Roadlesstaken's Xanga

Yay, I Won!

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:59:00 GMT

Woop Woop! Here’s a quick video to thank those that allowed my entry to win Nick’s Xanga commercial contest:

(I included people that voted for me along with someone else and people that voted for me after the deadline, even though they technically weren't counted towards the tally =P)

Thanks again everyone! In return, I’m planning on stopping by the pages of everyone I listed above so I can drop a comment and a mini (it’s the least I can do). Expect a visit from me sometime soon (such a great way to procrastinate from finals, no?). Hope everyone else is doing alright as we wind down to a much needed winter break!

P.S. I'm trying to think up a good video idea to do when I meet up with people at the Bay Area Xanga meet later this month. Last time at the San Diego meet, I did a silly relationship skit which worked out pretty well. Any suggestions?

P.P.S. While I'm on the topic and asking for suggestions, I'm currently collaborating with TheCheshireGrins to figure out where to meet and what to do for the third DC Xanga meet happening on January 10th. If you're going or are familiar with the DC area, is there anything you would recommend? Since a good amount of people that are planning on going are from Maryland, should we make the meet up in Maryland instead?

That Chip On My Shoulder

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:59:19 GMT

The other day, I read a post by Kontzicles that I found myself really agreeing with apparently. She more or less gave this advice: "if you're a man, don't be obvious. If you're a woman, be obvious. Don't confuse the two." Granted, it may not be the most fool-proof advice out there, but it really hit home for me right then. Before I could really think about it, I recommended it and wrote a simple comment proclaiming "HELL YEAH". I was driving off to school right after I did all this when I thought to myself "Now, why in the world did I agree so enthusiastically to her advice?"

It all came to me over the next half hour. In essence, I suddenly remembered the three major times I've gone out on a limb for a girl (such as this one) this past year, only for me to fall down hard. Such a low batting average, huh? I felt like I had a good chance with every one of them, seeing as they gave me certain signals that used to clue me in the past. Instead, I got burned each time, making me become very disheartened. I still have my romantic heart (as someone mentioned), but it's now locked away inside of me. It wants to come out and believe again, but I've learned to be very careful with it and to be skeptical and hesitant of whom to share it with. Frankly, I've just grown really tired of letting someone have a piece of my heart, only for it to be dismissed so easily. Because of that, I've grown...comfortable with how it is now, just me doing my own thing. It's not ideally where I want to be, but it works for now.

You know what's funny though? The solution to this problem of mine is quite simple. It probably will take only one person, one hell of a special girl, to totally change this all around. If I meet someone that I truly believe is worth it and is willing to go out on a limb for me, she will certainly have the keys to my heart. I hope that someone can be obvious enough so my current skeptical, reluctant self won't miss her.

I wonder who it'll turn out to be. Whoever you are, just know I'm right here.

Why I will never underestimate mall security

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:42:59 GMT

Mall security does not have the best reputation, which was only made worse after that Paul Blart movie came out. I'm sure a lot of people have negative impressions of them, but I can't help but have some respect for them despite it all. How come? Well, I will forever remember two memories I've had while at my local mall that involved mall security being badasses. The stories I'm about to tell you may sound unbelievable, but I promise you I am not making this up.

The first memory took place when I was about 15 years old. At the time, I was working at my mall's Dairy Queen/Orange Julius and it was a rather slow weekday night. As I am standing there waiting for a customer to come up, I start hearing some commotion around the corner. Right as I lean over the counter to see what was going on, a teenage girl comes sprinting past, carrying a couple shirts. Right behind her were two (admittingly overweight) mall security guys chasing after her. It was looking like she might get away, and she must have thought so too since she turned her head to guage how far they were. What she didn't notice was the security guard directly in her upcoming path, about 10 feet away.

Guess what that security guard does? He stuck out his arm right in front of her, essentially clotheslining her down to the floor. I think everyone around that saw this, including me, gave a collective "OH!" (amongst other words). The last thing I saw was the three security guards dragging this dazed girl back to the store where she stole from.

The second memory happened a couple years later. Now, at the mall there was this small, middle aged, female security guard that would patrol the place in an electric wheelchair. At first glance, it looked like she was very handicapped and made me wonder what she would be able to do if forced to take some action.

I most certainly discovered how one day, while I was window shopping with a friend. Once again, I heard some commotion going on near by and as I turned that direction I see this man sprinting towards my general direction. That woman security guard happened to be nearby as well. Here's where it got kind of crazy. As the man came flying past us, I suddenly saw this lady straighten hereself up and leap out of her wheelchair onto her (apparently working) legs. "Holy crap, did she just pull a Keyser Söze?!", I thought.

Before my brain could process it fully, she sprinted off. Not only did she catch up to that guy (who had a healthy head start) she actually tackled him down and held him on the floor until her reinforcements came. I'm pretty sure my mouth was still wide open as she casually got back into her wheelchair afterward and went about her business as if nothing happened.

These two events, my friends, are why I will never underestimate mall security ever again.

If my blog had a commercial...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:22:13 GMT

I suppose it would go something like this:

I tried to make the video's theme related to my username in case you didn't notice =P. This is my official entry for npr32486's Xanga Video Contest in the personal Xanga site category. It's not too late for you to enter in if you wish! I made my video in only a few hours, so it doesn't take too much time. If not, feel free to vote for my entry when the voting process begins after the Nov 30th deadline.

P.S. Bonus points to whoever knows the song that's playing in the background.

EDIT (12/07/09):
If you would like to vote on the commercials, go here.

One Year Ago...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:45:57 GMT

I was just discovering the community here around this time last year. Ever since I joined back in 2003, I thought everybody that had a blog here was written with the intent of it being seen by only a few IRL friends and themselves. I had no idea strangers would actually comment on other people's posts on a regular basis, so I didn't do it because I thought people would think I was weird or something. In fact, I wasnt aware of so many features on here, such as the front page, top blogs, footprints, pulses and recommendations. Shoot, I was still using the old private home page set-up. So naive huh?

Funny enough, it was Datingish that kind of brought me in. I saw a plug for it on my homepage one day, so I decided to click on it to see what it was all about. I was surprised to see posts that people from here would comment on in large numbers, so I figure I'll join in as well out of boredom. After a while, I started noticing people were coming to my page through my comments and I eventually started getting friend requests from these same people. It was cool getting to know new people here and to have more reading material in my inbox, but that also meant I was opening myself up to more viewers of my small, humble blog (I'm not kidding; before, I was quite happy whenever even one unique visitor came by my page!). Oh no, I thought, people are going to be reading all my boring thoughts and feelings now!

As life would have it, I was beginning to write in my blog a lot more due to some personal set backs, so I had some fairly interesting things to share. I started noticing my writing style was changing too. I was still genuinely writing down things that I wanted to write about, but I began writing it more coherently and structured. Shortly afterward, I wrote up a post about things I missed in a relationship that somehow caught on and drew the largest viewership my way. It's been a interesting journey ever since, and I'm so thankful for all the people that I have really gotten to connect with through this medium.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty crazy how it's already been a year since my blog became so public. I've written a lot more about my life than I ever thought I would before this past year, that's for sure! Out of curiosity, how well do you think you know me based on the stuff I've written? Is there anything in particular you wanted to know more about?

An Irrational Worry

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:54:54 GMT

I think we all occasionally think about things that could potentially turn our world upside down. Perhaps it's the idea of becoming permanently blind or disabled, being a victim of a horrible crime, or maybe being stricken with a life-threatening disease. While those scenarios have crossed my mind, there is actually something else that causes a constant dread in me that I can't quite shake off.

About a year and a half ago, I was on vacation with my family. My little brother and I had a hotel room to ourselves, so I basically had to babysit him throughout the entire time. It was very annoying since I couldn't go anywhere without him tagging along with me. (Did I mention our vacation was in Las Vegas? Here's a tip: don't go to Las Vegas with your family if you want to have the best experience there.)

One day, we were returning back to our room after swimming in the hotel's pool for most of the afternoon. My little brother was very insistent on taking a shower first, so I grudgingly oblige. As I'm waiting for him to finish up, I suddenly hear a thud sound, followed by my brother yelling in pain. I hustled over to the bathroom door and asked if he was alright, to which I hear no answer. I started to panic, thinking that something really awful just happened, and I began yelling at him to open up the door.

After what seemed like a long time, he finally opens up holding a small cloth over his forehead. He was crying and looked like he was in a lot of pain, so I asked him what in the world just took place. Apparently, he had slipped and hit his head on the shower knob. When I took the cloth off his forehead to examine the damage, I saw a button-size wound that was bleeding pretty badly. Luckily, it ended up being mostly a surface cut (although a rather big one), so after I cleaned it up and put on a band-aid he was okay.

As I look back on this memory, there is one specific part that plays back to me very vividly. As I assessed his wound to see how serious it was, he looked up at me with the sadest eyes and groaned "Gor Gor..." ("big brother" in Cantonese) in the most woeful, agonizing way possible. I don't know why exactly, but hearing that dispair coming out of him tore me up right then and made me think of the worse. Thankfully, it wasn't the case that night, but what if things had played out differently?

Ever since then, I find myself consistently worrying that something awful will happen to my little brother, be it illness, a crime, or an accident, and I would be helpless to do anything for him. I know I shouldn't be stressing myself about this too much since it's really out of my control, but I can't push that thought out of the back of my head. I am just afraid that one day, he will look at me with those same sad eyes from that night, call for my help, and all I can do is watch in horror as my little brother fades away.

Hopefully, that scenario will never become a reality.

What I'm Working On Right Now

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:11:08 GMT

I'm going to be bit preoccupied this week due to a group presentation I'm working on for my I/O psychology grad class. My group and I are presenting on fairness and diversity in the workplace. As hysterically interesting as that may sound (sarcasm), my group was worried that our classmates might get bored while watching us lecture for 2 hours. Thus, I decided to get creative and make some videos for our presentation! I figure since I already make videos for fun, why not make it for school when I have such an opportunity?

The first video introduces the fairness section of our presentation. To make it more interesting, I made it in a way that I would be interacting with my onscreen self while it's being shown to the class. I even asked a classmate to raise her hand so my onscreen self can call on her. Afterward, I will be doing a short skit with...myself. Here, I'll add the off-screen lines in for now so you can see how it flows:

Another video I made dealt with how trust can be undermined in an organization. For this, I enlisted the help of my little brother. Of course, you know what that means; this is going to be a silly video:

The last video I made concerns the best way to write a rejection letter to someone. Most of my lines come directly from the textbook, making it sound rather cheesy (which was actually what I was going for). BTW, some of you may notice I borrowed footage from another video I made previously:

At this moment, I'm still working out everything I'm going to lecture on and perhaps make even more videos for this presentation, so I probably won't get a chance to write another entry until next week. Wish me luck on my presentation!

P.S. Are you familiar with the multi-web cam chat room located over at http://x-angaz-ombies.xanga.com/ ? I've recently started participating in there during nights I don't have to go to bed early for work. Here's a sample of what went down last night:

A lot of random fun silly times...I just don't recommend going in there if you want to be productive with school work =P

Stuff That I Don't Know (That I Probably Should)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:04:49 GMT

I like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent person that strives to understand the things around my environment. I would say I'm at least competent in most areas I should know and there's lot of random knowledge in my noggin, but of course there's so much out there still that I don't really know about.

Every once in a while, I'm reminded of topics that I haven't quite pick up over the years. I'm not talking about topics that the average person doesn't talk about on a more or less regular basis (i.e. world history, astrology, pink squirrels), but things that a lot of people just seem to know which I've somehow not been able to acquire. For example...

Cars

Yup, that's a um, red car...and that's a...bigger red car...

I know how to drive a car well and I understand the basic mechanics, but ask me anything else about cars and I'll probably won't know the answer. Specifically, I wouldn't be able to tell you a car's make and/or model. Apparently, different companies have distinct looks, but I never notice them. I can tell you the make and model of a tennis racket just by looking at it though! Does that give me some credit?

If you were to ask me to describe a car, I'll probably only be able to say what color it was and whether it was a small car, a truck, or a minivan. Pretty bad huh? I guess I must have missed the car lesson growing up. How did you learn about differences in cars?

Swimming

Is this a creepy picture of a pool? It looks like it's going to eat me alive!

Okay, this is more a skill than a topic I don't know about, but I picked this because it seems like so many people know how to swim while I just fail at it. I can sort of move myself in water, but I'm rather hopeless with everything else. Is it suppose to be easy to float? Whenever I try, I just sink like a rock (I wonder if my head's too big and heavy -_-). According to my friend, I'm not relaxed enough when I try to float, but how does one relax if they feel like they're about to be engulfed in water?

Don't even get me started on holding my breathe and keeping my eyes open underwater. I've tried, but I can't seem to do it without water getting through my nose or the chlorine stinging me.

For now, just throw me a life vest if I ever fall into a large body of water. I'll just chill until somebody rescue me.

Professional Football, Baseball, and Basketball

I'm not used to these balls. Where's my fuzzy ones?

Say a team name or a famous player and I can probably recognize which sport they belong to. It's another story if you want me to discuss stats or anything else like that. I don't know why, but I never got into those popular sports as much as everyone else. I rarely know when big games are happening until I suddenly see everyone discussing it in their newsfeed.

If it means anything, I do try to follow current sport news so I'm at least aware that something happened (the Yankees won something big recently, right?).

So yes, there are many other topics I would rather you come to me about (i.e. basic technology, exercise techniques, tennis, psychology, pop culture, current events) before I recommend the topics above. If we ever get in a conversation about which type of cars are the best, which swimming techniques are the most effective, or which players really deserved to be MVP I'll probably change the subject quickly to avoid any possible embarrassment due to my ignorance. I promise I'll learn more about them...one of these days.

The Look

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:42:24 GMT

About a month ago, I mentioned I was going to make another music video again, just for fun. It took a bit more work and time than I had estimated, but I finally completed it! It was fun getting it altogether, but it was quite frustrating at times. You can read about the background, process, and the obstacles after the video below:

Alright, so this idea started shortly after my friend Kevin and I finished our 1st video together. For the next one, we decided it should be one of Kevin's favorite songs and it should have some sort of story to go with it. Picking and recording the song portion was easy enough. Kevin just came over one day and I recorded him playing the song in one take. However, the storyline portion was a bit trickier to take care of.

Initially, the storyline was going to be completely different. More or less, the story was going to be about a guy seeing this girl he falls for immediately, but before he could do anything about it she already have left. Most of the video was then going to be of the guy trying to find her, but with no success. Finally, after he had given up he sees her elsewhere and even finds out she was looking for him as well. They embrace at the very end and they live happily ever after (at least until the break-up song =P).

Unfortunately, those plans fell way side when the original girl I had in mind (a fellow Xangan) to help out told me she wasn't able to do it. Because of that, I had to put the development of the rest of this video on hold for the next few weeks until I found a replacement.

The replacement ended up also being another Xangan, which was awesome. I met up with her Halloween day and shot her scenes around University of Maryland, College Park. Since it was just her and me, I changed the perspective of the storyline from third person to first person POV so I could shoot and act as the guy in the video (the guy in the video is supposedly Kevin, but at one scene where you see my hand you can obviously tell it's not him haha).

Finally, I had all the material I needed to complete the video! I just had to edit it all together, which proved to be much harder than I thought. Apparently, iMovie doesn't really allow videos to overlap while retaining another video's audio, so I had to manually go through and splice the scenes and audio together. Ideally, I would have also added some more transitions between the singing and storyline portions throughout the video, but apparently that screws up all the syncing and audio between clips. Urgh, very frustrating!

Anyway, I did the best I could do with the material and program I had available to me, so I think it turned out okay. At the very least, Kevin sang the song wonderfully, no?

P.S. Here's Kevin's Xanga page. Sarah has one too, but it's kind of private so I'm not sure if she wants me to give it out. However, she said I could link her Facebook fan page and YouTube channel. As it turns out, she's an excellent musician as well (check out her rendition of Truly, Madly, Deeply by Savage Garden), so she might be making a future appearance in another video someday!

My Mojo Could Use A Stimulus Package

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:17:30 GMT

Looking around, I wonder if loneliness hit us single people all around the same time. It can definitely catch you off guard that's for sure. Here I am, minding my own independent business and content as can be, when BAM! Suddenly, something comes waltzing by to remind me what I'm missing out on.

In my case, I was watching The Spare, a short story by Wong Fu Productions. For those that haven't seen it, it captures a HK couple's last moments together before the guy leaves for school in the US for a year. Seeing how sad and concerned the girl was brought back good memories from my past of a time when my (then) girlfriend felt the same ways about me. It's these types of reminders that makes me question what happen to my so called "mojo" I had a few years back when I found myself in almost back-to-back relationships. I used to think it was so easy to meet a good girl, but now I understand I took that for granted. If only that mojo can come back to me, now that I'm older and wiser!

Oh love. It's a feeling I haven't had a chance to really experience in nearly two years now. Believe me, I've tried to find it again and I did meet random potentials since then, but nothing concrete. I occasionally worry that one day I'll just forget how love feels and become numb to it all, as silly as that sounds. Oh, what a wonderful feeling it was! Knowing that someone cared for me so deeply brought me so much happiness. Unfortunately, those memories becomes a greater struggle to hold on to with each passing day. It's for that reason why I'm writing those thoughts down here, as a way to remind myself what I'm ultimately striving for.

Like I've said many times over this past year, I've gotten used to being single and have even come to enjoy the lifestyle. I'm pretty sure that in a couple days or so, that lonesome feeling that's currently with me will go away and I'll be content with my single status once more. Still, I'm uncertain how many more rounds I can keep up with loneliness before it overtakes me. Hopefully, someone wonderful will pop into my life before then to make that issue obsolete.

Until that lucky moment, I'll just have to soldier on.