs. Pictures with words on them, pictures with sentimental harangued phrases as captions, pictures with “reblog-or-you-will-die” threats under them, all reblogged, the same things over and over again, until you think you’re going to be sick. I’m complaining. I know that in a way I shouldn’t be, because I used to do that too.

Back to what I was saying. I don’t know how to say this. Everything looks so fake. Well-being is expected of you. Your “friends” don’t really want to hear about your problems, and most of the time vice versa, but when someone posts them you sorta HAVE TO reply because even if you don’t, you know they keep check, and the bold ones confront you about it. They wouldn’t give you a honest answer even if you did. They don’t trust you enough. They just want the attention. Renren, and sometimes even Facebook isn’t a platform for social interaction or connection. It’s a service that gives you a mask. You put it on and you make it what you want. Or maybe it’s just the friends I have.

I don’t want to be all wrapped up in the falsity. I don’t want to say “what’s wrong” to people I don’t really care about or hear these insincere comments reflected back at me.

Here I just want to shout my thoughts to the open Internet and hope that somewhere, somehow, someone will resonate with my words. They don’t have to follow the blog because they know me in person. They don’t have to comment to prove they’ve been here.

It’s much more real this way.

I hope.

2012 in Review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Hey! It’s been a while!

Hello dear readership!

I have been absent / MIA for quite a while now and I am officially ashamed. My excuse is my IB workload…? Heh heh.

But here’s a little something: I created a new deviantArt account and…here you go! http://awesomeaim.deviantart.com/ Do check it out and deviantWatch/fave stuff if you have an account too : ) (Also, if you’re into visual arts and you don’t, I recommend you join.) I’m going to upload artworks / drawings primarily there. I’m going to submit my college applications soon too…so I’ll post the Arts Supplement link here soon ; ) (It’s on WordPress too!)

Cheers!

Proxy Configurations!

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out the proxy settings on the Macbook. Instead of a LAN setting (as I previously had on Windows), it had a whole bunch of proxies on the list: Auto Proxy, Automatic Proxy, Web Proxy (HTTP), Secure Web Proxy (HTTPS), FTP Proxy, SOCKS Proxy, Streaming Proxy (RTSP), and finally Gopher Proxy. (You can find this list on Safari by clicking Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Change Settings button -> Proxies.)

So if you were like me, you would go WTF. 

I typed in my proxy server to most of them. But when I selected one, it didn’t work. I could get onto Facebook’s welcome page, but not log in. This was for a number of similar sites. And it was getting ridiculous! I did the sensible thing and 

Googled it. 

Turns out that THREE PROXIES (HTTP, HTTPS and FTP) have to be checked in order for it to work as it does for LAN on Windows! The proof is in that I am actually typing this, since China blocks WordPress too.  

So well yes here is my tecchy tip for today. It took me ages to figure this out so if you’re Googling it / following me / whatever else, yay for you! You will have this piece of valuable information with you for the rest of your life, whether you need it or not. 

And now I’m off to sleep; it’s Three In The Morning. Seriously, Three In The Morning!

;]

 

Mindflail

Okay, so I was going to post about how I’m inevitably turning into a boring person who thinks of nothing but the SAT and the IB and colleges all day (hyperbole, y’all better appreciate it), but I found something much more worth of my words.

WHAT IS IT? IT IS THE NEW HOMESTUCK ALBUM, FOR YOU AWESOME-AS-FUCK HOMESTUCKERS OUT THERE

Even the album art is awesome.

“One Year Older” by Erik “Jit” Scheele. It is on my list of Best Albums now. I love every single song. These songs, they are making me happy and sad and happy and sad and happy and sad depending on the song and ALL THE FEELS, ALL OF THE FEELS. Also the fact that this is heavily piano-based! The piano is just such a melodic and emotional instrument (yeah, no duh). Alright, I will admit, I am biased. I play the piano. 

OHOHOHO this means that I will get the chance to attempt each and every song without sounding like a hopeless failure. 

Such. An. Auditory. Orgasm. 

Anyway, on a more depressing note, I will continue to research Personal Statement help tips to waste time and procrastinate while still remaining on-topic. And also do SAT practice. Because my future sort of depends on it. And also WRITE my Personal Statement. Do you know what is worse than writing a Personal Statement? SCRAPPING THE PREVIOUS PERSONAL STATEMENT THAT YOU ALREADY FINISHED BECAUSE YOU FOUND A MUCH BETTER TOPIC (or in my case, my <strikethrough>bestfriend</strikethrough> butler found it). OH THE PAIN. 

Let me attempt to overcome my inherent laziness once again. 

Korra

Now that I’m happily in America…THE LEGEND OF KORRA, YO. I am so going to watch all the aired episodes. The only downside to my plan: the crappy Internet speed. So now I’m like two minutes into the first episode and waiting for the rest to load! It’s currently stuck at 4 minutes and won’t go any further. 

Which is super annoying!

If you haven’t watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, you totally should. It’s a kid’s show, yeah sort of, but it’s not like that at all. The storyline is awesome, the characters are well-developed and realistic, and I also suck at giving reviews of any sort so I’m going to stop riiiiight here. 

About the slow Internet speed? I wasn’t kidding. 

I’ll probably finish the laundry before I even finish one episode. 

Limbo

I have a feeling that this is going to be a post that I have already written before. 

What is becoming increasingly obvious to me is the fact that I no longer feel comfortable about my abilities (or rather, self-perceived abilities). Before grades were all that important, I got above-average results and got along with most of the people I had to get along with. When grades became important, I aced everything and skipped a grade. And all this time I had my best buddy with me, so social life was not of any concern. When she left, I still got more-than-decent grades in my IGCSEs, but needed friends I could really ‘click’ with. In some ways this is still an issue.

Anyway. I hate writing really personal stuff because it makes me feel all insecure and vulnerable and shit, so yeah. I went into bouts of depression and started thinking a lot about lots of things. I couldn’t really find someone to debate with me, so I started to debate with myself. This is healthy (well the debating and introspection at least), but only to a certain extent. Together with the depression and whatnot I created some sort of cynical, disembodied voice in my head that would offer me a “third person perspective” and lots of discouragement.

Yes I failed to cut the crap, I just write a lot mmkay just deal with it!

So. Remember when I said that I feel like I’m failing at everything? Everything being 1) academics, 2) social comfort.

1. I have the reputation of “best student”, or some shit like that because of my IGCSE grades, and one thing I have to say about the IB is that IT IS ON A WHOLE ‘NOTHER LEVEL. My grades are shitty and average. In comparison to my past achievements, they are a failure. I can just sense the disappointment from my teachers (and it is there, also, from myself). I no longer think that I can write well (why did I ever think that anyway) and for the first time, I’m beginning to wonder if even my best efforts wouldn’t be sufficient (yes weird sentence I know, shush). And that is scary as hell, because the only confidence in myself that I used to have was that if I really, really wanted to do something and managed to put TRUE EFFORT into it, I would succeed no problem. Am rethinking that. 

2. The voice in my head is interfering with my relationships. With anyone, really. Because I unconsciously try to think about all the different ‘sides’ to situations, I also identify how I could appear really out of place or interruptive…which does no good at all to my ego and makes me want to just leave and stay in my room. In some conversations I would just notice that the group of people seemed pretty happy without my input, so why should I stay and possibly intrude? As a result of that I come off as sort of passive-aggressive to friends and family At the same time I am painfully self-conscious of what I do and say. Anything I say that could be / is stupid or incorrect in any way? I jump to point it out and to correct it. The correction isn’t usually much better and usually I just end up in a cringe-worthy cycle.

…Also that may be why I try to explain my thoughts and downplay them and insult my own ideas and all that shit. Just in case I say anything wrong or stupid or biased or ignorant or anything like that. Even on this blog, I do this.

Yeah and now to prove the point, why the hell did I name this Limbo anyway? Is this any kind of limbo? Between two failures, maybe. 

All I can really say for now is that this definitely isn’t one of them good phases of life. I think I made many wrong choices along the way and I’m in a really bad place (mentally too). I see the same problems coming up in different situations and places and it only means that the problem is within me and not a product of the environment! Now all I have to do is change it.

Easier said than done.

Panicky

Called friend in Shanghai today and the subject of homework was inevitable. Am thinking about all the things I should have done and should be doing right now and I am sort of panicking. As a matter of fact I failed to sleep on the bus because I was thinking about my essays that are due by September and that I have not yet even started. This is bad.

Frankly I am very tempted to continue ignoring their existence for the rest of my stay in America. This however is obviously one of the worst solutions I could ever decide to implement. 

I am going to make my third redraft of my Personal Statement now and hopefully think up one or two topics to use for my World Literature essays (2x), and maybe even write the structure.

Bleak. Bleak. I have still a 4000 word draft of a research essay on top of that.

I should not have ignored it so far. I have been enjoying myself too much these weeks. America is everything and more than I had ever thought it would be. I am having one of my best holidays in my life.

Good things don’t last forever. Bit by bit, I shall have to make my way back into the world of reality, competition, college applications and IB.

Afternoon

As none of you know, I am currently in Boston, MA! For now I’m with a summer program so I’m living at a nearby university, but later I’ll get some free time and then fly across the country to California, hell yes.

Anyway. Productive afternoon (I guess). I had a few hours free, so I decided to hang in the Campus Center! Found my way there after a lot of map-consulting, getting lost and finally asking this cute dude for directions. Got Starbucks. Sat and wasted time on the Internet. And then I played pool for an hour, on my own. I only just learned, so it’s good practice (????) . An hour away from class-time, I left for the campus store. Browsed through everything and bought hair ties + 2 books. A flash storm took place while I was there but fortunately it soon ended, leaving me less than half an hour to walk to class. Which I did, successfully. Got there 15 minutes earlier and wrote the essay that was due in class, successfully. 

And then there was class, and it was interesting because half of it consisted of my having a conversation with the teacher / friend. This summer program is filled with local Chinese people and has only 3 first-language English students, and Chinese students are incredibly laid back (or at least these are). Nobody had any questions or even constructive comments.

I hate to sound racist, but being around these kids can sometimes be REALLY embarrassing. Once when we were touring another university campus, this painfully Chinese-looking boy pressed the Emergency button making the police come. 

I sound awfully biased, but I have never before been so ashamed to be Asian. 

These small things remind me why I hated China so much when I first went there. There is pretty much no sense of social responsibility and almost everyone just does whatever annoys other people the most.

Yeah, this is like, a pet peeve or something except it probably isn’t what you would typically call a pet peeve. 

Yeah whatever I’ll shut up now

Summertime.

The title totally reminds myself of the song “In the Summertime”, of which artist’s name I forgot.

What can I say? This is the summer between two years of IB and seriously, there’s not much in terms of major rest and relaxation. Lots of essays, preparation for college–that sounds more like it! Which is sort of a shame, because I’ve only grown fond of holidays during recent years. The exciting thing about this summer, though, is the fact that I’ll be going to America for the first time in many years! 

Nevermind the fact that it’s partially for touring colleges and attending classes. It’s going to be fun anyway. Or at least I hope! Because I’m going to be with a group, like as in a summer program, it would totally suck if I couldn’t get along with the people there. Which I hope won’t happen. If it does, I guess I’ll just call people all the time and write/blog a lot.

(That sounds inviting.) But you get my gist!

So I guess this is turning into a “My Summer Plans” type of post. Oh well, I never seem to know what I want to write beforehand anyway. 

Summer program and touring aside, hopefully I’ll also get to meet an old friend! Who is sort of a sister-from-another-mother. So that should be a major highlight.  

( And all that aside I have a 4000 word draft, two English essays, an Art project and lots of late Bus.Man assignments that I have to hand in by the end of August. Am not happy about this: I leave in less than 10 days and have another 10 days after I get back from America to do this. More or less! )

IB aside, I really need to get my plans straight. I don’t really know which colleges I want to go to or what I want to study, and this is among the many things that I would like to find out this summer. I can’t prepare myself for what I don’t know will happen, so here’s hoping to getting that sorted out. Oh, and my personal statement. I need to get over my aversion to writing personal, emotional things in order to get that done. I find myself trying to hold back as much information as possible and seriously, I think I would feel a lot more comfortable writing someone else’s personal statement. I don’t like the feeling of having my thoughts and emotions on paper for anyone to see and laugh at.

Or having my emotions anywhere, really. 

But that’s growing up for you? Suck it up, that’s what I’ll have to do, just like all the people before me did and like all the people after me will have to do. 

Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Hope y’all have a great summer too.