Finding Reasons to be Heppy

The Bird and the Bee - Preparedness , all up in my ear (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCAqoMT_mts)

A cup of coffee, perfect temperature & unlimited refills

Fake non-prescription glasses.. so I feel intelligent as I translate the pages of a book yet unreleased in Korea (Dear Undercover Economist)

Boss repeating "50 Cent" over and over again in the background noise to eager Korean listeners as he lectures about the new book he's translated (The 50th Law: Strategy Expert Robert Greene and the Hustler's Mind ...)

And here's a look at the new website I've pretty much finished: (www.intrans.co.kr/main.asp, looks wrong on Macs b/c Koreans are like 99.9% PC/IE users)


Ok I'm satisfied with myself.... for the moment.

The Professional Life

Interview today...

and another one Monday.

I'm up for a potential $1000~2000 monthly increase just from working 9 or 15 hours a week.

UNLIKE my current job (which I am still going to keep) where I work 40 hours a week and still get paid way less than that 15 hour job.

I tried to quit, but I got offered to be paid the same @ my 40-hour job even as I'm allowed to leave work early to go work another part-time job teaching English. So basically I'm using work time to go and work at another part time job... and getting paid to do it. Damn my company needs me bad if my boss is willing to do that. And damn I am impressed at myself for not being a lazy fucker like I was back in the States...

But oh how I miss being a lazy fucker.... and chillen doing nothing all day with my best friends.


Anyways, working two jobs, especially b/c they're an hour's subway ride apart, will be pretty tiring...

But the DONS I NEED....!! Come to me~~

Nature Magnified

Often times the littlest and smallest of things have the most important roles in determining the outcome of an entire being.




The back of a rose geranium herb magnified at 310x.
The little white specks are oil pockets that release the herb scent when you pop em between your fingers.




Charcoal made from burnt bamboo at 50x magnification. The little holes trap odor particles. Instead of dumping a shitload of Febreze all over the place, get some bamboo charcoal (you can put it in the fridge too) and your home will be odor-free. It's also pretty interesting that burnt (dead) charcoal should look like a bunch of skulls.




Epidermal and guard cells on the back of a Dayflower petal, 141x magnification. It's amazing how no matter how small and randomly the little cells may be shaped, they all fit together into one nice big puzzle. And if you were that one little cell reacting and organizing itself based on only the nearby cells that are local to you, you wouldn't even realize that a picture bigger than yourself (or metaphorically put, a higher meaning/purpose) is emerging.




Round leaf sundew (insectivorous plant) magnified 200x. The brown thingies are the sensors that make the plant close once it comes into contact with the prey so it can digest it.




These cells of a Dayflower has been dyed with a fluorescent substance and magnified at 564x. It's like a whole another galaxy inside each of these cells.



The "furs" inside the seed of a pumpkin flower at 80x. These mini "furs" are designed to protect the delicate ovule so it can grow peacefully.



Putting aside the fact that a lot of the colors in these images were produced by man-made dyes, we need to realize, and then more importantly, remember, that small, nearly invisible miracles on minuscule levels are happening all the damn time. As was the topic of my last entry, we're always on the lookout for the big shit in life. But you'll never know how you got there if you don't slow down to appreciate all the small building blocks.. the elements that may not be of obvious use now, but what will eventually lay the foundations for the bigger future.

The SMALL(est!) Things in Life

Jill Bolte Taylor: Powerful Stroke of Insight
^About a neuroresearcher who had a stroke.. and recounts what it was like to have her brain functions shut down one by one

I've always known that my personality was very right hemispherical in terms of the brain, so to me Jill's story is especially touching.

I remember having a similar moment as Jill a couple of months ago, although in smaller scale cuz it's not like my brain was bleeding. At that time period I was in the process of discovering a new outlook on life and becoming more and more spiritually aware. In short, through an amazing sequence of life events and books I was able to relate completely unrelated events and discoveries to each other. Life seemed to be coming together and coming back in full circles. It was like one big epiphany which honestly, has been hard to follow through after moving to Korea. But I won't get into that just yet.

Anyways, I was really really really high. My right brain must have been highly dominant living my life at that time (watch the video I posted above), so with the help of a fatty ass hit it just took over and my entity was no longer contained in just myself but to my environment. It's kinda hard to explain, but my body didn't feel like it ended where my skin ended. I felt my physical body and my mental body expanded as if I were stretched out like a web that was connected to everything else in the world. It was as if I was a ball of infinite rays of light shooting outwards, connected to everything around me in every which direction and angle possible. I noticed that the location of my consciousness was still in the area where my head was, but within this experience, I was more than myself. "ME" was secondary; in fact it was more like I ceased to exist and my energy just joined the room, apartment, and San Diego. Although I'm trying to describe this in words, keep in mind I was actually COMPLETELY FEELING all of this, without these words running through my head because I didn't have to try to explain it to anyone, I just had to FEEL. It was almost like that nirvana Jill talked about in the video. I felt connected to everything that was, is, and will be. Being at one with the energy flowing into and out of me I felt less selfish, that it's not just me and my complicated emotions all alone in this world. It was kinda scary in some ways, but at one point I just let go and let myself feel that way without making any sort of effort to look or feel sober, and it became peaceful. Usually if I'm THAT high I'm just trippin out and waiting to be less high so I can just laugh at things and be amused by the TV, but this time it was way different. After that I started having more interesting bud experiences in general but even when I was sober I did remember how my physical body felt through that experience, but even more so I remember what I learned from that experience, which is commonly called the "afterglow."

But now that I think about it, it was more than just being sober or not. I hate the stigma that is associated with drugs or being "on" stuff. People too often say "I was just drunk" or "That's because I was high" as excuses for their embarrassing behavior. Besides the people that consume large amounts of crazy ass psychochemicals long term, we are basically who we are. Just because people "black out" and don't remember what they did while they were drunk doesn't mean they weren't being themselves. But anyways, I was illustrating this point in an attempt to defend that my experience wasn't just about being blazed. It gave me a chance to FEEL all the things I'd been reading and learning about, not just understand rationally and catalog it in my drug-ravaged brain.

I firmly believe that everything comes back full circle in life, whether small or big. An example of something small is the refrigerator magnet on my aunt's fridge. Throughout childhood I always remember that parrot magnet being there. It was like an integral part of the refrigerator to my 6-year old eyes. When I pictured a refrigerator, I pictured ours, with the parrot and the other magnets on it. Well, I forgot about it for years and years, not once have I thought of the parrot ever in my life after that. It basically did not exist in my perception of the world, and thus failed to exist. But I was wrong. The first day I came to Korea I noticed the parrot on my aunt's fridge and remembered it. To think it had been living there all this time for 17 years and not lying at the bottom of some dump somewhere as an integral part of my aunt's perception of the refrigerator. This story might have been not that great but when I relate such little things to the bigger things in life, I can derive meaningful ways of thinking to go about life just a little bit easier. This story would be so much cooler if I found the magnet, say, at a random ass place like the gutter in Africa and not at my relative's house, but the moral of the story is that in order to understand life and tackle its "big" ass problems sometimes you just need to look at the small things around you and there you will unexpectedly find the answers.

Just because things don't "exist" in your immediate surroundings doesn't mean they don't exist. And as much so, the things we know to be absolute or true may as well totally be not. We are so quick to make unjustified judgments about life based on the small (but seemingly HUGE) problems that surround us. Things always seem to be apt to change, and sometimes things always seem to stay the same. We just don't know. We say we hate Christianity because church as an institution is so fucked up and Christians are so hypocritical. But what do really know about God? Is your local church or even the Bible even relevant if you think of the scope of what we DON'T KNOW contrasted to what little we think we DO know? What do we know about our world, our nature, or the UNIVERSE? Will science answer all our questions then? If so, what the fuck do we even know about science besides the mere 0.000(infinite zeros)00001% discoveries we've made as a juvenile species? (Think about how old and vast the universe is, and how limited and young we are.) I don't mean to go into a discussion about religion, so I won't talk about it any further, but I just wanted to address the point that before we let the small things in life leave us soooo downtrodden and angry at other people, we must realize that it's PERFECTLY OKAY that life is not perfect or exactly the way you want it to be. It might be, and honestly more often than not, that life will NEVER be what you wanted it to be. Only when you let go of that notion can we even begin to become happy and grateful with what does exist around us.

There is also a rusty ass bracelet and earrings I remember having under my bathroom sink for the longest time. Before I came to Korea I tried it on and decided it was too ugly for me to keep, so I just stuck it back in there. Turns out now that bracelet is my aunt's and it's made of 18K gold and it's been sitting there for years. Cash4Gold! jk.

In conclusion, you just never know about life. All the way from the little things to the big things. However, with the small things we must look a little bit closer. We're always aiming to make big changes in life. We're looking for miracles and leaps of achievement. We're wishing we were magically out of the "mess" we think we're in, always looking for the magic all-in-one product that will eliminate our problems quickly, easily, and permanently. Such things do not exist. EVER. And even if they did I wouldn't take that solution and end my life's journey there. Too easily we dismiss the importance of refining the small in order to get to the good stuff and not topple over when something unexpected fucks you up later. And once you realize that you can start concentrating on the little things you can do to make life better for yourself; it's about the process of it all, not just the outcome, that makes life worth living. Life is a depressing mess if you think that only the results can bring you joy. The little things in life provide for 95% of my joy... and only when you're happy with yourself can you make others happy too.

Despite our exterior differences, we're all in the same boat. Rich or poor, hot or not, everyone at any given time is bound to have a set of problems they wish they didn't have. So you say you're having a tough time, and yes you probably are. But so is everyone else in their own ways and magnitudes. You might be sad now, but you might be happy later. There's no need to ever be jealous of the other "happy" people, because it works vice versa as well: if it's of any comfort to you, they're happy now but they're probably in for shit later haha. You're not alone and we're all in this together.. so let's be happy for each other when good things happen, and support each other when the bad times hit.

Update 1 from the Future! (Korea)

Korean cows and cow farmers are in danger. The price of one baby cow in Korea averages to about $15. And corn is a staple in cow feed, and corn is very expensive to buy in Korea. Cow farmers everywhere are going broke as fck and having to throw their precious babies away. I loveeee cows so this saddens me deeply. Just because of this I am gonna drink more milk, even though Korean milk tastes super super fatty. If I compared its taste to American milk, it would be labled WHOLLLLLEEEE milk, not WHOLE milk. All of you girls should drink more milk too. It helps you shit, which is good for girls (we have more constipation issues than guys.) And more importantly, it will help you ward off osteoporosis in the future. Better safe than too late and sorry! Yea 'osteoporosis' sounds like something really irrelevant to us right now as youngins, but you know how time flies. All of a sudden when your bone density goes to shit you don't wanna look back and wish you drank more ooyoo. And Asian women are one of the most susceptible people to osteoporosis so you don't wanna start breakin bones and shit to find out!

I don't write in this blog that often, but since all of you back home are asking the same questions and I have to repeat the same stories over and over again, I'll write in this shit and upload interesting pics more often.

Electrical wires near my area.... this can't be good haha.

I live right next to a church. I hear hella Korean Christians wailing in very fervent prayer all the time. "Jooyuh~~~(add gibberish)." Prayer is good. But it doesn't always have to be so vocal. Or even articulate, for that matter. Any loving God won't judge you for the "cool" things you articulated while praying. People should just keep it real.

I heard children singing for hours on Saturday. I hope that doesn't happen every week because I can't stand when children sing. Especially when it's like a whole choir full of kids. Cuz I know only like a few of them are actually into the singing and shit like that is more for the parents to squeal and ogle over. And the ones who are actually into the singing sound and look so obnoxious. Ew. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE kids. But I HATE it when parents make their kids do shit they don't want to do. And kids are sometimes too young to know that whatever it is they're being forced to do is actually something they wouldn't wanna do. Haha.

My uncle, aunt, aunt's friend and I all share one bathroom. Showering is a bitch in many ways. Oh how I dread the summer, coming up soon. I haven't experienced a Korean summer since I was a kid. And I don't want to experience it, either. I'm honestly very frightened and scared about that. And it's not like I can be naked all the time. Hmm. Also I'm going to force myself to drink. FORCE yes. I do NOT intend on being sober for 1~2 straight years hell no.
I been meaning to exercise more while living in Korea. Looks like that shit ain't heppening. Haha. At least I have to walk a LOT more. No more conveniently pulling up into parking spaces like 10 feet from the entrance of wherever it is I have to go. I walk to the subway station and walk even more to get to work from the subway station. It's such a bitch but I suppose I'm getting at least some of the exercise I said I was gonna do and are not doing.


I live next to a shitload of aluminum and metal thingy shop people. It's not that great. But it's not bad. Before this house my aunt and uncle lived in a nice ass apartment. BOO for the move. The doors are so creaky it's a bitch to slip in/out late at night or early in the morning.

I've only gone out to play... 3 times now. I'm booked all week, Mon-Fri, serving 9 hour days. 10 hours if I count the transportation time. And 11 hours if I count the getting ready for work time. I don't care how tired I am, I am going to play every weekend. If I have noone to play with I'll go on trips by myself. Well maybe not. That's probably more easy to say than do, cuz it's not like I'm ballin out of control. But we're only young once... I have the rest of my life to only worry about all work and no play.

To the right is a picture of the paper cups I use at my work.
"I PISS" lol. I once passed by a place that sells King Crab. And on the window there was a big sign that said, "킹크랩-2만원" (KING CRAP-$20) LOL I will take a picture of that next time.

The air in Korea smells so bad. I LOVE it. Xtine knows what I'm talking about. To register myself to the immigration office I had to take an ID picture. I went to some picture place in the subway because the man in the photo booth machine was taking forreverr.It was $3 more expensive but I did it anyway. After I took the pic, I hear the man clicking away furiously behind the wall.. and by furiously I mean helllla fast, like clickclickclickclick NONSTOP for a couple of minutes. Then he calmed down. Then he gave me 8 copies of my edited pic. Apparently this studio was one of those studios that like photoshop your face before they print it out. I'm glad I paid $3 more and I get to look good in my Alien ID card hahaha. BTW this picture looks better in person. hahaha



Next update: pics of random artwork & party pics haha

From THE FIELD

From the last chapter of The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe by Lynne McTaggart:

"Every day in the laboratories, these scientists caught a tiny glimmer of the possibilities suggested by their discoveries. They'd found that we were something far more impressive than evolutionary happenstance or genetic survival machines. Their work suggested a decentralized but unified intelligence that was far grander and more exquisite than Darwin or Newton had imagined, a process that was not random or chaotic, but intelligent and purposeful. They'd discovered that in the dynamic flow of life, order triumphed.

These are discoveries that may change the lives of future generations in many practical ways, in fuel-less travel and instant levitation; but in terms of understanding the furthest reaches of human potential, their work suggested something far more profound. In the past, individuals had accidentally evidenced some ability - a premonition, a 'past life', a clairvoyant image, a gift for healing - which quickly was dismissed as a freak of nature or a confidence trick. The work of these scientists suggested that this was a capacity neither abnormal nor rare, but present in every human being. Their work hinted at human abilities beyond what we'd every dreamed possible. We were far more than we realized. If we could understand this potential scientifically, we might then learn how to systematically tap into it. This would vastly improve every area of our lives, from communication and self-knowledge to our interaction with our material world. Science would no longer reduce us to our lowest common demominator. It would help us take a final evolutionary step in our own history by at last understanding ourselves in all of our potential.

These experiments had helped to validate alternative medicine, which has been shown to work empirically but has never been understood. If we could finally work out the science of medicine that treats human energy levels and the exact nature of the 'energy' that was being treated, the possibilities for improved health were unimaginable.

These were also discoveries which scientifically verified the ancient wisdom and folklore of traditional cultures. Their theories offered scientific validation of many of the myths and religions humans have believed in since the beginning of time, but have hitherto only had faith to rely on. All they'd done was to provide a scientific framework for what the wisest among us already knew.

Traditional Australian Aborigines believe, as do many other 'primitive' cultures, that rocks, stones, and mountains are alive and that we 'sing' the world into being - that we were creating as we name things. The discoveries of Braud and Jahn showed that this was more than superstition... On our deepest level, we do share our dreams.

The coming scientific revolution heralded the end of dualism in every sense. Far from destroying God, science for the first time was proving His existence - by demonstrating that a higher, collective consciousness was out there. There need no longer be two truths, the truth of science and the truth of religion. There could be one unified vision of the world.

This revolution in scientific thinking also promised to give us back a sense of optimism, something that has been stripped out of our sense of ourselves with the arid vision of twentieth-century philosophy, largely derived from the views espoused by science. We were not isolated beings living our desperate lives on a lonely planet in an indifferent universe. We never were alone. We were always part of a larger whole. We were and always had been at the center of things. Things did not fall apart. The center did hold and it was we who were doing the holding. We had far more power than we realized, to heal ourselves, our loved ones, even our communities. Each of us had the ability - and together a great collective power - to improve our lot in life. Our life, in every sense, was in our hands.

These were bold insights and discoveries but very few had heard them. For thirty years, these pioneers had presented their findings at small mathematical conferences or the annual meetings of tiny scientific bodies created to promote a dialogue on frontier science. They knew and admired each other's work and were acknowledged at these small gatherings of their peers. Most of the scientists had been young men when they made their discoveries, and before they embarked on what turned out to be life-long detours they had been highly respected, even revered. Now they were approaching retirement age, and among the wider scientific community most of their work still had never seen the light of day. They were all Christopher Columbus and nobody believed what they'd returned to tell. The bulk of the scientific community ignored them, continuing to grip tightly to the notion that the earth was still flat.

The space propulsion activities had been the only acceptable face of the Zero Point Field. Despite their rigorous scientific protocols, nobody in the orthodox community was taking any other discoveries of theirs seriously. Some, like Benveniste, had merely been marginalized. For many years, Edgar Mitchell, now 71, depended on lectures about his exploits in outer space to fund his research into consciousness. Every so often Robert Jahn would submit a paper with unimpeachable statistical evidence to an engineering journal, and they would dismiss it out of hand. Not for the science, but for its shattering implications about the current scientific world view.

Nevertheless, Jahn and Puthoff and the other scientists all knew what they had. Each carried on with the stubborn blinkered confidence of the true inventor. The old way was simply one more hot-air balloon. Resistance was the way it had always been in science. New ideas were always considered heretical. Their evidence might well change the world forever. There were many areas to be refined, other paths to go down. Many might turn out to be detours or even dead ends, but the first tentative inquiries had been made. It was a start, a first step. the way all science started."

teke me beck... to when i was heppeh

Why were we so happy as children?
Because we only had one main objective: to do whatever you wanted to do. That was the primary law that governed all our actions.
And 99% of the time, we did it. And it made us happy people.

When something got in the way or our parents wouldn't let us do something, we fought.
Not just mentally, but we fought with all of our might, kicking and screaming and cursing your evil parents in your head. And in this event, and in many subsequent events after that, we gained life experiences. Experiences that taught us to mind society, restrict ourselves, and say no to our inner desires for happiness.


But that was at a time when we didn't know anything, one might say.
An "innocent" time that is lost and cannot be recovered due to the progression of time.

But why? Our spirit knows no context of time. It's not a finite material, an object that fades with time. Our lives are not like clay, tender at first but only to be hardened and useless over time, unless you choose to be. Our spirit, the desire to be happy and do the things we want to do, still resides in all of us, as strongly as it did when we were children. It's innate. But no, we must consider all the wisdom, knowledge, and experiences that happened as we got older in age. We can't just do whatever the hell we want, they say. There are rules and restrictions, they say. These regulations, derived from life experiences, were actually supposed to help us become better and "wiser" people, but actually they haven't taught us much. It only taught us how to limit ourselves. It only taught us how to double-check ourselves instead of following our hearts, preventing us from being free.


Of course, learning and growing wiser is an inevitable part of human life. But there are two routes a person can take.

We can live life, gain experiences, and let the "realities" of the world continue close our hearts.

Or we can live life, learn and grow, gain experiences all the same, yet keep our inner hearts open to our childlike, natural desires, which in turn opens ourselves to the true pursuit of happiness.

The second route... yes it sounds pretty sappy. But I'd much rather take that road than the other anyday. (But what is sappy? Isn't it just something that we're too ashamed to admit that it's a sweet, good thing?)


Though we are all human, you are not me. And I am not you.
Yes we are all kin, and yes we are all pursuing the solutions to life, but my electromagnetic brain waves don't reside in your brain and yours doesn't reside in mine.

You are you, and only you can make yourself truly happy.