Job Positions Frenzy

I want to apply to all but I need to cut down to three. Too many will make me go coocoo. Plus some online publications are more selective, more demanding workloads than others, so here's a post to weigh out the pros and the cons.

some rambles on nothing

I feel free when I type this kind of posts. I'm listening to GEM's Intoxicated and sitting on the floor whilst typing this. My mind is like a cloud right now - blurry and peaceful.
I got back from Kelowna and Vancouver (Canada) since Monday night and have honestly been doing nothing. I haven't even unpacked or organized my room (clothes all over the place). To be honest, I feel like I should challenge myself and doing something I wouldn't be totally comfortable doing right now.
Running outside, playing tennis, spontaneously calling a friend to hang out, you know.
Or submitting my prepared resume. Or start taking musical lessons. Or reading that accounting book that I was supposed to do.
something. Wow, I have seriously messed my schedule and I feel terrible.
Slept at 2-3 am yesterday with my laptop next to my head. I have been doing this a lot - staying up until the wee hours of the morning, looking at blogs, videos, facebook, the whole shabang. Gah I hope I don't get cancer from the radiation of putting the laptop so close to my head... Woke up at 10 this morning, but then stayed in my bedroom watching Youtube videos until 2pm... and then finally going downstairs (not washing up or brushing my teeth) for breakfast. Yeah, my routine has screwed up big time. I need to take control over my life again. ASAP.

I just checked my Facebook and remembered about this white guy I liked from a class I took in the spring. I found his profile by knowing just his first name, what he looked like, and another hottie athlete from my school. Gah..eeeeps. Now I know his last name too and I don't even know... Probably it will never work out between me and him. Why did I look him up.....? Now I feel like I already know stuff about him that I am not supposed to know. This is what Facebook does to you, gals and boys reading this. Learn from this. -_-

the stereotypical asian job

At a yogurt shop with some friends, we talk about majors, and what we want to be.

I poke around the toppings of my yogurt with my spoon as I say to them, "I'd become a filmmaker or work as a photojournalist, or a makeup artist if it was as stable as accountant."

I thought about all the stereotypical jobs that Asian kids complain about. Being a doctor, a computer engineer, an accountant. Of course you would, I could hear people say with a sneer. You'd be surprised - its not just ignorant people who do that, even Asian young adults themselves. 

Instead of pursuing these jobs and majors, I could simply go for "my true dream career", whatever that means. 

But again, and again, you come across stories like this that inspire and amaze you. We don't know what it is like for students who have it much harder to even go to school. Things we have for granted. The parents are only trying to secure us into a stable job so we can be well off in the future - is that so wrong? As middle-class people, I don't know what its like to be poor - to have a cook provide for the whole family, to live in public housing with other families. But through these stories, I have come to understand, even if it's only for a little bit. So to those people who scoff at "stereotypical Asian careers",  maybe you don't understand it yet, but after reading the article from that link (above), I think you'll get a better idea. 

dreams

Dreams are so confusing, yet we still grab onto whatever we can remember and piece it together, thinking that maybe it was supposed to be important. Sometimes, the dream is strange, sometimes it is normal, and sometimes it is random. Once, I asked my mom about dreams, and she told me that she doesn't dream. Then again, she always looks well-rested and healthier than I, so I'm wondering if dreaming is a bad thing after all. It probably makes it so that getting a good night's rest is harder to manage.

For the past week, I've had dreams involving school and my classmates; sometimes made up classmates that are actually celebrities or TV characters.Anyways, last night's was this: there was a left class and a right class and it had to do with what your writing hand was. I'm a righty but somehow got placed into a lefty class. That's where I found two of my classmates there. One guy was David from high school and another was a popular girl from the same high school. And we took turns drawing something...? Or it was a personality test - I try to remember, but I can't. We soon became good friends lol. Finally, I got to the righty class and Mark from middle school was sitting besides me in a crowd of students. The classroom was set on a hillside. The instructor told us to get into groups. Heck, I wasn't friends with anyone there! I panicked. And amidst the scramble of everyone else to find groups, Mark asked me if I wanted to join his group, and turns out, Rupert Grint (when he was still doing promos for HP 3) was in that group of guys! I couldn't believe my eyes.

Sometimes I think having a dream journal is cool, so that I can record all the vivid dreams that I can remember before I forget them. But then I think, well, they're mostly bits and pieces of different dreams anyways, and it's not that important aka not worth the hassle.

what happens when you change your name

Before you even began to get judgmental - here is my situation, which might resound with you (or not).

Zhang Lianxin and Chong Yang from A Beauty in Troubled Times 

• China-born and raised up in an English-speaking country
• then moved to a city with few minorities; mostly caucasian population
• "can you pronounce that name again?" or "is it this or that" or "am I saying it right" is a common occurrence and it might or might not drive you crazy after hearing it the nth time.
• my parents had let me change my own name, which is probably a bad move on their part simply because I was too young and thought names like Lola were cool names for girls

To preface this story, I have never sought to change my given name which would truly alter my identity; instead, I used nicknames in place of my true name. This should resounding with people of Asian descent and have lived in an English-speaking country. Thee first English name I chose was a mistake.

procrastination and sleeping at 2AM

Why can't we just live life with no consequenceAnd always live in the nowForget about the sunriseFight the sleep in your eyes
I mean it literally. This is how I felt all throughout my adolescent years (middle school, high school, and college) and its been taking a toll on my body and mind. We need sleep. I have always had an issue with going to bed early. Goal-setting for an earlier time just doesn't fare well with my brain. That is why, today, I am making that change, that transition. I don't want to be waking up ten years later with sagging eye bags, sallow skin of Prof Snape, and an aching body. And with the reaction speed of a turtle. No more time to regret. If I'm going to make the change, it has to be now. Today. 

are summer plans hopeless?

Summer plans aren't usually planned in summer - they're concieved typically during the spring quarter of college where unassuming young adults are likely to conjure up the perfect summer. School, blech. Dying, overflowed with homework and finals. But when summer makes its entrance, a lot of people will have already surrendered to days on end of a routine of wake up late, eat, internet, then sleep (and broken goals for that matter, yeah, that's probably YOU too).

Internet loves you.
Plans hate you.

By the way, my plans are to get really good at playing the guitar, take lessons on guzheng古筝, reading the entire accounting textbook, complete a Coursera course, get out a lot, play tennis everyday and improve, sleep at 11pm every night of summer, and there's more but I don't remember.

Guilty Pleasure Foods

We all have junk foods we sneak in our mouths when we are starving and no cooked meals are around right? Or it's just me! I can think of many off the top of my head, but I'm going to list them out because there are too many. Great god of mummy there's too much. At the end of this post, I'll name my top 3 (all-time) favorite snackage. Watch how I try and justify...

• glazed donut - school parties taught everyone how to enjoy these deep-fried, sugary treats.
• chex mix - a bag of chex mix used to be considered healthy... 
• salsa and chips - saucy and crunchy and a very satisfying snack
• hua mei (dried prunes) - the very salty and sour kind. Because it's a childhood love. 
• dried apricots - they are actually healthy.
• beef jerky - the protein content, the chewy goodness of beef, the portability
• ketchup with boiled eggs - because normal boiled eggs taste bland
• fruit by the foot - you can unfurl and then fold into a huge mound to savor
• oreo cookies - don't really eat them anymore, but they look delicious no matter what
• greek yogurt - healthy and filling
• taro mochi - taro is my favorite asian flavor
• wang wang rice crackers - it's frunchy and soy saucy
• milk candies - oh my the nostalgia....
• umeboshi w/ rice - I would be eating more of this if my teeth handled the decay from sourness
• bread dipped in ranch - rarely. only if there was nothing edible in sight
• extra-cheesy goldfish - goldfish are supposed to be good for you....says me. 
• poptarts - the perfect sugar on-the-go, and they are forever available from the vendor machine.
• apple danish pastry - oh you know, college kids. What can we do?

Ideal Types

Nobody wants to back themselves up into a corner when it comes to types. Love is unpredictable. But it doesn't mean we don't have ideal types. Obviously pictures can only go so far to reveal physical traits. For starters:

 

c'mon! it's kaku kento

Future of Education

Courses provided from top universities like Duke and Stanford that you can take for free.

 Is there such a thing? I came across this term MOOC - massive open online courses. And the concept sounds like a dream. One such example of these massive learning online courses is called Coursera, which a lot of top colleges in the United States and abroad are experimenting with. High quality videos combined with deadlined assignments and quizzes makes Coursera a viable option for people who just want to learn, without a requirement for anything else. In traditional colleges, note all the stigma of registering for certain questionable-sounding classes (i.e. Women sexuality, drugs and society) and the how colleges charge you for dropping a class late. 

Once upon a time, people worried about not being able to afford good education for their children. Education was hard to obtain for the poor, the immigrants, and the people in developing countries. What about nowadays where virtually anyone has access to a computer and an internet? I think there is now a bunch of resources that people provide for free that we are not making enough use of. Because of the internet, that is over-saturated with information, internet users are having a difficult time focusing on the free educational videos and resources avaliable, but instead on entertainment such as cat videos on Youtube and social networking sites like Facebook. There is a way to not fail classes and the decision is within our control and ambitions. First there was Khan Academy, and now there is Coursera. Not to mention the vast array of informative videos you can find on youtube. Those sites are like treasure troves. But where the pirates at?

Coursera seems like a pretty darn good way to sample your way to your future major. You ask an 18 year old what he or she wants to do for the rest of her life. Why do you think she chooses "Business"? It could simply be because the word sounds professional and there seems to not be mathematical differentiation involved? (or of course it could mean that she's pursuing something she's always wanted to do) Because it would be nice to arrive to the office clad in business suits? Not everyone will have a clear cut goal for life set when they turn a certain magical age. That's why I think it is important for a young person to explore the opportunities.

Although Coursera and other MOOCs are still in their experimental stages in the educational realm, these mass online courses might just be in the future of mainstream education. So here I throw you a question: what will the future of education look like? Do you think MOOCs can replace our learning institutions (i.e. physical colleges) one day? More educational materials are going to be available for the public, that's one thing for sure. It depends on you if you want to take it to the next level.