Many of the following thoughts are rather spontaneous and are probably not coherent (not making sense), please bear with it. If you want to skip to the recent news with me just click here. Thanks.

I suppose that it's a bit too late to say "Happy New Year" now but I owe you that nonetheless, if I haven't greeted you in such way already in the past month.

Thanks to Timmy for pointing out that I haven't been updating my blog as often as I should've been per the commitments I have made in my New Year's Resolution. More than once I have thought of writing a new post, however every time the thought are overwhelmed by more urgent and important works, and be demotivated by the exhaustion.

As I am writing this post, I came to realized that "overwhelm" is a big word. The challenges and works I face everyday may not be necessary comparable to that in the real world out there, but enough to, well, overwhelm me. I said the word is big not because it's long or difficult to remember, but rather it is big because people who are overwhelmed are people that are given responsibilities to.

I have been keeping up to some of my New Year's Resolutions, while the rest are falling apart. Not that I haven't been trying to keep up to them - I have tried, and am trying very hard to do so, yet there are things that prevent me from being free from doing things that I wish to do.

Perhaps it's just that I am not keeping up to the resolutions, perhaps there are twenty starving tigers on my way, or perhaps these are all the excuses only to make my sorry self better.

I know I can do better. I just need to try harder, and I will.

Well, I am glad (and you should be happy) that I am still doing the "right" things. A few people asked what exactly does that mean, and to which I simply responded with, "Well, the 'right' things." There's one thing that I have kept to myself for many years, well, considering there's no necessity of sharing there's really no point of doing so but I guess I will share it here.

So the story goes that my elementary school best friend is an early (cigarette) smoker. He was a great friend, not a particular bad student, does his share of homework, and he smokes. He started at a very early age, second grade, perhaps, my memory is not refreshing very well at the moment. Anyway, so one afternoon when we didn't have school I was hanging out with him at the condominium which he resides (resided?) in. Out of nowhere he and his older brother (by 2 or 3 years) started smoking. They offered me to "enjoy" it, and I declined the offer without having to think twice.

Boring story, yes, but it's significant to me because I did the right thing. Every time someone offers me to do something similar I would think back to that incident and would simply tell them, "No."

"No" is a complete sentence.

I smile at it every time seeing it inside my guidance counselor's office.

Haha, I know, I am lame. :)

I guess I should move onto the recent stuff instead of boring you out.

My Best New Year's Gift Ever.

Well, so far. I am not the kind of person that celebrates holidays. Not even my birthday. I don't have a good reason or explanation for this. I just don't feel like it, that's all. On New Year's Eve I received my acceptance letter from The Ohio State University. Although not entirely surprised as I have been informed of a few close friends of mine having already received the acceptance letters from the OSU a few days prior, but I am still happy to find out that I did get in (at last!) and even more so, relieved.

Winter, Snow, and the Beauty of Nature

woodward memorial park
Christina walking toward a swing at Woodward Memorial Park after a mild snow storm.

There was a mild snow storm around Columbus last week and due to the extremely cold weather (to us Ohioans) school was canceled for a day on Friday. The three-day snowfall built up a feet or so of snow in some areas and to take advantage of this very distinctive beautiful feature of Winter I decided to go, and invited my girlfriend Christina to join me to go to a nearby park to snap a few photos. The park was phenomenally beautiful that day, with the nearly undisturbed snow on the ground. It gave me this strange yet familiar feeling of utopia.

I would love to spend my whole day there, but I'll just say that being in a below-freezing point environment for over 30 minutes is not the coolest thing. No pun intended. (Sorry, Maddox.)

Straight A's Again!

Almost, almost. Just 3 more percentage points for my college-level Physics class and I would have straight A's in my report card again. I was pretty upset when I found out that I don't have an A in that class and even more furious when I found out that Physics is the only class that I don't have an A. I guess I was just taking things for granted because I wasn't really expecting to get A's in my two other AP classes.

On the upside I am breaking my own GPA record once again with a 4.5 (on a 4-point GPA scale) this time. :)

This post is getting longer that I have intended so I will just wrap it up by saying that I am pretty happy with life right now despite being somewhat stressful, but this is just life right? We just need to continue to live, laugh, and love.

Once gain, Happy New Year.