Felt like typing it

“Tell me who you are, and I’ll tell you you’re wrong.

Show me who you are, and I’ll show you you’re wrong.

Believe in who you are, and nothing will compel me to acknowledge you.

Be who you are, and no matter what I say or do, you will rise above.”

The world is full of people trying to touch the sky. By tearing down others, they believe themselves to be closest to the heavens. Ignore the progress of others and ascend. Their stones will only fall at your feet, but your shadow, harmless yet indestructible, will encompass them all.

Not much to say

My grandmother passed away today.

Timestamp – 11:24 PM

Driving Test is DEFEATED!

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA! I PASSED! Not only that, the overall experience was definitely interesting.

First of all, Kyle from my Creative Writing class was also there to take his test, but due to the number of people testing today, he had to wait over an hour. The same thing happened to me. I was scheduled for 3:20 PM and the test began around 4:10 PM. I also saw Kartar there, but he wasn’t there for a driving test, I don’t think.

Now, the Santa Teresa DMV stops giving driving tests after 4:30 PM, in order to have enough time left over in the day to process the people who pass and etc. I was one of the 4 last people, all of us Asian. Not only that, all of us passed, hahaha. To which the girl ahead of me commented, “And they say Asians can’t drive.” She only made one mistake, which is pretty godly, haha.

My instructor was very nice. While I was waiting in line, I saw that my first instructor was sitting at a desk, so I was immediately elated. I can’t remember his name, but I knew he was going to be nice because when I gave him my permit and etc to look over, he saw that I had taken the test before and said, “I see you had such a good time last time, you came back, haha.” Also interesting, I was testing in my sister in law’s Prius, and the guy wasn’t too familiar with hybrids. When he was asking me to show him where the emergency flasher and the defroster were, I could tell he had no idea where to look haha. Before we started, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I told him how I had heard that you aren’t supposed to pass the metal grate at the stop sign at the beginning of the test, and he told me its ok to pass it as long as you don’t block the sidewalk. Myth busted, ST kids, myth busted!

Funny enough, the instructor spotted a car waiting at the exit of the main parking lot, and he guessed that they were waiting for us to start so they could scope out the course. Turns out he called it, because after a few turns they were still behind us. It also turns out that’s illegal, so he had me stop and he rolled down the window to tell them to go on. I managed to go along alright. I was surprised that I didn’t have to do a K-turn aka Turn-about, aka 3 Point turn. He just had me drive up to the curb and backup in a straight line for 3 seconds. When he told me to go back to the DMV though, I thought I had failed. “Oh man, that was way too short,” I thought.

Turns out, I only made 12 mistakes. The funny thing is, all 12 mistakes were from not turning my head to check traffic or looking over my shoulder when changing lanes haha. What makes this funnier, is that at school today, I was talking with Alan and Nicole and Alex about the test, and they told me the biggest thing people lose points on is the not turning enough. We then joked around about wearing hats or putting a pencil on your ear as a blantant symbol of head turning. Maybe I should have, haha.

Oh man, its just awesome. Now if only I had insurance and a car, I could start taking myself to school. : ). Also cool, this Saturday I start working for Raging Waters, 10 AM to 2 PM. I can’t wait to start making some money, haha. : )

Timestamp – 5:34 PM

My response to Undercurrent

You know, this is probably like the first or second time I started writing a blog post without coming up with a title first. But this time, I just don’t have any succinct words to describe my mood.

On a whim, I downloaded a manga called Undercurrent. It’s pretty obscure; you won’t find it on Onemanga but you can at Mangafox, except there it’s titled “Under Current.” I’m not going to lie – I would recommend that you read it, but I don’t think many would find it interesting.

It’s a “slice of life” manga. Sekiguchi Kanae runs a bathhouse all by herself and currently is struggling to understand why her husband disappeared two years ago. Also, another guy works as  a live-in at the bathouse she owns. Nothing super natural or ridiculous happens. It’s a short, 11 chapter manga, about her life.

Its hard to describe how I feel about it, haha. The first thing that struck me about Kanae, well let me explain another thing. Her husband disappeared two years prior to the beginning of the story. He didn’t walk out on her or anything dramatic like that. He left for a business trip, and simply never returned. So the the first thing that stuck me about the manga, is that often times she watches the news and scans newspapers for stories, paying careful attention when deaths are reported. She is still searching for signs of her husband. I can’t say that it’s unique or touching, but I guess you could say I’m really taken by how human Kanae is.

While she still thinks about her husband, she tried to figure out why he would leave. But when she thinks about that, she truely wonders if she ever knew him. This theme of “what is understanding” is one of the important themes that the story deals with, and I love the way its handled. It’s so weird.

I just couldn’t stop reading it. The end was just, I guess satisfying. I feel as though I’ve learned something, except what that something is I don’t know. Not touching, not inspirational. Not terrible or anything. I don’t think I’ll forget this manga anytime soon, haha. I can’t explain it if I tried. There’s just something about it I like.

Timestamp – 11:31 PM

Grad gown failure.

Thank god my mom reminded me, or else I would have found out too late. Today, she asked me to open up the package that contained my grad gown, hat, and tassel for inspection. The hat fits, the tassel is fine, and the gown is of proper size. The problem? The right sleeve of the gown is tearing. The seam where the sleeve is attached to the gown is like, partially torn. It even has an “Inspected by ##” on it too. Geez, this sucks haha. Tomorrow I’ve got to go to the school bank and ask them what to do about it.

In other news, Free Realms is a pretty interesting so far. Free Realms is a new MMO released by Sony, and its free to play, but you can buy a membership and get access to a lot of things. The thing about the game is, its minigame and job based. You can have your character be any of the jobs at any time, and to level up said jobs you go to the right places and play the minigames. Example, let’s say I’m working on my Chef level. I would go to a harvesting minigame, collect what I need, then make my way to a stove or what-have-you to play the cooking minigame, which is different depending on what recipe I’m making. And within the cooking its broken down into other Warioware like minigames: chop vegetables, tenderize meat, flip a skillet, and etc. The other cool thing about Free Realms, are the different jobs you can play.

Chef, Ninja, Brawler, Kart Racer, Pet Trainer, Demolition Derby Racer, Postman, Miner, and there’s even a built in Trading Card Game so you can play as a Card Duelist. Like I mentioned earlier, you can switch your job whenever you want, either manually or it will switch you automatically to fit the minigame you want to play. It’s pretty cool, but I’m still trying out everything the game has to offer. I’ve been busy doing all these quests, so I haven’t had time to try out character customization and etc.

Combat is 100% optional in this game. There are no mobs that will attack you on the world map. If you want to fight, you find the Combat minigames placed around the world. For example, when moving from the forest-like town of Sanctuary to the snowy mountains of Snowfall, you will see these red dots on the minimap which represent the combat minigames. Frostling Wolves are the monsters in this area. You run up to one, click it, then a menu will come up asking if you do indeed want to battle. If you hit yes, it will change your job to brawler and then take you to where you’ll fight a bunch of wolves. It’s really, really simple lol.

But the thing that bugs me, is the membership thing. If you pay, you get access to new quests, new jobs, and etc. Also, you can buy newer things. This isn’t too much of a problem (after as an on-and-off Runescape player I’m used to it) but like, in the town you start out in, there is only one place to buy pets. In the other two towns I’ve been too, I haven’t found where to buy pets. That first town, all the pets cost cash to buy. I was kinda mad at that, haha. I mean, why make the Pet Trainer job open to free players if they can’t buy pets? Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but still.

Oh yeah, did I mention there’s no like, massive install to play? You have to download a small installer, but everything else about the game is downloaded and installed as you play. For example, when I went to play the Kart Racing tutorial for the first time, a little window in the top left corner came up telling me how much it would have to download before I could hit “play.” But, I hit the X on the minigame screen, and the downloading window stayed. I ran off and finished a talking quest, watched the download progress, and when it was done, I went back to the Kart Racing and started the game easy. And ever since then, I can start the game easily since I’ve already downloaded it. It’s pretty cool, haha.

So give it a whirl, and let me know how you guys like it. I randomly chose Server 5 to be my “home world,” so if you’re gonna play, hit up Alex Thundertouch. : )

Timestamp – 2:13 PM