Difference

#242 - What a Difference a Day Makes
The prompt this week is inspired by the difference between how I felt yesterday (at work) and how I feel today (on holiday!) But I know that you can go deeper than that! The prompt is: what a difference a day makes.

I can't believe this lil' nugget is on holiday already. Same to all you Californians on budget cuts. I'm proud to say that while you're watching TV eating mickey Ds, I'm in the classroom getting what I paid for.
*sniffle*

um.
I'm sure I understand, but I have no idea where to start...
So yesterday, North Korea decided to have some target practice with a South Korean island by shooting artillery rounds for about an hour. When I heard, I called up my mom to tell her about it and she responded that it isn't a biggie. I was like, "mom, they just shot dozens of bullets the size of me onto SK territory," and she just derailed asked me why I was up so late (-.-). But she's right, the tensions didn't really escalate, and it isn't unusual for NK to just randomly aggravate SK by using whatever weapons they use. SK simply held an emergency talk with it northern half and I'm sure by now everything would be settled. Hopefully...
So I don't know how much of a difference in tension between the two changed in the past 24 hours, but I don't think it escalated too much, but I'm sure it isn't the last of Northern aggravation.
....
WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THIS PROMPT, WHAT IS THERE TO WRITE ABOUT?!
alksdjflkajdls;fkjads;lkfad
afghan kahzi abduhllah jabar taliban... i don't know, I felt like writing that explosion of random middle eastern terms because it's what i thought of when I rolled my face over the keyboard on the previous line. Not really on the rolling over the keyboard, but whatever. (HAHA, explosion of random middle eastern, get it?... i didn't get that till after i typed it. okay, not funny). Sigh, I wonder if things like this ever come up in a search engine that the government uses.

SIR! we found a cross reference for "taliban" and "north korea."
i KNEW it! bring it up.
Sir, it seems to be written by a UTD student.
Call up local officials immediately and bag 'em.
sir!















sigh. i give up.

fact: If you throw random items of clothing onto the floor in my house, the only difference in your next 24 hours is that you're not going to live to see the next 24 hours.

PUBLIC

hahaha, oh dear. Reading my older posts are so embarrassing -.-. But i'M GOING PUBLIC.
note: i've changed a lot in the past 6, 7 months or so, so.....yeah

fact about me:
星晴 is my favorite jay chou song

C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

After the prayer meeting today, I had one of those "What's life?" moments and I felt incredibly reluctant to go back to the apartment for no reason. So instead, I went to all the way to West Plano, my prior hole in the wall, to just "think." And I figured as a person who doesn't have an immediate "someone" to just talk to about stuffs, I wanted to find a place where I can go and just let my worries worry themselves away, kind of like those cliche movie scenes where a love introduces his/her lover to this "institution" where he/she can be free and not have a worry on her mind. Yeah, I found some place kind of like that.

This place is very specific in terms of location, but in general it's in a quite high class neighborhood and not too far from an outdoor shopping area, which is kind of like Irvine Spectrum in Irvine, CA, but rather it's more dining and less shopping. That area is more targeted to couples rather than a girlfriend shopping session, and it definitely exceeds quota in terms of a "romantic" night. Perimeter-ing that shopping area are blocks of very high class residential apartments and townhouses and right smack dab center of it all lies a big pond with a fountain in the middle. And on one particular side of the pond, if you sit down on one of the benches you can see the bright lights of the dining district (since it's the season, they placed a lit HUMUNGO christmas tree there and wrapped every tree with bright christmas lights within that district but not around the trees around the pond). However, the distance from that particular side to the dining district is just enough so that's it's ridiculously peaceful and calm.

As I sat on one of the bench-chairs I was pretty distressed to see that there weren't that many stars in the sky due to the heavy industrialization of the area. So if i were to bring a date or something (lol, -.-), we wouldn't be able to make imaginary formations with the stars, but instead, I came up with another game. "Find that star!" HAHA, although there aren't that many stars, there are enough for it to be a beautiful. So, as I sat there pretending there to be someone special right next to me finding whatever stars there are, the muscles around my mouth started to take form of what one would know as a smile. It was amazing because I smiled not because there is a picture being taken nor was it because of some video on youtube, but just for the sake of smiling, i smiled. All I could think about was how awesome it would be for someone else to experience the same thing I did; oh, how lucky she would be! (You're thinking: LOL, you're and idiot if you think someone's lucky to be with you. Yeah, iknorite?). And as people walked by looking at me like I was a lunatic, I realized that I can't come here often. Or more like i shouldn't because it's too precious to be seen every now and then. It's not something that I want to wake up in the morning and realize that I dont think it's something special anymore. I don't want to take it for granted. And as I pondered more about it, i realized that the idea is somewhat correspondant to having a wife. Sooner or later, a husband will wake up one day and take "seeing his wife's face" for granted. It's almost inevitable. And I don't want that; I want to take every opportunity that I see that smile as a very precious moment. That's why, I might if it doesn't deteriorate the relationship, for a portion of my marriage life, choose a career that has frequent and long business trips, so that when I come home, I'll come home with a big ol' botox-like smile that I can't control.

Sigh, I do realize that I'm on a low point in my spiritual life since i'm infatuated with all these ideas. I've been avoiding God because of all the things around me; It's too easy to have other things, like this, to be option number one. I have yet to submerge myself fully in the word of God and it's hard when I'm listening to jay chou and kid cudi back to back. :/

note: c-c-c-combo breaker is an internet meme that means "breaking a particular pattern"
in this case, i haven't been writing based on a prompt for the past few posts. but whatevers, today i felt compelled to write and i wish to read this one day in the future.

Rebel Post: Nostalgia

Tonight was quite interesting and I'd like to share to my only reader and to my future self of what happened. I'm actually breaking my systematic habit of answering random prompts for each blog, but I think it's necessary and maybe in the future I'll be once again compelled to make another rebel post. w/e.

Yesterday, I had to fill out a survey asking about how much stress was part of my life, and although I already knew how tiny stress was in my life prior to the questionnaire, I found out that I do get sad and mopey only when I recollect my childhood memories. Oh, Nostalgia.

First off, I don't understand.
I don't understand how people purposely stress themselves out and somehow get depressed over academics. I don't understand why the only reason high school students want to get better grades is to get into a decent college, and for college students it's to get that six figure yielding job. Isn't it just more than that? Like, once you're there, then what?
Maybe it's just me. I'm just probably a really carefree, happy-go-lucky sort of guy, but I really think that everything should be towards God first and then your family. I mean if you know that you want to help out with God's work in the future and that you might want to have your own little family one day, surely, you wouldn't want to be deteriorating your health by pulling an all-nighter after another studying for an exam.
I dunno. :[ , I just get really uncomfortable when I hear other brothers and sisters complaining about how much school work they have and then see who had to pull the most "all-nighters" from the past week and just basically dumping everything from the academia world on Sabbath. I just don't understand. Can we have something more meaningful to talk about?

Well, there goes my little rant -.-

Well, anyways, the reason why I shared the former paragraph is because I went to go watch a movie with a roommate called The Social Network tonight. Basically, it's about this programming/hacking/networking genius who started this social experiment which we know today as Facebook, and it really inspired me to manage my schoolwork better and maybe hopefully be on top of my game when it comes to academics. However, as I thought more and more about it, I asked myself, "Why do I want to study harder and get better grades and graduate with a good degree and early?" Automatically I knew my answer: My future family. Then I asked myself "Then why am I already screwing up in school already? Shouldn't I be better with my study skills?" I'll admit; I'm already doing terrible in school and failed to realize, or maybe just out of lack of motivation, that I needed to do this for my future family and for God.
It was a good wake up call I guess.

Then when I came back home, I realized I left something at the theaters, so I drove another 20 minutes back to West Plano to grab it. However, on the way I passed by Souper Salad, where my mother and I would ALWAYS go to when we wanted to go out and eat, and my high school, Plano West. Only a couple of months ago and 20 minutes away from the location and I already feel so distant to those memories. I remembered my mother and I handing out church flyers to the waitress because she was Chinese (lol -.-), and I remembered having my first high school swim meet at the TMC and dominated everyone at that meet (...and then i sucked) , and I remembered going up and down Ohio, which I passed by, to go to church with my mother every Saturday morning, and just all these emotions and memories were just filling in my heart that I started to cry. I didn't cry because I felt lonely or distressed. I cried, I think, simply because I missed those days.

I remembered something like this happened when I first moved here to Dallas. Like, I remember that on one of the first couple of nights when I first moved, I started crying like mad.
I felt lonely. I felt depressed. It sucked being away from all my friends that I knew. I missed my younger days and wished I could just go back and be carefree once again. I wanted something to fill the void, more like, a person whom I can talk to about my problems and to love and be loved by that person. I knew that it should be God and only Him. I knew that…but I gave into my youthful lusts and had my first relationship. I’ll admit, I felt completely ecstatic and happy about the relationship during the first year or two, but inevitably that void of loneliness came once again.

However, now that I have God, I think that void has been filled and that my childhood moments are a blessing from Him and all I can do now is ‘miss’ them.

Then on the drive back from the theatre to Richardson, I started to listen to this 90s Japanese dance/pop song that my brother ALWAYS played when I was younger, (normally, I don’t listen to pop music, I even deleted all the secular music off my computer, but since the HD on the navi had it, for the sake of nostalgia, I started to listen to it) and it made me think about all the things associated with that song. I remembered that every time I heard that song, I was playing pokemon. Every time! Also, I remembered during that time that I was praying to God for Him to turn the world that I live in, that we all live in, into a pokemon world. And when that didn’t work out I prayed to God for at least a little Pikachu companion or something. Haha :p That was the first thing ever in my life that I legit-ly prayed about.

Sigh….good times :]
I think that’s all for tonight. Next time I’ll share about….how I got to be where I am today…yeah….okay…
I miss the 90s.

Wait.

"#231 - Wait
With tongue firmly in cheek again, I declare the prompt this week: Wait. To those of you for whom it is Monday already, I am sorry for the wait! My internet connection and I have spent the day in a fight. For the last little while there has only been one of us doing Sunday Scribblings, so it is much worse when I can't connect. I am sorry!"

-Sunday Scribblings.

I think i'm patient in terms of short term things like waiting on my mom to finish her meeting, or like waiting for my 6-7 year old swimmer to get something correctly after teaching them 12094823 times. Yeah, I don't think I get easily frustrated with that.

On the other hand, I don't like to wait for the long term things such as getting married or like taking care of a family.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to get married now; I want to have mini Frank and Francessca Changs right now. (I know, i'm a dork. But only God-willing of course). I just don't like the fact that I have to spend another 4-6 years in college and then try to build up some financial support for myself before getting to the point where I want to be.
I want a time machine.

Father, please help me to put those feelings aside for now.
I'm not married and my heart is already divided. -.-
Help me to be more patient and wait for that time to come and only if it is within your will.
I wish to serve you with all my heart. Can you not see?
I want to make most of my years now for you because all my life I didn't know you.
Please help me to stand firm.
Thank you J-Dawggg. (That's not blasphemy is it?...)


I dunno if i'd have the patience for that brat though.

Domination.

My first act as King of the world would be...

Well, since I'm a King and not an elected official, I don't have to mind all the criticism or worrying about doing anything for the favor of the citizens; all opposing figures will just simply be annihilated. However, I don't want much: just only a complete renovation of the world's land layout. Not much.
It would be called Operation Frankination.
First, I would get a couple of scientists to retrieve Kryptonite from the planet Krypton and have it injected into the earth to create a new landmass. possibly a new continent, like they almost did in Superman. Then I'll have its layered with an exotic jungle, a grassy comfortable field sounds nice, and a Mediterranean-like beach. Yes, yes, it's not much.

Then my queen will also have her own little island, probably in the shape of a dumb looking cat, which will be used as a landfill.

Not much, I mean, It's ONLY a new continent.

idk, man, Operation Frankination seems pretty peaceful to me

Dear Past Frank, Dear Future Frank

This actually sounds pretty darn fun.

Dear Past Frank,
Well, what can I say?
It's that age where you give birth into your 'ungovernable' self; You discredit mom and dad for not knowing diddly squat, your hormones are starting to go buck wild, you regard your popularity, more like "e-props," as a way to obtain happiness, and you assume you know enough to be self-sufficient. You just think you're hot stuff, don't ya'?

But is this suppose to be a disappointment? Wasn't this a given the day you and I were born?

I remember three years ago, seven for me, our curiosity has led us to realize that by turning the faucet all the way hot wouldn't make blazing lava come out. Also, Remember how we believed that by sucking any blood, even our own, would cause us to turn into terrifying, blood-sucking vampires? Or actually, your generation will come to describe it as a fascinating, sparkly, dazzling creature that girls go bonkers for. Ha, Francis Cullen, what a joke.
Really Frank, just three years ago you thought that farting in the direction towards the heavens would somehow piss the Lord off, and now you think you can take care of yourself?

And how were the fights you picked? You stand five-feet-two, and you think you can knock out a guy twice your size?
How was the little 'business' you got yourself into? Was the dinky monetary gain worth it?
Did you like it when you lead other people into sin? You should know that it is better to have a "millstone to be strapped around your neck and be thrown off into the depths," than to "lead His little ones into sin."
How are the detentions you serve almost every week?
How are lectures from Sam?
How are the failing grades?
How are you and God?


How is your life Frank?

P.S. Don't worry, you'll get it all sorted out.....in Texas, punk.

Dear Future Frank,
How is life in the prime? Hopefully you're prospering, yeah?
I imagine you're married to a drop-dead gorgeous and God-fearing sweetheart, right? hehe. And how about 'em kids? Prospective gold medalist, world-record shattering, Michael Phelps dethroning Olympians right?

I hope that you are a caring hubby and father. I hope that you'll continue to guide your family under God's guidance. I hope that by now, you understand what God's Love really is, and I definitely hope that your wife doesn't make more than you, salary-wise, otherwise, I think you should just give up on life.

Haha, you should know that I think quite frequently on how your life is like. I'd imagine that you'd always show signs of affection to your wifey all around the house, even in front of the kids, and the kids get so annoyed by it that you think it's hilarious. Like, like pinchin' your wife's butt or something and then she'll obviously go "Fraaank," with a big-eyed smile, and the the kids will say "Dang it, Pops, Really? Do you seriously have to do that here?" and I'm sure you'd just go, "Hey, one day, you'll understand."

I really hope that the most important thing to you right now is your family.
Never underestimate the power of prayer, big Frank. I don't think we'll have a picture perfect family as both of us wants us to have, but I really hope that in times of distress, you'll be able to take the time to pray.

Good Luck out there in the real world. Hope you're doing fantastic!

Franksta Changsta, the O.G. Gangsta

Suitin' my needs.

If you could design one room in a house to suit only your needs, what would it look like?
I grew up in a traditional interior designed home. I hated it.


First off, this room would have to be built in a modern conduct. Nothing too radical as contemporary, but just a soft modern feel. The room can't be too big, I imagine something less than 250sq ft. should be fine. Although, I love warm color schemes like the picture above, I think I'm going to have to go with White, mostly Black, year 2142 type of feel. The walls will be painted cold white and the floor would be a very soft white carpet; something like arctic fox skin. I would have a fair-sized window on the north wall looking out on to some sort of view.

The doodads I'd have in my room are a full sized bed, a corner desk for my computer, a tall bookshelf, and a long rectangular table. The wood has to be oak finished in flat black. The bed would be placed on the north-west corner facing perpendicular the the north wall, head first. The corner desk will accompany a very high-tech computer with a really wide screen, preferably a Dell 24- inch and will be placed on the north-east corner right by the window so that I can rest my eyes and look at something pleasing if they are too stressed out.

My 6 foot Bookshelf would be placed in the middle of the East wall. A metallic surround-sound system is placed on the top shelf with speakers planted into the walls around the room. And the remaining shelves will be finished with books. My bookshelf would not be complete without A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy, Princeton's companion to Mathematics, Euclid's Elements, a big study bible, and a series of A-Z wordbook encyclopedias.The rest would probably be Computer Science papers and creative writings like poems. My rectangular study table would be placed on the south east corner having the long side adjacent to the east wall. This is probably where I'll do my studies and computer science crap. It will have a modern type of lamp, maybe Ikea?


This picture above will be implemented into three separate rectangular canvases. Each canvas being 40 inches long and will be placed on the southern east wall, just above my study table. The paintings will be done in acrylics and each canvas will be separated with a space of 5-7 inches. So my room would be black, white and a hint of orange. I like it. :]

I actually really like interior design, definitely something I'd like to be a connoisseur of.

I love it, but I hate it.

The Mariana Depths, I have been

What is the hardest universal sport on earth?

Although, Olympic swimmers have the most tedious workout program than any other sport hands down, I think the sport of swimming actually falls shy of one sport in degrees of difficulty. I mean, don't get me wrong, professional swimmers have to train at least 4 hours a day ( I know that Micheal does up to 6), swimming up to and over a 100 kilometers weekly. That's a round-trip from Los Angeles to Orange County.
Also, skipping practice is out of the question for swimmers. You take a couple days off, and it just suddenly becomes exponentially harder to recover the workout from those days. It's not the same with other sports. Take basketball for example; A NBA player gets injured, and as soon as he's recovered, he's back in the game. Do that to a swimmer in the middle of championship season, and he's gone

But what sport could possibly be any harder than swimming?


Figure Skating.
What!? It's not even a sport!
Oh yes it is. If you have to spend hours training and building some sort of physical aptitude, it's a sport. Golf, on the other hand, is a leisure thing; please don't tell me you get your exercise from golf. Yet, it's one of the most well payed sports on the planet, ironic.
Why? Well other than the physical abilities that are needed to do so well in this sport, it also requires a great amount of mental capacity. To be able to remember a 7 minute speech is one thing. To be able to remember, to be able to execute, to be able to endure 12 minutes of a routine is definitely another thing.
Although figure skating is an Olympic sport, it's one of the less universal sports out there. Logically, the harder the sport gets, the less people participate. Last time I checked there was only 2 heats of 10 swimmers in the mile race when there were 10 heats of 10 people in the 50m freestyle race in 2008. So using the same logic, it's easy to say that figure skating is one of the hardest sports on the planet.

still my hero though.

sheet music can be found here
Inochi no namae is my favorite by him though, be sure to check him out!

The damn "Deserted Island" prompt.

If I were to spend the rest of my life on a deserted island and can only bring three things, what would the three things be?

...I hate these prompts.

Assuming that this island accommodates essential living materials, the first object I would bring along would probably be the bible. Oh yes, the good ol' book. However, although, it is pretty much obsolete considering the fact that the likelihood of anyone sinning on a deserted island would not be a whole lot. I would still bring it along just to exercise the mind and have something to meditate upon.

Numero Dos.
Seclude a man from humankind long enough, and I'm sure he'll have quite a few screws up in his head loose, so for this reason, I'd like to bring someone along to share the torment with me, preferably a female counterpart....hehehe. WHAT? Do you wanna stick around with a gender you don't favor "pleasingly" 24/7? Yeah, that's what I thought. Whatever, I gave the bible some use now. :]

And lastly.
I have two things what I want., and it'd be selfish to blackball my "counterpart's" needs. So, I'll let this object to be whatever she wants it to be. I would guess a piano or something of that name of tune. I mean, honestly, If I were dragged along to this sort of situation and I couldn't bring anything along, I think that person should be more concerned about his own survival rather than what objects to bring along.

definitely something a girl would post, but I thought it looked sort of "cute." (please excuse my ladylike terms). So that's your picture of the day.

Now something about me:
Cuisine; don't have a particular favorite but I love Mexican, Japanese, Korean, and American food.

Unitl next time,
FC

Fresh Start

"Term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives"

urbandictionary on "blogging"

Heck, I have the time.

I do not believe that I would belong to that classification of people known "technical," but the things that my life has become revolved around happen to be some of the world's most methodological subjects and objects: Mathematical Logic, Object-Oriented programming, Cryptography, and so forth. Therefore, I wouldn't deem this blog, which is representing me, justice without consisting of some form of technicality. In consequence, the basic body of this blog will consist of short written discourses answering some prompts particular to that day (I get randomly generated prompts from various sources), or some just random media: pictures, videos, music, and other knickknacks. I do not believe in leaving a couple of sentences behind to describe a subject, neither will I twaddle my way through this log.

Like how I'm writing this in such a lecture-mannered type of way?
Ha, It won't be as boring in the future. You can count on that :]

So a little about myself.
I LOVE swimming; I have epic dreams where I'm this crazy Olympian that dethrones Phelps. hehe

Music; can't really categorize what I like to listen to, so I'll just list a few artists and genres. The Fray, Jack Johnson, Regina Spektor, definitely some classical, Jason Mraz, John Mayer, and a few international songs. Although I can tolerate a few hip-hop songs, In general I hate them.

I am an unfortunate breed of Taiwanese and Korean. I can speak and read Mandarin, but I only can understand very limited Korean. Although, culturally, I'm more Chinese oriented, I favor my Korean side.

It's a shame to say, but technology is my life. From the Shimura-Takayama conjecture describing how modular functions are elliptic curves to the latest trick in exploiting a computer network, but surprisingly, even as a big nerd, I don't play games.

After quitting the trumpet, I've discovered better things like the guitar. When I have more time, I'll try to start with the piano again.

Well, that's pretty much it for today.
Also, I'll describe one particular aspect of my life like I have described several already every short essay post I make.

Blogging is actually turning out interesting...Let's see what this page has in store for the future!

Francis Chang, out.