I’m not a “hip hop” girl.

A lot of the music I post is hip hop related, yes. But I don’t think I’m considered the stereotype of “Asian who listens to a lot of hip hop.” 

I actually listen to a lot of other genres besides hip hop. I grew up listening to R&B but hip hop surely came a lot later on in life. 

Of course, then people will ask. “Well, then why don’t you post other stuff besides a lot of hip hop?” 

And really the answer to that is as simple as, “I listen to a lot of hip hop when I’m ‘thinking’.” Something about stoic rapping and really nice melodies on top of a beat makes me think about a lot of things. It’s just how it is. 

I’m neither really happy or sad when I’m listening to hip hop. It just makes me think about different kind of things relating to life or what I like or what I don’t like. 

So no, I’m not a hip hop girl. I’m just a girl who likes hip hop. But I like music in general. Rock, pop, classical, jazz, disco—-you name it.

1. People Don’t Stray

I used to think that “social networking” actually meant connecting with people around you that you don’t already know, but now it’s become an elite thing. Not that I’m the type of person who follows up on “friend requests” to just about anyone. I do the elitist thing too. I’m picky with who I will allow on my Facebook page, because Facebook isn’t just a social networking site. Facebook is the portal to one’s mind. Facebook is the anger, the joy, the openness to share one’s life to a close public. And you don’t let just anybody in. Then again, not everyone is that open about their life on Facebook either. Though I have to say, those who were not so brave to speak their minds in the past have definitely gotten over their fear of speaking up via a quick status update nowadays. Isn’t that something? The internet has made us brave. 

The internet is a weird thing. Some call it magic, others call it a series of mathematical logic through binary coding. I call it “The essence” because without the internet, most of us have lost the ability to cope with just about anything. I was watching an episode of South Park where the world starts to lose internet. Shit was funny though but the humor really resides in the fundamental factor that what they make fun of is pretty on the dot of what would happen if that were to actually happen. As a random character shouts out during the epidemic, “What did we do before the internet?” I couldn’t help but laugh from the sheer blunt truth that came out of the question which spawned in myself to reiterate the question. What did we do before the internet?

And I don’t really know. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter what we “did” back then without internet. It’s kind of like asking, “What did people do before cars?” Well, people walked. People rode horses. Pretty simple answer right? Not really. Because it compromises the detail of just how significant something adapts to this world. Sure without cars there are means of transportation, but walking isn’t nearly as fast as a car is to get you from point A to point B and a horse, well a horse is an animal for one. You may not have to fill it with gas but you’re going to have to feed it and everything is manual if you think about it. I’d rather ride a bike instead. At least a bike doesn’t shit. 

Let’s close our eyes for a minute though, and just imagine what it would be like if internet just stopped working. Imagine the sheer chaos that would ensue. Through internet, or technology in general rather, we have learned to utilize it at every sense. Television programs are now accessed through a shared network. The reason you get cable TV is because a network, via internet, supports the programs to be aired. 

News relies on internet. 

Your phones rely on internet. 

Computers, more often times than not, rely on internet.

So what can we do without internet? 

And some may look at the question and be like, “Damn…..I’d be so bored.” but the real question here is, “What BETTER things can we do besides using the internet?” Human beings weren’t teleported onto this earth. We made it. We created it. We expanded it. Benjamin Franklin didn’t need internet to spark him the idea of electricity. Alexander Bell didn’t need internet to spark in him the idea of communicating via a two-end device. What great inventor or genius needed the internet then? It might sound irrelevent to say this, but if you think about it, the most common inventions of this world are the ones most taken for granted but they were the most brilliant. We’re so used to electricity because it’s considered as “a given” but without it, we would virtually have nothing. We didn’t need internet to watch movies or play on our Super Nintendo, but without electricity, we don’t even have those. We have books. We have board games. We have, what’s this? Creating? Absurd right? Sure people have invented smart cars. Sure, people have invented Amazon.com, sure, people have invented smart phones and PS3’s, and even common ingenius items like a computer mouse or hell, water bottles. But these things don’t compare to the discoveries of the past. And really it’s because back then, all of these ideas, these life changing inventions came from ‘pure’ knowledge. These men made discoveries by pure facts, put their facts together to create something that could work, but these are the fundamental things that made it possible for us to have laptops, microwaves, TV’s, blu-ray players, and everything else we can touch and see in our homes. And all it took for these people was a lot of knowledge, a lot of time, and a lot of patience. Our day and age don’t have that kind of time, that kind of patience, and unfortunately, that kind of willingness to learn anymore. 

Without the internet, we’d have a lot of free time. We’d have all the time in the world to write a story, to write poetry, to make a painting, to sew a dress, and so much more. We’d take more time to go outside and meet people, to talk to our friends, to bond with others, to write them letters. But we become “too busy” for people and feel that simple tasks like driving to someone’s house is “too far”, “too costly”, which are all valid excuses but only because everyone else feels the same way. Why bother driving when you have AIM? Why bother hanging out with someone when we video chat? Why bother when the world is so conveniently right in the palm of our hands? 

You see, people don’t stray because they’re bad or have bad intentions. People stray because it’s easy to. Your best friend deletes you on Facebook because you don’t give her enough of your time. You don’t trust your boyfriend because you see too many girls comment him on Facebook. You don’t even know who people are anymore because their Twitter updates only talk about getting drunk, injecting things, or getting high all the time. So who do you really even know when the internet says one thing, and the person says another? Should you believe what you read online at all? Wikipedia is trusted by so many as a source of information, when really the articles are written by just about anyone. There’s a good chance that the person who wrote about “Psychology” is an actual psychologist or someone who specializes in psychology, but do you really trust the words of a second year college student who majors in Psychology that just happened to write the article? Most people don’t question the validation of the source, therefore, it’s almost like every word is law. 

People, like the internet, have become so fickle. Facebook was originally established as a college-only networking site. I remembered it very well when no one was on it back then. You needed a college email address to even create a profile. Isn’t that crazy? Now it’s just become another Myspace, minus the freedom to actually create a profile page. Fickle. If it stayed exclusively to college students, it wouldn’t be as popular as it is today, but, how cool would it be to have an elite portal for college students only to join that network? It wouldn’t be filled with mindless updates but instead, would be filled with probably school related agendas. That may or may not be the case, but it would be pretty nice to know that your little sister couldn’t stalk you on facebook because she’s still in high school. You’d be a little more special. But everything on the internet becomes fickle the minute it realizes that it needs to have more people latch on to it. It’s not about meaning or a fruitful experience on the internet. It’s about the amount of hits. Sound familiar?…..Tumblr famous peeps?

But it’s okay because people don’t stray. 

The surge of unreliable, fickle, and reputable facts is what makes one stray from the world outside of cyber world.

Sometimes a little lie is just a little lie. Sometimes we lie because we’re just too lazy to explain the truth or sometimes we lie because we feel unsure of the feedback if we tell the truth.

But no matter the reason, a lie will always be FALSE information. A lie will always be the opposite of what’s true. 

And the more you lie for whatever your reasons are, the more your mind begins to think i’s okay. The more you condition your mind into thinking, little lies are harmless. 

Doesn’t matter if the person never finds out that you lied. 

Doesn’t matter if the lie did no harm whatsoever. 

A lie is a lie is a lie. 

The more you do it, the more it becomes your truth. 

But you’re lying to yourself. It’ll never be the truth.

Dreamin

As children we don’t know much. We can only attempt to put together pieces of the puzzle as we view the world around us. But as we get older and as we get wiser we realize that everything we were thinking of, became a part of who we are as we grow up. And if you didnt have much as a kid, you appreciate the things you have now as an adult.

Its an excuse to say that because you had a fucked up childhood you have no life now as a fully grown adult. Attempting to mooch off of everyone you know, that’s not even living. That’s just surviving and I wonder how people can live that way.

In life there are no legit excuses. You make the choices you make. How wealthy or successful you are is determined by your efforts. Nothing comes easy in this world. Even those who have been spoonfed all theor lives will come to realize that being given everything doesn’t come easy either. Your parents wont always be there. And they don’t provide infinite amount of income. Sooner or later yoy have to fend for yourself and you’ll learn the hard way that life is about working hard to get what you want. There are no excuses.

I hear it all the time. Friends on the streets ask me for money, to buy them food, and borrow a little cash to take the bus. I can only provide so much until I eventually tell them to get a job and stop being a bum.

I’m the laziest motherfucker there ever was. But I still bust my ass to get where I am now because I want to live my life. I don’t want to just merely survive. That’s not the life I want to live. Alot of people tend to think I’m wealthy and I guess you could say I am, but I’m wealthy in spirit not really literally. I can affors to have nice pair of sneakers on occasion. I’m wealthy enough to have an xbox, my own desktop computer, a macbook laptop, expensive makeup, expensive graphic design books, and a dslr, but every little thing I own, I earned it myself. I worked my ass off at a fast food joint at the age of 16 and saved and bought everything I wanted. I was never spoonfed. I know what its like. I’ve been there.

My father left me when I was 15 and ever since my mom went crazy I had to fend for myself. That meant doing everything from going to high school to working at Jack In The Box in a ghetto ass neighborhood, and even reverting to selling a couple “special orders” if you know what I mean. Don’t ever lecture me on what ita like to live in the streets. I’ve been robbed. I’ve been threatened at gun point. The life I live now, one might never even fathom id be the type of person to experience something like that. But I have. And so have many other successful people. Some call it luck. Some call it smart. Others say its all God. I call it drive. Because no matter what my life was like I would always be dreaming of the life I wanted to live when I got older. Dreaming is just as good as reality to me because my dreams are my inspirations. Don’t take your imagination for granted. If you can dream it, you can create it. You can live it.

Not everyone is going to be a success story but all I know is that I can’t stand when people give me these bullshit excuses. Yeah you might have issues with your parents. Been there. Yeah you might even be homeless. Done that. Yeah you might have no real friends. So fake it. Do whatever it is that yoy need to do to get there. Don’t give me excuses. Without effort your excuses are nothing but a statement of how much you don’t care where you end up in life.

Dream big and dream always.
It doesn’t take a genius to be somebody. It takes drive.

Where do you want to go?
And ask yourself, how will you get there?
Set your path and follow it.
Age is never a factor. You’re never too old to become the person you want to be. Im 23 in a field fulk of high school students as young as 15 doing what I do better than me. But it means nothing. Motivation stems from how much you want your dreams to come true.

No dream is ever too far away.

Narcissistic moment

I think people tend to like me because I don’t go anywhere near DRAMA. I may be conniving, selfish, manipulative, and not always the greatest friend, but at the least, i don’t try to make other people’s lives difficult in any way. I find that’s the most annoying thing about befriending others as I get older. Most people are not considerate and don’t think about what they do or say. They just do whatever they want even if it means it can get stressful for the other person. I’m not the people pleaser I used to be, but I’m definitely not someone who is inconsiderate enough to make other people stressed out. At least, I hope I’m not.

I drop a lot of people from my life really easily and it’s because I know I’m capable of moving on pretty quickly. I value my friendships with all my heart but at the same time, I know that I will always meet new people and make new friends as well. Meaning, that if shit annoys me enough, I don’t care to maintain the friendship as much as I would in the past. And you can shun me for it, hate me for it, think I’m a terrible person for it, and I wouldn’t give two shits. When you’ve based your whole life trying to make everyone like you, eventually you want to feel what it’s like to be on the flip side. And I definitely dig not caring all too much.

But that goes to say, I will never turn down someone if they really needed me. If I get a text from someone saying they really need to talk to me, it doesn’t matter what I think of them at the moment. If they are a friend then they are a friend. I’m not cold blooded or heartless. I just have other priorities besides those around me. And that’s just the blunt truth.

Still, even saying this upfront to my friends they still accept me and they brush it off like it means nothing. I guess that’s why they are my friends right? Haha. If you can put up with me, I can put up with you, then there is what we have a compromise. Sometimes I pride myself knowing that no matter what happens between me and my friends, picking up new friends is a matter of a text away. And it may sound mean but to be honest, I’m just being honest. Not everyone has the balls to admit that you are not Jesus fucking Christ. I’m flawed.

Life is full of a little bit everything: Sadness, happiness, experiences, and everything in between. I’ve even had a few regrets. But as time goes by, you become the person you were meant to be. You live the life you were meant to live. You gain the friends you were meant to befriend. And you fall in love with the person you were made for. But none of that happens without effort. And with effort, everything, no matter good or bad, will be worth it.

Project Seba Jun

I think what motivates me is when I’m inspired by something I really appreciate or enjoy. Since Nujabes’ passing last Feb. I’ve been feeling like a very small part of my life has left me. I think it just comes from the mentality that this artist that I really appreciated will no longer produce anymore new tracks. It’s saddening especially if you really liked his music. I’m sure many people can relate to this. 

I’m thinking of doing a design based project on Nujabes. I’m not sure exactly how to execute it yet but I just got inspired to work on something related to him and his music. The only problem is that I want this to be exclusive and use it for my portfolio, but as anything in design goes, there’s always a copyright issue. I’m wondering how I can get in contact with HydeOut productions to ask them if I can use his images for commercial purposes. 

Hire Japanese person ftw.

I’d always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die.

First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time.
For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout Camp, watching falling stars. And yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street. Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand-new Firebird. And Janie… and Janie. And… Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry, you will someday.

—Lester Burnham

When the lights go on

Why is it that we become so certain of something the moment we believe it is “logical” to think it is certain? But what is really “logic” and what does it mean when you perceive it in a scientific and mental point of view?

Just a moment though. Let’s not get LOGIC confused with “COMMON SENSE.”

Alot of people like to say, “well that’s logical” when they really mean that something is just “common sense.” Common sense is sociological perception. One might say, “It is common sense to turn an electrical device off before you unplug it.” But its a socio perspective. What if you were born in a third world country with no electricity and would have no way of knowing how something like that works? If you brought them into the scenario and they didn’t know what to do, would that justify them to have no common sense? Common sense is a judgment, an instinct if you will, that derives from a socio perspective. It can be based off logic but logic cannot be based off common sense.

Logic is a method of reasoning. Scientifically, we believe that something is logical when we conduct an experiment and conclude that it works. Logically speaking, if you turn a light switch upwards, the light will go on because we infer “up” is ON and “down” is OFF. But with logic comes fallacies.

A fallacy is a false notion of something perceived of being “TRUE”. Most of us believe that the light switch turned UP will mean ON, but this is a fallacy in the most simplest of ways because there are factors that contribute to it’s scientific function.

If you have a lamp that has an on and off switch of it’s own, you can plug in the lamp to the corresponding light switch and turn the switch to DOWN. Then turn on the lamp directly and the light will turn on. If you then flip the switch up, the lamp will turn off. The wiring of the electrical switch directly responds to the wiring of whatever electrical device you use. Therefore, the analogy that the light switch going up means the light will turn on, is a fallacy.

Science may be something you can prove, but science is an experiment in itself. We cannot know what is really TRUE or FALSE based off a scientific proof alone. There is only reasoning, a logic, in which we can infer that something is true or false.

Our minds work like this. The moment that we believe that the light will go on, we give ourselves hope that there will be light. But that logic is not always going to be our savior because there are far too many components that goes within our thoughts beyond a simple light switch. You can probably see it from your computer as you read this, that very light switch that is mounted to your wall, just a little above and adjacent to a door knob or at the corner of a wall. This white, maybe beige rectangular panel that is common in every household is so simple yet so complex. If a wiring is disrupted, this panel is rendered useless. It is a simple solution to bring light into a house, to turn on and off several electrical devices at once, and at the least, it is a mere analogy for the mind.

When you’re given an idea, does your mind always instantly give it a solution?

Sometimes the best solution isn’t as easy as a flick of a switch; saying what you know, doing what you’re familiar with because you have experienced it. Sometimes the solution requires you to look beyond the simplicity. Because honestly, nothing we say or do is ever for certain. Your friends are not for certain. Your family is not even for certain. Your entity is not even for certain. So go beyond logic and go beyond your own understanding. And experiment with your uncertainties until the light goes on.

The ‘Inception’ of Reality.

If you haven’t noticed already, I named this blog (not the username) but the BLOG title, “LUCIDREAMZ” aka “Lucid Dreams”. In fact, my old blogs were all named “LUCIDREAMZ” for a while. And there was a reason why. I’ll delve into that soon enough.

I just watched Inception by the way. It was……phenomenal. I mean, I knew it would be a great film because it’s Christopher Nolan’s genius behind it, but I mean….wow. It goes beyond being just a great entertainment of a film. This movie in particular, REALLY embedded itself deep within me. I was so engaged in the film and it’s topic, I literally felt entranced into the motion picture myself.

So what is a “lucid dream”? Basically, a lucid dream is when we have dreams and are at a stage of consciousness. It is when we are aware that we are dreaming and can alter the elements or direction of the dream to our choosing. I’ve been fascinated with dreams since I was a little kid. I discovered lucid dreaming in high school. As in, i actually discovered what it was that was happening to me at night when I was dreaming. When I was a kid, I would have lucid dreams every now and then, but when it happened, I was fascinated by it. I was astonished by how realistic my dreams were, how I could remember every detail down to a tee. Ever since, I was always trying to think of symbols and reasons as to why we dreamed of certain things and what certain elements in a dream meant.

Even as an adult, now, I still have lucid dreams. In fact, I can enter lucid dreams at my own free will, almost. Basically I fantasize about this world that does not exist in my current reality. In fact, it’s so real that I return to it each and every night before going to bed. Meaning, I fantasize about it. I hardly ever actually dream of it, because a fantasy and a dream are two different things. Fantasies are created with the fully conscious state of mind, whereas dreams are in our subconscious. However, when I’m strongly fixated on my fantasy, it drifts me to fall asleep eventually. And every now and then, I’ll have pieces and elements of my fantasy world incorporated into my dream world. I remember them. I remember the detail of it being present. I don’t always remember my dreams, but I do know I have at least one dream every night that I can recall after waking up to a fully conscious state of mind. It’s fascinating if you think about it. To form a fantasy and incorporate that into a dream. It’s different because in fantasies, it is only an imagination projected in the back of my mind. It doesn’t feel any more real than that. But when it transfers into my dreams, it feels real. As DiCaprio’s character in the movie states, “Dreams feel real when we’re in them, It’s only when we wake up that we realize something seems strange.” implying that when we are dreaming, it is almost as good and “real” as reality. We don’t realize the ‘state of dreaming’ until we are woken. Which is why lucid dreaming is so unique. When I’m lucid dreaming, I know I’m dreaming, yet, because the projection of imagery is on a deeper level than just the back of my head, it now seems ‘three-dimensional’, as if it’s reality, but altered. And for that moment in time, I wish to never ‘wake up’ to the full conscious, because ‘reality’ is so mundane compared to my dream world.

But if you think about it, we all have this ‘dream world’ concocted in our minds. We may not literally day dream about it or fantasize about it as frequently as I do, but we have an idea. We all have a dream lifestyle that we’d like to obtain; aka, ‘goals’. But what if, the goals in our reality begin feeling unreachable? What if, we begin to feel like, we are stuck with a bland, mundane reality forever? And what if, we can change that to whatever fantasy we would want? What if we could live whatever life we ever imagined? This is what dreams are. Dreams are a projection of an alternate ‘reality’. Our memories, our imaginations, our every thought and desires become strewn together in our dreams. One might argue that dreams are ‘just dreams’ and that they can never be reality, because nothing in the dream world is REAL. See, this is where Christopher Nolan loves to impose an idea that seems so absurd and unrealistic and bring it to the closest, visual and mental reality, that we as viewers can think of. Who is to say that dreams are NOT real? They ARE real. When we are in a dream, we can touch, taste, and feel. And as you read this, you may think, “but the feeling is different.” and that’s only because we are NOT dreaming right now. We are engaged in our full, awaken conscious state of mind. We perceive the notion of a radical reality, that being the one we are in right this instance. But the next time you go to bed, think about it for a second. Think about dreaming. Think of something to dream about. Tell yourself, “I’m going to have a dream….and I’m going to remember it.” And as soon as you wake up, while your mind is still at a level of regaining full consciousness, recall the elements and details of the dream. Did it feel fake? Did what you ‘experience’ feel like it was really all ‘just a dream?’ For that moment, it does feel real, because again, while we dream, it IS REAL.

It’s fascinating, the topic of dreams. Scientifically, they are nothing more than projections of memory, jumbled into our subconscious mind while we’re sleeping. But it makes me wonder, if dreams stem from a part of our mind that stores memory, why is it that we can ‘create’ people, places, and things in our dreams? Why is our creativity working even when we aren’t thinking? It’s as if, things just happen as they go along, without any thought. It’s kind of like, ‘reality’.