Chain letters

Have you ever received a personal survey email from friends? You know, one of those things where it asked you to fill in your favorite beverage and what you ate last night. During high school, my friends liked to send out those, with questions ranging from who-cares to none-of-your-business. From reading between the lines, I’m sure you can guess how I felt about them and how glad I was when my respective friends all seemed to get over them (or at least removed me from the address tagline).

Yesterday, one of my friend (who I met here in college) sent me one of those. Needless to say, I did not receive it with much grace. Then to top it off, she predicted that I would be one of the ones who would reply with answers intact.

Childishly, I responded “Perhaps I should not, just to be unpredictable.” Misunderstanding, she responded, “It’s not to predict your future, but to know about your past and present.” After several more back and forth, I finally sent her my answers this morning.

But I have to wonder, would this be taken as encouragement? And, how much of a hypocrite am I for caving to peer-pressure and not only responded but volunteered to spam some friends along the way?

And you know what, I bet you some of those friends, who were spammed by me, are busy spamming other friends at this very moment.

All I can say is: the chain letter tradition lives on…

I may be a murderer….

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That got your attention, right? Read on for more details.

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I read The Daily yesterday, and there was a commentary in the opinions section by Jessie Opoien entitled: “Gentlemen revive chivalry today” (to read it, click here). If you are too lazy to read it, it’s basically about how she recall being told by her mother to let boys open the door, and how it’s not done too often. Also, it’s a call-to-action to tell guys to bring back chivalry and open doors for ladies (I am doing the article a great injustice by summing it up this way, so go read it here).

Anywho, as I was reading it, I thought to myself, why do some females get all annoyed when males don’t treat them as equals, yet complain because their doors aren’t opened for them. But then I read more, and she did addressed that question, so kudos.

However, my main reason for writing this is that I have this friend, whom I’ve known since freshmen year of high school. Whenever we hang-out, he would always open the door for me, and I would always say, “You go first.” His response: “No, I insist” as he stubbornly hold onto the door. I’m stubborn also, so I would say, “I insist more.” This almost always happen, all the way through high school.

But, I don’t do this with just my friend. In fact, I do this with everyone who had ever hold the door for me (or a variation of it). And when we enter a double door (where there’s one door, a waiting area and another door), I would go in the first door the gentlemen is holding open, and race to the other door just to return the favor.

Well, I recently hang-out with my high school friend, and guess what, he didn’t open the door for me (I think he still do it for other girls though).

So, if chivalry is dead, I probably helped in the killing of it.

(I did not post something like this in my livejournal account, because he reads that, and I don’t want him to recognize himself. lol)

How do you know…

I rant a lot nowadays. After a conversation with a close friend of mine, I wonder “What is love?” Actually, more than that, I pondered, “How do you know he or she is the one?” Here’s my theory:

I personally think it’s when your heart skip a beat when you see him/her or thought you saw him/her. When you can’t stop from smiling when you two are conversing. When you get a bit jealous when you see that person acting friendly or seeming to get along with another person (more than with you). When you care enough to question what his/her aspirations (hopes and dreams) are. When you see or want a future together. When you are sad that the other is not around. When you want the other to be happy and content, no matter where he/she is in the world.

I’m too much of a romantic, right? How about you? How do you know he/she is the one?

Waiting…

So, something that occupied a good chunk of my time today was the concept of procrastination. I’m so well versed in it that it had became an art form of sorts. In fact, me writing this entry is actually procrastination in practice. Funny how that works, eh?

Anyways, in trying to procrastinate, I updated my livejournal entry. I felt almost obligated to do it now, because it’s part of a class assignment (of my choice though, so I shouldn’t complain). I warned my readers (close friends and family members who still care) about the potential result of filler entries due to this obligation. But then, most of my blog entries are fillers, so no worries. Then I dedicated a whole paragraph about the mystery of a fried onion ring that found its way to my bed. Honestly, it’s not what you think; it’s probably much weirder than you could ever imagine, though (lol).

Well, back to procrastination. I was thinking about it today (probably because some assignments are due soon). If you say you procrastinate, it becomes such a negative, don’t you think? But what if you say, “I’m waiting for the most opportune time.” So yeah, in writing this, I’m just doing stuff during my wait for the most opportune time to do the other things I should be doing.

To blog or not to blog

So, last week in class (313 that is), Quinn finally set the criteria for our blogging assignment. We are supposed to choose a subject, an “obsession,” to blog about for the rest of the semester. So I thought to myself, my obsession, what be that? I have heard somewhere, a while back, that Obsession is a sickness that consumes. I personally feel that each obsession is more like a symptom that adds up to make a whole sick person (is that too pessimistic of a view?). And, well, I have enough symptoms to kill. So, do I want to share a sneeze or a cough with the class? What am I more comfortable with, back pain or a headache?

At first, I was just planning to reproduce my livejournal blog and write about my life, an online diary of sorts. Though my blogs have always been privately public (or publicly private?), which means I make it a rule not to use real names, write about anything too “politically incorrect,” or state anything that have legal implications, I don’t think the class really need to know all that much about my life. Then, I juggled around the idea of making this into a books/movies recommendation blog. Maybe even write reviews about some of my favorite foriegn dramas, like Hana yori dango, but then I really don’t want this be a repeat of my other similarly themed blog, which have been dormant for over two years.

After reviewing several more options, I finally thought to myself, why not blog about blogging? Even though I do not blog as much as I would like, I am always wondering if I should update my blogs. Therefore, I will use this blog as inspiration for my other two. What does that mean? I will only blog in here, if I have updated either of my other blogs. This blog will serve as a review board of sorts for my other blogs. That means, if I write a journal entry at livejournal, I will go here and hint at what I wrote there. If I update my myspace blog, I will add tidbits and pieces about it here.

So, I guess this blog will be centered around an itchy nose then; frustrating and annoying until you finally sneeze, but then, sneezing isn’t all that fun either.

On Blogs

When I was in high school, I believed blogs to be a waste of time, impractical and full of liabilities. However, after about four years of maintaining a semi-active blog, I feel it necessary to defend the benefits of blogging.

Blogging can be a practice of relieving stress, a medium for relating inspiration, and/or a means of keeping in touch with friends. When I have a bad day, I like to blog. I would start out complaining, but for some reason, I always end up stating a positive. It really puts life into perspective. When I think of a story or finish a poem, I like to post it on my blog. Readers of my blog can leave comments and critic my work, which help me improve in my writing. Also, during my stay abroad, I was encouraged to blog my activities. Since there was a 12 hours time difference from where I and my friends were, we were still able to communicate through my blogs. I shared my pictures and my adventures, and they gave me suggestions on where I should visit on my trip.

Though blogging have its advantages, there are plenty of liabilities that come with blogging, but that’s a subject for another day.