Long Weekend

I took another one of my long weekends, this time, followed by Victoria Day. I was hoping to catch up on some school work but that didn't go as planned.
The long weekend gave my family time for one of those long dinners we used to have. Last night, over salmon and white wine, we put on the table the unification of Korea debate. I personally wasn't strong on it; I just didn't feel like the unification is a necessity. However, my mom and homestay student felt otherwise; they made a neglected but viable point; we are one people! I remember in grade two SS class, we were taught about pro-unification and the friendly North Koreans in the red scarves. I don't think unification is as big of an issue as it used to be..

This dinner was followed by another gathering with a less political topic. We finally got together for a night out for dinner; food was at Goldfish.

West Fest

What a crazy day! I just got back from West Fest, a celebration for the launch of Free the Children's Me to We office in Vancouver. Jesse Cruickshank emceed the night and Marc and Craig Kielburger inspired us with stories of their past experiences. My most memorable presentation was by Michel, a former child soldier who endured the brutal Great War of Africa.

Before the show started, Alysha and I sold buttons for their "Got Goat?" project, a fundraiser for the Alternate Income program at Free the Children. The central idea is that a goat is merely an animal to us, but in third-world countries, it is a source of income and food. We had a blast selling the buttons and we made over $300!

The Marianas Trench were there at the show that night. It was hilarious because it seemed like the lead singer kept wandering around the front expecting to be swarmed by an army of crazed teenage girls; no swarming happened.



HAHA, this picture always makes me laugh.

Before West Fest, I was in Surrey, at Tamanawis Highschool, as a spectator for the annual Surrey AIM games, a sports day for students with mental and physical disabilities. Alysha, Sioban and I, have organized a similar event for Vancouver, called Passport to Play. It'll be launched on May 27th, at John Oliver Secondary.

Mother's Day and its preceding days

Honor thy father and mother.

In Christian beliefs, parents have a God-given authority over their children that can't be defied; if dishonored, the offense is not only towards your parents, but to God Himself. They are to be honored unconditionally except in the conditions of them sinning or them causing you to sin. This commandment; although the most "realistic" compared to the previews ones, which talk mostly of one's relationship with God, rather than the human to human relationships; contradicts the culture at the time because it gives equal power to male and female, which was rarely the case. Nowadays, it is somewhat opposite the case; it is common for mothers to have more power in the household and more influence over their children. I mean, they did go through that nine months of bloating and that nine hours of labor.

Today is mother's day and although it was a last minute decision, I decided to make dinner.
I chose to make Soy and honey glazed salmon because I had such limited time and this came up to be one of the simplest dishes. Despite the haste and simplicity, it turned out really nice! My brother Sean, who said he'd make the salad, bought a ready-to-go salad from Safeway, that cheater.
I regret not having enough time to make it look nice, as you can tell by the picture, it looks really boring and empty. But, I got a thumbs up from all of my family so I'm off the hook! : )

* * * * * * * *

Yesterday was VYSO's final concert of the year. We played Overture by Weber and five movements from Carmen, one of which was my flute solo.
So I was pretty nervous, and being a flautist, you need to watch your nerves.. Because your nerves will project right through your sound. There have been many times in performances where I felt confident and relaxed but my body told me otherwise, resulting in my lips shivering. And don't try to be optimistic, because this does not sound the least like vibrato. When I told my fellow flautists, they told me they'd experienced the exact same thing, which, being or at least trying to be super simple minded at the time, instantly made me feel better.



Entr'acte

My flute solo! The sound quality is terrible but if you can hear, it starts with the harp and the flute, later joined by the rest of the orchestra. In our rehearsals, the strings section played the harp part, which I thought would be the performance plan. When, an hour before the concert at our final rehearsal, the strings were replaced by a single harp, I felt like it just sounded so quiet in the huge auditorium. And I'm gona blame my squeaking on the high note on that! Oh, and of course, on the jinxes from my brother. Somewhere near the beginning, you can hear Sean quietly saying "choke, choke, choke". That little bastard.

Overall, it went pretty well; we all agreed it was the best one of the year. Our concert took place in Kay Meek Center, wayy into West Van, but despite the distance, Amrit, Isabel and Jonathan came to watch and we finished the night with Chinese food.

I have another excuse for my wrong notes! I must admit, throughout the concert, I was half asleep and half zoned out and half dying from exhaustion. If that even mathematically makes sense. Well, this explains the state of mind I was in.

* * * * * * * * *

The night before, Sherry and I went out; we went out, which lead to me getting locked out. We hung around and at around nine, we brought company from Surrey. Then the drunken night carried on from a random guy teaching us astronomy to meeting a fellow drunken girl on the skytrain to getting locked inside the skytrain (AGAIN. At the same skytrain station!) to getting locked out of the house.

All the buses had stopped running when I got to 22nd station, so I had to shamefully call my friend Tracy to pick me up.. (If by any chance you're reading this, Tracy...You know you saved a stupid kid from truble and I don't know how to thank you!)
It was around two when I got home. Okay, good enough, I could still get a good 6hours of sleep til I have to wake up for my rehearsal.
Let me just say that I always carry around my keys. Except that night.
Silently cursing the new door we just installed (my old door used to just open without unlocking once you pushed it hard enough), I went to the back because I knew it would be open. But of course, it wasn't; otherwise I would have been awake during my performance. I knocked on my brother's window for a good 15 minutes, with no luck. I really didn't want to wake my mom, but I had no choice. Desperately, I called my house, only to remember my stupid stupid suggestion this morning when she told me about random phone calls in the middle of the night. I told her to disconnect the phone before going to sleep, and she did just that.
Yep, so I did the unthinkable; I slept on my balcony. I'm grateful for the comfy chairs.

A week off. To Galiano

I got back from Galiano yesterday at around 7pm, and although I was exhausted from no sleep from the night before, headed from the ferry straight to school for Desserts and Drama night, Ideal's annual art show. The moment we landed in Vancouver I was overwhelmed with a low because of the inevitable return to an inescapable and routine lifestyle and the realization that nothing had changed, only me, which can be a very scary thought. I think it was a good thing I went to school because it's better just being around people than ruffling around in your bed alone with your whole body wanting to shut down but your brain refusing to let go.

The constant frenzy isn't anything special or new, I noticed that everytime I take off and come back, an extreme low, a crash is inevitable. But because this time my retreat wasn't just a vacation, rather, an intense experience for the brain and the heart, I'm expecting and hoping for the crash to stay.

I always say, "I wish I could be a hippie for a day", and I think in a very long time, I finally came pretty close, minus the weed. Followed by that week of overflowing to-do's and time constantly on my ass; not having to worry about school, work, future, and ridiculously immaterial things, was so liberating and gave me time to actually think without being interrupted by phone calls (there was no reception!) and post-it notes every where I look. The group was a gathering of 19 highschool students, 13 from Vancouver and 6 from Port Alberni and mentors (AKA tormentors); each one of us with our own stories and ideas to share and a goal of challenging discrimination. And with that motivation, we were to make a short video on anti-discrimination at a small film school called GIFTS on beautiful Galiano Island.

We were divided into sub-groups depending on what type of film (documentary, animation, drama, etc) we wanted to make. Inspired by Moby's "Sky is Broken", I wanted to make an animation film; I didn't know how tedious and complicated animation would be. During our working times, we sat in front of computers in the "Nerdhole" and worked while other groups filmed outside, in the sun! As jealous as I was, I don't regret choosing animation because I learned so much about Photoshop and Aftereffects, a program where you can make your picture move, and with animation, you can make anything happen, and ways of communicating your ideas is limitless.

But before we could start the process of storylining and drawing characters, we had to come up with the message we wanted to convey and how to show it through our piece. For my group, which consisted of Branden and Jonah, both from Port Alberni, and myself, this was the hardest process of all; we really had an overflowing of ideas and everything we decided on would complicate itself into an incomprehendable theme. Our first idea was a FPS video game film on the affects of discrimination on the racist. This idea couldn't work because we couldn't find a way to justify the racist's violent actions and couldn't take the risk of depicting a mixed message. Our second idea was a view into the minds of three strangers on the bus. The three stranger are of different colors, and we demonstrate both the random thoughts (eg. what to have for dinner, what to wear tomorrow) and the circumstancial and subconscious thoughts (eg. the way person naturally relates to a certain colored person when reading about crime, way a person resituates themselves on the bus depending on the color of his neighbor, and etc.)

Both our ideas revolved around a thing called "subconscious racism"; we were all devoted to this vague idea that only on the second day of the week, with five more days left to finish our film, we decided to change it. In truth, we were so blindly in love with the idea of "subconscious racism" that we didn't even know how to exactly define it. I first brought up the idea of "subconscious racism" because I discovered my inner racist. Having drifted from culture to culture, continents to islands, I have always considered myself to be multicultural and open minded; but one day I caught my mind freely and sneakily judging and justifying, after an anti-racism workshop that I whole-heartedly participated in. After the workshop and on the bus, a stereotypical emo girl walked in, and although I can't describe in words how the mind works, closest thing is, it was a split second of "she thinks she has the worst of everything". The duration of that thought was so short and the visibility so faint that it could have easily slipped away, but I caught it and had a holy shit, you hypocrite moment. And after catching my mind in action that one time, I caught a lot more. And constantly catching this subconscious mind in action and just being aware changed my attitude a whole lot.

We also argued that this "subconscious racism" idea creates a new intake into the whole anti-racism argument. The fight against racism has somewhat become a blaming game where fingers are always pointed towards the "racists", "others" or "bad guys", rather than us, and everyone. I think this piece had the potential to redirect the accusing fingers and reconnect people with the neglected little voices in our heads.

When we are aware of our thoughts, we can do more to control our actions followed by those quiet thoughts. With the help of Angela, the school board's anti-racism and diversity consultant who brought me on board, we discussed "subconscious racism" and came to a conclusion that "subconscious racism" in fact lines itself with prejudice. Prejudice is "a feeling, favorable or unfavorable, towards a person or thing not based on actual experience (negative and positive)". The minor difference between "subconscious racism" and prejudice is that subconscious racism is a subconscious division of people into categories, while prejudice sides towards one particular side of that division. Three cups of coffee and countless reconsiderations later, we decided to completely renew our idea once again. The topic of "subconscious racism" was very insightful and educational, but it was much too vague and difficult to convey. Hitting a stop point was difficult and having to acknowledge that we need a change of idea was even more disheartning, but we were warned beforehand to "love nothing" and with that, we let go.

Our new idea reflected the long caffein filled discussion we had in an attempt to revive our "subconscious racism" idea. In an attempt to define the word, we examined the origins of racism/prejudice. Needless to say, much history is involved, but the present media also plays a huge role. We're all affected by Hollywood's definition of beauty, masculinity, the smart kind, the obedient kind, the main character, and the extra. And with this in mind, our piece shows the dilemma of authentic self versus the media influenced self formed by the "layer of skin" media has wrapped her in. We used boiling for the background, to create a messy and unrealistic affect. We played with real images, cropped a bunch of random images into pieces and stuck them together into one body (sorta like Angela Anaconda) and placed them into TVs, magazines, posters, all of which represent the media.

On the last day, exhausted and caffeinated with coffee beans from the last minute work the night before, we showcased all of our videos. All of the videos turned out great, we put into film what we wanted to say, and we all left with the pride that we all had a part in them.

It's funny because before, I would have considered this week to have been either an excuse to miss another chunk of school and "take a break", or the most "ineffective" time I'd spent since spring break, "effective" use of time, meaning studying physics, cramming for chemistry test, practicing flute, constantly checking off my to-do list, and so on. I have single handedly avoided to do any of that "effective" stuff.

I think we have developed a fear of not being in constant action. We are afraid of taking a break because the world is going so fast, and it'll take that much longer for you to catch up. And from that fear, we became obsessed. Obsessed with our own futures, our own financial situation, our own survival. And with deadlines breathing down our necks, it's hard to not to be obsessed. In the midst of so many people to see, things to do, places to be, and physics, math, chemistry to learn, I can't say for sure that social justice and racial discrimination would have been my priority before this trip.

These past few weeks have been physically and mentally exhausting.
It seemed like my whole year's to-do list suddenly decided to cram itself into this incredibly short timespan of two weeks. But I admit that my procascination and putting things off is mostly to blame. I had to prep for my under prepped Kiwanis competition and finish my overdue Art projects for my school's art show before leaving for Galiano... And orchestra raffle tickets to sell, rehearsals to attend (I finally get to play a solo part and I have no time to practice it!), VDSC meetings and presentations to attend.. And to top that off, PMS! I feel like this twitching on my left eyelid is like a time ticker for my head to blow up.

I have been playing the flute and performing for years now, and I annually enter the Kiwanis Festival, for more performing opportunities and scholarships. This year, I unwillingly chose Borne's "Carmen Fantasy" and and Bach's "Partita". I first watched Carmen in Germany, then in England, and never in France. It is a memorable opera, and it was one of my favorite, until these past few weeks of nonstop listening and playing of it that has made me resent it and fear it completely.

First of all, as I mentioned earlier, I "unwillingly" chose Carmen Fantasy and Partita. I really wanted to perform something that I was familiar with, due to my lack of time to practice and, well.. my desire to win. I had many other performing and learning opportunities but this was one of the few festivals that offered opportunity for international performance and scholarships. But my teacher insisted I play something new and extremely difficult for "my own educational sake", which my mom totally agreed with. These two pieces required for at least 2 hours of practice a day, time I could not possibly afford. It was irrational choosing this piece because not having practiced the expected amount of time and just barely perfecting it wasn't going to teach me the full lesson of this piece. Maybe later, if I hit a major traumatizing turning point in my life and decide to become a teacher, I will understand but in my right mind at the moment, I can't say I agree the littleset bit with my mentors for making me do this.

And to top that off, my pianist burnt her hand (I realize I sound like a total bitch making this about me...) and I had to find a new one two weeks before the concert, which meant I had to repractice the whole thing and familiarize myself with the new pianist.

It was three days before the concert that I started exceeding my usual and rational 2 hours of practice time. I was headbutting into impossibility, practicing 8hours a day, even skipping school and consuming enormous amounts of food (playing flute makes you stuff your face in food). Stupid last minute adrenaline.

Oh, and did I mention I had to miss my mom's birthday and 420!? I felt like I was sacrificing everything to this monster called limited time.
And although I already knew I wasn't going to win, I practiced and practiced.. because I guess that's what great and mindless musicians are supposed to do.. The two performances turned out to be pretty devastating. At least it's over.

..Not really. I woulda been able to say, "Finally! Fuck Carmen and her l'Amore and Habenera business, I'm going back to loving and friendly moby and britney"... if it wasn't for my orchestra. I play in the VYSO, and one of our music for our May performance happen to be Carmen. I got a solo part, which is awesome, but after this performance, I'm really gona lose it if I have to play it again any time soon.

I love art and one of my many dreams is to one day run my own art gallery and support the arts as it transforms. Just last year, as I sat flipping through Cosmopolitan, flat out of ideas for my art project, I came across a perfume ad that caught my eye, and in the act of desperation, I decided to paint it. And to Joanne (our art teacher) and my surprise, it turned out quite nice. And from then, Joanne has been encouraging and even pressuring me through art works. I could say it was from then that I really started to take interest in art. If there was one thing I regret from my Eurolife, it is having stared at my gameboy screen playing Pokemon (Yellow version!), instead of at the face of Mona Lisa when we were at the Louvre years ago.

Despite my love for art, or maybe because of my love for it, I hate doing art under a deadline, although it is the only way I can get anything done, because for me it's one of those never-perfect and forever incomplete kind of work. But because Joanne wanted to showcase my painting in our Dessert and Drama Night, an artshow our school hosts annually, this week was crowded with due dates, including a finish for my painting. And because Joanne knows my inaffection for deadlines, she threatened to kill me if I don't finish it, which she clarified it as not being a threat, but a fact. LOL.

I'm going to call this painting "the Lady in the Green Dress" for now. It was, once again, found in a magazine and I just loved the affective color and the soothing and exotic and even an abstract feel of it.
I rushed the bottom part of the painting because I am exhausted and I was about to faint and rip my painting, but it's done for now.
I feel like I should feel a ton of weight lifted off me but all I can think of is the list for tomorrow. I have two more projects to go, photography and art, and for the art project, which is done on a 2m paper, I'm praying to get an extended deadline. Otherwise I'll just have to leave without finishing it and actually meet my deadline.
And I should pack. Of course I haven't packed yet.

One of the best things about life is leaving it, and tomorrow, I'm leaving to Galiano with 13 students from Vancouver and Port Alberni to share ideas and make a video about anti-discrimination. More than anything, I'm just happy and relieved to be leaving this space right now, and hopefully this week away will do me some good.

One of the things I love about being in VDSC is the amount of free workshops and presentations you get invited to. I just got back from a presentation by Craig Kielburger, the founder of Free the Children. It was, like any other, an inspiring and informative presentation about tear jerking events that changed the world and becoming the change. I remember the first few presentations I attended really shifted my paradigm of the world and made me want to "be the change". I still enjoy the presentations but now they are starting to feel like Red Bull for a temporary motivation high, a repetition of powerful words whose effects are starting to wear out.

*** said (4:34 PM):
dami?
*** said (4:38 PM):
thanks for the lecture
no sarcasm
it was more of an eye opener sort of thing
*** said (4:39 PM):
it was almost getting to the point were it was like a repulse action when talking about it with ** afterwards
*** said (4:40 PM):
kinda realize now i don't need to cheat
to do well
so yeah thanks

This was gonna be a serious angry rant post until a few minutes ago, before I got this message.

One sunny day, my friends and I got into an argument about cheating; before leaving from school, I caught them on their routine pre-test-lingering-around act. And although both sides of the already screaming argument tried to avoid the sensitive and condemning topic, what could have been a rare and peaceful sunny walk home, couldn't be so.

I find that in most arguments, unless both sides are both very reasonable and detached from emotion, no one really wins, no matter now plausible or reasonable either side is. So the whole way home, this sensitive topic, like all issues concerning morals, morphed up an intense atmosphere and became an unwinnable battle between the "good guy" and the "joker".

In front of my friends and a mob of "it's just a test"'s to try to fend off, once again, I had been forced into the role of the too-sensitive, too-much-pride Goodie Two Shoes, whom I preferably like to call the "good guy". "Good guys" are ones, maybe duller than the other kind, that have nothing to prove but the fact that they have morals; and couldn't cheat their conscience only because they are unstable and shapeless without their sturdy rock called morals. They have too much pride to let their ambitions budge and too much ambition to let the "jokers" off the hook. Also, they probably have a foolish if not subconscious hope that "you reap what you sow" and they will one day be rewarded for their resistance.

Jokers aren't stupid. They understand that their actions are wrong but cleverly and even subconsciously justify their actions with everyone-does-its and it's-not-so-wrongs, and lessen the enormity of their injustifiable decisions. They cleverly disguise themselves well and try to turn the whole situation into a joke. Some of them also hide the deceitful and cowardly act it in a facade of a rebellious act, which in today's teen culture, is mostly accepted without question; what could be "cooler" than "not caring?" But if the so-called rebellious teens don't care, why cheat in the first place for grades they don't care about? One thing I want to say to them is, if you really don't care, don't come to class. Simple as that. (And if you're worried about graduation, it's actually quite effortless to just barely pass to graduate without attending much of school) The hippocricity is overwhelming. However, I think this type makes up only a small portion of the popular joker association (most cheaters prefer to cheat in groups/partners, thus the "association"). Another portion is made up by the saint-by-day and cheater-by-night type. This type irritates me the most because I think they are a great example of "wolves in a lamb's costume". They are rarely blamed for anything because they claim their righteous morals on a daily basis, by trashing the moral crimes they are not related to and have no genuine interest in defying. They are the biggest hipocrites because their fiery opinions on moral issues mysteriously die down when it comes to cheating. This is a great example of betrayal of morals for ambition; maybe the true temptations are not drugs or alcohol, maybe they're the ones that offer a easy way up on the ladder and give way to our neverending ambitions.

∴ambition + temptation = evil?

The great mystery. In today's English class, we discussed if ambitions are the root of evil, and if we should pursue it, nevertheless. I think.. we concluded that once your ambitions turn to greed, you are more likely to betray your morals. Macbeth encounters the same dilema, and must decide between his raging ambitions or his familiar morals. After much scorning from his wife, whom I think represents Macbeth's ambition, chooses to murder Duncan; and don't worry, I won't say "look what happened to Macbeth" because, well, we all have our own battles to fight and soliloquys to write.

Then, you may be saying, if we ultimately make our own decisions despite the full-throttle attempts at "guidance", why not just leave the poor friends alone?! Well, that's because I'm no moral saint, and I don't, and won't ever, pretend to be one. Pretending to be a moral saint has one definite result which is hipocricity. (In fact, life would be very sad if either we or the ones close to us were "moral saints")
I have had my share of pocket-pickings and test-peakings and I admit the wrongness and will suffer the consequences but I won't try to justify it because in most our cases, it can't be justified. We did not suffer a moral dilema of wrong vs. another wrong. For the ones who chose to cheat, it was a dilema between right vs. wrong, making it inexcusable.

Anyways, before I got carried away with my idea of justice, I was talking about why I taunt my friends if I believe it is ultimately their decision. Moral saints don't do much of self-construction or self-development. When people, not moral saints, help, not only is it highly unlikely to not feel even the least amount of pride after positively changing a course of someone's life, it is what get many people motivated. Which makes "helping", sort of like a good selfish act.

Therefore, because I am a selfish person like any other, I "help" and try to fulfill my purpose-One of the purposes in life being, whether you are religious or not, to positively influence others into a direction that offers the most against all the odds because it's just not logical to think that you are the shining star in this world populated with 6.7 billion people, with roughly 5babies being born every second and 25000 children dying each day due to poverty, and with nearly HALF of that 6.7billion living on less than $2.50 a day, with less than TWO percent of that getting a post-secondary education, it is just so pointless climbing on top by betraying your conscience, which should be the most important out of like... everything.

So in the spirit of doing my part, I attempt to influence. And it was uplifting when I got the message, although I have no way of telling whether it was an honest confession or just BS, but as friends, all you can do is have faith.

Oh, and of course, there's that good old "if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself" business.. But seriously.. Although I believe and hope my friends are not stupid enough to think they can get away with this elsewhere, it does have potential of becoming a habit. I'm not tryna pour the negativity and jinx the promising futures, but you could actually get kicked out of college for cheating and it will without doubt majorly affect your life. Also, if you believe you get away with this moral crime, with the right motive and ambition, you could bend any moral crime. Moral is no moral at all if it can be compromised.

In a time where we more likely listen to tips-of-the-days and Oprah instead of our conscience, cheating has become something so commonly practiced and practical, the true hideousness behind it becoming clouded, along with our judgment.
I'm just gona finish by saying I lied when I said it wasn't gona be a rant post because it so obviously is..