math

I find it funny when random people I meet try to give me tips on how to become a firefighter and tell me all the requirements I must meet. I don't know about you, but I usually do not try to tell people basic information I may or may not know about the profession that they are trying to get into. Like "Oh, what? You're trying to be a lawyer?" "Did you know you have to take your LSATs for that?" "You know one of my friends from back home is going to law school right now... he says its so hard to get into." "Do you really want to be a lawyer?" If you think saying that to someone who is trying to be a lawyer sounds pretty retarded, then you, sir, are correctomundo. Although, that is seriously what people have said to me but replace lawyer with firefighter and LSATs with something else they thought up. I just think it is common sense that someone who is trying to get into that field of work would know a little more about it than someone who isn't.

Anyways, I finally got a job teaching an SAT class. Two jobs actually. It's a pretty cool job except for the fact that sometimes it takes me a while to figure some problems out. The very first problem I did on the board during the very first class we had was a bit harder than I had anticipated. I recieve the problems at the same time the students recieve them so I didn't have any time to do them first. So anyways, I was doing this problem on the board and half way through I realized I had no idea where I was going with it. In my head all I could think of was "ohhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiit". This can not be a good first impression I am making. So I paused for a second and told everyone to flip their pages over and look at the answer key explanations. "Read the answer explanation first so you will get a better understanding of it while I do it on the board" I said to them while furiously reading it myself. Afterwards I asked "Okay, does everyone get it now?" Everyone said no. Damn it. Honestly, the explanation was confusing as shit and I was having trouble grasping it myself. Anyways, I had "memorized" the steps to take to get to the answer while everyone was reading it so I started doing it on the board the same way the book did. I purposely did not look down at the key so it wouldn't have seemed like I was using it. I ended up forgetting all the steps and got stuck again. So I took the most obvious approach out of this dilemma which was, of course, ask the students. "What would you do now?" Oh okay, "Now do it on your own paper." Seemed like a good idea except for the fact that they couldn't. Eventually I just told them I received the question at the same time as they did so I would need a couple of minutes to figure it out first before I showed them. I ended up figuring it out during break and succesfully showed them how to do it. Phew, thank god. For the rest of the class, I just gave them minimal time to work out problems and then taught them how to do the ones they couldn't finish on the board in order to make it seem like they really needed me. That actually worked out pretty well.

cash money

I fed my praying mantis a spider I found in my room the other day. It ate that spider so fast, I didn't even get to see how he captured it. Just saw him chilling on top of the box holding it with one hand and eating it like it was a hamburger. Pretty awesome huh? Also, I really don't know why I keep finding bugs in my room but now I get really excited when I see one because I can feed it to my praying mantis. I still haven't named him yet...

Today was a pretty awesome day for multiple reasons that I won't get into since I don't want to jinx anything, although now I am pretty happy with the way things are going. I started running more and finally timed my mile today. I ran it in 7 minutes and 40 seconds and ran a mile and a half in 11 minutes and 32 seconds. I wasn't really trying to get a hella good time or anything; I was more focused on actually finishing it without stopping. I guess a 7:40 is not that bad considering I almost never run. It's nothing compared to what I used to be able to run in high school though. But then again, I was probably like 40 pounds lighter. (all muscle... of course...) Haha. I miss those days where I would eat anything I wanted all the time. I think my mom went on vacation for two weeks one summer and all I ate was cheerios and vanilla ice cream (together). That shit was soooooo delicious. Kinda miss those days, although I really like how my life is going right now. I feel like I have matured so much in the past year, in so many different ways. Ever since like about like the 7th grade, I can remember girls calling me immature. I was probably lacking in manners and a lot of other stuff. But yeah... maturity was never one of my characteristics. Also I am the youngest in my family and always liked to hang out with older people so I guess I was always used to being the youngest. I got babied a lot actually, now that I think about it. Also honestly, I make a much better little bro than a big bro. Hahaha. Anyways, I think the past year is the most growing up I have ever done. I see so many things differently now and my priorities have definitely changed. My views on things have changed drastically on many differnt aspects like work, money, relationships, and mainly time management. Yeah... This year probably wasn't my best year for many reasons but I am pretty happy about how it turned out. This next year will probably be the best year of my life thus far.

I also recently have thought about a new strategy in spending money. Yeah yeah, those of you who know me know I am incredibly cheap and thrifty. Saving money has always been something that came to me naturally. Anyways, I thought about a new thing where I would spend money like I had it. I'm going to spend money like I have it because then I would be pressured to go out and make more. This is the exact sentence I said to my friend while buying beer at Ralphs which resulted in laughter, not only from her but from the cashier too. Maybe it sounds like a dumb idea, or actually is a dumb idea but I have reasons. First of all, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be splurging on things and buying things I don't exactly need or spending money on expensive meals or anything of that nature. However, I am going to stop worrying about how I spend my money and start thinking about how I am going to make more. I can easily live off $400 a month (not including rent) with a lot of calculating and self control. I would just need to spend all my money on groceries and gas and rarely buy anything or go out. I have been doing this for 3 years. But I am constantly worrying about money and how much I am spending and it often affects my social life. Also it makes me really stingy. I would not consider myself greedy or selfish about money and neither would my friends but I understand being cheap is not exactly a great characteristic either. Also honestly, it causes a lot of stress. Buying things or going out without constantly thinking about how much you spent probably also makes whatever you paid for much more enjoyable. In addition, spending all my money makes a pretty great motivation for me to go out and find ways to get more. Legal ways, that is.

new pet

So today while I was searching through my messy room for my watch, I saw this light green leaf on the corner of my bed, by the window, and for some reason got startled like I saw something out of place. I was feeling stupid for getting startled by a leaf, but then I noticed I am not stupid because the leaf was actually a praying mantis! It was huge. It was about 4 inches long and 2 inches tall. I have no idea how it got into my room. It was just chilling there with its hands up in the praying mantis pose. So I put it in a clear box and now it is my new pet. I am having some trouble naming it. So far I've thought of... Cyrus, The Magician, Theresa, and Slicer. None of them are really any good so if you got any ideas, let me know. Also, does anyone know how long a praying mantis can go without eating? I went outside to try to catch some crickets but those things stopped chirping every time I got close to them. It was pretty hard to find them so I gave up.

On another note, I have a serious sleeping problem. I have an incredibly hard time going to sleep before 4 AM. I am pretty sure it is not a physical problem but more so a mental one. I don't like to go to sleep because it is so incredibly boring. Just lying in bed in the dark is so lame. I always start to feel really restless and end up opening up my laptop and going on youtube or something. That lasts for about 25 minutes and then I would try to sleep again for maybe half an hour which would result in failure and then I would maybe be curious to see if anyone else was awake and open up my laptop again, continuing the cycle. Then I start to get mad at myself for not sleeping when it was 1 or 2 o'clock. If there was some way I could psychically do something or communicate with someone with my eyes closed, sleeping would be so much easier. I have tried a lot of things including drinking milk, reading, eating a lot, counting, taking benadryl, etc. Nothing really works except for the benadryl one. But then the next day you don't really feel as refreshed. Although I really do love that drowsy feeling. Taking benadryl before drinking is the best. Anyways, if ya got any good ideas about sleeping early, lemme know.

sports

Yes, I bitched out of deactivating my facebook account. I originally posted in my blog that I was going to be deactivating it to avoid potential-employer-spying and because it was too time consuming. However, through sub-conscious embarrassment, I have drastically decreased the amount of times I check my facebook. Probably by like 90%. So I guess in the end, it all worked out. I would definitely not consider myself a facebook whore and can most likely live without it, but there are just too many convenient functions facebook has... as you all should already know.

Anyways, onwards to things about my life... I am currently taking three fire-tech classes at Santa Ana College (junior college) and will be taking three more, yes three more, classes at UCI. Upper division writing and two Chinese minor classes. Yes, I know, I already walked and did the whole graduation ceremony thing but I felt like I was going to miss the "college life" so I decided to save upper div writing for the fall and didn't take any classes in the summer and I wasn't planning on finishing my Chinese minor since I don't see much use for it, job-wise. However, now I just realized I probably will not miss college life THAT much and wish I took upper div writing in the summer. I am now finishing my minor since the price difference between part-time student and full-time student isn't really that large. Anyways, the point of me putting this on my blog is because I dont want you coming up to me on campus and saying "Didn't you graduate?" or "What are you doing here?" and making me feel like a retard. Although, I'm pretty sure that is still going to happen... a lot.

So while I was sitting in my fire class today, I realized something that I have thought about a while ago but never did anything about. I don't know shit about sports. Seriously, I don't. I don't even know enough to pretend like I do. Sometimes I can't even tell if the team they are talking about is football or baseball. The type of people taking fire classes, although very diverse, can still somewhat be generalized into one type of person, which is the macho, or wanna-be macho type of person. Apparently most of them really like talking about sports. I was sitting in the middle of class today during break and people were coming up to my table and we were just talking about a lot of random shit about the class and fire and whatever. And everyone was going blah blah blah and it was all cool and then all of a sudden they started talking about college football. I guess I am pretty used to not knowing shit when people talk about sports so I just do the usual which is smile and nod. So while I was smiling and nodding, even the teacher (who is a woman and also a batallion chief) comes over and starts yapping on about baseball or whatever. Then I realized, hmm... maybe it would be to my advantage to be able to hold a small conversation about sports. I mean, usually I don't really care and when people start trying to get me involved in the conversation I just tell them a team I "like" and try to throw out random facts I hear on the radio. I can't really tell, but I think it usually works. I don't really see myself trying to memorize the sports section anytime soon but perhaps I will start learning how to discriminate baseball and football teams.

On another note, I recently learned how to forward ports in my router and can now create Starcraft games. If anyone still has their CD... start playing again! I recently started playing again and damn, it is so fun. More people need to play so we can get in house games going. And no, I will never move on to Warcraft! Also if you want to learn how to do port forwarding visit www.portforward.com. Hmm... just realized these two topics don't go so well together in the sense of me trying to not sound nerdy. So, if you do not know me and are reading this... I just want to note that I am not nerdy. Or at least I am not that nerdy.