Day Eight: I Actually Make Friends

6/21/14, 1:44 PM PDT

Eric showed up at my house at 7 AM to pick up some reimbursements forms for Red Cross. Problem is, I don't normally wake up until 10 AM, so when he showed up, I was SUPER cranky. I don't remember exactly what I said to him when I handed him the Ziploc bag of important Red Cross documents since I immediately went back to sleep after, but Eric, if you're reading this right now and I ended up saying something horrible about your mother, I'm sorry. I'm not me when I just woke up.



6/22/14, 1:26 AM PDT

Wow, another really late entry. My bad, guys.

So a bulk of today was spent at my cousin's graduation party in Orange County. Or at least, I think it's Orange County, I really don't know where they live since every time we go up to their house, I pass out for pretty much the entire car ride.

Let me just throw this out there. I am NOT a social person. Throw me into a party full of the nicest, most accepting people in the world and unless someone talks to me first, I will happily ignore every single person there in favor of writing on my phone. The day I start a conversation with a total stranger will probably be the day that World War III starts and RoboHitler is unleashed into the world.

So based on how this party was looking in the beginning, I didn't think anything would change. The older adults probably weren't looking to make conversation with me that didn't start with the words "What grade are you in now?" and the younger people either already had friends to talk to or had their eyes glued onto their electronics. The latter was especially prevalent in the party's piano room, occupied entirely by kids still in elementary school and middle schoolers addicted to social media.

But hell, there was a piano, so I decided to play. And surprisingly, playing the piano acts as a pretty good ice breaker, because suddenly I'm getting all these requests from the kids around me who were previously just staring at their iPhones. And even though I couldn't play all of their crazy requests ("Play something from Frozen! Play a Snoop Dogg song! Play the Keyboard Cat song!"), I managed to have some pretty decent conversations with these people, so I guess they're my friends now? I added one guy on Facebook who had a VGHS shirt, so yeah, I think we're friends now?

Yep. Definitely a VGHS shirt.

Is- is that enough to bring upon WWIII or what?





RFotD: There exists a "friendship paradox," which states that your friends tend to have more friends than you do. Several mathematical explanations exist to support this paradox.

SGAT: Became a little less socially awkward.

Day Seven: Library Day with Samantha

6/20/14, 5:56 PM PDT

Went to the library again with Samantha. Had a nice little conversation, where she called me fat several times. How rude right?

At one point, while we were talking, a strange homeless-looking guy approaches us with a sticker sheet in his hand. I saw him walking towards us in the corner of my eye and I thought he was going to tell us to be quiet since we were laughing pretty hard. But you know what he does?

"Want a sticker?" He asks us.

We were kinda confused. But hell, he just pitched me an offer that I can't refuse, so I just said yes to the free sticker. He peels a happy face sticker off (doesn't even let me choose, I wanted a blue one) and forcefully slaps it on my shoulder. He asks Samantha the same thing and after she says yes, she gets a purple one.

Then he just walks away.

The aforementioned sticker.

Maybe we just met the most interesting man in the world. Maybe his sticker-giving had some sort of insightful, symbolic meaning, a meaning that neither of us will understand until years, perhaps decades into the future. Maybe someday, this sticker will save my life.

Or maybe he was just mentally disabled.

Anyway, after that, we went to Carl's Jr. where she insisted that she buy me a milkshake even though I said several times that I didn't want one because I'm following a strict, sugar-free diet. But stubborn her bought me one anyway, rrrrrrgh. So I drank me an Oreo milkshake, diet ruined, now I'll never lose my extra 16 chins.

After that milkshake run, we headed back to the library. I brought the same umbrella from Wednesday and she really wanted to see what I look like walking around with it open, so I opened it up. She said I owned a really feminine umbrella and she called me a girl because of it, which I guess I'm okay with since it's definitely an improvement from "old Asian lady."

In short, I had a pretty fun time, lol.



6/21/14, 1:21 AM PDT

Aaaaaagh, I'm tired. Spent a big chunk of my afternoon/evening watching MLG's Melee stream and the West Coast vs. East Coast crew battle took effing THREE HOURS to finish. Started at 10:30, went until now. But it was a REALLY good contest, glad that West Coast won because East Coast's team was STACKED.

Uhh... let's see, what else happened today... White Austin finally got a Facebook, so to celebrate, Samantha and I had an argument on his wall over which person he loved more. The answer is obviously me, but because I'm a courteous gentleman who is a firm believer in chivalry, I let Samantha win. After framing her through the magic of Google Chrome in a last-ditch effort to win Austin's approval, of course.

Wow, pretty short entry today, huh? Ah well, not every day can have 1,000+ words.





RFotD: The word "umbrella" derives from the Latin word "umbra," meaning shaded or shadow. The French suffix "-elle" means "little," so literally, "umbrella" means "little shadow." Which completely justifies why I bring one along when I walk to the library.

SGAT: Was supposed to work on my story, but I didn't really feeeeeeeel like it.

Day Six: My Sister's Friend Annoys My Mom

6/19/14, 9:18 AM PDT

Hey, I'm actually writing my anniversary story now! Wooooooooooooo! Here's my choice of writing music, gonna listen to that on repeat for a few hours.



Same day, 1:54 PM PDT

Picked up my sister from school again. Had to bring her friend, Laura, along because my mom and Laura's mom have a deal going on where they alternate days on who picks up both kids so that they can get more sleep. But I'm pretty sure my mom is 100 percent done with Laura because she DOES NOT STOP TALKING EVER. We had to bring her with us to my job orientation in Carmel Mountain because her mom wasn't gonna be able to pick her up before 3 PM and the entire car ride, she was practically screaming. I mean I didn't care, I thought it was hilarious, but my mom likes quiet car rides, so even though she didn't say anything out of politeness, I could tell she was this close to bursting a blood vessel.

The tipping point? When my mom stopped at McDonalds and asked us (as in my sister and I) what we wanted to eat.

"I want an Oreo McFlurry!" Laura says. No please. No hesitation. No waiting for my mom to ask her directly.

It was around then that mom gave out the most exhausted sigh I've ever heard.



Same day, 9:56 PM PDT

Job orientation at the summer school that I'm working at sucked. Everyone was either from Scripps or Westview, so they all had their own little social groups EXCEPT ME. I arrived 30 minutes early, so awkward, friendless me just sat alone, playing Tetris on my iPhone until the actual orientation started. Then, awkward, friendless me just walked unnoticed in the crowd, following the head of the summer program until training ended.

The campus is really pretty though. It's on a sort of hillside terrace and one building is half on the main terrace, half on a lower story all by itself, so the entire campus sort of looks like a sideways L. It's really hard to explain and I thought it would be rude if I took pictures, so you're just gonna have to take my word that the place was really nice.

After I got home, I napped for a bit, then got on a Google+ call with Angela and Christina. They have this new feature where you can draw things on people's faces and the drawings follow their face as they move around. Basically, think of those really crappy webcam effects where it makes it look like you're wearing a hat or a crown or glitter or whatever. Except it's actually pretty decent. Look at some of the stuff we made.

Angela tracked a drawing of Mario's hat on herself.

Mario

Wants a lick

OF YOUR SOUL.

She also drew a few other things.

Duckface Goldilocks. Thankfully extinct in the wild.

She's either a strawberry or a Cabbage Patch Kid that's high.

Ironically, Drag Queen Angela looks more like a girl than
normal Angela does.

These two are probably my favorite.

Angela doesn't like space camp.

No really, Angela really doesn't like space camp.

We didn't limit our facial vandalism to Angela though.

"It wants to crawl inside my mouth."

Oh, and here's a picture of Angela trying to strangle her dog.

Look at how happy she is to crush that poor dog's trachea.

RFotD: Someone divided Star Wars Episode 4 into 15 second chunks and asked people around the world to select one of those chunks to reshoot in however style they want. Star Wars Uncut is the final product of this project.

SGAT: Wrote a decent chunk of my anniversary story.

Day Five: A Spambot, a Library, and a Last-Minute Pool Party

6/18/14, 9:33 AM PDT

Has anyone noticed some weird, sorta thought-invoking graffiti around Mira Mesa? I've seen this sort of graffiti in three different places in Mira Mesa, all written in a similar style. I took pictures to show you guys what I'm talking about.

Found near 7-Eleven on Camino Ruiz and Capricorn Way.

Found on the corner of Capricorn Way and Sagittarius Road.

Found in Mesa Viking Park.

That last bit of graffiti is the only one that seems different from the other two because it doesn't have the letters "MMFE" on it (or at least, I didn't see it), but I"m still thinking that it's written by the same person, or at least in the same style. I'm basing this guess on the fact that the S's and the D's on the slide graffiti look pretty similar to the ones on the other two, but I could be wrong.

I don't know, I might be looking too much into this. I mean if it's some sort of sign that a revolution is coming, I'm not sure if that revolution will be a very good one considering that they spelled "successful" wrong. I'm just curious to find out what "MMFE" stands for and if there's other spots in Mira Mesa that have graffiti similar to this. Comment below if you've seen more, I want to see if there's more to this thing.


Since last night, a spambot has been messaging me. Here is a log of our conversations.

I figured out he was a bot pretty quickly.

It wouldn't stop messaging me, so I decided to have a little bit of fun and tried to see how weird I can make the conversation look.

Yeah, it got boring pretty quickly.

You gotta admire the bot's persistence though. It wouldn't stop messaging me through the night. I had to put my phone on Do Not Disturb because the vibration from the notifications would wake me up in the middle of the night.

Note the timestamps.

First thing I did when I woke up today? Yeah, I messed with the bot.

I regret not catching that typo before I sent the message.

At one point, I thought the guy that owns the actual Facebook account replied, asking me why I called him a bot or why I just proclaimed my love for him. I was about ready to explain everything I send him up until that point.

Unrequited, once again. Sigh.

...But then it turns out it was just an alternate response path for when we reply with the word "bot."

Tricky trick programmers.

Jordan tried to jump on the bot bandwagon too. But he messed up.

What a failure, right?

Same day, 7:58 PM PDT

Walked to the library today, where I coincidentally and unexpectedly ran into the awful, awful Samantha. Purely by chance, I promise. We talked for a bit, mostly about my blog's summer bucket list and anniversary story (I know, I shamelessly promote myself, whatever), the possibility of her getting a summer job, and the fact that I looked like quote "one of those old Asian ladies" because I used an umbrella to shade myself from the sun while I walked to the library. Psh, we all know that I am infinitely more attractive than wrinkly Asian ladies. She's just jealous that I had my own personal shade generator because whenever she steps outside, she has to pretend that anything the sun's light touches is hot lava since if her skin gets hit by any of the sun's rays, she instantly gets burnt. And I mean burnt, like charred black.

She also brought her cousin from the Philippines over. Apparently, when I left, Samantha's cousin told her that I was really scary. To comfort her (or just to spite me, I can't tell which), she told her cousin that I was gay and that even gay people can have really deep voices.

So thanks, Samantha.

Afterwards, I napped until 7 PM. Or at least, I would have, if Angela and Christina hadn't rudely called me at 5 PM, demanding that I open the gate to my community pool because they were waiting outside the pool even though they gave me literally NO HEADS UP that they wanted to swim today. So I dragged my groggy, cranky self out of bed, went to the pool, opened the gate, and suddenly they're telling me to go swim even though I brought no swimming clothes. So I get driven back to my house (courtesy of Angela's brother, Alex), get the stuff I need to swim (and my GoPro), drive back to the pool, jump in the water, and what do these two female dogs tell me when I tell them to jump in?

"Oh, we weren't planning on swimming. We didn't even bring spare clothes."

Oh hell no. You do not wake me up from my afternoon nap to invite me to a last-minute pool party that you yourself won't even participate in. For a good chunk of the two hours we were there, it was just me, Nick, and Alex wading in the shallow end of the pool, me playing with my GoPro and Nick and Alex doing... whatever the hell this is.

I'm... I'm not sure what's happening here.

Anyway, I splashed Christina and Angela with a ton of water as punishment. And eventually Christina gave in and swam anyway. Look at this awesome shot of her I got.

Slowwww motion.

Later, we grabbed Boba, so I guess losing my naptime was worth it for a free lychee smoothie.





RFotD: A framerate of 24 FPS is the bare minimum required to give the illusion of motion in humans. That's why 24 FPS is the film industry's standard framerate.

SGAT: Went outside for the majority of the day. Imagine that.

Day Four: Parkour Flow and Mario Kart

6/17/14, 10:30 AM PDT

Woke up at 7:10 to drop my sister off at school because I'm a wonderful, caring brother that values my sister's education.

Just kidding, my parents had to practically drag me out of bed because I really wanted to sleep in today.

But I guess it's a pretty good thing that I have to drop my sister off at school every day for the rest of the month. Waking up before 10 AM means that I actually get a chance to run and/or do parkour in the morning, which I did.

A big thing I've always wanted to try with parkour was flow outside of a gym. Stuff like this video. See how they do everything without slowing down? Yeah, that's flow. Up until today, all of the parkour stuff I've done outside of a gym were single tricks that I practiced in a drill-like fashion. Even though that sort of repetitive, single-task oriented exercise helps me learn the movements, it's... well, it's pretty boring.

Yeah, this looks fun now, but it won't be after the first 30 minutes.

So today, I decided to change that and practice some real flow. Living in suburbia, I don't really have many obstacles to utilize, but the park and the front of Ericson Elementary had some pretty okay stuff. So I went crazy (or, as crazy as intermediate parkour skills would let me).

And you know what? I actually had a LOT of fun. Even though I was doing really simple stuff (pretty much just vaults and precisions), the fact that I could connect those moves smoothly just made the entire workout so much more awesome. I mean not to brag, but I was pretty amazed at myself for doing some of the things I did there.

It's a really strange feeling to describe, but at some point during the exercise, it almost felt like my body was running on autopilot. Usually when I do parkour I have to meticulously plan out every movement that I'll make, but when I practiced flow earlier today, I didn't even have to think about what I was going to do, I just ran towards an obstacle and trusted myself that I would somehow find a way through it. It didn't require any conscious decisions on my part, it just felt so fluid and natural. Even when I stumbled and fell at one point (got my foot caught on a fence while I speed vaulted over it), I just automatically saved myself by rolling and kept on running, which I thought was incredible. God, this probably sounds super cheesy, but in that hour or so that I was doing parkour, I felt really free.

Hopefully that entire paragraph sort of made sense. I might have been rambling, but really, that sort of feeling is difficult to transcribe through words. In short, I'll be practicing flow again very soon. Heck, maybe I'll even film myself with my GoPro so I can show you guys.

Oh, scratch that. Before I work on flow again, gotta work on long distance running. I got really tired out after the just 10 minutes of flow, which is AWFUL, so I'll definitely work on building up that endurance over summer. Landing could use a bit of work too, my legs hurt like CRAZY after the fifth precision or so. A few hundred more squats should solve that problem.

Same day, 11:46 PM PDT

Went to Angela's house, along with Nick and Kayla. When I got there, they were watching some weird (and frankly, kinda crappy) WWII movie. It had special effects that I could probably pull off if you gave me enough time and the dialogue was really weird. I wasn't really paying attention when it happened in the movie because I was playing Temple Run on Kayla's Kindle, but a character in the movie said the words "Yankee Doodle" or something and it made everyone watching the movie laugh? I don't know. Angela said it sucked, so I'll take her word for it.

Anyway, Angela got a WiiU a few days before school ended, so she invited us over to play Mario Kart 8. And HOLY CRAP IS IT AWESOME. It's got flying sections, it's got drifting, it's got awesome new (and ridiculously overpowered) items, it's got catchy as hell music, it's got an EPIC antigravity mode, and it's got HIGHLIGHT REELS THAT CAN BE PLAYED IN SLOW MOTION AFTER EVERY RACE.

Look at it. Just look at it.

JESUS, I am SO IMPRESSED with how amazing Mario Kart 8 is. I mean I loved Mario Kart Wii, but this just BLOWS EVERYTHING OUT OF THE WATER. Seriously, they added SO MANY MORE AWESOME THINGS, I can't even BELIEVE IT.

I want it. I want it now.





RFotD: Mario Kart 8 is the first game in the series to use a sexy, sexy 60 FPS frame rate.

SGAT: Worked on the anniversary story a bit. And by "a bit," I mean two lines. I suck at this.

Day Three: Smash Adventures in Viet's Bedroom

6/16/14, 8:15 PM PDT

Today, I went to Viet's house, along with Jordan, Ivan, and Khai. Viet has a pretty pimp room. In every other aspect, it's a pretty normal room for a teenager. A maze of clothes everywhere that require you to walk on your tiptoes. A computer half-buried under stacks of paper and wrinkled notebooks. Mysterious stains everywhere. Yeah, pretty normal for most teenagers (although my room is pretty tidy).

But what made Viet's house really awesome? IT'S TWO STORIES TALL.

Well, not two full stories. It a loft more than anything. But god DAMN, is it cool. I didn't take any pictures because I didn't wanna shame Viet by posting pictures of his bedroom on the Internet, so take a look at this picture.

(via bedroomwise.com)

See that? Yeah, imagine that bedroom, except if it had blue walls, was right next to a laundromat and an Office Depot, and a category five tornado ripped through all three buildings. Then you'll get a rough idea of what Viet's room looks like.

Anyway, what were the four of us doing in Viet's model of an apocalyptic wasteland? Just playing Super Smash Bros. Melee and a bit of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

For FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT.

Jesus Christ, I don't know how we pulled off that long of a gaming session, especially since Viet's sub-par room ventilation and lack of an electric fan meant that the room hit 10,000 K two hours into playing.

By the end of the day, most of us were close to fainting from heat exhaustion, except for Khai because he left two hours early and because his pores are all blocked from when he fell into a vat of molten plastic as a child.

Oh, Viet has a REALLY cute dog too. It was a mixed corgi and it was REALLY FAT. When Jordan and I first entered Viet's house, it just barked at us as if it was trying to be a guard dog. Except we knew it couldn't ever be a guard dog because it was SO PUDGY. When it waddled out from behind the corner of Viet's house looking like a tiny furry hippo, I just died because of how cute it was. Whenever I got the chance, I tried to play with Viet's dog (I think her name was Marcel?), but she just ran away and hid behind stuff whenever I got near her. One of the people in Viet's house (I'm assuming his brother) claims it's because their dog isn't too social, but it seemed to like Khai a lot so I think it's just a racist.

If that's the case, she's the most adorable racist that I know.





RFotD: While racism can't technically be present in animals such as dogs because it requires higher brain processes that they don't possess, animals can be conditioned to react with hostility towards people of a certain appearance, either through poor socialization or from a former abusive situation with a person of a specific look. In short, they can "act" racist because they predict people's behaviors based on past negative experiences.

SGAT: I was supposed to work on my anniversary story today but I never got around to it. Too much Melee.

Day Two: Father's Day Monstrosities

6/15/14, 10:19 AM PDT

It was around 1 AM this morning that I realized I didn't have anything for Father's Day. I'm not a firm believer in Father's Day, partly because it's been commercialized to the point of insincerity and partly because I'm not big on showing any kind of love to anyone. But from pure obligation, groggy, half-asleep me decided to make a card for my dad anyway.

Here's what it looks like.

The cover.

The inside.

My mom laughed really hard when she read the entire thing. My dad kinda just looked like this.

I'd say that was a pretty good start to Father's Day.



Same day, 1:08 PM PDT

Worked on a new piano cover for a bit. The song is "Sad Machine" by Porter Robinson and ever since it was first released, I fell SO IN LOVE with it. My god, it's just such an amazing song. Still gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it and I must have listened to it over a hundred times now. If you've never heard it before, give the original a listen before you check out my half-piano cover because the original is INFINITELY better than my rendition.



And here's what I have so far on the piano. It's only a recording of me playing since currently, it requires me to use two hands for that pretty crazy left hand part.

Not bad, no? I'll work on it and hopefully you'll see the final version in a few weeks or so, lol.



Same day, 8:18 PM PDT

As part two of our Father's Day present, we went to the local pho restaurant. While we were there, my sister was messing around on the iPad. Then, she figured out how to add effects to pictures.

These are the abominations that she has created, with captions courtesy of Kayla and Christina.

Looks like my first acid trip when I had hallucinations of Mickey Mouse.

"Mmmm you smell good gurl."

Hobgoblins are real.

Love me. Feed me. Never leave me.

Jesus Christ.





RFotD: The word "pho" is believed to derive from the French phrase "pot-au-feu," which describes meat soup with boiled beef.

SGAT: Brainstormed a few ideas for the poem with Samantha.