A Surprising Diary

I was organizing my desk today and found one of the many notebooks I had tried to start a diary in. I looked at the first page, expecting to read one of my rants. Instead, I found a diary introduction. Strangely, it addressed one of the themes in my English class ("What kind of world is this?"). This is what I wrote.

This is my first diary entry in about thee years, so this entry may have a lot to talk about. But let me get this general idea a basic walk through. Life is never simple. Personally, I think that Life is fabricated of layers and layers that vary in degree of goodness, badness, mourning, and celebration. Life is generally viewed in two ways: the good and the bad. But it is never really one way or the other; It's never simple.
People throughout time have wondered 'Why are we here?' People have looked up to a higher being or persons or a god or multiple gods to explain why people exist. I remember in seventh grade, I was required to take a course in religion. One of the lessons the teacher taught was that God (the Christian God) put us down here because he loves us, the people. There has been so many ties since that lesson when I've wondered, 'Is there really some higher being out there?' My heritage, the Filipinos, is one of the two countries in Asia who has Christianity as their national religion, so my family is naturally Christian-Catholic. At least, to a certain point. I guess that there is a higher being out there, watching us. At Escrima, or the martial arts of the Filipinos, there is a command pronounced 'pamajé', which means 'pray'. Our head guru tells us that we should pray to whichever higher being it is we pray to. He says, "To whomever you pray to, whatever your religion is, just pray." He just says to pray; it doesn't have to be a good long prayer asking for something. It could just be a short thank you. But if yo listen to what I hear, and interpret his words the way I do, Guru implies that a person should pray to someone of a spiritual high being to at least thank him or her or them for life.

This long introduction brings me back to my initial statement and reason of these following entries. Life is never simple. As one reads along, though my experiences and thought, Life is never simple. There are always things that will make people wonder about things that are obvious and not obvious. Life is never simple because of the many views and options and possibilities that it could be viewed or experienced. I guess that is the general purpose in Life: to go through choices and feelings and thoughts, and to reflect and learn about what Life is meant to be.

When I read what I wrote, I was actually surprised that I thought about this sort of topic. I was even more surprised that I even wrote my thoughts down. At the beginning of the second semester, when the questions "What kind of life is this? How should we live in it?", were presented to the class, I thought That is something that people don't normally thing about. But I think that this entry actually contradicted my assumption. Now, I think that the question theme isn't such an ambiguous theme.

Myspace vs. Facebook

I had some time on my hands so I decided to create a Facebook account.

I know, it's another internet craze like Zanga or Myspace. But really, what is the difference?

I didn't have a Zanga account, but I did have a Myspace. I thought that it was a pretty good site. I reconnected with some old gymnastics friends I hadn't seen in years. I was able to personalize my page and put music on and all these other features. When I told my parents, they first became parentally concerned and made me do monthly check ups on my page. (This was when there was myspace 'horror stories' on the news.) After a while, they stopped... and so did the myspace craze.

Now the Facebook craze has begun and I just joined it. I think it's interesting and has its pros and cons as anything does. Instead of the myspace comments, Facebook has 'writings on (your friends)'s wall'. It also keeps record of what changes that were made to your account and what others did to your account (i.e. write on your wall, 'poke' you, add a new friend, etc.) I haven't got many facebook friends yet, but I'll see how it turns out compared to the myspace world.

Gymnastics

When I was younger, I grew up in club gymnastics for Aloha Gymnastics World (commonly known as Aloha/AGW). Around sixth grade, I stopped gym and I declared that I wasn't going to do anymore gymnastics. Well, I proved myself wrong around eighth grade. I was at a new school and wasn't very outgoing. My mom suggested for me to do ILH gymnastics for the school. At first, I didn't want to. But I remembered that a lot of my friends from Aloha did it. So if I did it, I would be able to keep in touch with them better. So I went and 'represented' my school and did ILH.

Since then, I've been in ILH gymnastics, not quite willing to renounce all of my gymnastics abilities. Now, I'm a varsity member, although it's not a very big deal. A lot of my friends are in this group, so it almost feels like old times. I think that a person can never truly leave their roots. I've experienced it through gymnastics. Many of my favorite skills are still with me and help me along in my primary sport, diving.

Show Finale

Wow, I haven't made a post in a while. I think that this was a personal discipline problem and lack of ideas of what to write. Anyways, I'm back and I'll be making more posts now.

This past Thursday was the finale of the Korean show Pure in Heart. It had such a happy ending. MH approves of Gukhwa, at first due to publicity pressure. But after Gukhwa and Yunhu get married, MH approves of Gukhwa due to unasked favors Gukhwa performs for MH. DK and MH make up and act more like a couple. (They fought a lot over petty things...)
Ugyeong (a college buddy of Yunhu's and older-brother-like figure to Gukhwa) and Yunjeong (Yunhu's younger sister) are married and have twin boys. Ugyeong also takes over his grandfather's tailor shop.
The show officially ends when the creators show the families one year later. Gukhwa is seven months pregnant and Yunhu is really happy. Gukhwa also becomes a college student. (She is ten years younger than Yunhu, and didn't have enough money to go to college immediately after high school.) Ugyeong and Yunjeong are proud parents of twins who are 100 days old. Ugyeong's tailor shop is flourishing and his younger sister is dating a good guy. (Earlier in the show, Ugyeong's sister was having a lot of boy problems.) MH also gives her cooking class company to her son-in-law (who loves to cook).
All in all, a happy ending. Here's the link to epilogue part of the show if anyone wants to watch:

Pure 19 Ep167_Final Ep_2 of 2
Uploaded by ConstableOdo

I think that every story can have a happy ending, only some turn out better than others. Change in every character is imminent and maybe obligatory in every story. And depending on how the characters change, the ending changes also.

Change. Connecting with a Show

I like Korean dramas/soap operas. The show that I'm watching now is called "Pure In Heart". It's about a girl (Gukhwa) and how she falls in love with this guy (Yunhu) and how his parents don't approve of their relationship.

This is the show's "cover picture":


In the more recent episodes,the parents finally approved of their relationship and agreed to their son's wish to marry her. The father (DK) is more willing because he observed them during work (—Yunhu works for DK's company and Yunhu hired Gukhwa as his secretary as a bargaining price to work for DK). But the mother (MH) seems entirely against it because of her background.
As the season goes on, MH seems to secretly like Gukhwa and doesn't want to admit it. The way I see it, MH doesn't want any change to her life and doesn't want to share any attention with Gukhwa. I think that if MH gets along with Gukhwa more, she'll get equal amount of attention and maybe in better light because it might make up for all of the things that she did to Gukhwa.

I think that sometimes people who don't want to change miss out on things and possibilities that could open a new world to them. That new world may have negative aspects in them, but every sort of world has at least some positive aspects that will please everyone to a certain extent, even though it may not always be apparent.

A Flight to Somewhere

Yesterday, my brother returned from his spring break trip to Washington DC and New York, NY with his school. It seemed that he had fun, which I had hoped. He didn't get me many things for souvenirs, but got me something at least. He got as many National Holocaust Museum pamphlets about people who were involved in the Holocaust and their stories. He also saved the playbill for the Broadway production of The Lion King. He also got me some jewelry trinkets.








Now, generally, I don't like jewelry trinkets. But I told myself that I'd be willing to change so I can appreciate his gifts better. This sort of change will be slightly difficult for me because I'm not used to wearing jewelry. But, I will adjust my attitude to the situation to better myself. thus willing to this change. I hope that this will able me to take other situations in the better light in the future.

Movie Review

Recently, a friend of mine let me watch this Korean drama movie. The original language is Korean, and not wanting to ruin the original feeling of the movie, I watched it with English subtitles. It's called "The Classic". The title fits because there are so many clichés in the movie. It's about a girl who is having boy problems. (Her best friend likes the same guy and makes her write love letters to the guy.) At the same time, she's reading the diary of her mother's first love, whose situation was very similar to her own.
Although a movie with a lot of clichés would be not very good, it sort of made the essence of the movie. You could predict what the characters would do or what was going to happen next, which sort of made it funny.

While I took the first semester of English over summer, my teacher constantly said, "Don't use clichés." It's hard to, but sometimes that's the only way to get to the point. I thought that it was interesting to put many clichés together in a pack. I don't think that I've seen anybody use that many clichés all at once, which made the movie pretty unique.

Here's the DVD cover: