This was something I’ve always wanted to try out just to say I have.  I’m by no means a great singer, so I asked my friend Kevin to help me out.  He’s a pretty good guitar player and singer in real life and in video games (always crushes me in Rock Band -_-), so I knew he could take on the job.  He ended up doing the main vocals and music while I was his back-up help.

We had some idea how this would go, but overall we winged it and did what felt natural to us.  Obviously, we aren’t YouTube music stars so we knew we wouldn’t be that good, but we tried.  We practiced, filmed, and edited this all in roughly three hours.  It didn’t take as long as we thought it would, but we definitely learned how hard it is to do everything perfectly in one continuous take.  The take we chose wasn’t flawless, but we thought it was decent enough to use. 

This is the first time either one of us have done something like this, so just come in with low expectations and I’m sure the experience won’t be too awful (maybe).  If you haven’t already, please read the official safety waiver and release form that Kevin wrote up for you all.  Remember, this was all just for fun!

One last thing.  This song doesn’t have anything to do with what’s currently going on in either one of our lives (although this would have been the perfect song 3 years ago…but I digress).

Alright, if you haven’t backed out yet then here we go!  Here’s our version of “Won’t Even Start” by David Choi:

P.S.  I was intentionally being a big ham in this.  Also, stay tuned for the outtakes at the end!

P.P.S.  Before anyone says this, I’m just going to say what’s on everyone’s minds (besides “what the hell did I just watch??):

THIS SONG NEEDS MORE WOOD BLOCKS!!!!!!!!  just kidding

I didn’t pinpoint what was going on right away, but upon retrospect I think that was exactly what had just occurred.

I had just gotten off of work and was driving my cousin back home when I decided to stop by my local CVS to pick up some green tea (my supply was running dangerously low!).  I was asking my cousin if he wanted something and was walking in the direction of the drinks aisle when all of a sudden a few things came over me in a matter of seconds. 

Instead of walking straight, my body started gravitating towards where all the registers were.  Around the same time, the conversation I was having with my cousin abruptly stopped (probably due to my mouth not working).  Before I knew it, I felt like I was heading towards something or someone, but I wasn’t sure what or who yet.  As I got closer, I finally noticed exactly what was affecting me.

There she was, this beautiful girl that I’ve never seen before around these parts.  What a sight!  I couldn’t tell you what made her stand out exactly, but obviously my brain was detecting something wonderful from her.  Whatever it was, I was being stupefied right there and then.  It was kind of a nice, soothing feelings, but at the same time I didn’t like how overwhelmed I became.

Once I figured out what was going on, I managed to override that influence and snapped out of it.  Luckily for me, I did it right in the nick of time as I nearly crashed into a display that was directly in front of me.  I think only the guy at the register noticed anything peculiar as I narrowly avoided that stand.  Close one!

Somehow, my cousin didn’t pick up what had just happened, so I continued on to the drinks aisle with him not bringing up anything that had just transpired.  However, a part of me really wanted to go back to see who the hell was this girl and where did she come from.  I had mentally made the decision to talk to her, but unfortunately by the time I finished grabbing my drinks and headed back over to the register area she was gone.  All I saw was a glimpse of her as she exited out the store, her long hair flowing in the wind (hmm, not sure if that last part was true or if I just imagined that in my head).

My area is not too big and I’m pretty sure there aren’t that many people around who can stun me like that, so perhaps I will serendipitously bump into her again in the near future.  If not…oh well.

Now if you may excuse me, I suddenly feel the need to pick up some more tea

…and it wasn’t exactly the most flattering moment of my life -_-

Let me give you some back story.  Back in 2003, I was a junior in high school and apparently somebody in my class got infected with tuberculosis.  Yes, tuberculosis.  How did he get this rare disease?  I’m not sure if we ever found out, but needless to say there was some concerns that he may have accidentally infected others at school.  Luckily, only the passive version of the disease was passed on to some other students (including some of my friends), so after a few shots they were all better.  Fortunately for me I never got infected, so I didn’t have to worry about any of that.

Anyway, one day I was waiting for my ride back home when some people from the local news station came up to me and asked if they could interview me about the tuberculosis story.  I’ve never been on television before, so I thought it would be pretty cool.  For the next 15 minutes, I answered a bunch of questions and gave some personal insights.  I’ll admit, I was a little nervous at the beginning, but as it went on I became calmer and was giving out pretty good answers.  When it was all said and done, they told me to expect it on the news later that evening. 

I got back home and waited for the news story to pop up.  When it finally came, I got all excited to finally see myself on tv.  That excitement quickly went away when I realized 1) they only used a single sentence I said out of the entire 15 minute interview, and 2) they picked probably the dumbest answer I gave in that interview (while I was still a little nervous on top of that!).

What exactly did I say?  Well…okay.  Even though this is really, really embarrassing, I’ll show you the video clip of the news story (BTW, please ignore my high school hair and the squinty eyes.  It was bright!):

In case you couldn’t understand my stuttering, I said “I didn’t even know what T.B., what T.B. was until, until it just happened!”  *Goofy chuckle*

URGH!!!

What a very sad television debut.  I will redeem myself one of these days!

I got this idea while watching this Wong Fu Productions video the other day.  I thought it would be cool to try out with some of my fellow bloggers on this site.  There has been so much random drama lately that I reckoned now would be a good time to do something with the community that shows unity instead of division (not to mention this project was a fun way for me to procrastinate from my grad school studies hehe).

I sent out invites to random people I knew on here that I thought might be interested.  The response was much greater than I had imagined.  Over the past few days, I’ve been slowly but surely gathering people’s pictures and editing them together to form combined photos.  This was all just for fun, so I hope you guys enjoy!

Thanks to each and every one of you who helped me make this work!  I know I asked for a lot, but you all definitely pulled through in a big way.  Being able to do stuff like this only reminds me why I enjoy being on Xanga.  You guys are too awesome.

The Cast
Click on the pictures below to visit each person’s page:

Unfortunately, Linda, aka Bluedreamer85, has shut down her site.  I just had a chat with her to figure out what had happened.  I’m still a bit shocked she did it, but I can understand her reasons.  I won’t get into all the details (per request), but she did give me this message to share with the Xanga community:

I will definitely miss seeing her around Xanga.  Hopefully, she will come back sooner rather than later.

I like to think that I’ve been as genuine as I can be on here.  If you were to meet me in real life (as some of you have), you would pretty much get what you were expecting.  I don’t share everything on here of course, but the things I do share are all true from my heart.  I try to stay consistent with what I write about and how I treat others, as I attempt to do in real life as well.  How can I expect respect and kindness from others if I don’t give respect and kindness myself? 

Respect, in general, is a very important quality to me, as it is for probably a lot of you.  Before I make any character judgment calls I always look at how a person not only treats me but more importantly how they treat others around them.  It can be tricky at times because a lot of people appear alright at first glance, but end up being a wolf in sheep’s clothing once you take a closer look.  Let me share some personal examples.

I once knew this blind kid from school.  He was pleasant enough when there was an adult around, but whenever he was not within adult supervision he suddenly became very mean and crass to all those around him.  He would tend to abuse the fact he was disabled by rudely yelling at people to get out of his way, when he could simply ask nicely as he would if an adult was around.  Often times, I would hear him talk smack about others that were within hearing range, knowing that they won’t do anything because of his condition.  Perhaps he was mistreated a lot growing up and that was playing a part in his behavior, but that still doesn’t make what he was doing okay.  Anyway, I just kept my distance from him as often as possible to avoid unnecessary issues.

Another time, I was on a date with this attractive girl.  We were having some great chats over dinner and I was enjoying myself for the most part.  However, over the course of that dinner I started noticing how badly she was treating our waiter.  She would act very cold and annoyed whenever she asked him for something, not even really smiling or saying thank you whenever he came by with food and requests.  While giving the waiter his tip, she asked me out loud (with the waiter still there) why I was giving him so much since he was apparently awful.  I just told the waiter to go ahead with the money to avoid any more awkwardness.  I ended up not going on a second date with her mainly because of her horrible behavior with our waiter.  Her actions made me think if what I experienced with her at the table was really the real her or just a front.  It really made me wonder if that’s how she would treat me if I ever got on her bad side.

Ever since those experiences (and many other experiences like those), I’ve learn to be very careful with whom I trust and interact with.  I try to be an open and understanding guy, but if I notice somebody being unnecessarily rude or mean to others it makes it very hard for me to see that person in a good light.  We don’t always all have to agree with one another, but at the very least we can be respectful.

Wow, I certainly got lucky getting this trip to actually take place!  I’ve been meaning to go to the US Open in the past but something always came up.  I was losing faith that I would go this year until I got a call from a member at my club last Monday, saying he had extra tickets he needed to get rid of.  After making a few phone calls, I manage to secure Saturday and Sunday day session tickets at a very low rate and got a couple of my friends to go up with me very last minute.

We took a megabus up to New York early Saturday morning.  However, for funsies lets just say I got up there this way:

My almost accurate () reenactment of how I got up to the US Open

We ended up staying there for about 9 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday.  We certainly saw a lot during that time.  I won’t mention everybody we saw, but I’ll go over the highlights.

On Saturday, my friends and I met up with Rosalie (pasaway4eva) for the eventful day session. 

We love big balls

The very first player we watched was Maria Kirilenko whom (in my opinion) is the hottest tennis player playing now.  I sure had a big grin watching her play!  Very attractive seeing a girl who not only looks great but also plays tennis great.

 
Why hello there! 

Seeing my favorite tennis player, Rafael Nadal, in person.  I can now cross that off my bucket list after finding him practicing on a hidden court.  Woohoo!

My tennis idol!

You can bet that I took as many videos and pictures of this rare sighting.  If you’re a big Nadal fan, you can click here, here, and here for videos of him practicing his volleys, returns, and serves.  Below is a sample of some of the other pictures I was able to get (click to enlarge):

As you may have saw in my video at the beginning of this entry, we visited the Unisphere that was right outside of the tournament.  It was a rather warm day, so what would anyone do?  That’s right, we ran through the water fountains!

Sunday was Kim’s (xkthily) turn to come watch the US Open with us.  Who would have thought I would have gotten the chance to hang out with her twice in such a short period?  Very happy that it worked out that way.

Overall, how was my first US Open experience?  I guess if I have to describe it all in one word, I have to say it was fantastic!  What a satisfying experience and I hope to visit that tournament again in the near future.

Hey everyone,

Been a while since I made a straight out blog about what’s going on right now in my life, so let me give you an update on some events being played out as of this moment.

First week as a graduate student!

This past Tuesday marked the first day of graduate school for me.  I’m going part-time for now, just to see how the workload goes.  I’m only taking two classes, one on Monday and one on Tuesday, both from 7-9:30pm.  Because of how the schedule, I won’t be taking my first Monday class until two weeks from now!  Sweet!

My Tuesday class went alright, but definitely wasn’t what I expected.  It was a statistics class, but it seemed a bit…easier than I thought?  From what I gathered, we’re pretty much going over everything I did in the statistic classes I took during undergraduate, which is fine by me.  I just need to refresh my memory on some stuff and I should be good.  The professor also seems very relaxed too.  When we asked what the tests would be like, he didn’t sound like he had even thought about it yet.  He kinda went “Oh well…I suppose there would be multiple choice questions, maybe a few word problems.  Actually, maybe I’ll make it a few word problems and have you take it home to do.  Oh final exam?  We won’t be having that, just a regular exam at the end of the year.”  Hell yeah!

With traffic, the commute is about an hour.  It’s not ideal, but I can live with that for now.  Who knows, perhaps in the near future my commute will be shorter if I end up finally getting that one job in VA.

New position opened up!  Shall the millionth time be the charm?

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you would know I’ve been trying my hardest to get a job position within the United States Tennis Association (USTA).  I think I’ve applied at least 5 times and each time I made it to the final two people, but end up losing to an older (and apparently more experienced) woman.  Noooo!

Well, looks like I have yet another chance to fail try again.  I swear, if I end up FINALLY getting the job I will make a video of me doing a long victory dance.  You can hold me to that!

Of course, if I did get this job I would have to leave my club, which would be bittersweet.  However, getting this USTA position would open up so much more possibilities that I got to try for it.  Not only that, moving to VA for this job would actually land me closer to my graduate school, so that would be convenient.  We shall see.  Wish me luck please?

Roadtrip to the US Open!  At last!

After all these years of saying I would go, I am definitely going to the US Open in New York this year!  A member at my club was going to go but couldn’t anymore, so I bought 3 tickets from him for day time sessions this Saturday and Sunday.  Yep, that also means I’ll be staying over New York for the night, so if any of you NY Xangans want to hang out either at the tournament or Saturday evening just let me know!

I’m heading up with a friend of mine, but when I get there on Saturday pasaway4eva will join us (whom I first met back in March when I took my last spontaneous trip to New York) and on Sunday xkthily will join us (whom I recently met in D.C.).

 
May we all enjoy our first vist to the US Open tournament!

Consequently, I won’t be on much this weekend, so I’ll see you all when I get back.  Not too much drama I hope?  Have a great Labor Day weekend!

-Alex