I think it's funny how people get drunk and then start missing all the people they shouldn't. How can they want a past that doesn't want them?

It's comforting sometimes to hold the hurt for longer than you should, and so I linger in these graveyards. But even then it's about victimization and assigning blame and being alone at three in the morning. It's never about you.

I miss the shy hands and the wanting looks and the kind of echoing hunger you can't name, but the people I have forgotten. If you asked who they were I couldn't say - what remains is a blur of time, an abstracted failure. Names are a promise of continuing relations, so these must be thrown overboard. I don't miss them.

It may be wrong to discriminate, but I have never known any fat people who eat healthy. I know skinny people who eat junk but it rarely works in reverse. Fat families aren't fat because of genes; it's because bad eating habits are passed down through the generations.

Why do people eat junk? I could say it's because they're uneducated, but the resources are there for anyone who's looking. Education is not an authoritarian imposition; it's your own responsibility. You can't educate those who won't educate themselves. The Internet is jam packed with information for the willing to learn, and through some of it will contradict, any dummy will know the basic principles of eat your veggies, drink your water, sleep enough and exercise.

I don't mind as much when my Ultimate friends go to McDonalds because you do stupid things when you're young and when you haven't yet had a kidney failure (although that doesn't stop some people). Us suburban kids have been spoiled enough to have had everything given to us - why shoudln't we take our health for granted as well?

But CMNS 235 lecture is different. Dr Cross is short and smiley and not so intelligent as to overwhelm her chubby, grandma-like adorableness (she's about the same age as my mom). And it's hard to take her talk about the evils of corporate, conglomerate media seriously when she downs a Diet Coke at the same time, every week at lecture. My high school physics teacher was the same. He was as round as Santa Claus and he had the facial hair for it too. Both teachers are some of the nicest you could get, but somehow these brillant people with Masters and PhDs must fool themselves into thinking that their obesity can't be affected by their consumption of Coke, especially if the word "Diet" comes before it.

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Ever since my tomatoes and some others across the Lower Mainland (info from a local gardener network on Facebook) have died before fruiting due to changing climate conditions, I've been especially worried about how environmental degredation will inevitably make it impossible for me to stay healthy. I used to think that local farming could potentially sustain us once Monsanto succeeds in taking over world food production. It never occured to me that by then the weather could be so far whacked that it wouldn't be possible to grow things anymore.

Lately I've just been letting everything go. I've given up on trying to be gwai for my parents - I just don't get any return. This pessimism probably has a lot to do with my simultaneous giving up on the state of the planet. Throwing in the towel isn't as easy as it looks. I think it's far easier to stay in your momentum by smiling and by pretending that all your work is going somewhere, especially when you want it to so badly.

It isn't easy to live without hope, but it's hard to keep moving forward without it. And I do intend to keep moving, not because it'll make a difference, but because we have to. Optimism is something I need to find again.

I'm a very angry person. I write when I'm angry. I feel angry when my smart, intelligent friends go out for a burger at McDonalds. I'm annoyed when I meet people who think they're above socializing and small talk. I get angry when my hair refuses to do what it's told. I fall asleep to the sound of people being angry. I'm an environmentalist because I'm angry.

Lately I've been trying not to be mad at Starr. I text the boy and sometimes ask him to hang, but he rarely reciprocates the initiative, and I get angry because I just knowwe'd be right together, so in my head I blame him for not trying, for being afraid, and that's easier than admitting maybe I wasn't engaging or pretty enough, or maybe he's just not interested.

I should get smart and recognize a lost cause. But when I discover a new band I want to share it with him. When the day's been too long it's him I want to wind down the evening with. When the September sun makes an appearance I want us to go out in skirts and shorts and pretend that summer days aren't over. I'll watch him pore silently over books for an upcoming exam while I fill the house with the smell of wafting cookies (I don't actually know how to make anything else).

Maybe I'd be less angry if I didn't have all these dreams. I'm not young enugh, after all, to know how to hope without fear. I should get smart and recognize a lost cause, but the fact that I'm angry at all means that there still exists a dream to disappoint. I'd rather be angry and know there's still something left to burn.

I can go without drawing or making music, but if I don’t blog for a length of time my mind feels crowded and mentally tired like when you don’t sleep enough. There are words and phrases continuously crawling around the crevices of my brain and at the end of the day they accumulate like dirty laundry; your living space becomes quite unlivable if it doesn’t get cleaned out every so often. Xanga is like real-life Dumbledore’s Pensieve.

I’m officially calling this the White Semester. I’m one of the only two Asian people in my French class (that hasn’t happened since high school French immersion), and I’m the only non-white person on the campus radio exec. I’ve been in white-majority situations before of course, but I feel my difference more acutely when I can’t run along with the crowd.

French is actually okay because class is fun and we all get along, but I’m having a hard time at the station. I have a feeling that the two female execs aren’t very fond of me, ([Wings] doesn’t count because she’s the kind of person who is determined to sit through awkward conversations in order to get to know a person. Also she’s a senior) and so far I don’t know how to relate to the other white guys.

I’m kind of annoyed because on the job description it says [radio station] encourages applications from individuals of traditionally disadvantaged groups including, but not limited to First Nations, women, queer, persons of colour and immgrants, but since I’m not one of them I feel like their token Asian person, their embodied declaration of Look-We’re-So-Progressive. (Similar to My Black Friend or My Gay Friend)

The only person who makes the station feel like home is [Zen]. He’s one of the first people I met at work, and it so happens that I’m dorky enough to get his humour and vice versa. I grew suspicious however when, by the end of the week, he kept asking me to hang out outside of work. He was giving off jealous vibes when [Bomberman], whose job I took, came last week in to show me the ropes. Bomberman’s closer to my age and it turns out we have 13 mutual friends (oh facebook), so the two of us ended up just hanging around and chatting.

Anyway, I really don’t need for it to get complicated with one of my only friends at work. I bumped into a recital club member outside the station last week, and when our conversation had ended Zen was just leaving the building. Zen and I were making small goodbye talk when he gestured for a hug, which in retrospect I think is out of line for this type of work-relationship, but I obliged. And in the half-second I pressed up against him I felt something lonely and something whole at the same time, and I didn't know if it had been him or me. I let go before I could find out. I walked to the station without looking back and pretended nothing happened.

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I’ve read too much feminist literature to not be influenced by them, and I believe that we have to protect and empower girls more than anything. I have also derived from my Chinese heritage a hyperactive Big Sister complex which I feel is necessary to practice upon anybody who could be considered a disadvantaged female relative to myself, such as English-challenged international students or 1st-2nd year girls or people who are left out of the circle when people stand in groups to chat. I think I scared away this white 2nd year girl in my stats course with my insistent Chinese hospitality (she literally ran from the class lol oops).

I find it strange therefore, how I’ve been hanging around mostly guys this semester. It’s been an interesting change, and I like how guys are generally less filtered and inhibited than girls, but I wish Starr were the one to pick up the phone and call me.

- Got hired as our campus radio PR coordinator and I'm terrified! It's self-directed work which means I no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. I've been there every night after class and I come home so late I haven't seen Trumon for several days! We briefly caught up before his bedtime today and he told me all about his first two days of high school.

- I'm co-hosting Less Boys More Noise tomorrow (Sept 9) from 8-10pm at www.CJSF.ca (-8GMT Pacific time. Podcast available after live broadcast). I've never hosted a show before and imma sound like a stuttering fool but imma ask you guys to listen anyway

- Met Sheldon Witt at one of our live radio performances (Vancouverites - please msg to be in our audience!) and he's such a sweetheart. Gave me a free CD ^^

- I'm excusing myself from getting a real job this semester (PR work only pays a small honorarium). Don't have enough time between 2 drawing clubs, 2 music clubs, radio-ing, swimming and yoga to join cheer. So disappoint My only consolation is that the cheerleaders look as cliquey as they did on my high school team.

- wtf eye exams cost $100 a session now that I'm an adult. My eyes get worse every year so I have no choice but to go :( Thank you Canadian Healthcare for taking care of my cripple eyes for 12 years!

- Everyone loves my berets. My mirror is dirty

Trumon and I have different personalities - he's lazy and I'm self-driven, he bends where I rebel - but for the most part, we think alike.

One of my favourite thing to do is to listen while my brother tries to explain his theories to me; I love it when his hands are gesturing, his eyes are looking up and out at the corners, and the words are alternately stumbling and streaming from his mouth. I can see the gears running in his head and I'm so proud because it was I who made him that way; I who I raised Trumon with words and ideas. Sometimes I wish I could start over, do everything differently and build our relationship again. But if nothing else, I showed him how to think in circles, cause that's the only way to wind yourself out of the box. I want him to be his own person - and only self-expression through the arts will do that for you.

Trumon's an arts student through and through - you can tell by the way he talks. But when he told the parents what he wanted to study they put their foot down. Arts, apparently, are okay for Alex because she's a girl, but boys should study math and engineering and computer science.

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Both [Shark] and [Banker] are my age and in 3rd year like me. If all art is quite useless, then Shark is the artiest of us art students - she studies extinct languages and ancient civilizations and wants to become a librarian. She makes money, however, as a programmer, and it's only by doing that has she earned enough to move out on her own.

Banker was driving by the field yesterday when he saw us playing and decided to join us for a little while, like how he did every summer day when we were younger. He just came back from his high-profile co-op job in Toronto, where he was chauffeured around in a limo, had nightclubs emptied out on account of him and his, and had upwards of $100 a day on his corporate credit just for food. Banker told me how his bosses buy yachts and luxury cars in various colours with their $12 million per year paychecks and he's soon to join them himself; he's already poised to make six figures a year once he receives his degree in investment banking.

I used read my dad's copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad as a kid and think that I was interested in business and finance. But now I couldn't care less and that's dangerous; a person who doesn't care and doesn't want to know about money can never be rich and will only create wealth for other people.

But where is your humanity when you're counting dollar signs? I like art and music and words and people and stories - and doesn't everybody? Next to Banker, it seems juvenile of me to spend time writing lyrics and catching frisbees. My daily concerns are if I'll meet my quota of prose and poetry, if i can find enough time to read. My personal development, that of my artistic abilities, is directly related to that of my career's. Cause what's the point of doing things if your work stays shut in a filing cabinet? To do things that you can't share with or help you relate to the people you love?

The rat race will put your nose to the grind and squeeze out every living dream inside you, but that's not supposed to happen until we're old and have kids and mortgages. I think about [Yonex] telling me about his decision to study business ("You can't make money working for someone else!") and about [MileyMakeup] who will one day do marketing for some evil corporation. I see all these young people in business school and I wonder if they ever had the ability to dream at all. 

I think about [DaisyDuke], who's brillant and beautiful and treats us stupid, struggling students like shiny stars. Even with his Masters he only gets the $14.50 per hour (it's not like the rate's stellar once you're a professor). How is it possible that Banker, who is ten years Duke's junior, is the one who's paid the big bucks? I love what I do, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But I look at my job prospects and think maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Trumon went down a different path.

I dreamt about Tinkerbell last night. She, her mom and I had been shopping at the mall and were in the parking lot ready to go our separate ways. Before we parted, she gifted me with a beautiful, spineless and black-bound modern edition of a Communications theory book written back in some forgotten century, complete with linocut drawings. I thanked her fondly while caressing the pages and thought it was the most perfect thing anyone's ever given me.

The actual Tinkerbell I haven't seen since last year on my birthday. Even though I'm the one who she's kept most in contact with since high school, she has by now pretty much abandoned our old circle of friends and I miss her. But upon waking up from the dream I felt satiated and closer to her than ever, and even in the dream I had considered our friendship rekindled. I think my dreams are helping me to get over the nostalgia, to remember what was good and ultimately, to move on.

I've been feeling demotivated and angry for the past couple of weeks, and it's more than shown in recent posts. I'm as optimistic as they come, but sometimes when everything you do doesn't add up to jack, I have to take a mental holiday from being stupidly cheerful all the time. I've been going out and seeing people, and it's most unlike me to spend all this money and to not feel guilty about it. I haven't yet regained my previous momentum but it's a necesary release.

I sat in on [DJ's] show yesterday. I went on air for the first time and sounded like a fool, and the station managers with whom I am interviewing with tomorrow morning were listening! The podcast of the show won't be taken off the internet and permanently deleted until two weeks later. My career is not off to a good start ==

[DJ] and I are not good friends, but he was courteous enough to wait for my bus with me and to give me a hug before I got on. I pressed myself against him for one dying second and was grateful.

I'm glad I watched Inception with [Shark] because we got to make fun of it together afterwards. She's newly vegetarian and I felt like I could say anything around her. I found that as I liberated myself ideologically I also became a more articulate version of myself, instead of the usual awkward, bumbling me that automatically censors the words as they come. It's the same with Sun, and to an extent, Mint, and we laugh often at how pretentious we are.

My "pretention" often manifests itself as anger, and lately it's been spilling over the top. Last Saturday's dragonboat regatta was held at Science World, and scattered around outside the building are these metal globes about three times my size.

Karen and I were browsing the environmental section and one of the globes was covered in helpful eco-tips. "Don't leave your cell phone plug in the wall after charging?!" I read, outraged. "Why does that even have to be said?! Some people are just so careless and unthinking."

"Well, some people need to be reminded," said Karen gently, "and I guess you could say I'm one of those careless people, cause I don't remember to take out my phone after charging either."

The politesse-obsessed politics of female socializations should have, at this point, caused me to become deeply ashamed of having insulted my friend, but I just don't feel sympathetic anymore towards people who don't bother to make environmental efforts. Forget about meat eaters and smoking - a couple of friends and I were hanging out at school yesterday and I was uncomfortable when [BlueEyes] left and came back with a can of Coke.

I've ranted to environmentalist friends who were patient enough with me to listen, and both Mint and Saddeer have responded by saying that people have to be eased into eco-friendliness, that still more education is needed. We as environmentalists need to be optimistic and understanding. But it's too late to take the middle ground when the bottom floor is on fire. Change needs to be now, and in the age of the Internet, one can't use their lack of education as an excuse. If you're trying, you will find a way. It takes all sorts to make a world, but certain deviations must be stomped out in order for us to universally adopt a mindset that is environmentally-inclined. Is that radical? It's the only thing that will save us.

Both Trumon and Dad have both called me extremist in turn, but I'm only doing what makes sense. Why is it extremist of me to associate meat with dead animals and to do things that will not harm the environment? Why is it pretentious of me to recognize obvious rights and wrongs? Being "pretentious" doesn't mean I'm stuck up; it means that I have something to believe in, and that I will stick by it. If you're not pretentious then you're not trying hard enough.

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That's me in third seat!

Dragonboat is not the best sport for making friends because you spend most of your time on a boat sitting next to only a couple people, and really there should be no talking in the boat. To top it off, my high school dragonboat team was highly cliqued and exclusive.

I joined team Riptide about 3 months into the season (there's only about 4-5 months depending on how much your team practices), and even though I was new to an established, tight-knit team, everyone was friendly and open to me. I didn't belong exactly (although more effort to socialize could have been made on my part), but it was better than feeling the usual straight-up excluded. Riptide is an adult team, but still I was surprised at this level of maturity.

I expressed in "Disengage" just a week ago how I was feeling nostalgic over old, deteriorated relationships. My Gr 12 English teacher is making a reunion dragonboat team next year, but I think I'll join Riptide instead. There are old friends I'll miss for sure, but I think it's time to get away from high school: away from the people, the past immaturities (both theirs and mine), the cliques, formers lovers, everything. We can't help but to keep building our lives elsewhere, and in just a couple more years, none of it will mean anything anymore.

A new semester is about to start.

The Internet gives us choice. No two people have the same playlist anymore...and yet everyone still watches the same movies at the theatre. We insist on being corporate drones even outside of the office. Everytime people start raving about a new blockbuster I pray that it will live up to its hype, that I will like the movie and be initiated into the happy good times of mass popular culture.

I watched Inception last Monday and didn't like it, and I shudder at the inevitable social discomfort that this miniscule rebellion will bring ("Did you see Inception? Wasn't it amazing?! "  "Er..."). Number one, the overworked orchestration never once relented throughout the entire movie, with the result that I felt emotionally bloated even before I processed the actual screen content (you know there's something wrong when a movie relies too much on the score for emotional effect).

This was probably due to the lack of character development, which aside from Cobb and his wife, was painfully lacking. Normally this is fine in movies that are more action than drama, but it makes all the other characters look forced and arbitrary. For instance, Ariadne was officially the dream architect, but actually she was the meddlesome clairvoyant that felt sorry for (and therefore also led us into feeling sorry for) how emotionally fucked the main character was. I guess it's poetic how the supposed dream engineer was ultimately the one who went into Cobb's mind to take apart his fantasies, but despite many attempts to demostrate her brillance, she seemed so technically unskilled that I felt like she was just standing around looking pretty most of the time. This made for a damsel-in-distress effect even though she never actually had to be rescued.

The actual damselling was done by Saito. There was virtually no purpose in him getting shot other than to heighten the audience's feeling of Great Danger. He had neither the skill nor purpose to justify taking him into the dream anyway. Saito was the black guy who dies first, except he was Asian, and he had to be Asian (complete with a choppy accent) because everyone knows the riskiest deals are always made with rich Asian characters.

And just because a film is based on a couple of cool premises about dreams does not make it a mindfuck! Valve's Portal, PHIL 100 and the popularity of JB videos are a mindfuck, but I felt that Inception unravelled just like any other action movie. What doesn't make sense is why all the characters risked their lives and minds - all in order to take down a rival company. You could say that Cobb had adequate motivation, but the remaining characters certainly did not - not even Saito. Since when did rich men ever help with the dirty work? (Especially one as slimy as Saito. Remember, Saito never promised to honor his agreement with Cobb.)

Maybe I shouldn't feel offended at issues of race and femininity when après tout, it's just a stupid movie. But even without all the hype, the movie itself - with its dark palette, its unsmiling faces and its pressing orchestration - asked to be taken seriously. The only expectations it fell short of were its own. The fact that it required any thinking at all makes it "head and shoulders above the season's crop", but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect airtight continuity and brilliance from our million-dollar films.

My team members know that I'm a decent athlete and that I've made good plays in the past, so I don't work as hard as I could cause I'm too lazy to try and impress them. Still, my team is very kind to me. They compliment my meagre efforts and still trust me enough to pass to me.

I play much better when I'm on a team of strangers because then I have to prove myself anew. I subbed for the team of a high school acquaintance today in a tournament because they were short on girls. Since this team played together for a whole season already they were familiar with one another's playing styles and were reluctant to pass to a new, unproven player who, on top of everything, is a girl (many teams don't pass to their girls and have them only because the rules say you always need at least 3 on the field). They trusted their own teammates with risqué passes, but they wouldn't accept anything less than perfection from me. I was forced to run all the harder and to sharpen every cut; I had to fight for the disc each time. Instead of dully following my check or the movement of players on the field, instead of playing in response mode, I was forced to play with a higher mental awareness.

After playing six hours of games I concluded that I have plenty of endurance for a day's worth of ultimate, but mentally I give up much sooner. Even with gas still left in the tank I couldn't find the motivation to play my best, especially since the team didn't rely on me anyway. The difference between me and an elite player like KitKat isn't even necessarily one of fitness and skill, but of headspace. I play ultimate to get fit, to gain the glory with the occasional good play, but I don't play to win.

Until I can put my heart into it, I won't be able to catch or run as well as my teammates, as well as I know I could. It's alright to play ultimate only recreationally, but what am I doing in the upper divisions of a competitive sport league if I don't play competitively? Ultimate used to be my whole life; my standing on the high school team solidified my place in the school community. I spent lunch, after school hours, and entire summers on the field. I had a tight circle of ultimate friends - with KitKat, Mint, and Lime, at its centre - to keep me grounded in the sport.

While Kitkat now dates the captain and is one of the strongest players of our team, I've never really felt like I've belonged, both socially and in terms of skill (especially since all our team social events are centered around drinking and eating unhealthy, non-vegan foods). Now that Mint is dating her supervisor and is increaingly engaged with work, she's expressed to me a similar feeling of growing distant from the sport. Mint'll still play recreationally with us but it's evident that she lives her life elsewhere. But unlike her, I don't really have anywhere else to go. Ultimate is another instance of my feeling increasingly alienated from everything.