082306 - call my name, you know my name.

so for the longest time, i was holding off thoughts on my final departure from irvine; a little over four definate years of my life spent down here forming who i am to be and become. i tried to escape it by living day-by-day in my own world, a world i had molded from the various experiences, people, and voices that i have come to interact with daily and sporatically.

but this summer, i was continuously reminded of the who and how i would become, reminded constantly that i was bound for where i was originally conceived. this summer i was offered a job that i initially accepted and was picked out of a couple dozen to perform with, an occupation that i had desired and that, i believed, would have led me to my  "future". but parallel to getting this job, i was also excepted a second-time back into uc irvine's student-led orientation program, spop (something i had also dreamed of far beyond when i had learned about my other job). i eventually dropped the first job i was accepted into, figuring the orientation program would be my last grasp at holding-on to who i was during those four years at irvine.

so i was a spop 'returner', one who had gone through spop staff before and came again as someone the first-year staff could look up to, showing them, as i have said in earlier blogs, who i was and who i had become. yet this summer was different from how it was when i went through it two years ago. familiar nuances still mirroring the summer of 2004, yet, at the same time, changed in color, face, and form. this time around it was also different in the fact that there were many things, obstacles even, that were not expected at all. i wasn't the same boy who was wide-eyed and ready for everything and everyone that came along, i graduated, i knew who i was and who i wanted to become. i was eager, but only conditionally, i liked someone and remembered what it was like to be hurt, and i remembered, not only the past nuances, but the people before who weren't the people who stood before me now. you realize the people that you onced loved there, but not quite, that people change, you change, and that sometimes old friends become memoirs on your nostalgic memory. an obstacle that i was talking prehand was that of an incoming freshman of mine, a spopper, who passed away a week before she was coming back down to visit the staff she had come to love and respect. (for people who don't go through spop, nor staff it, you would probably question the validity of our affections to the incoming freshmen, their parents, and even one another on staff, but alas, i guess it's one of those things you'd have to go through and experience to finally visualize and take grasp of).

but besides that, her, momo nakamura her name, had an effect on me greatly, seeping into my veins and brain puddles. i remember how she was greatly questioning her admittance into uc irvine and whether or not it was the "right" school for her, something many irvine students do when they first step onto the soil of our campus. so i told momo, 'wait, you'll see', telling her to wait out her weekend with spop to see if whether or not she would change her mind at all; if us, as staff, could sway the negativity that set-in her mind. as the weekend finally came to a closing, she came up to me, as we were checking-out, stating that she was happy to come here, that she felt like she belonged, that she was happy - something i'll always remember. spop three was the third to the fifth of august, she died in a car accident five days before.

the shock sets in, you're at a loss of words, thoughts, ideas, and emotions. you can't help but allow the tears stain your face, a wreckage of pain and blank on your pallete - you don't know what to do regardless of how many times you've helped people through their hurt. days passed, i drew, i ran, i broke my new year's resolution and used the word "fuck" numerous times, i did things to keep myself busy so that you won't think of these things; bad things in life, things that make us human. i couldn't draw, i didn't want to run, i kept swearing though, but out of it all, i did write; something about writing takes everything you feel inside and lays it all down in front of you, alleviating some discomfort you felt earlier. i wrote a spoken-word piece for momo and for me, something that i eventually performed in front of all of spop three staff and participants for the talent show. it helped, i cried, and when i left the stage, went to the back and yelled out more profanities - it helped.

so how does this all connect to me leaving? well, i don't know how much my poem meant to any of the participants or my staff, but i got an e-mail a couple of days ago, directing me to a blog that a participant wrote:

The talent show included more than the breakdancing, including an improv section, funny skits of both clever dialogue and physical comedy, humorous poet recitals, and, on a very memorable and much lower note, an extremely depressing poem written by a staffer of another house about a beloved "Spopper" who had passed away not too long before. The amazing thing is, people during this program only stay for two days, so it made everyone realize just how close people become in such a short time. Had it not been for that man and his poem, perhaps Camino, nor any house, would have been so eager to "Reunite."

i read this and it makes me feel validated. everything i did this summer wasn't in vain or unnoticed, i made the choice to come back to make a difference and in the eyes of regardless of how many, i did. i'm ready to go home, i know i'm going to have to start over again and the same shimmers of discomfort and uneasiness will reappear here and there, but knowing i did something valuable with the time given to me here makes all the difference.

i remember when i first came down here everything looked like a crowded room, both luminous and strangely unfamiliar, so i began writing down in this journal, writing about who i wanted myself to be, who i used to be, and where i was at that precise moment within my own blog on xanga, and this is where i feel ok to end; this is where it's ok to say goodbye again and start over back home. good day and goodnight.

pahee.

Soundtrack of My Life

Open your choice of music player and put it on shuffle.
Press play.
For every question type the song that's on.
And when you go to a new question press the next button.
No cheating! Ready? GO!

Opening credits: "touching my body" - danity kane
Waking up: "the elephunk theme" - black eyed peas
Average day: "do we stand a chance" - one vo1ce
First date: "cry" - james blunt
Falling in love: "your body is a wonderland" - john mayer
Breaking up: "since you been gone (acoustic)" - kelly clarkson
Getting back together: "more than love" - sweetbox
Life’s okay: "fade into you" - mazzy star
Mental breakdown: "waiting..." - boa
Driving: "it's you" - ryan cabrera

Flashback: "it's all about you (not about me)" - tracie spencer
Partying: "stickwitu" - the pussycat dolls

Happy dance: "in my pocket" - mandy moore
Regretting: "nothing" - nikka costa

Long night alone: "dance dance" - fall out boy
Death scene: "the tower" - vienna teng

End Credits: "because of you" - kyla

072606

for four years, i've kept this blog as a way to take notice of nostalgia and of my own happenings, writing both articles based upon nonchalant, melancholy, and whimsical nuances of this thing i call my life. for four years i've lived walking distance from the campus; sometimes driving, but mainly a hop, jump, and skip away to and from my classes.  in those four years, i've learned more about the world, how it works, turns, evolves, and shapes people into the society we have come to know. i've discovered cultures, formulas, mathematics, sciences, verb tenses, works of art, educating myself on new ways of looking at things, analyzing pretenses that we had once thought were true before. i have also learned things about the world you don't learn in books, drugs, why intimacy isn't always intimate, love, jobs, computers, and how we all search for someone to make us feel something more. in that first year, i was that stereotypical quiet asian kid who was overweight and didn't really speak up at all. in my third year, i pushed my way out, straying away from who i was and taking on who i was to become. i've fallen in love for the first time, but haven't had my heart break for the last. making new and old friends along the way, trying to keep ahold of them as i've kept myself busy, searching for emerson's path that might have lead me in my own direction. i've almost died twice and lived more times than i can count on my fingers. i've been a student, a co-worker, an orientation advisor, a teacher, a tutor, a salesman, a bum, an advisor, a community programmer, a "wannabe" filipino, a boyfriend, a "make-out" buddy, a douchebag, a roomie, and everything in-between. i've come from nothing and turn myself into something; taking my past nuances, things i had never seen in me, and working on who i was to be and who i am to become. after these points that i have mapped out in my brain puddles for the past years i have learned to want things in myself and in my life: i want to see the world, i want to correct papers, i want to learn how to cook professionally, i want to pick up a new life, i want a lover, i want to say, "it's a beautiful day" in more languages than i can count on my fingers, and i want to make a difference. in a couple of months i may leave the people and places i have come to learn and know behind, but then you remember it is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. but the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes. for four years, i've kept this blog as a way to take notice of nostalgia, my own record of my own life, and as this summer draws down and irvine finally leaves me, i'll look back on who i was and the people and places that have imprinted themselves onto me, press the "back" button on my computer screen, remember who i was, and end somewhere where i began.

thanks you guys for everything.

pahee.

061106

so crazy-weekend. so you know you and your roomies threw a good party when the line is stretched from the door, past the parking-lot, onto the sidewalk, and slipping onto the street. when they shut the party down fourty minutes before orginally planned because the bar is tapped out of alcohol, they let around 100+ people over the max capacity into the place, everyone's drunk, people IM, text, say or e-mail you that it was hella T-I-T tite,  alumni show-up to the party from los angeles, san diego, and far off just to say 'hi', you have responsible "d-d's", there's an afterparty at alejandros and jack-in-the-box, and when you asked if you met the "bar-tab", the bartender just looks at you, laughs, and says, 'we have no more alcohol because of you guys.'

yo thanks for coming out everyone, sorry if the wait to get in was hella long, but hey, congrats to the class of 2006. oh yeah! and oh shooot! my mom and pop came down; i always miss get sad when they leave =T hollerr family. pahee

052906 - letting the warmth come back in.

you go at it a second time; reapplying because of your own personal agendas and convictions, questioning to why or why not you'd want to do something for another round. you reapply having the prenotions of how it was like before, the people you met, the things you've said and did, and to show people the person you became. but for the second round, it's different - you're different. those same people you met the first time, although some still there, have gone off and begun to lead their own lives. the things you said and the things you've done, all scratches in the memory bank of your brain puddles. you applied wanting to make a difference, become someone, and show someone what you were born to do - lead. those nuances that you fell in love with, now gone. you do these things now, not to show people the person you will become, but to show them, from those past nuances, the person you are.

everybody's looking for that something - one thing that makes it all complete. you can find it in the strangest places, places you never knew it could be. some find it in the face of their children, some find it in their lover's eyes; who can deny the joy it brings, when you find that special thing, you can fly without wings.

i <3 spop.
pahee.