NOTE ; 2011 RESOLUTIONS

Only a handful of hours left until 2011 (which some people are touting as the start of a new decade...um, no), then it's January & time is going to start warping into hyperspeed again.

So after days of taking out & adding new resolutions, here's my final list of goals going into the new year...

- Get an A or A- average spring semester.

- Take handwritten (not typed) notes in class.

- Update all my blogs regularly (especially this one).

- Build up Adobe CS & web design skills.

- Find my direction in life (...oh)

- Be more involved in CKS & Bare.

- Find a part-time job or internship for the summer.

- Hone Korean speaking skills.

- Stay positive & keep looking forward.

- Don't be so nosy.

- Stop eating so much in one sitting.

- Clean right away.

- Follow Fashion Week.

- Document outfits every day.

- Go thrift shopping more often.

- Wear heels more.

- Explore SF/East Bay every other week.

- Watch classic movies at the Media Resources Center.

All in all a very typical lengthy list of resolutions, of which I expect to keep about half. Actually it won't even feel like a new year until I go back to school & start all over, which is when I have to get out of my hibernation blanket burrito state & start being an active human being again. And less than two weeks it is...

So it's time to get ready, have a couple more drama marathons & sleep until noon, & revise my schedule on Telebears so many times that I end up waitlisted for every single class of mine.

photo | ayco311 ; flickr

MEME ; DAY 17 - LOOK BACK ON 2010.

DAY 17: Look back on this last year and talk about it.

I skipped a good 14 days on this meme (maybe I'll get back to it sometime, emphasis on the maybe) but considering I write about a good portion of those prompts anyway, it's no matter that I gave it up.

And so here approaches the last few days of 2010. I haven't reflected on a past year in a while; usually I'm stuck in a frenzy of changing and dreaming of the future, something that I am doing right now (of course) since I'm in the midst of a mental breakdown of "what am i doing with my future" "why do i give up on everything seemingly hard" "where am i going" & "what happened to good old life-goals-totally-set carolyn." This cycle of making and revamping the same old resolutions every year is completely pointless, so some much needed reflection is underway.

2010...

- I became way way more "Korean" so to say, which clearly had no impact on my "2nd generation" pronunciation but my eyes don't glaze over long paragraphs of Korean plus I know a lot more slang than I wish to. Not to mention a lot of society/cultural/political news, thank you CKS.

- I got a lot of mediocre grades. This is probably 50% not going to lecture, 30% laziness, and only about 20% me being stupid. Still disappointing.

- I read a lot more fashion blogs this year. Went through ring & shoe phases. Cut my hair into blunt bangs.

- I had multiple identity crises, college major & minor changes, & lots of stressing out about the future.

- I weaned myself off the internet a little. A little.

- I spent way too much money on karaoke.

- I was too uninvolved in the things I was involved in (does this even make sense?)

- I travelled alone for the first time.

- I started vacancied & blogged pretty consistently on an unread blog, albeit giving up my dead horse creative fiction writing attempts.

And that's it. An all-in-all okay year, but I'm jumping at the prospect of the new & shiny, aka 2011, but talk of the new shall come tomorrow. Here's to the last day of 2010.

photo | beverly e. ; flickr

MEME ; DAY 3 - PICK A SONG.

DAY 3: Pick a song that projects the same mood as your day or week & explain.

"High High" - G-Dragon & T.O.P

I only can dream of wishing that this song reflected my day/week (crazy extravagant parties in Seoul, yes please?) but no, unfortunately the only reasons I chose this were that a) I repeated this nonstop in the library while studying for finals & b) there are just no legitimate songs about studying, plus that would make for a really lame entry.

I know this has nothing to do with my 'mood', but I am nothing short of obsessed with this music video, in both good & bad ways. I haven't replayed a MV that much in a while, especially when there's no catchy choreography to accompany it. It isn't just because GD & T.O.P are ridiculously good looking, or the fact that I've been cooped up in an underground library the entire week wanting out. The thing that really gets me about this video (& hence song too, in a sense) is how cool Korea has gotten - or rather, how that "cool" is portrayed.

I'm not sure if it's this built-in ethnic stereotype that I have being born & bred as an American, or the fact that Korea has a conservative image that it usually upholds (because it is conservative, compared to other Westernized countries) but this song is just so BAMF & shoves all the swag of YG Entertainment up in our faces. I don't really see Korea having a problem with this song or video (I'm amused at the number of Youtube comments fighting over whether "high high" means smoking weed: even if it were, those who knew the reference wouldn't care, & the rest would be too blind to see it) but the problem I see in it (& maybe just me) is the blatant Westernization of it all.

Come on. It would've already been enough Westernization to go around just filming a club, any club in Korea, but they picked foreigner-central Itaewon for a reason. It looks like GD, T.O.P & a handful of his friends crashed a NYC club, since evidently they're the only Koreans/Asians getting screentime. And not only are the foreigners not Korean or Asian, they're all white. Yeah, more of the same "you need to be white to be cool." I'm being so indignant about this because I can't stand that after the 20th or so time I rewatched this, I felt like maybe I needed to be white to even try to hang out with the likes of Big Bang. And that's just ridiculous.

Listen, Korea is cool enough as it is. Koreans know how to party & hold their liquor &...oh please. I am just disappointed that I have to rail against fellow Koreans for perpetuating a "I want to be white" mentality. As catchy as I think this song is (& as much as I adore everything else about this video), I can't help but feel let down.

(And yes, I realize this has nothing to do with what the meme asked but I need to keep moving on to finish before 2011. Goals goals goals.)

video | "high high" mv ; youtube

MEME ; DAY 2 - WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

DAY 2: Where have you been spending your time lately? Three/five/ten years ago would you have expected to be there?

The precise answer to this question would be underground in Main Stacks (aka the library...) but that's a pretty boring answer (did I expect to be in a library ten years ago? Considering I planned to go to college I'd say yes) I'm going to go with a broader answer here.

It's already been 1 & 1/2 years that I've been at Berkeley, a place I swore I never ever ever wanted to be. My entire childhood I had dreams of the East Coast or the Midwest (anywhere but here), I had dreams of private school, I had dreams of perpetuating the white-washed environment I grew up in. Berkeley was none of those things. Not only was it an hour away by plane, it housed ridiculous numbers of Asians (apparently it's 45.7% now, a clear majority out of any ethnicity). The only college I dreaded more than Berkeley was UCLA, which had all the same characteristics and, as a spectacular cherry on top, was less than an hour away...by car (being a half hour drive away from home was, & still is, pretty much a god-awful nightmare).

Till the very last moment spring semester of senior year, I still had no dreams of going to Berkeley. My attitude had changed from nowayinhell to iguessifthatsthelastresort, but when it came down to it: Berkeley vs. Northwestern: I was championing Northwestern so, so much. It got to the point where I read their student newsmagazine every single morning and wrote pages & pages about how I wanted to go there so badly (dreams of Chicago, the L, the publications, the time difference).

In the end money was the deciding factor, as it usually is (people also tried to convince me by making a big deal out of the Chicago weather, which I guess I would've bitched about...a lot). I didn't have any big qualms over coming here, but time to time I still wonder what it would've been like to go to Northwestern. Not so much "would I be happier there?" but more like, "how different would my life be right now?"

Am I glad I am where I am now? So, so much. There are so many things I've discovered through all the different people I've met (super cheesy sentence but it can't be helped), so many different opportunities I've been given, and I've realized an hour plane ride is definitely far enough away from home. Yes, school is ridiculously hard (and more than the material itself being ridiculously hard, it is ridiculously hard to get /good grades/) and I am made to feel inferior every day by all the geniuses around me, but that's alright. My laziness needs a kick in the ass every so often so I can get to work (which should be right now, three days before my finals).

And so it goes. The 13-year-old self would've hated to see me be here at Berkeley, but teenagers are bratty blind beings anyway.

photo | southerncal88 ; flickr

MUSE ; XMAS WISHLIST 2010

(my first foray into polyvore, forgive me if it looks grotesque)

top: uo moustache socks ($8) & other cutesy knee highs; proenza schouler ps1 medium bag in black & brown ($1485); acne atacoma knockoffs ($38); antique typewriter; chanel nail polish in black satin, nouvelle vague, & gold lame ($25 each)

bottom: hi-tec c pens in .25 or .3 ($1 each); moleskine plain cahier journal kraft large ($12 for 3); vera wang princess eau de toilette ($27); lula magazine ($32); pierrot le fou dvd ($34); doc martens ($100)

MEME ; DAY 1 - WHO ARE YOU?

I have been hunting for a while for a decent meme to do here, mainly because I'm lazy & need prompts & that's precisely what a meme provides. I finally found a somewhat decent one & whittled it down to 17 (coincides with the end of 2010 + a few leeway days & other excuses/reasons that really are just bullshit ways of saying no way am I going to divulge in social life on my public blog). Here's the whole meme for reference, and here we go.

DAY 1: Who are you? In comparison to who you used to be. What made you change?

I love answering this question. At one point in high school I was addicted to changing my Myspace about me every month, writing long paragraphs about how ~sassy~ I was (don't worry, I'm snorting at myself too). I know this makes me sound incredibly narcissistic or vain, which could be true, but it's more of the fact that it gives an appropriate forum for me to talk about myself, something I never do unless prompted to.

This question is asking how I've changed though, and suffice it to say that I don't really believe any of my defining characteristics have really changed. I talked about this briefly in a previous post; though my circumstances have changed greatly, my friends are completely new, & on the outside I am just so...so different, once words come tumbling out of my mouth (if they do, that is) you'll hear the same snide jokes, you'll get the same deflective answers, you'll see the same apathetic face.

It drives me up the wall when people assume that hanging out with different kinds of people or taking on new interests means you've "lost yourself" along the way, that this new place has messed with you. Maybe with others, but no, not me. Real change to me is if I were to become a nice conservative, outwardly polite Korean girl, one that's brash & throws obnoxious questions at strangers, but no. I'm still the same liberal girl too shy to ask for anything.

So yes, following your definition of change, I have changed. I have flipped 180 degrees, whole-heartedly embracing my ethnicity whereas I vehemently denied it to the core a couple years ago. I care about Korean current events, I follow their pop culture, I may have even Koreanized my fashion style a bit (blame pretty models & cheap clothes for that). And if that's deep down change to you, then so be it.

Moving on to the actual who are you part, I'll list this out like statistics on a baseball card (there's really no natural way to talk about yourself without looking like a douche). I am an INFP to the core. I'm a bit sensitive to criticism (not defensive, but sensitive) & have unreasonable expectations of others (part of why I just figure it best to not bother at all). I suck at debating with others. I don't talk about myself ever, to a point where you would have to pry out something pent up inside (after which everything just comes tumbling out). I use sarcasm as a sign of friendliness. I'm a cynic, I'm too honest, and I can't hide emotions from my face. I hate looking desperate or needy more than anything. I have a penchant for personal writing, clean typography, random lists, cheap clothes, fashion illustrations, memoirs, female rock, bad pop music, ethereal cinematography, & 90s romcoms. Basically I sound like every insecure indie wannabe 15 year old girl on Tumblr, an amusingly sad diagnosis on my part.

photo | posternaks ; flickr