2009, the year of…

2009 has brought it’s ups and it’s downs.  I feel like recapping the year, just because everyone’s doing it and I like reminiscing, no really.  I do.

School brought very little joy to me in 2009.  Basketball was a drag, and I admit, track was a tad.  I got hit with Senioritis in every aspect of school, but I didn’t care.  I actually really don’t have much to say about my final year at Lowell.  It was enjoyable and…well, I’ll never forget it, that’s for sure.  And to tell the truth, I was happy when I finally graduated because that means new school, new people, and new beginnings.

I met a group of people I actually grew to love as time went on.  We call ourselves “BLT”, which is short for Blacklisted.  I wasn’t meant to be part of this group, but because of them, I did.  They are the reason I love 2PM and Ok Taecyeon so much.  They know how to make me laugh and smile no matter what and I’m truly thankful for them.

I coached a team of second graders.  At first I was only doing it because it was “the proper thing to do” and I would also be able to write it on my applications.  But I learned to love coaching them and I loved all of them.  They’re so cute and they did very well.  It was nice to know that I was able to help them love a sport I also love.

Summer of 09 was definitely one of the best summers I’ve had.  But with that…I spent a lot of money.  I was out a lot during summer, which is a change compared to past summers.  I went down to LA about…5(?) times when I didn’t even used to go down to LA once a year.  My friend Alex was my summer pal.  We played a lot of pool together, and was actually the one I dragged down to LA with me twice.  Anime Expo was very fun.  I’m glad I managed to convince both Alex and Thomas to go with me, I think they had as much fun as I did.  Both ISA SF and ISA LA were amazing.  FM’s performance in SF was great, but Quest’s and David Choi’s performance in LA were amazing.  Being at an Epik High concert made me feel like I was at an actual Kpop concert.  All that was missing were the chanting fangirls, lightsticks, and balloons.  There’s probably way more I’m forgetting, but summer was fun.

Moving to Riverside was one of the best parts of the years.  It started out rough, and I felt lonely.  I was really worried life was going to be like this forever.  Luckily I met the cool people that lived in my building and we created the N Zone.  Even though we’ve only known each other for three months, we love and support each other as if we have been best friends forever.  They’ve comforted me whenever I was having problems and always kept the building busy.  The Razor Knights are always there to protect the females of the group.  Oh I can’t forget to mention I met Justin too!  Yay!  My grades were actually much better than they were at Lowell, but truthfully, I expected that.  2009 has brought some really good times to my life, but with the good, comes the bad.

With the Senioritis came the slacking, and it showed.  My graders weren’t particularly fantastic, and my APs weren’t as good as they should’ve been.  I spent too much money during the summer.  I lost one of my best friends.  But nothing is perfect and life must go on.  People move on, and people learn to put things behind them.  I just hope that happens soon.

2009, thanks for treating me well.  I know a lot of people said 2009 sucked, but I don’t think so.  It was nice, and I had fun.  2010, can you top 2009?!

So you think you can play piano?

So it has come to my attention that playing piano is actually a great skill to possess.  It pains me that it took me until now to realize that.  I met a really close friend of mine who loves playing the piano any moment he can.  I’ve tagged along with him recently to his trips to the piano room because I enjoy piano music.  As I watched him glide over the white and black keys of the piano, my heart ached.  I couldn’t read the sheet music as fast as I used to be able to.  And once I gathered enough courage to print out the sheet music to a song I’ve been wanting to learn how to play, I have lost the ability to cite read well and make my hands do different movements.

I began flashbacking to about…1997.  (Damn, that’s a long time ago.)  I was in second grade, and both my brother and I were taking piano lessons.  One particular lesson day came immediately to my mind.  My brother was in his lesson and I was outside jump roping.  ”I jumped 100 times, mom!”  I remember screaming in joy.  Then it was time for me to take my lesson.  Fast forward to the year 2000.  My brother quit his lessons, and I disliked spending my Thursday afternoons at piano lessons.  But I still went with a smile on my face, running up the stairs with four or five piano books in my arms.  My lesson was always around the time mail arrived at my teacher’s house so I always gathered it for her.  The lessons were in a small room that overlooked the streets.  The first piano I ever played on was in this room.  A light brown wall piano.  Next to the wooden piano bench, my teacher sat on a white wooden chair.  If you took a right before entering this small room, you’d enter the living room.  There resided the grand piano we played during recitals.  The atmosphere during recitals was sophisticated, although during that time, I didn’t understand fully the experience I went through.  My mind surfs through the many days I spent in this old Victorian house.  If I were to visit this house back in San Francisco, it wouldn’t be the same.  My teacher moved to the East Coast and who knows who lives there now.  I feel like part of my childhood moved away, and I can never get it back.

I sit here blogging, listening to my friend play the piano.  Besides the fact the song he’s playing is sad, reminiscing back to this segment of my life makes me sad.  Piano is another one of the few things I wish my mom made me stick with because now, my skills are mediocre compared to my friends.  Considering how long I took lessons for, my ability to read music is lacking and I feel like I let myself down.  Hopefully with some determination and practice, I’ll be back to where I was.

Turning up the heat

I actually haven’t blogged in a while and I figured now is the perfect chance to get that one post that’ll collect dust for another…oh about 5 months.

Today, April 20th, 2009, marks the day that my appeal efforts got rejected.  I received a letter from UC Irvine stating that despite my effots, they still cannot offer me admission.  Yeah okay, I’m a little bummed out, but after getting rejected a second time from UC Santa Cruz, I didn’t expect to get into Irvine.  So I submitted my SIR to UC Riverside today.  Making me an official…highlander is it?  They’re bears with kilts I think.  Today also marks the hottest day April 2009 has seen.  It made me ask myself, “Goddammit, how am I going to survive living at Riverside when I can’t hand a measely 92 degrees?”  Most of the answers I received went a little like “Stay inside where there’s air conditioning.” and that’s very true.  I guess I’ll have to live my college life cooped up in a) My dorm or b) the library.  Sounds exciting huh?  But then I realized, despite the hot weather, going to school down in Southern California may not be so bad.  I realized this while talking to my friend Patrick.  We basically plotted out how far Riverside was from Irvine and how long it would take. (1 hour drive)  I also calculated the distance to my family down in SoCal, Calpoly SLO, UCSC, UCSD, and Korea Town.  A lot of my friends go to school in SoCal so it would be an advantage to be down there with them.  I’ll always adjust and make new friends so I don’t think this whole, “Riverside is the fail school” idea will last very long.  Besides, I’ve got studying abroad and transferring to UC Irvine to motivate me to work hard and get the hell out of the desert.

On another note, I<3BigBang.  TOPren is OTP.

In dier need…

I feel that I need to update my blog. But I have nothing much to say at the moment so I’ll just random words that’s held a meaning lately.  I’ll also number them off :]

1. SHINee

2. Big Bang

3. TOP

4. Korea

5. Kkok Boda Namja

6. Blinkies

7. Soompi

8. YGBB

9. SHINee Forums International

10. YOTANGee

11. Fanfics

12. Graphics

13. Photoshop

14. School

15. Dune

16. Basketball

17. Drama

18. Track and Field

19. Field trips

20. Labs

21. Stupid lowerclassmen

22. Toki Doki

23. Shopping

24. KPop CDS

25. KPop posters

26. Korean Music Festival ‘09

27. International Secret Agents Concert

28. Far East Movement

29. WongFu Productions

30. Stats

31. Sleep

32. Sunset Glow

33. Haru Haru

34. Rapping

35. Dancing

YAY 35 THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT!

I also think I need to change the banner up there.  Those pictures are so old, and maybe I’ll make one of just Onew and TOP.  But that’s another day.

SHINee-ism

I’ve been converted.  I will now admit that I am, a SHINee fangirl.  I AM NOT OBSESSED WITH THEM.  Not…yet at least, and hopefully wont be.  But truthfully, I’m like any other person with their favorite famous person.  Let’s recall my steps to SHINee-ism.

1. I ended up joining a SHINee community, SHINeee.net/forums.  It’s tag is “Your number one source for all things SHINee” and believe it or not, their tag is true.  Everything and anything SHINee you can find there.  Updated daily, Iple, schedules, and messages are translated giving you the whats what about SHINee.  And who could forget the snapshots section of the forums.

2. I bought “The SHINee World”.  SHINee’s first full length album.  What else can I say about it?  Physical SHINee merchandise, sitting in my room.  I’ll review my favorites.

001. The SHINee World (Doo-Bop)

SHINee’s opening song.  One of my favorites actually.  It’s more of a rap rather than a song.  It’s nothing much, just talking about them..typical opening song.  My favorite is the end though, “Bling Bling is Jonghyun, our “powerful Taemin” is Taemin, “The only tofu” is Onew,  SHINee’s “Almighty and All-Knowing key” is Key, the Charismatic Flame, Minho, My name is Minho”  Yup..it’s my favorite part.

003. 산소 같은 너 (Love like Oxygen)

At first I didn’t like this song.  I watched the music video before I actually listened to the song, and the music video was just bleh.  Too colorful, and it had a weird vibe to it.  But then I listened to it again and I really enjoyed it.  It has a Michael Jackson tone to it (SHINee said in an interview they were supposed to sing it like Michael Jackson) and the music video has really good dancing in it too.  The boys look good in suspenders and colored wife beaters.

009. 혜야 (Y Si Fuera Ella)

Jonghyun’s solo.  It made me realize just how good of a singer Jonghyun really is.  He’s got great range, and you can hear the emotion he puts into singing.  He recently did his first live performance of this song on 081213 at the One Love Concert.  He is an amazing live performer, but you could tell he was nervous being onstage by himself.  If only the other members of SHINee could be up with him!

012. 누난 너무 예뻐 (Replay)

SHINee’s debut song.  Although I’m not a noona to them (Only to Taemin), it’s one of my favorites.  The dance is appealing, or maybe it’s just their outfits.  It’s got a good rhythm and the lyrics itself are good.  My favorite part is Onew’s “Nunan naul MVP” keke.  My basketball teammate and I always do the MVP motions when he sings it.  I will not try and learn this dance.  ANEYO! It’s supposed to move   >>

3. Stanford gave me “AMIGO” for Christmas.  SHINee’s repackaged album featuring 3 new songs.  I’ll only go over Amigo.

001. 아.미.고 (AMIGO)

I REALLY LOVE THIS SONG.  Thissong currently has 266 plays, outranking ANY OTHER song in my library.  Fast paced, not really following the same tone as the rest of the songs, but it’s got a really good beat.  In an interview, SHINee said this song is supposed to be that if you fall in love with a pretty girl you will suffer.  The music video is good, the dance is good.  It looks hard, but I’ve managed to learn most of it.

4.  I got SHINee’s 2009 calendar for Christmas from

my boyfriend.

Umm it’s a calendar and it sits on my desk. I can look at SHINee every day.  All the pictures are really nice, and Onew’s picture is for August!  Taemin needs to a little bit more photogenic, Minho is of course the most model looking of them all, and OnTae is the best represented pairing in the calendar.  Second is OnKey.

Four steps to SHINee-ism.  That’s all it takes.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

P.S. (A)Yai, you are a perv.

Recollection.

Well, I’ve decided to do a recollection of anything recent and worth blogging about so here we go!

UC apps are due soon, unfortunately ive got 2/3 of prompt one done and about two sentences of prompt two. I’m horrible, I know. School is definitely a reason why my personal statements are not done, but even if I had the free time, why would I WANT to write them? I admit that I did today, write some. I felt accomplished and went to watch National Treasure 2 with my parents. Oh that Nicolas Cage, what a stud. (Just kidding) He’s got well defined cheek bones, if that’s what they are. You know, those lines from your eye down to about your mouth? Enough talking about Mr. Nicolas Cage’s facial features, I’d give the movie 4.5 stars out of 5. It was a good movie, it had it’s funny parts. My favorite was when he stuck his hand in between these two rocks and started screaming. Of course everyone thought he was hurt so they were screaming, but he was just kidding. It was funny despite the fact that that is done very often. However towards the end of the movie when they’re wandering around Mount Rushmore, the lighting is very poor. You can barely tell who’s face is whose, and in which part of the cave people are in. But good story, I liked it.

That really isn’t a reason why I’ve procrastinating now that I think about it, so here is reason number one. I’ve recently been obsessed with my new Asian sensation SHINee, a group of teenage Korean guys.
Onew (The Leader): Grey hat and blazer. Born in the year 1989, Onew stands at 5′10″ blood type O. I sound like a major stalker, but that’s what the websites say. Onew is definitely my favorite. Not because he’s the leader because I didn’t know that when I first saw their music video for Replay (Noona you’re so pretty). He has a wonderful smile and he’s just so adorable.

Jonghyun (Bling Bling): Red wristband. Born 1990, Jonghyun is 5′8″ (HAHA Onew is taller sucker.) I’d say he’s my…3rd favorite. Maybe 2nd because he sings Y Fuera Ella which is my FAVORITE song (next to Replay). He has very good vocal range and that song is just wow. He has big nostrils. :3

Taemin (The Maknae): Green shirt. Born in 1993, he’s only 14! 5′8″ but he still looks too much like a kid. Sorry, but you’re on the bottom. Too young and he has this kind of…creepy smile. And that bowl cut, not for me.

Minho (Charismatic Flame): Hand on knee staring directly at you. Minho is also born in 1990, however 5′11″ (Darn you, one inch taller than Onew). He is above Taemin on my favorite list, so that would make him…4th. He’s also got this creepy look. And in the music video for Amigo, he has this blank expression that’s very unflattering in the beginning. Nothing else is wrong with him, just Onew is better.

Key (The Almighty Key): Yellow striped shirt. Key is born 1991, same age as me! Also 5′10″ he is my second favorite. Close second actually. Only thing is Onew has a better smile. Key has more of a… I don’t know how to put it. But they’re both my favorites :]

This is one of my favorite videos of them singing karaoke:

Onew is so cute with his maraca <3

Second reason why I’ve been procrastinating would have to be manga. I’ve read a lot of manga this past week probably because I don’t want to do work. My favorite manga I read is definitely Hot Gimmick by Miki Aihara. Hatsumi is a girl who lives with her family in the building owned by Ryouki’s family. She gets caught buying an at home pregnancy test and Ryouki tells her to become his slave. But then her childhoo friend Azusa comes back to town and decides he wants her to become his girlfriend. Ryouki get’s angry and forbids her to see him, but she doesn’t listen. On top of that, Hatsumi’s brother, Shinogu, has a crush on his sister. Ryouki later forms feelings for Hatsumi and everyone becomes angry and starts fights, have sex, pretend to have sex, and other good stuff. Full of drama, twists and turns, this was definitely on of those mangas where you need to keep reading. I give it a 5 out of 5. The artwork was fantastic, story was awesome, and it always kept me wanting to keep reading. (Reason why I lost sleep that week and failed a test..) Definitely read it even if you’re a guy.

Third reason is Ninja Town for Nintendo DS. A defensive game with ninjas and devils that starts out amazingly easy, but then gets annoyingly difficult. These ninjas are also part of the Top Friends Facebook application. The mood part. Anyway you place ninjas with special (or just plain ninjas) on the map, and as the rush of devils come in, you must defend your town! Sounds easy? Guess again. They definitely limit the amount of cookies (Ninjatown currency) you get per devil killed making it difficult to either upgrade current ninjas, or build new ones. The devils get increasingly difficult and come in bigger mobs. On top of that, they start to pile mobs on top of mobs making it even harder! AHhh!!!!! It’s hard and makes me sad. =[

Those are actually the only reasons why I’ve been procrastinating. More currently in my life however…

Toki Doki creator Simone Legno was doing signings at the Union Square Macy’s. Of course, I went, so did my boyfriend Michael. We waited in line from 10:40 AM to 1 PM. That’s when he started signing. After he started we waited another…30 minutes – 1 hour. My legs are tired, but it sure was worth it. I was surprised (sort of) at how American looking he..looked. Decked out in all Toki Doki clothing he didn’t look Italian at all, except his nose. And he had a strong Italian accent. I ended up buying a new bag that I got signed. Bought a SANDy doll from Japan Town that Michael got signed (for me), and because I bought a bag, I got a signed fan. Woo hoo. Met some weird people though…

That is all. Time to go sleep.

P.S. This is a hella long post…

omgshoes.

New shoes make me happy.

Chapter Three: Oh Poultry!

This one is horrible because i didnt know what to write at all…

As I slump up to the third floor I run into my friend Sean.

“Hey Sean!” I say gasping for air.

“Hey Alyssa! What’s wrong???” he asks with a smile on his face

“Oh nothing, just getting a workout as usual”

Our brief encounter is interrupted by the fact we only have 2 minutes to get to our next class. Running down the hall way and into class, I arrive 30 seconds early. Settling into my seat, I pull out my notebook, math book, pencil, and calculator.

“Psst, hey Alyssa” whispers Daniel, the boy who sits in front of me.

“What?”

“Did you beat level nine yet?” pointing at his calcultor

“No, not yet, but I think I might today!”

“Haha, ok cool!”

“And if you can derive the quadratic formula…” our teacher says while writing up the quadratic formula

“OH POULTRY!” he says when he writes -2B instead of 2A The class giggles, but dies down after a long 2 seconds. 10 minutes left in class and still on level nine.

“Alyssa, can you answer number 6.50?” calls the teacher

“ERMM…..No, I don’t get it..” I say in desperation

“Fine, how about you Gary?”

Managed to wiggle out of that one…how lucky. And as the teacher continues his lecture, I move on pass level 9.

In search of a quote..

So far i’ve stumbled upon 4 quotes. I will not name the source of the quotes, but i will add more as i find them.

“Live life to the fullest, you never know what will happen next”

“Those who break the rules are scum, that’s true. But, those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.”

“I’m not defined by my abilities alone”

“You won’t become the master of your weapon by relying on its power..first you got to become the master of yourself”

The 4th one is kinda lolubernerd status.

NG? No Good?

Nice is never out of style.  Nice is simple, simple is classic, classic is cool. So I got my NG shirt, as seen above, and me and my friend Stanford decided to take a picture wearing our NG shirts.  We’re holding up the letters NG if you couldn’t tell.  We (being me) sent in our picture to WongFu haha.  Umm that’s basically it.