Heh…case in point

So draft 4 of our English essay is due today. I was planning on starting it yesterday. Well it is now 2 hours before I leave for school. No, I didn’t wake up early to try to do it. I stayed up planning on doing it. I have nothing right now. This sort of sums up my grade problem and serves as an example of my poor effort/work ethic that I brouht up in the post before this.

I give up on that essay. Sorry Mrs. Mohr, but I’ve fallen too far.

Timestamp – 5:17 AM

Grades, depression, and apathy

So I am failing USAP, Calc AB AP, and Physics. Like literally, failing. F grade. Well, my USAP grade might be going up, but there’s no way to tell for sure since Mr. Phipps doesn’t post grades on Schoolloop. My Calc grade is technically rising since I’ve started doing homework in the last few days. However, those assignments are really low point assignments when compared to the work I didn’t do earlier on this semester. My Physics grade is in the toilet since I don’t do work. That class is just a major waste of time. The teacher, Ms. Kaur, is a new teacher to ST and has little experience when it comes to teaching high school stuff (she taught middle school before). I think it’s her inexperience, but her teaching methods don’t work. She lectures on whats in the book, only in a skimmed version. Also, the test questions have literally nothing in common with homework questions. There’s just no warning as to whats going to be on the test. Homework/classwork and test questions are worded completely differently. That just sucks, big time. On a side note, my English 3AP grade will be dropping soon since our most recent essay project thing is due next week, and I’ve hardly worked on the drafts that are required as a part of the overall work.

I’m starting to feel more and more depressed as the days tick by. SAT this, college that. At the same time, people keep saying college isn’t the only option, SATs aren’t super important, and etc. It’s all just a confusing conflicting mash of the future. I get depressed everytime someone brings it up because I don’t have any plans. I want to be a teacher, but I don’t know what subject I want to teach. I don’t know what colleges, what plans to undertake and etc., and everytime someone tells me their goals and plans it just makes me think of my own lack thereof. It sucks.

A girl in two of my classes snapped under pressure from parents and school. She was on anti-depressants for one day and was completely loopy. It was very very awkward to hear her complain about dark things in an upbeat manner. It just made me think of how all this crap is getting to people, including myself. Sure I’m still happy-ish at school or on the computer, but thats only becuase I have things to distract me from these thoughts. WhenI run out of things to do, I just feel depression creep in. I can’t stop thinking about all the crap I’ve planned to do only to not follow up. I have yet to finish writing any story that I’ve tried to finish, I can’t finish song parodies I tried to make, I wanted to make movies like small home movies but never did, practice drawing, work out, and the list just goes on. I had plans to jump rope for x mins a day, plans to do x amount of situp/pushup/etc a day, plans to do homework before dinner, plans to get 8 hours of sleep no matter what, and just a whole lot of crap I’ve never gotten done.

The worst part of all my low grades and depression is, I know what the problem is. Pure and simple, its a lack of effort on my part. There is absolutely no one else to blame but my own damn bad habits. Procrastination, arrogance, laziness. And yet I still can’t change. I’m not getting any better. I’ve started falling down this goddamn slope, and I can’t get back up. Hell, I can’t even stop the falling. Crap just keeps getting worse and worse, time keeps running out, and I’m not doing anything. I keep telling myself I’ll use the next weekend to do all my late work, but I never do. I try out a “work before play” plan, but that holds up for about a day. Whatever it is, I know it cannot be natural. Maybe there’s a chemical imbalance in my head or something, but I know for goddamn fact that it is not just a phase or being lazy when you cannot put any effort into something and then hate yourself for not being able to, so you continually try again only to continue a loop of failure, hate, and denial.

I’ve just stopped caring. I have no drive or reason to try anymore. I can’t put any effort into what I do. Honestly, the plan I have now is to forego the classes I’m tking right now, do remedial classes over summer to make up the credits, under achieve senior year, and graduate on bare bones. I don’t have any direction anymore. I know in my heart, brain, and spirital conscience that this is a really stupid way of doing things, but I just don’t see any alternative. High school and its APs and etc is all about maximizing options in my opinion. Consulars say “If you want to do this, prepare as such, and if it doesn’t work out you have this to fall back on.” “Most students going into college change what they want to do in life.” And the list of encouragement and assurance continues. The problem is, all of this only applies to those of have an initial goal or plan, but I don’t.

I basically gave up on school the beginning of junior year subconsciously. What I mean is, I didn’t have the conscious awareness that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wasn’t doing homework but I firmly believed I could bounce back. End of semester 1, and I didn’t. I broke down and realized I wouldn’t be able to do it alone anymore. I went to my sisters and parents and revealed the situation I had put myself in. After some arguements and anger, they told me to pick myself up and try again, assuring me that they didn’t mind if I was a C student or if I couldn’t get into Stanford (which was their initial goal for me). The problem is I don’t give a damn as to what they think of me. I get mad at myself for less than stellar grades, my pressure and pain doesn’t come from anyone else. The other problem is, that I’m taking 3 AP classes for christ’s sake. For someone having effort problems, bouncing back after a semester of failure is nigh impossible. Too late to switch out and etc.

I tried bouncing back. I really did. I did homework for a while, but I couldn’t maintain it. Things just fell apart with time. Now though, I’ve had enough. I’m tired of half-assing my way through school. I’m either going to sink or swim. Fuck inbetweens. I may not have any drive, but I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t choose a path. I’m tired of staying up late and stressing over crap I eventually decide not to do.  Laugh or cry, live or die, pass or fail, I’m going to decide. I’ll see how my mood/grades change in the nexr week or so, and decide based on that.

Timestamp – 4:56 AM

Birthday Post, now with more happy

So now my birthday party happened the way I wanted, and goddamn it was fun. List of attendies: Alan, Dustin, Eric, Victoria, Tejinder, Tony, Bryan, Martin, Pierre, Ed, Alex, and Franny. Alan had to come early or else he wouldn’t have a ride later on, so he arrived at 11:40ish. From that point on, it was time for massive gameplay. Just Super Smash Brothers Melee. Like, for until Dustin came over and brought his Rockband. Which I don’t even remember the time haha. Anyways, it was madness. We set up Dustin’s Xbox 360 and Rockban’d for like, ages. I can’t really remember the order of everyone else’s arrival, but it was fun. Eventually, we traded out the 360 for a Gamecube and SSBM. After making alot of jokes about ST kids vs SC kids, we moved the Gamecube into my room so the Meleers could melee on my small tv while the Rockbanders/Halo-ers/CoD4-ers used the large tv in the tv room. Don’t know why it turned out like that. Most likely since we/they were too ingulfed in melee to take the time to switch locations. I say we/they since I switched back and forth between stations for much much game play.

When Ed brought out his Wii though, everyone was all over Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Although, he didn’t actually treat us to it until later on. Everyone was engrossed into 1v1 Melee’s. I believe the stpulation was, “Let’s switch the Wii and if we want to go back to Melee, we don’t need to switch machines since the Wii is backwards compatable for Melee.” So, after mainly Eric and Tony reluctantly gave up Melee, it was Brawl all the way.

Haha, the main reason they wanted to stick with the Melee 1v1 games was that Ed and I were very good. Martin, Tony, Eric, and Tejinder (Silver Creekers) are good Melee-ers, and I play with them almost every Friday after school. It’s our Friday Smash, and thus we are quite used to each other’s skill. However, after they met Ed and his Marth and Marth’s Double Fair, competition boiled. Everyone was throwing down 1v1 challenges against mainly Ed, since his Marth is TOPTEIR (inside joke mainly ST-ers know). But, using my right as birthday boy I called the right to challenge Ed. My Shiek brought his Marth down. To my surprise, the Silver Creekers were shocked that I could beat Ed. They all were confused. I believe Tony said, “How did you get so good?” I was playing the way I normally did with them at Friday Smash, and yet here they are, underestimating me haha. Oddly enough, I would then move on to lose to Tejinder’s Marth. Even more confused, they pulled the rock-paper-scissors arguement that sometimes play style and character make a difference. Yes, I agree that is true. I don’t care what anyone says, Gannondorf CANNOT get past Marth’s sword. But I don’t agree in calling it rock-paper-scissors since it implies you stand no chance at the certain style/character. I know that is not what they mean, but please use a different term guys.

Brawl was awesome fun. The new chars and new things made things very very interesting. Although Eric’s Diddy Kong annoyed the hell out of me. That damned carwheel dash attack. Why does it have to be multihit? <.< But Eric’s banana strategy didn’t get to me much since I could use them against him >:) Getting into Zero Suit Samus. Initially, I wasn’t gonna play her since I knew most people would go after her (in both senses of the phrase). However, after playing some rounds usng only new chars, I started to like the quick running, high jumping, stun lasering, whip whipping blondie. Although her slow fall, slow ground smashes, and horrid recovery are kinda annoying.

Main Melee-ers/Brawlers: Tony, Tejinder, Eric, Ed, Pierre, Martin and myself.

In between the Melee-ing and the Brawlin’, I fit in some time to play Rockband and Eterna Sonata on the 360. First of all, I like doing vocals on Rockband since like, no one else does vocals. But when certain songs pop up that other people want to play, I’ll give it up. However, I’ve come to the realization that everyone is better than me at singing. Victoria really nailed the higher pitched songs and totally rocked. Alan had a better time with the deeper stuff but he still brought much music madness. Haha, I remember we picked the song Creep since the lyrics had the singer say, “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo.” At Dustin’s adivce, we turned up tyhe volume and I screamed the likes announcing my creepiness. At this however, Martin ran out and took over the mike since he liked the song. Althogh Martin liked sitting unhealthily close to the tv, it helped him do much much better than me. I didn’t see Franny sing, but he was the singer in the later portions of the party. Like everyone was better than me at singing haha. Dustin tore up the guitar/bass, since He already knew which songs/parts he liked best. Bryan rocked the drums when other’s couldn’t handle some of the tougher songs but he also took guitar/bass alot. Alex nabbed drums alot and picked alot of songs I didn’t know haha. Somewhere along in the party they started playing Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, but I’m not much of an FPS-er, so I Brawled mainly while they shot each other to death.

Main 360-ers: Dustin, Alex, Franny, Alan, and Bryan.

Although, the ones who drifted inbetwwen stations alot would be Ed, Victoria, myself, Franny, and Martin.

Close the the end of the party though, Dustin, Victoria, Bryan, and I played Eterna Sonata. Active-Turn-Based RPG with multiplayer for the battles. Victoria got to play some, but not much since she had to leave. Bryn took over, and holy crap is the game fun. You jam on the attack button while a timer bar runs down. When times up, that character’s turn is over, except that after building up the echo thingy, you get to chain together your special moves into “Harmony Chains”. Man, the damage is insane in this game. Jazz throws out 6k strikes like they were nothing. And due to the way Dustin set up Falsetto, shes throwin doen 20+ hits per turn. Although, there were there goddamn pirates that where downright evil. They were hecka tough and dealt massive damage, even through your guard. They would do this one thing where they beef themselves up and can punch you for 20K+ damage. Most chars only have 21K+ life. These goddamn pirates are insane. Bryan, Dustin, and I kept getting totally screwed by them. They run HELLA far and damn near always catch you. If they attack your char from the back which makes it so you cant guard, you are effed. You are effed in the a my friend.

OMG I remember this one particular time. We actually developed a nice ass strat. I would controll Jazz, slow and strong as hella swordsman, Dustin would be Polka, umbrella lady with crazy heals, and Bryan took Falsetto, fast and fragile martial artist. We would run away from the pirates, and totally gang up on the one that managed to get closest. We would keep em busy while Dustin stayed back and just healed us every turn. We once lasted a battle without taking any clean hits. But then, on the normal dungeon map outside of the battle screen, Dustin started getting chased by a pirate. He wanted the back attack though, thereby ensuring we get first. Tere were two pirates on the screen. Each on screen pirate leads to a battle with 3 pirates on the battlefield. Dustin, while still being chased by the first pirate runs into the back of the second one. We get into a battle and deal with it pretty ok. But then, after the battle Dustin stopped to grab the Cheetos whch were placed in arms reach of Dustin’s sitting down position. He forget we were being chased by the second pirate and let them get us from behind. They got the first attack and we died. There was no chance. No chance at all. THEY RUN TOO DAMN FAR. But man Eterna Sonata is fun. Just about as fun as a good fighter(Brawl, Mele, KOF, etc) if you ask me. Well, maybe just in the later portions of the game haha. The beginning looked kinda boring.

Food wise, we had BBQ meat, egg rolls, and fried rice. We had alot of soda haha. Food was good, but it was mainly just a break to stop playing and rest our hands. Oh yeah haha, my sister Thi was the one responsible for the cake for my birthday, and she like, loves ice cream cake. So when I told her I didn;t want an ice cream cake she was like, shocked haha. The cake she got though, a half mocha, half strawberry cake was delicious. Had this awesome design on the front, although the fact that candle wax dripped into it make me and Bryan not want those pieces haha. It was weird, we were like the only ones who noticed/cared about the candle wax. When my mom sliced the piece and offered it to us, both Bryan and I just waited for a new one haha.

Oh man this party was fun. Around 11 my dad said, ok its late enough, time for your friends to go home. But the advantage is of course, that most of them live pretty far away, and we had some good amount of time to play more before rides actually arrived.  Dustin, the last person to leave, didn’t end up leaving until like 12:40AM ish. If we take into account Alan’s early arrive of 11:40AM ish, thats 13 ours of near non-stop games haha. That is so insane.

Timestamp – 1:56 AM

Just making a side note, but I wanna do another post later about the set up to the party. My last post made my dad out to look like a real asshole, but he isn’t. It’s only around Lunar New Year celebrations that we come at odds. When I describe the lengths my dad went to help out the party, I think it should help make amends. Sleep time.

Happy Lunar New Year Dad. Oh yeah, it’s also my birthday, but I guess you don’t really gives a damn

So I suppose it’s been a while since my last post. I would like to post more on the blog, but eh, I just get lazy. Also, whenever I think about blogging, I always end up asking myself, “Is this topic interesting? Is this topic worth writing about? What should I omit, if anything about whatever it is I’m writing about?” Now the obvious answer is, it’s my blog and I should decide to write down whatever the hell I want. But things just aren’t that simple. As I said earlier in my previous post about my life and friendships, I’m not the kind of person to tell people when things aren’t well. This in turn leads to censorship when I post things in my blog. There are things that I don’t want to post for the sake of not coming off as an odd/angsty/evil person. It hard finding the balance here.

As for why I brought it up, that has to do with the events that transpired on my birthday, February 10. I woke up around 9ish, three hours before I usually like to get up on weekends. My parents wanted to go to the Chinese/Lunar New Year celebration in downtown San Jose, over by the Tech Museum. I don’t like going to these places. My parents say it’s for celebrating the new year, but I honestly don’t see it. Various companies and organization set up booths with free candy, pens, calendars, and other random merchandice to attract people to said booths. But it just disgusts me that the various mobs of Vietnamese show up for the stuff. I swear to god, booths with the best “prizes” and “loot” get totally swarmed with damn near nobody actually giving a damn about the actual booth or organization. Even if I don’t care, at least I choose not to get the workers’ hopes up by approching and nabbing their goodies and leaving without a word. Pisses me off.

My dad drags me to these events all the time. Seriously, unless I’m sick or act like a massive asshole, I have to go. And it’s the same each year. Yeah there’s food, and a parade, but my dad makes the hugest fusses and totally kills any chance at fun. If he finds out I didn’t wait in the impossibly long line to get the fake roses (which we throw away anyways) he goes off on this long-ass speech about how I’m not properly cherishing my Vietnamese heritage. Excuse me? What the eff is that. Each year, these events always end badly since I will eventually always want to go home and will have to fight my dad for the right to go home. It’s always a hard fight since I’m trying to be a good son while overall not wanting to be there. There’s also the language barrier. Broken Vietnamese turns my best arguements into sad excuses.

Anyways, we went and I spent most of the day just walking around, ignoring the booths and waiting for the parade. Around 11-12, I found my mom and we stood watching the parade together. We were standing a ways away from the front of the barrier that keeps the crowd out of the street. My dad spots us and tells us to join him right up at the front to watch the parade. My mom and I say we can see from where we are. In reality, we couldn’t see much, but I said so anyways to avoid moving up. Every now and then my dad would tell us to come up to the front. Eventually, he gets joins us behind the crowd, and immediately complains that no one could see from where we are standing. So, we tell Dad that if he wants to go back to where he was standing up front, he could go back. But he doesn’t. He just stands there bitching about how no one could see from where we were and that he had to give up his place. We keep telling him to go to the front and we’ll say where we are, but no. He just keeps complaining and bitching, saying how I’m not experiencing my heritage enough. Yes Dad, not watching a parade from the point you’ve chosen means I’ve given up on being Vietnamese. Your logic is flawless.

Now my mom tells my dad that we should stop because the kids, meaning myself, the youngest sister, and that sister’s friend, were hungry. Now I know that I was hungry, but as for my sister and her friend I don’t know. What I do know is, I specifically told my mom I wasn’t hungry. When my dad was out of earshot, I asked my mom and she told me she was the one hungry. Now my dad gets super pissed off. I’ll just give you the english version of my dad’s complaint. “What the hell? The kids are old enough and have money from new years. If they are hungry, the should have just bought some food on their own.” Now up to this part, this is completely true. I turned 17 that day and had money on me, but I wasn’t about to spend jack squat on overpriced food. My dad goes back to complaining about how we(the kids) are helpless, and that its a waste to not watch the parade, and that we are missing out on the Vietnamese experience. FUCKING BULLSHIT.

In my head I was screaming, “What the shit is this? Yeah I’m suffering over here, but I wasn’t saying anything about it. Now I gotta listen to this degrading belittling bullshit because my mom was hungry? Makes no goddamn sense. Today is MY birthday. I wanted to wake up at 12, crack open a cup of noodle for lunch, and spend the day the way I wanted.”

I was fine with the digusting display of the Vietnamese love of free crap. I was fine with waiting to get home to eat my cup of noodle, no matter how long it took. I didn’t have breakfast and stayed up to 1ish the night before, so I was damn hungry, but I could bear it. I was fine with pretending to see a parade I didn’t give a damn about, in weather so jacked up the shade was freezing cold and the light was blazing hot. I mad as hell listening to my dad complain and over all be an ass, but I could bear it. I could take all these problems in silence, hardened by 11 years of this same annual bullshit. But the instant my dad my was telling me that I was wasting his time, I had it. I turned off my cellphone and I walked off.

For about five minutes I walked around and found a place I knew there wouldn’t be able to find me. Eventually, I decided I let them sweat enough so I rejoined with them and we started walking towars the car. Another sister who had come with us tells me that my dad was just about to leave without me since I wasn’t answering my phone. I don’t know if she was joking or not; this sister takes me the least seriously of out any of my family members. Either way, you’re gonna leave me behind because you’re mad at me? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: BULLSHIT.

On the way home, my dad was still bitching about nto seeing the parade through to the end. Having had enough of it all, I started to argue. My dad’s main point was that I needed the life experience and needed to get to know my culture. My main point was that I had had enough of this so-called culture and that I didn’t like it. My dad countered with, “This has nothing to do with like or dislike. You need this experience.” It looped like for a few rounds, my dad saying I needed to be there and me saying I had had enough. Then comes the all time comment that gets me unbelievably mad. “You think I’m having fun with this? You think I’m here becasue I want to be here? I’m doing this for you!”

BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. I WASTED 5 FUCKING HOURS DOING SOMETHING NOBODY WANTED TO FUCKING DO BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT I NEEDED THIS SHIT? 5 HOURS OF MY BIRTHDAY, STARVING, SWEATING, AND SUFFERING, BECAUSE I NEEDED THE LIFE EXPERIENCE?

You drag me here each and every year. I have to degrade myself and get this useless crap each year in order to be a good son. I tell you time and time again that I’m not interested and you force me to go anyways. Each year ends with us hating each other since I’m mad that you want me to be here and you’re made I don’t want to be. If I don’t embarass myself and go into the free-food line a dozen times, you get mad at me. I thought today would be different, seeing how it was my birthday and all, but I guess the need for another year of pointless “Vietnamese” life experience takes precident over your son’s birthday wish of staying home. I guess being nice to your son has nothing to do with having a good one, does it Dad?

Happy Birthday to me.

Timestamp – 1:59AM

I’m not gonna leave out or cross out my curse words in my blog anymore. What’s written and what’s spoken have different meanings to me.