Live

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." ~ Oscar Wilde

As I came to sit down after delivering so many passes, I planned to just write about whatever. The random and unplanned things that interrupt the cycle for each day, the things that differentiate today and a day. But I think I'll change it up a little.

I sat down on this crappy old Dell. I call it crappy because it's the same model computer that I owned, that just randomly self destructed. Thank you Windows, thanks. I logged on to my account, and came to the default desktop for each student. The school tries to spruce it up a little by adding announcements, little reminders and what not in an embedded slide show. But no one really reads this stuff. It goes without much thought.

Today was different. By chance, I happened to look at the screen before hitting the Internet Explorer button. The current slide show being displayed was our Weekly Quote. And it said the what's listed above. But here it is again:

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."


In a few seconds, a whole series of thoughts swarmed through my head. I'm not sure if you call this a wake up call, but it was definitely something worth paying attention to:

This quote begs the unrelenting question: "What am I doing with my life?" I'm not trying to come off as cliche or like a fortune cookie, but it's such an important question.

I don't like it, but I really do fit into the latter category. I exist, but do I live? Sure, biologically I'm alive (duhh), but how much does that amount to? I eat, breathe, 똥, sleep, consume. But what do I produce? What do I do that's anything significant? How am I living?

During the school week, I'm always looking forward to the weekend. My days at school are spent awaiting the dismissal bell, and my time at home is spent lamenting over the homework pile and lusting after the weekend. Then the weekend comes. Granted, a lot of the time I am out or at least with somebody else, but some of the time I'm just sitting home. And what do I do? I watch one-piece for like hours. I watch episode after episode. I sit in my bed and watch. Just taking in the information, consuming it.

Now, I'm not here saying that watching a show or whatever is bad, because it really is not. I'm not saying that looking forward to free time or a break is wrong, because it can be good.

But when that is my existence, that's the problem. I'm gonna look back one day and notice that I spent a whole lotta time waiting, and not enough living. I wasted so much time sitting around, and not enough acting.

My plan wasn't to make this religious or anything, but this definitely relates to my spiritual life. It's funny cause while I was writing this, I remembered stuff that my youth pastor, Justin, said. The topic was boredom. In short, he said,

"How can any follower of Jesus Christ be bored? Each one of you is part of a movement, each one of you is a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. Your lives are renewed and you have new meaning, a new soul. You know that you have been saved, and this knowledge is good. Your lives should reflect this. Joy, love, peace, it should all be a part of you. And knowing that you're part of such an awesome purpose, how can you ever be bored? Your lives have purpose, so go do it."

So, I dunno, maybe in its own existence, this snippet isn't that meaningful. But in context, it meant enough to me where I can remember it vividly. And I used to think about it a lot, because it made so much sense. I know this truth, I know it. It's described as this fire that wells up and consumes you from the inside out. This joy inside me, this new life, should explode from inside me and make me do something. But instead, I can quickly forget it and just youtube for 5 hours.

I need something to live for. I need a purpose. People ask me, "What do you wanna do in college?" or, "What kinda job do you want to have?" And I tell them I don't know. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what kind of job I want, or what exactly I want to study in college. Maybe I'm too indecisive to pick something. Or maybe I just haven't found something to live for, and not live of off.

Without passion, man is nothing. Without a goal, everything else is void. And without it all, we exist, not live.

I need to start living, really. Every day of just getting through it, every day where I just go to school and go home, all of it is for naught. It's a waste.

But I won't stay like this. I can't. Soon I'm gonna realize that I have too much to do, and every wasted day is something I won't ever get back. I'm not sure what this is gonna look like, or what it's gonna involve. But it will be great. I'm alive, I just don't know it yet.

Gahh

I'm so freaking bored today. 너무 심심해. 어떡하죠 ㅜㅜ

Anything that I want to do is ruined by the thought of "Too bad you have school tomorrow."

Man..it's really starting to take it's toll on me. There's only a few months left, and spring break is coming up pretty soon, but just the thought of school ruins the moment.

It sucks cause yesterday was so fun. I spent the whole day laughing and having a good time, not caring about school, hw, stresses, or w/e. I think I'm making up for that now.

God I just want school to end. Summer, Korea, I'm coming for you. No more complaining. No more "I should get a job." I'm getting a damn job and I'm gonna pay for my damn way there. How can I expect anything without working for it?

Furlough. Bleh..

And here's my first entry into political blogging..yay..
Honestly, I thought that I'd be at least a little more excited upon writing my very first blog about politics. But in truth, I'm a bit troubled. So I'm coming to you..my faithful readers (YES ALL THREE OF YOU) seeking your opinion, and an open place to babble my scrambled thoughts.
Hmm..so where should I begin. Well, I guess I'll start by saying Virgina just recently elected a new governor, Bob McDonnell:

안녕~

But yeah, so we just elected this guy. I personally really liked him during the campaign. He seemed like a great candidate for office, especially since his opponent sucked. Even the Democrats agree.

Now, I'm not trying to say that I don't like him anymore. I still do. I'm just a little...confused. So with all this said, here's the deal:


Governor McDonnell ran on the premise that he would not raise taxes. And everyone loves this. No one wants their taxes raised (unless they're sadistic?). And he's sticking to his word--good man. No taxes are being raised. But what a lot of people don't (or didn't) understand is that when taxes are not raised, something has to get cut. Even if people do anticipate a budget cut in the future, it is so detached from them and their current state, that a tempting appeal to a low-tax kinda guy overpowers their forecasting abilities.

I hate tax increases. I love lower taxes. And I support budget cuts. So none of what I've said above is really that much of a big deal to me.

What bothered me then, is what happened today in AP GOV. My teacher, Ms. Batts, is liberal (duhh..teacher.). So obviously she doesn't like Mr. McDonnell. I come into that class always taking her words with a grain of salt (as I should do with anything though, nothing special). And this has done me good in the past. For example, were having a discussion on health care insurance companies:

Ms. Batts: *dadadada........*...and I also think that a lot of the problem with rising health care costs is the massive profit margins health care insurance companies have.

Josh: Oh..hmm yeah I could see large profit margins being a factor. How much do of a margin do you think they have?

Ms. Batts: Oh..I'd say anywhere around 70%. But I'm just putting numbers out there, but I'd say its pretty high over all.

Josh: (hiding *WTF ARE YOU SMOKING* reaction) Oh, well yeah that's pretty big..

The following evening I researched current profit margins from a Yahoo! Business source. They reported that "large name health care insurance companies" had a profit margin somewhere around 3%...

So you can probably understand why I'm not too ready to just take everything Ms. Batts says at face value.

ANYWAY...

So Ms. Batts brought up Mr. McDonnell today in class. And he has in fact carried through in my expectation, that he is going to cut the budget. Although she was under the impression that all of the money was going to be slashed out of the education budget, Mr. McDonnell's exact words were something like, "[no part of the budget is safe, not even education]" To me, that didn't sound like a complete isolation of education, but just a notification that state-wide education is not immune to budget cuts. But I can still understand the frustration.

So she went on to talk about furloughs. The way she explained it, a furlough is when you are made to come into work, but do not recieve pay for that day...

I didn't even know they had such a thing. This is ridiculous in my mind. How can you go into work and not be paid. I'd be so pissed if that happened to me. Having worked in the past, I can tell you that it's not fun. The only, only good thing about it was getting that money at the end of the week. What the hell am I doing there if there's no reward...?

So I'm not really sure what my point is. Ms. Batts went on to continue about other things that could come with the budget cuts: teacher salary slashes, less funding, blah blah, etc. But I honestly think that we have to feel some pain. We're in a freaking recession; how can the government expect to be impervious to it. And I'm not just saying this because I can; it's not like I come from some massively rich family that can take any damage. I'm not sure where some of you get this idea but we really aren't awesomely wealthy. Any pain affects us as well. So I say this, completely unsure of the future. But I also know what I believe, and I will stick with it. I don't want a tax increase. So I will accept budget cuts. If we have to live on a tightened salary, then so should the state government. So should any government.

But the problem is that the government is not just some enigma. It's not just a machine. A collection. It's run by people. A cut in that means a cut for those people. I can't help but be sympathetic. "Yeah sure, you go and take the fall too, ya stupid public servants," isn't something I can easily say. Something interesting Ms. Batts said:

"If I have to go through all this furlough, through these pay cuts, and through even tougher situations at work, then I would have gladly taken the tax increases. The money I lose that way is undoubtedly less than the money I'd lose with these budget cuts."

So basically, I'm not sure what to say. I'm sticking to what I believe: low taxes is, in the end, better for the country. But what about the people it affects, in a not so good way?

Same old, same old

Bleh..we're back in school again. This "break" (or rather a series of God-sent snow days) was definitely good, but short lived. I could have used like another week off..but now I'm sitting here in class again. I'm actually writing this from the Guidance Office ("wtf..."). Instead of taking a study hall, I kind of got ropped into delivering passes for guidance. Officially, I'm labeled as a Guidance Aid...but really I just deliver passes for the Guidance Counselors.

Would you take this pass for me, dear?

Yeah....

So anyway, yeah, school sucks. I'm finding it increasingly harder to have reason for doing homework. Remember that huge mound of Latin homework I was complaining about? Yeah..that only took about a half hour to do (and I'm sure you can guess why). At this point it doesn't really matter though; college is right around the corner, so who cares?

Except that I don't really know where I'm gonna go haha. Forever I was set on getting in and going to UVA. Now both of those are kind of iffy.

1) I don't know if I can even get into UVA. Before the whole application thing I was pretty sure of my self. Now, realistically speaking, I'm not so sure. Everyone else who applied to UVA has grades and a life like mine, so why am I any different? I'm freaking white damnit, they don't need me (And it's sad that I'm being mostly serious..)

2) I dunno if I even really want to go now. Like, UVA no doubt is a good school, and I'd be really lucky to go there. But as of now, it doesn't have the same luster as before. Who knows, maybe it's just my whole attitude towards school at the moment. Maybe I'll feel differently once I know where I can at least go, after April 1st....(dandandan).

[BTW I KEEP GETTING INTERRUPTED BY HAVING TO DELIVER PASSES. Times like this really piss me off cause they come in ONE AT A TIME every FIVE MINUTES. JUST SEND IT ALL IN ONE CHUNK SO I DONT HAVE TO KEEP GETTING UP -_____-]

OH. Yeah, so the surprise party was a success. It was pretty funny though. A lot of the predictions I made came true. For example, Jay's mom told him that he had to get out of the house for a while, and so he called me. He was like, "Hey I need a place to go cuz my mom said I needa get outta the house, so imma go to the gym first then hit up ur place in like an hour." Thing is, we all knew that he would want to go to the gym first LOL. It was really perfect planning. His mom told him the news at around 2 pm, which would mean he'd be coming over at around 3ish, which was right after everyone should have showed up. Pretty crazy timing if you ask me (10 gateway anyone?)

People started filtering in late though. Most of them parked on the street, which was fine, seeing as Jay would probably not care about the cars parked near my neighbors house. But someone decided to park on my driveway...when Jay knew my parents were at work (fail). I had to make up some huge lie when he came in LOL:

*opens door*

Josh: Hey whats up

Jay: Oh hey...what's with the cars?

Josh: Oh haha actually my dad's friend broke up with his girlfriend and now he needs a place to stay for a while. It sucks cause he moved here from Cali and moved in with her...so he doesn't have a house or a job or anything

Jay: oh...so he's juss chillin downstairs?

LOL, poor kid probably expected a surprise when he came in. Hopefully the lie worked well enough because he looked surprised when he came downstairs. But who knows, maybe he was putting on a show. But I'll classify this one as a success. gg.

The party itself was pretty fun at the beginning at least. I met a lot of his ffx friends for the first time, and they were really funny haha. Not much to say though for the rest of it. We kinda just did whatever for the rest of the night, laughed about nothing, sat around, etc lol. It was still a good time though haha ilu jay no homo (faggot..).

Oh, so over break I learned future tense (thanks Juho :D). So now I basically know all the tenses, which is awesome. I also have a really good idea of indirect statement...(but don't worry about what that means...just nod and go along with it hehehe..awkward.) Pretty soon, after I get a good vocab, I'll be spitting out sentences like MC Sniper WOOOO..(yeah, okay, freak).

Its'sa meh, Mario!

Hmmm..what else. Well, there hasn't really been that much SC action since I last posted. Choi's at dorm so the whole crew is kinda lost (we need you choi T_T). Oh, but speaking of John and Choi, they're together again. No more SC drama for the time being, yesssss (wtf sc drama...uber nerd).

Well, not much left to say. I'm really gearing myself to write something else than just boring update blogs. Hopefully a political blog in the future kekeke. But for now, laters



jaawshh

Colors? Good Lord

Alright, so it's kind of been a while, but I haven't been motivated to write anything lately haha. I'm pretty boring .__. hahaha

However, just now, my friend John Juho Bisu Rat Lee just made me take this personality quiz. He seemed really excited for me to take it, so I thought, "Eh, why the hell not?"

The quiz basically consisted of choosing colors. You were presented a 2x4 column of 8 colors, and told to pick each one in the order of which one "makes you feel good". I was like " WTF COLORS MAKING ME FEEL GOOD..?" LOL, it gets better. Then you're told to wait like 170 seconds to continue the quiz. AND THEN you're told to do the SAME THING with the SAME COLORS again, but to "try and not to pick the same colors". LOL. Obviously you can tell that I was quite skeptical of this.

So I took it, and kinda rushed through it/didn't take it seriously the first time, and got completely crappy results. So Juho was like, "TAKE IT AGAIN"

So I did.....


AND THEY WERE SPOT ON.

I was pretty weirded out; the results were very accurate this time around. Here, take a look:

Josh LaRosa took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! ""Wishes to live in a calm, peaceful, relaxing envi..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

But yeah, I thought this was pretty freakin accurate.

Also, I've been learning Korean a lot more in the past few days. That Juho kid I talked about earlier really helped me a lot in starting my foundation for Korean, and still helps me all the time, so I feel bad asking him a million questions all the time. I have a friend, Choi, though, who helps me from time to time. Recently, however, he's definitely been a huge help [고마워!! 난 최를 통해 한국어를 빨리 배우고 있어 ^^]. I'm still definitely a long ways away from being anything close to fluent, but I'm seeing the progress. It's really exciting that I can understand certain things now; something that sounded so foreign to me is becoming more and more familiar. I really hope to have a conversation with these guys in Korean one day..or maybe I could blog in Korean [What a freak...LOL]. Even though I know that I sound like a major loser right now...well I don't care cause it's freaking awesome LOL.

Anyway, not much else is new. I've just been sitting here at home on my second winter break, LOL. It's been nice though; I'm definitely already dreading returning to school. They weren't lying when they talked about senioritis. Spring break is gonna be gg....I can already feel it.

Speaking of senioritis, my Latin teacher was telling us that "just in case we have a snow day, work ahead so we don't fall behind. We have a lot to do still and the AP Exam is coming up!"

Yeah, nice pep talk...for a one day break. ITS BEEN LIKE SIX LOL. No way in hell am I doing work...I'm gonna be doing so much work Monday night...T_____T;;

Yeah well I don't wanna virtual complain forever, so I'll stop here LOL.

KEKEKE TOMORROW IS GONNA BE SO FUN...but I cannot say why :X

jaawshh

Snowed In

Yeah, so I woke up this morning to a huuuuuge load of snow--and a crap load especially for this area.

I couldn't really make anything out though; I just looked out my window and saw a blanket of white, a massive piece of paper, a hyperbolic time chamber, what ever you wish to call it. I was talking to my friend Aimee on aim though [which is interesting in itself because she never goes on lol], and she told me it was up to her knees. Now, granted she's not gifted in the height area, that's still a crap load.
Still, I could not fathom the extent of the snow. Hoping to perhaps reach super sayan, I ventured into the abyss, only to realize, "Damn...this is a lot -_-"

And then I got to shovel it, YUSSSSS!!!! An hour of my life wasted. Snow used to be so good to me...then i grew up.

gg no re..

Funny things happen though: The snow is largely loose, so snowball production was minimal. However, the snow packed into my shovel, and created premium snowball forming material. Seeing my dad with his back turned, I compacted the devilishly cold missile, and launched it. I swear I was aiming for his back, but I hit the back of his head, on his ear. I saw a side of my dad that I rarely see. His eyes were bugged out, and he was as raged as possible

DAMN YOU! THAT PISSES ME OFF

LOL, it's funnier for those who know my dad, but he never really gets mad at anything, so I couldn't help but laugh while he was raging right in front of me [so bm...]

We also made pizza today. We tried out a new crust recipe, which was pretty good. This one had olive oil in the crust, so it was a lot flakier after being baked. I thought it was pretty good, although I think I prefer a more standard crust. But I'm not a food critic, so we'll stop this conversation here.


Quote of the day: "HEHEHEHEHEE" --Jay Lim

ROFL

jaawshh

Snow Day = Good Day

This morning I woke up to the motorcycle ringtone I have set for my dad. It was about noon. Without opening my eyes I just pick up the phone:

Hello...
Hey Josh, what are you doing??
sleeping..
Oh, well, I'll be home in a half hour-ish, do you want me to bring some Chipotle?
oh uh--what - yeah okay.

I really didn't want to expend the energy talking so early in the morning, and I slipped back into a good sleep. I'd write whatever my brain dreamt up in this time, but I'm so bad at remembering these things -___-

Anyway [after what felt like a few seconds later], it was 1 o'clock and the garage door was opening.


AHH TO BE CONTINUED
I'm heading out for a few hours.


I know...the suspense is killing you [does he have chipotle? 아빠 치포트래 있어?]

[continued here]

Yeah, so I went downstairs and found that my dad did in fact bring Chipotle home.

SUCCESS!

Mmmmmmmmm....

I ate it while re watching the season premier of LOST with him. I don't wanna be a spoiler..BUT WHY DID JULIET HAVE TO GOO T------T;;

주리엣....보고싶어....

Hmm..well yeah I kinda just bummed around for a while after the chipotle. At around 3:30ish I got a call from Jay to go to the gym. [I know that you might have some hope now that I'm not actually a total nerd :D...just wait ._.].

So I went to his house...only to be frustrated by freaking fail muta timing. What is muta timing do you ask? Well, in sc [StarCraft], the most essential part to a zerg [one of the three races] player's game is mutalisk harass. This involves pretty careful control of the units. And for some reason, the stupid retarded pre-pubescent guardians wouldn't shoot. pretty ridiculous -__-"

Anyway, after a fail series of experiments, we finally decided to go to the gym. Lemme recap this for you:

Jay: GOD CHIGGER WTF WTF I GIVE UP..lets go to the gym now

Josh: Okay (FINAFRIKKINLY)

Jay: Ohhh lemme check one thing real quick

*motorcycle ringtone*

Josh: Hello? Oh..you're coming? The snow's so bad? Oh...okay.

Jay: Guess no gym today....

yeah, epik fail. I was kinda hoping for a good workout too. But instead of writing about that, I'm telling you about sc failures. omg...LOL

Yeah well, nothing else will probably come up. Who knows, maybe I'll see Obama on TV and get pissed enough to write a special entry. YATAAAH

ah well. LAN PARTY GOGOGOGO

jaawshh

An Introduction

Alrighty, so upon the request of friends, I'm making this blog. I'm not really sure how this is all gonna work, if this will be interesting at all, or if I'll even continue with this, but it's second semester, so I don't care anymore.

[yeah what a lame introduction...let's try again]

Hi, I'm Josh. I'm 17, and a senior in high school. I have a lot of quirks, as some call it, so bear/bare/ehh...? with me. But I'm writing this to be about me, so I'll just get on with it--no hiding anything. (I also can't spell....yeah I probably spelled that word wrong back there).

So..what about me. I'm white, kind of. My nationality is mostly Italian, although I'm afraid that I've transformed. 안녕하세요! 좌시 입니다.

Yes, I'm slowly becoming Korean ._.

[This is my wife, 함은정, just so you all know]

Some of you are definitely asking, "How the did this happen...?" Well, I guess I've always had an interest for other cultures: for language, food, people, 여자들, yeah. This, and some of my best friends are Korean. So it sort of just happened. I love the music scene, and am learning the language, so feel free to drop a comment on it ^^.

Anyway, I'm also a pretty big politics nerd (It just keeps getting weirder..I know hahaha). Ever since freshman year, I've always been following current events. I'm terribly opinionated. If you can take debate, then feel free to say what you think. I'll probably be pissed off enough one day to write about some stupid thing that's happening anyway :D.

Hmm..what else. Oh yeah. One of my favorite things to do in my free time is..StarCraft (The nerd keeps coming). Yeah, yeah, it's true. It really is a fun game to play though. On top of all the actual gaming, the people dynamics is really entertaining too. (nerd rage ftw) Anyway, there will probably be a few posts about this in the future too.

My faith is also a very important part of my life. I have to be honest and say now that I've been kind of out of my youth group activities, but that doesn't stop my relationship with and love for God. Maybe I'll be introspective in a post one day and talk about this too, who knows.

Yeah I realize I'm probably just drawing this out now. You can probably tell that my brain is pretty scattered, and I kind of think in a mess. Hopefully what I said is at least interesting enough to get you to here though. Hopefully future entries are a little more organized. And hopefully I keep this up LOL.

jaawshh