Happiness avec du fromage.

Je pense la langue Français est facile à apprendre si on passe temps avec des amis qui parlent Français. Ainsi, j’ai demandé une copine à aider moi (merci beaucoup Katie!). Je lis Harry Potter en Français et je trouve très amusant. Qu’est-ce que je peux dire?

So in translation, aka what I meant to say: I think the French language is easy to learn if one passes time with friends who speak French. Thus, I have asked a friend to help me (Thanks Katie!). I am reading Harry Potter in French and I find it very fun. What can I say?

I honestly have no idea what the title has to do with this post…well the “happieness” has some relation. It’s a Thursday and I’m blogging. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but it should be generally odd. Anyways, I can happily say that I am happily happy today. “Why?” you so kindly ask, well let me tell you my fine friend. Today was just AWESOME. Among many things was the fact that I had possibly the EASIEST/SIMPLEST mid-term EVER, it’s raining, and I woke up in a good mood (a few other things too, but you don’t need to know ;)). Of course, the fact that I’ve been taking random photos on campus again may have something to do with it too. I’ve been literally just bouncing around this day and while it IS pretty weird, it is pretty fun as well.

In other news, I’ve been starting to play the piano again. It was prompted by the rediscovery of this:

Jon Schmidt is awesome.

I find that music makes people so happy (the right kind of music anyway). While I am unable to jam with other people, playing some songs made by others shall have to do. In other rambles, I wish I had more time. Hello German mid-term. Ich bin unglücklich.

My posts tend to be ridiculously long just cause I can never really pick which photos NOT to put up. Today is no exception as, and I don’t think I really need to say this, the weather has just been fantastic! *Snap snap snap snap* goes the camera. Here are the shots from the past few days:

I miss street shots. You’re not gonna see a guy playing hacky sack for a while now.

So assuming you even bothered to scroll alllll the way down here….yeah I got nothing. Enjoy!

I love reading.

Just putting it out there since it has been 2 weeks since my last post. There really isn’t much happening in my life right now. Today all I did was go to Home Depot to return a aluminum bar I was going to use for my flash brackets and to Canadian Tire to buy some Butane. I found aluminum bars in my garage and I thought I’d save the 14 dollars I spent on the one from Home Depot (yea I’m so Asian) and the Butane filled my lighter up, but the lighter itself won’t light the fuel anymore. Weird. So anyway, books are great. I have learned more about life and how to live in in general from reading books. School is important, I have no doubt about that, but it shouldn’t be the basis of anybody’s life. School doesn’t necessarily teach the right things for life in general.

Not as healthy as can be, but getting there.

Lately I haven’t been doing much in terms of physical fitness. I have felt terrible when it came to fitness and I just bloody well hate the laziness feeling. Today I did 10 sets of 30 pushups which made for a total of 300 pushups for today. Feeling very sore, but I somehow just love the feeling of being sore. Now that I’ve started, maybe I should start some jogging exercises as well. It would be very nice to build up the cardio.

Here’s the bad now, the good comes later. Much later.

About 2 weeks ago, I was accepted to work as a photographer for the Artona Co. It’s a photography business that is fairly big. I was quite happy about this and life seemed perfect. I got the contract in the mail a week or so later, read it, and promptly signed it. Today I went to the Artona studio to return it. Here’s when happiness went downhill. In a nutshell, some times didn’t work out and there were a few misunderstandings due to communication. My possible boss decided to think about it and will call me back later this week. So this was a pretty big dissappointment and now I’m beginning to wonder if I should even get this job, or any job for that matter. In some ways, not having a job would free up time for me to do whatever, but then not having a job would limit my knowledge of the working world. Decisions decisions. I think that I’ll go the route of whatever comes. If I end up getting offered the job again, I’ll take it. If not, then so be it.

I think this post is a bit cluttered and not understandable. That’s how I feel right now, so we’ll see how things play out. Life is just like that.

Late Night. Wow.

So nothing too new accept that it’s currently 4:07 am as I am typing this. I’m up because the alarm system in my home went off. Why did it go off? Five guys broke through the window and triggered the motion sensor. I then had to fight them off with a shotgun leaving many marks in my house. Just kidding. What really happened was very much less exciting. The front door of the house just opened. That’s it. It just opened and triggered the alarm. At first I thought it was my mom coming out of her room but forgetting to turn off the alarm. That itself though, was quite strange as I could not imagine her forgetting to turn off the alarm as it would affect the sleep of myself, my brother, and the people in the basement. The next few failed attempts at turning the alarm back on tipped me off that something wasn’t too right. I walked down the stairs and walked right to my front door; it was ajar. My first thought? What the ****? I close the door and realize that I have been finding the lock of the door unlocked for the past few days. Those days were lucky days as I was planning on opening the front door anyway, or just happened to notice it slightly open. Back then, the chain was attached. This time, it wasn’t. Alarm goes off, mom freaks out, I go “wtf”, I fix the problem, and think to myself logically how this could have happened. Well earlier in the day, my brother ordered some food from Pizza Hut. He must of somehow not locked the door properly. It’s an old door and the lock is quite confusing to most people so I guess it’s understandable. Still though, not a good start to a day.

On a more happy note though, my A700 should be back by around Tuesday. Also, I suck at blogging about my thoughts and my day. I don’t have that kind of writing thing it seems. Oh well =P

The Bus is just Awesome

Five people are waiting at a crosswalk. These five people are not related to each other. They have never seen each other before to their knowledge and chances are this is the first time they’ve seen each other; they don’t notice each other however. Yet these five people have one thing in common, the bus they need to take is on the other side of the street and the light has turned green. The bus is ready to cross the street, there is a schedule it must stick to. Luckily for these five people, the bus driver chooses to wait and the five people are extremely grateful. The five people have smiles on and so does the bus driver. He has a very memorable smile.

Buses are part of the public transport system and are not necessarily dependable . I figured that I wouldn’t find busing all that great after driving a number of times, after all the greatest convenience is being able to get from point A to point B with no problems at all (that and all my other friends who drive feel this way). Driving is the…epitome of that for a city. So far though busing is just….awesome. Situations like what I described above just make you smile (that is if you are able to notice things like this). Very nice bus drivers are generally hard to find, but most bus drivers are “ok” nice. This particular bus driver was very observant and would wait for people running to the bus so that they could get on. He was all smiles after waiting at the intersection and replied back to every “thank you” a person said as they got off the bus. You don’t meet bus drivers like this every day, but when you do you can’t help but feel slightly happy (if not more).

Public transit is really not that bad here in the Lower Mainland. It’s fairly easy to get to places such as Burnaby, Coquitlam, and Surrey by transit. Just take the skytrain then transfer to a bus and you’ll get to your destination (or close to there). You’ll know after you take a day to use the public transit system to go somewhere outside of the city. Just try it.

Disappear.

Disappear. It’s not the first time I have wanted to do that. Life is just strange in that sense I guess; at one point you feel like you want everybody to know you, then without warning you just don’t want to be noticed. I am currently (for once) torn between going to university right after high school or taking a slight break inbetween in order to find myself.  I haven’t been accepted to the university I wish to go to yet (still on hold) and it is really affecting how I am living right now. I have very little to pretty much no enthusiasm in what I do because the thought of university in the back of my mind. I don’t feel the urge to shoot photos when I have a camera, the urge to play ultimate, and the urge to do anything in the first place. Now I want to go find myself again. Yes, again. I thought I had everything figured out…well actually I didn’t, but I had a rough idea of what my dream was: I wanted to become a photographer. I had thoughts of aiming to become a photographer for National Geographic, a photojournalist, a war photographer, or just a professional photographer in general. I wanted to attend university to learn and experience post-secondary education and then go from there. I did do not want to work for someone else’s agenda, albeit National Geographic is kind of hypocritical it’s ok only because it invovles photography. Before I get too far off topic, the last year of my photography experience has shown me that I may not have all the qualifications necessary to become a professional photographer.  People may say I have the “skills” of a professional photographer, but there is just so much more involved to being successful than any sort of “skills” one may have.  With a world of over (what is it now?) 6 billion people, there is bound to be at least 10 people who are more qualified than you are. Deep down I know that I am not an amazing photographer. Despite this, I still get comments about how good I am at photography, sometimes from the same person. I would be lying if I said the comments don’t make me feel good great about myself. I think it’s human nature and I know that my photography is better than the average person, but like I said before, in a world of over 6 billion people there’s bound to be someone better than you at something in some shape, way, or form. I think I have a few comma splices there (the wonders of school), I also think this feeling is something called modesty (I might be wrong though). The biggest reason I feel this way though is fear. I am afraid of becoming someone who is arrogant and believes that he is the best of the best, that his photography “skills” are above everyone’s. I fear looking down on someone just because they are not able to do something as well as someone else. Yeah. That’s my deepest most darkest fear. Weird.

I emphasize again, I thought I figured it out. But two occurances changed it all. The first, was at Jerry’s house. He was having an early birthday “party” (if you could call it that). I quite enjoyed it either way, but near the end everyone ended up doing their own thing. I decided to watch TV, but Leo, Natasha and Jason were having a discussion about university, how UBC works, and what kind of future a person can get with a degree in this and a degree in that. It kind of made me realize: I had no friggin idea about anything whatsoever. I then decided to just continue watching TV and it was on the National Geographic channel (there was really nothing else I could watch at Jerry’s house; none of the channels he had I wanted to watch). The subject of National Geographic was Alaska, more specifically though, it was about a type of shark that would travel to the coast of Alaska to eat salmon as the salmon were swimming back to their spawning grounds. The shots of the place were amazing I really have no other words to describe it. I continued to hear talk about university during commerical breaks, so my mind was really boggled by the time I left. The second event was fairly recent and somewhat stupid. I saw a pod of dolphins as I was taking the ferry back to the Lower Mainland from Vancouver Island. I had not seen any dolphins swim beside ships and jumping around in person before and it was quite something. I won’t go as far as to say it was a life changing experience, but it did make me realize how little I had seen in this world and how much there could be seen. These days you need quite a nice amount of cashflow in order to travel, but at the same time you don’t want to spend a lot of time working. A balance of both would be best, but I really can’t express this feeling right now. It’s kind of strange.

It’s Summer. It Kinda Feels Like It, but Not Really

Good news today. I picked up my strobe (flash unit) as it has been done with repairs. I felt highly elated when I picked it up and began imagining pictures I could do involving two strobes. I can honestly say, it made me more happy than I should have been. In other news, it’s obviously the middle of June and it is pretty much summer vacation. It’s the summer season, but it sure doesn’t feel like one. For starters, I’m wearing a sweater indoors.  It’s cold enough that it’s comfortable to wear a sweater after 8 pm. That’s just not right. I don’t feel very hot during the mid afternoon period either. But I guess these are good things. I like mild weather and the cool, but not cold, breezes. It is summer though; no doubt about it. My logic? I got a mosquito bite this morning; That’s summer for you. Interestingly enough though, the bite hasn’t swollen to the epic proportions like it usually does.

Other than that, nothing too new. Reading “Good to Great” by Jim Collins (Jim Collins is a pseudonym as the book was made possible because of group work). It’s just about why many good companies stay good, while some good companies become great companies. Should be an interesting read. Anyhow, my day has been as such: woke up late in the morning (11:30 am or so), played a few rounds of “Company of Heroes”, took a shower, bused to Oakridge mall to pick up my Strobe, bused back to my house, then walked over to a friend’s house to deliver some plastic cases he could use for cards, got home, played with my Strobes, gamed a few time on Company of Heroes yet again with Zach, read a bit of the book, and what I’m doing now. Blogging.

End of the School Year. Almost.

June 9, 2009. Yearbook distribution day. Most students at Prince of Wales Secondary, if not all, were able to get their yearbooks today. The hallways were quite hectic as people were getting signatures from each other in a mad frenzy. Not the first time I’ve seen this, but definitely the first time seeing it as a person who helped produce the yearbook. It was nice seeing how much people liked the yearbook and how nicely they commented on it. I got quite a few signatures on my yearbook myself and many had something to do with my photography. Go figure since it’s not my most favourite hobby (sarcasm). I was the photography editor for my yearbook and I took quite a large number of pictures for this yearbook. The pictures turned out well, give or take a few printing issues, and there were a lot of pictures. In any case, I have this issue where I feel like I didn’t do very much for the yearbook. According to most, I did; I can’t say I feel the same way. Maybe I just have high standards and maybe it’s just cause I’m feeling bad. Lately I’ve been having quite a bit of bad luck, more so than usual.

Last thought: Who cares the least about you than you? Everybody else.

Just Being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

Ok, today no answer for the previous question.

My day started off swell today. I woke up on top of my school roof with Peter, Zach, and Spencer. It was a rather odd feeling waking up there. Things began to go downhill just as we were getting off the roof. The custodian found us and wasn’t all too happy. He brought us in and we waited for the principal to show up. Long story short, we cleaned up the mess everybody else at the grad sleepover did and then we got unofficially suspended. Yes, unofficially. Oh wait, there was no grad sleepover either because it got canceled on Facebook after everybody left at 3am or so. A nice way to almost end off my grad year.

After getting the talk, I went home and read a book. Then I slept till 4:59 pm. I had an ultimate game at 5 so I was pretty late. Didn’t play so well as I didn’t feel too amazing today.  That’s about it for my day.

I feel like answering my question from my way way earlier post about a good life again. This time with a phrase: Standard of living means that you are in love with and proud of your home, friends and posessions rather than envying someone elses’s standards of living.-Robert Kyosaki