Why we want to be 60 now...

Robyn: Who would ever want to be 60?!
Ted: I do.
Robyn: Why would you?
Ted: Because everything would have been settled by then. I would know how my career has taken off, who I am married to and who my kids are. I would have already reached my destination.
Robyn: What's the fun in that? Life isn't about reaching the destination; it's about the journey and experience that we have while reaching it.

Yes, I did just paraphrased/quoted How I Met Your Mother. After four seasons, this was the one conversation that stuck in my mind the most, simply because it applies to myself so much. In a sense I guess that is why I tolerate watching the lovesick Ted search around in high hopes of figuring out his life. Everyday I wish to wake up and...well not exactly be 60, but wake up to a life where I have already achieved the stage at which my life is magically figured out. I know where I am working, who my life partner is and what my childrens' names are. It is all the bottled up anxiety and unknown that generates a sense of fear and utter hopelessness for my future.

After hearing Robyn's response, I think I can finally reason myself to be a bit more optimistic and less tense about the future. From early myths to stories of our ancestors, we are creatures who constantly try to predict what will happen in the future. We even pay millions of dollars to traders/brokers to figure out what will happen in the next five minutes. Why is that we are so willing to jump to our destination? It is mostly that the torture of the journey to our destination is so arduous? We cannot bear not knowing what our next steps are? If this is so innately wired into our minds, how can we enjoy our lives, when every waking moment is used to calculate the next?

Perhaps we must grit our teeths, roll up our sleeves and rush forward, blinded to our fears and open to all opportunities. Today I had my first round of interview and the interviewer said that courage is the most important trait. Yes of course because courage is the most difficult trait to master. How many people can say that they did not hesitate for one second before belly flopping your way down a 12 feet pool? I definitely stood at the edge of the pool for more than 10 minutes before a clumsy fat kid tripped over his flip flops and pushed me down. The dive was thrilling and the moment that I hit full body into the pool was utter satisfaction. There the destination has been reached! But if I were wise, I should have enjoyed those ticking minutes of standing by the pool contemplating the risk of what might happen if I suddenly forget to hold my breath and kick. The moment of considering my options and seeing faint glimpses of the unknown should be the fascinating part of the story. This the moment where destinations are created and altered, whether we regret them or not. The satisfaction comes from the notion that we created the destination.

From such reasoning, our ever so desirable destination cannot be viewed as a simple standard endpoint. It is nothing but standard. Our journey of decisions and contemplation, what we choose to do and not do, what fate likes to challenge us with all shape our destination. It would be alienating to wake up one day and discover that we have reached our destination but not know and feel how it was that we got here in the first place,

Part of me that hinges on my rush towards shaping my destination is the great fear of failure, which comes from over contemplating. I am not always lucky enough to have the assistance of a clumsy fat kid, so I guess I simply must be my own clumsy self (this is true both figuratively and literally). As I finish this seemingly long post, to which should have been just a brief one, I will take a nap and begin to trip myself into the 12 feet pool, working away my anxiety and just moving forward, enjoying every tumble and fall while smiling gladly at all the small victories that shape the bigger win, my ultimate destination created by yours truly.

TVB deserves some props for 飞女正传 (Fly With Me)

(here's my sad attempt to do an entry similar to that of http://www.dramabeans.com/ in analyzing tvb drama)

Because my family watches television like a dinner side dish, we're constistently exposed to the tyranny of poorly written Hong Kong TVB dramas. I'm not saying their all bad but they mostly aren't good. So we've recently been following the drama called 飞女正传 aka Fly With Me, starring the veteran actress Ada Choi, having just came back from a year long wedding vacation, the always charming Moses Chan, nicknamed muscle man Kenny Wong, and the cutey Raymond Cho. The overview of the story is that Ada plays a female role to which all girls fear that they're future will be like (at least I totally fear this future), a woman whose rather successful in her 30's and still does not have a steady relationship. Her body has begun to lose it's S-line and begun to sprout the silhouette of a big pear. After all her horrible past relationship with guys, she gets genetically mutated into a superwoman named Janet Bin. Janet Bin is her alter ego, not only does she have a figure that Victoria Secret's models would die for, she can fly and has super powers. The show goes on to deal with Ada's character balancing her relationships with her new alternative identity.

There really isn't much to the plot that's fascinating and no I am not diverting from my title. TVB writers deserve props not for the general plot but for the five minute philisophical speech that occurs in episode 3 (spoiler!).

Towards the end of episode 3, Ada's character wallows over the guilt of sending her company's heir into a coma. She finds herself hanging around her 2nd uncles gift shop located in the hospital, where she remarks why he keeps all the left over umbrellas that visitors leave around. He gives a insightful comment that with each umbrella there is an owner and with each owner there is a story. This is already a pretty artistic set up, but what happens next delighted me even more.

After her uncle is done telling the umbrellas' individual stories, Ada finds herself taking sometime to self reflect on his words. Now we get to hear the voice over of her uncle's philosophical speech, which if I may give you a rough translation.

"There is philosopher once said what makes human human is the notion

of memory. Humans even though they tend to forget, but if only a small

minor thing can bring them back into recalling the past, then it makes

them whole and human altogether."

What's brilliant about this scene isn't the speech but the image of Ada looking beyond and we get to see a camera zoom out with her uncle's shop coincidentally named Godot and the clock on the left hand side rapidly spinning. At first I thought, oh cool Godot interesting that Hong Kong people would put the name Godot in their dramas because it's very uncommon. It was not until I began to listen to the voiceover did I realize how the whole scene fits together so well. For those who don't know, the shop's sign Godot should have orginated from the Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot," which the theme of the play flirted with life, death, future and past. The two protagonists of the play converse in nonsensical terms to which upon first glance, you're caught with a but "HUH?" hanging above your head. Upon further inspection you find that they're conversations are enriched with deep thoughts about the value of life. The two characters are always waiting for something call Godot, they don't know if it's a person or a divine being they just know that is their task. There's a lot of scholarly work that revolved around this play, so I won't further go into it, but one of the relevant themes of the play and Ada's scene was the notion of memories and knowing your past. The uncle's speech was about how fleeting moments of memories serve make us human; ironically, in the play the two protagonists come off as fools because they don't know of their past but only live the present and seek the future. In addition as Ada is pondering upon these words, the clock on the side quickly spins away suggesting that time within this scene is not important that the memories are built not within a time constraint but upon a different component of the individual.

This is pretty intriguing because Ada's alter ego Janet Bin is derived from her but plays a separate character with super powers. She looks great and is almighty but lacks a past because she's essentially spawned by Ada's resentment towards males. Her actions do not have meaning because she lacks memories, making her not human.

I never thought that TVB writers would present work that referenced literature outside of Asian thinking (actually they rarely reference the academia world at all). In addition to have this scene who closely represent the whole play within a couple of seconds is rather clever of them. This scene defintely needs to be applauded, as for the rest of the drama your opinion is as good as mine.

biggest fear: INDIFFERENCE

As child I was so sheltered because my grandparents raised me in China, where they were constantly afraid that a minor bump on my arm will lead to aggravating pain of telling my parents back in the US that something is wrong with their daughter. The interesting thing is, it was because of their overwhelming protection, I'm a HUGE wimp!
I fear so many things but the thing I fear the most is indifference. Life is so thoughtless when your response for everything is: I'll do just what it takes to get by. I've realized that I'm constantly indifferent towards everything. You would think that picking a major in college would make you passionate about it, but no I just tolerate it. You think that getting a great internship in a big company would encourage me to have the drive to work harder, but no I just sit in my cubby glaring at the screen wondering when it's 5. It scares me so much that there's nothing that gives me the edge to drive me forward at full speed rather than just cruising along. Back in my freshman days I would have said art because NYU academia simply prevented the artist in me from emerging, so I rebelled and made it work. Now I fear that even art isn't sacred at all. My mom just asked me that I haven't produced a painting since last year. I was shaking so much staring at my empty canvas last night, fearing the worst: I would no longer be able to paint. The fantasical world that I loved when painting would soon escape from me and leave stranded in this horrible reality to which I can only tolerate.
So for the rest of the year, I hope to get some type of drive (no chemicals involved), so that I can be a more dynamic person for myself. It's dooms day when I realized that besides tolerating everything else in the world, I'm tolerating myself as well. (ugh!)

It's Just a Game...You'll Get Over It...soon

In the past year everything seems so light and airy, as if nothing are grounded or definite. Probabilities of failure and success is a difference of decimals places (as my calculator can attest to since my stats exam bombed due to it).

Despite the winning success of Ogilvy, fate played me in so many ways. When people tell me life is just a game, they weren't kidding! And the worst part is when you find out that you have barely any control over it, it's the most depressing thought. My dad says it's because we're O blood type, meaning we get emotionally moved easily and then get over it very soon, which is true. As a child I never cried for more than 5 minutes and it wasn't just because I was a child, I just thought it was kinda dumb to keep focused on one thing for so long.

As I'm getting older, I find reminants of my mother as well, a person who can hold grudges for entire decades (it's proven because she still pulls out old knots from her childhood years in arguments with her parents). I wished I could get over the fact that I was played, played like a ploy of some plan to which I was ignorant of and obviously did not agree to.

You can often hear me say "You'll get over it" when you come to me with a problem because no matter how much you're agonizing now after sometime that climatic overbearing feeling just isn't there anymore. It's true, try it. But the problem becomes how to handle and tolerate those feelings while you're waiting to "get over it."

While you're waiting for the storm to blow over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4gqtr6rffo

And then learn how to play the game instead of getting played

Was it a Sign?

Okay despite, my horrible under the construction layout, I can't help but continue on making my posts.

Although being a college student, growing up under the heavy influence of understanding situations and results in scientific and logical ways; there are times to which we can not run away from superstitions and claim that they are true.

I remember when I was awaiting my UPenn admissions, I got on an early train because they were going to post the acceptance/rejections online at 3:00, so I jumped hope as quick as possible. I was staring outside the train window when I saw the adjacent train labeled with the number 4444. Seriously, I'm not some old Chinese lady but four fours, that's like getting thirteen thirteens for Asian people. Load and behold, I got rejected from UPenn.

I really hate waiting for results. Similary today was the interview request acceptance/rejection for Ogilvy and Mather ad agency. I really wanted it so bad, just as much as I wanted the UPenn acceptance but that didn't get me any good results so I was so scared. I ran all my rush week errands and got on a later train than usual. Waiting endlessly for that F train to make it's grand entrance, until I spotted a lady holding a really bright red bag. It caught my eye and what drew me closer was that it had the Ogilvy logo on it!

Exactly as above! Was it a sign? Okay I really don't want 4444 signs but dude it was staring me right in the face. I seriously wanted to go and talk to her until the train finally came and we both got lost in the crowd. It's a sign alright when it comes to situations like this. Thanks to that lady with the red Ogilvy bag, I got accepted for an interview. It's a minor win but up against all those crazy odds of my school versus the thousand others vying for the same interview, I consider myself lucky. Sigh

Now that I believe it was a sign, I'm still very curious. Ogilvy has bags? Was it a store? Wait Ogilvy has a store? I wonder who that lady was....

Under Construction

(super jealous of other ppl's beautiful and impressive blogs)

argh why does it look like my friends' nonprofit website >.<