Pride in my friend

I have been writing a lot of negative entries lately, due to melancholy streak I have been experiencing lately.  This entry seeks to change this up.  Positive and praising posts are just too rare on this blog.

While talking to Ashley H. about people who are proud of me, or rather a lack thereof, she asked me if I was proud of any of my friends.  The question caught me off guard, as I had never thought of having pride in my friends before.  I mulled the question over in my mind before coming up with an unlikely answer. 

There is pride to be had in this friend because of the way he changed.  He reaffirms my belief in the plasticity humanity and gives me hope that I can continue to change as well.  Thinking about how he has grown gives me pause.

Eric

Back in high school, I used to make fun of Eric for having no personality.  He was always the nice guy who was content on just going with the flow. Even though I had no vested interest in his ambitions, it inexplicably bothered me that he had none.  I just could not understand how someone could be so passive and yet be so content. 

Sometime in college, that all changed when Eric joined some business fraternity.  He started wanting to change things because he was unsatisfied with how they were.  In the beginning, the ambition was weak, he used to tell me a laundry list of problems about his fraternity, but when it came to solutions he was never willing to put in the effort.  As time went by, that gradually changed.  Eric took up increasingly more important leadership roles within his fraternity leading to bigger commitments and achievements. Whenever I saw Eric back at home, he seemed a little more confident, standing a just that little bit taller each time.

Most impressive of all is how Eric managed to do it all his own way.  He did not turn into a dick or fake as so many do when they take up leadership positions.  Eric is still that nice and chill guy that I remember from high school.  I seriously think he bullies people into doing things with his niceness and that is something to be respected. 

UCSD Characters

Ashley

I wish I had a better picture!

Different Ashley this time around, since my usual rock is currently studying abroad in England.  Cheery, Christian, sweet, exceedingly considerate, humble and possessing one of the most heartwarming smiles I have ever seen, this Ashley is my new foil. 

Fortunately, Ashley and I do have similarities, namely a penchant for spontaneous acts.  Ashley has become my go to girl for this quarter, joining me on numerous spontaneous acts.  Whether it would be something mischievous like sneaking out to the cliffs to see the bioluminescence or monotonous as grabbing lunch, she is always available and game.

Funny thing about me spending almost every other day with Ashley these days is that upon first seeing her at UCSD, I was intent on avoiding her.  I considered someone from my past that was best left there.  Only through her persistence in trying to say hello to me, did we manage to reconnect as friends.  And for that I am incredibly grateful because this quarter would be lacking a lot of life without her.

Kevin

We sleep in the same room

Roommate chronicles are back!  I have lived with Kevin every year that I have been at UCSD and one thing I have learned is that the hilarity never stops with him.  Already this quarter, Kevin has missed his midterm after not knowing it got rescheduled and gone to the ER for an ear infection (five days before he told me that he was losing hearing in his left ear and I responded by telling him to get that checked out) then grazed a runner’s leg with his car due to excruciating pain.   

Living with Kevin has made me remember how awesome having a roommate is as it definitely keeps the loneliness at bay and provides great stories.  Kevin and I picked up where we left off sophomore year and our friendship has continued to grow.   These days, we even cook together regularly, though by cooking, I mean that he cuts and washes the vegetables.  Sometimes it seems a little gay sometimes when we are in the kitchen together, but I tell everybody anyway because it makes me feel impressive.  An added bonus is that telling annoys Kevin because apparently, he has a straight image to keep up.      

Sarah

A missed connection in high school, Sarah and I became good friends in college to the surprise of many.  There seemingly always needs to be a devout Christian in my group of friends and Sarah has been that friend for a very long time.  Exceptionally awkward and clueless, Sarah is a goldmine burst out loud laughing moments.  Paired with all of Sarah’s peculiarities is a big heart and sweet personality that leads her to try to help all those in need.     

Sarah and I seem to have gotten closer after my period in Shanghai.  She used to tell me how terrible it was that she lost her closest friend at UCSD.  Unfortunately, upon my return to UCSD, Sarah has become impossibly hard to hang out with due to her devotion to her studies and terrible communication skills. Every year, it seems I am able to spend less and less time with her.

Kathy

We have too much fun together so we have to work apart

Loud, obnoxious and crass, Kathy is the most violent friend I have ever had and this includes guys too.  Almost every time we meet up there is punching, pinching and a lot of smack talk.  The night before the midterm, we ended up wrestling around the apartment and at one point Kathy tried to choke me with both of her hands on my neck.  Needless to say, hanging out with Kathy is a blast and always full of loud laughter. 

Kathy is the only completely new character this quarter and I met her in my language and culture class.  Sadly, she is graduating this quarter so this friendship has all the signs of being short lived. 

Diane

I left for Shanghai with Diane furious at me after having ditched meeting her because she was with her boyfriend.  Thankfully, old friends die hard and we have reconnected since I got back.  Diane is kind of a contradictory character in my eyes.  She complains and stresses quite often but yet still manages to maintain the image of being relaxed, as if nothing fazes her.        

Meeting up with her tends to bring a calming effect to my day.  We spend most of our time conversing about every aspect of our lives over copious amounts of coffee (as evidenced by the 6 cups I drank today and the reason I am writing this post at 5 in the morning).  However, there never seems to be enough time to finish our conversation.    

Life Back in SD

It has been just three and a half weeks since I came back to San Diego and already it feels like I have been here for months.  Many of the things I do seem routine already despite the fact that I have been doing them for maybe two weeks.  Senior year, is not turning out the way I had imagined.  No parties, kickbacks, binge drinking or even much irresponsibility to speak of.  It seems everyone has shifted their focus from having fun to “what the hell do I need to do for the future.”  Not to mention many of the people who used to invite me to drink were all loose connections which have faded since I spent a year in Shanghai. 

My life right now can be broken down into four pieces:

1. Work

I have been pretty thankful that Wednesdays decided to keep me on board.  Looking for a new job in San Diego would have been a huge headache and the chance that the new job would have been mindless and unfulfilling was pretty high.  The first two weeks back in San Diego, I was worried about my work performance.  It was really hard to concentrate and I felt very detached from my work.  However, as the second conference call with the founders rolled around, I found my rhythm.  On the second call, I was asking the right questions and found my drive again.  Once again I am excited about the developments happening at the company.          

2. Train

Within the first week of arriving in San Diego, I signed up for a 1 day trial at the Arena, a mixed martial arts gym.  Had the owner not called me, I would have probably pushed back my first day at the gym another week.  After my one day trial, I was hooked and signed the contract.  Since the start of school, I have been experimenting with different classes ranging from muay thai, MMA, jiu jitsu and wrestling.  I am significantly better than half the muay thai students, teeing off at will against them without any fear of getting hit.   However, once I go over to jiu jitsu things change dramatically and I get submitted four times in four minutes by someone who had been doing it for a month.   In addition to having a general lack of grappling skills, I am one of the smallest people in the class, which means I get out muscled a lot.  The jiu jitsu class has got me rethinking how good I ever was and how weak my fundamentals are.

 

The class that I have settled on so far is called Cyborg muay thai and Cyborg MMA because it is taught by Evangelista Cyborg, a professional MMA fighter in the Strikeforce promotion.  It is quite cool to be taught by someone you watched fight on TV and it is even cooler when Evangelista’s wife, Cris Cyborg comes in and does the class with us.  Cris Cyborg is the current women’s Strikeforce champion and was the headliner at the first MMA event I attended.  Training with people like that is what makes the Arena so exciting for me. 

3. Academics

Whatever enthusiasm I had about school quickly died when I got rejected from the honors thesis class.  The rejection was doubly annoying since I had been accepted into the class the year before but was unable to attend due to studying abroad and being a junior, also I was assured by the academic advisor that my invitation could be postponed till I came back.  Adding further insult to injury, my mother likes to point out I have a low GPA whenever the rejection comes up.  However, getting rejected might have been a blessing in disguise as I heard the class requires a lot of time and effort. 

I am currently a part time student, meaning I am taking just two classes and even then I cannot be bothered to attend them all.  I have missed about a quarter of my classes, which even resulted in me missing one assignment.  My goal is to do the bare minimum necessary for graduation and as a result I officially dropped my economics major and put to rest any ideas of taking classes that do not fulfill my requirements. 

and everything else

My roommate, Kevin and I are back to our old ways, namely doing stupid things just because we can.  I tore the hem of my jeans the other day climbing fences across multiple apartment complexes in search of a short cut to Tapioca Express.  And by shortcut, I mean saving maybe five minutes.  Also wrestling has made resurgence, but things have changed a lot.  Kevin has gotten much stronger since he got a personal trainer over the summer and this has made it much harder to get him to the ground.  I still win, but not nearly as much as sophomore year. 

In the past I used to talk to an excessive amount of people.  However, upon returning to San Diego I have been avoiding old acquaintances.  Whenever, I pass them around campus I hope really hard that they do not recognize me so that I do not have to get dragged into a meaningless and awkward conversation. 

Interestingly, a new good friend has come out of one of these acquaintances I was trying to avoid.  While in line at Panda Express, I spotted Ashley L. and quickly averted eye contact.  Ashley was a girl I knew from sophomore year, who used to come over to the apartment because she had a thing with one of my apartment mates.  Ashley and I had a falling out that year from a blog post I wrote about the apartment mate.  Fortunately, Ashley never got the memo that we stopped being friends and confronted me at Panda Express.  Feeling a bit guilty about ignoring her and not wanting to eat alone, I invited her to sit with me for dinner.  I ended up having a lot of fun at dinner and for the past three weeks I have been spending an extraordinary amount of time with her.  Things have a funny way of working out sometimes.

The scenic route

On my way back down to San Diego, I decided to take the scenic route with my good friend Sarah. With my Camry packed incredibly neatly, almost tetris like, Sarah and I set off on our one day road trip.



Sarah is a shuttle driver at UCSD and I had the utmost confidence in her driving abilities. She managed to pull off an incredible 31 miles to the gallon on the winding roads of highway 1, to put this into perspective, I usually get around 25 miles to the gallon driving normally. I drove for the last quarter of the tank, and without a doubt, the calculated mileage would have been higher had Sarah driven the tank to empty.

Typically, it takes me about seven to eight hours to drive down to UCSD. Taking the scenic route, it took an exhausting eleven hours. This was partly because a large stretch of the road was limited to 35 or 45 miles per hour, compared to 80MPH on highway 5 (more direct road through the state), and the fact that we stopped liberally to admire the view and take pictures.

Sarah ended up driving eight of those eleven hours, because highway 1 was so much fun that she wanted it all for herself. And that was fine with me, as I got to focus on taking pictures of the amazing coastline. It had been awhile since I had gone out on a shoot and I was rediscovering my love for the camera. At the end of the day, I got some really great shots.


My favorite picture of the drive


This was not bad either

Cannot wait for thanksgiving when I get to do it again! Wonder who will join me next time around.

-muffinman