omg another life blog

• Back ~5 years ago, I bought the MKV Gti. This was around the time when collegesucks bought his Genesis coupe.
• I was pretty heavily set on the Civic SI, but had an appointment already with the VW dealership and so went ahead and decided to give it a test drive.
• As soon as I was inside the cabin, I already knew that I would be buying the GTI over the Civic SI.
• In terms of performance and handling, the SI is superior in almost every way. Lighter, better handling, better braking, turning, suspension. The GTI because of boost might be able to win in a quarter mile but the thing that really set the GTI from the SI was the interior. It simply felt first class while the SI felt like economy class. The doors were solid and filled, the seats were adjustable and not made of cheap, washed out black cloth, the lumbar support of the seats, the details the look and feel. It wasn't even close
• And I never knew how attractive the GTI was either. The lights were "halos" or HID's, the fog lights were stock and very attractive against the honey comb grill. Plus the hatchback styling took my heart by surprise.
• And to this day, the car still surprises me. Look at this 3rd hole. What on earth is this for? 5 years later, I randomly put a redbull can and I was just giggling at how absurd German engineering can be with the foresight to include an extremely well designed cup holder exclusively for skinny (energy) canned drinks
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc..._1165320039_1590424_6548220_n-1-1.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2625/4188945145_11d3e0acb6.jpg

• Why does getting better at something feel good?
• I don't know the exact definition, or if I'm using it properly but why are some things intrinsically rewarding? And how subjective or arbitrary is this? There are a lot of things maybe your parents forced you to learn like a foreign language or forced you to play an instrument or sport. Why was this intrinsically enjoyable and motivating or demotivating?
• Back in undergrad after being really unhappy with life for an extended period, in part because having poker be illegal, I got to a point where I became a "yes man"
• You wanna go out get some drinks? Yes. You wanna go work at this shitty restaurant as a bar tender? Yes. You wanna go hit on some freshman at midnight breakfast + a movie? Yes. You wanna go learn some ballroom dancing? Yes. Do you want to learn how to change the oil on your car? Yes. Basically I would always say yes, and even though it ended up costing me a ton of fucking money, and I would run around town doing things I had absolutely no "real", "genuine" desire to do, these were honestly probably my fondest memories of college (even though college as a whole was 100% not by best years and thank god for that cause life gets considerably better)
• I owe a large part of this growth to my roommate. He had a completely different childhood than me. His father had a lot of odd jobs, grew up in Alaska, and even built his own fucking cabin. He never felt the pressure that I felt or that you guys might feel, to start a career as soon as you graduate college. But this isn't a blank check to do nothing like smoke pot and play dota2 24/7/365. Well at the time it was HoN I think.
• You have the freedom to do what ever you want. This is hard to see in school where you have deadlines, and clubs and academic involvement and parents. But you don’t actually have to commit to any of this. You can just wake up and do nothing. Granted these things have consequences and very real ones too. You could fail a test, drop out, limit future academic opportunities so it doesn't feel like freedom. I prob should elaborate on this a bit more but just physically or mentally can't put in the effort. (is mental effort physical? LOL)
• It should be obvious that certain things in life sound more appealing than others. But how in tune are we with our own desires? Is becoming an engineer vs becoming an economist so vastly different? Is success as a lawyer vs a physician going to bring you vastly different amounts of happiness?
• Or is it the person? Are happy people happy regardless of their decision? Are unhappy people unhappy regardless of profession?
• I never cared to learn more about my car. I was never a "motorhead" or "gearhead" or whatever slang is suitable. If anything I was the opposite. I made fun of these maniacs and "losers" who would spend 10K adding ghetto ass mods on a fucking civic or the maniacs and speed junkies who would risk their lives street racing (being in a Korean church I knew plenty of people who died this way). But after changing the oil for my car I was hooked. I had some friends help and start me out but how could something like this feel so good? You're sweating, toiling, dirty and grimey. Your shirt is going to get so oiley, your jeans and pants and skin will be abraised from the concrete. Its so fucking hot underneath the car on top of the Florida sun. But it felt so fucking good. So rewarding. I remember opening an excel spreadsheet and calculating how much I was paying to get my oil changed (full synthetic at the dealership @ $100 including tax, and how much I could save if I did it all by myself, start up costs, tool costs [haha I didn’t even have a car tool set], jacks, oil). I don’t remember exactly but this would have taken me 7+ years to break even. Although prob a lot less now, because I know to buy oil during huge sales etc. But regardless the fun I had, the process of improving was in of itself more than rewarding enough to make the time commitment and monetary commitment MORE than worthwhile. The future projects I undertook like lowering my car and installing coil-overs, a process that literally took me 18 hours (if you ever want to do this, get a friend to help, can prob do it in 8 even if said friend only chips in 4-5 hours) became fun.
• http://www.vrsnorthampton.com/img/cms/mk5stillstatic.jpg
• I remember a video with Nick Offerman, who talks about how he's seen people who make toothpicks at his woodshop get more joy than surfing the internet, facebooking or instagramming for 8 hours a day and having nothing to show for a days "work".
• So start collecting metaphorical toothpicks. Go offer rides to people who are carrying groceries in the hot sun, or go read a book, a chapter, a page a passage and take notes if you like. When watching breaking bad I knew I'd be rewatching a lot of the first 2-3 seasons and knew it would be a blast for me to take notes and write down all the foreshadowing, and character analysis of tuco and the integration of mexican culture, from the two brothers crawling on the dessert to what they were wearing. Go collect some skills, memories, some new flavors in food and/or music.
• http://youtu.be/d0YAhykMMxc
• So what should we choose to be good at? What disciplines or subjects should we pursue? (MMA feels pretty big here on this forum)
• The other really weird thing about this is that it doesn't even have to be "domination." Where it involves a losing party and winning party. I know a lot of what we do feels like sublimation of primal desires to "win" and "dominate." IE starcraft 1, 2, dota2, MMA. But working out, becoming better at cars or dance, or other personal goals without a clear "loser" are still equally intrinsically motivating no?

• Nah it's not about a girl, for me it was basketball.
• I got into basketball really late, around 9th grade or first year of highschool (out of 4 years for in case they do things differently overseas). It was the first thing in my life where I just wanted to fucking do 24/7. Seriously more than sex. I prob have defective genes heh.
• Even though I've won state level competitions in tennis and piano, mainly due to the pressure I received from my parents, I fell in love with basketball. And it was so hard to convince them to spend money on top of everything they were spending in terms of lessons for tennis piano. Which they very highly regarded.
• I never thought they would send me to camp because I just thought at the time that my parents were cold, heartless slave masters who cared about academics + piano and to a lesser degree tennis. But they would see my passion, where I'd bike 20 mins to a local park and just shoot hoops till literally 2 am when the lights would automatically turn off.
• I'd come home eaten by mosquitos and one of my favorite memories was them saying that it would be ok to go to tennis camp vs sending me off to learn Calc 3 and Differential Equations (which I was forced to do a summer later).
• I remember crying the first day of basketball camp cause everyone else was so fucking good at this game. I was at a physical and dexteritous disadvantage but I think performing piano and playing tennis at the state level helped my mental game. I remember wanting to quit right then and there when I was put in a group with a bunch of 6th graders or students 3 years younger than me. It felt so degrading. Eventually though in total Naruto fashion, I straight up outworked and out Jacky Mao'd everyone in my group and by the end of the first month or half way point, I was put in with a bunch of kids from my own grade.
• This was basically the beginning of a huge part of my life and something I felt truly defined me as a person.
• I'd miss out on varsity the following sophomore year and even junior year but finally made it to varsity my senior year. (I was on JV for two years, it's not like I got no playing time)
• Where does this leave me though? I couldn't play for a D3 college program or at any other competitive level. I'm left with skills like being able to shoot 80% from anywhere on the floor and prob around 60% from 3 point range (which is like saying you can CS mid at dota and hit 80 cs and deny 40 by 10 mins but you're playing SOLO, whereas hitting basketball shots in a real game is so much harder. Hitting 40-50 cs in a pro game while harassing, and getting harassed by opponent mid while checking runes while keeping an eye out on smoke ganks make the game so much harder)
• I'm 26 years old now and there's nothing left for me in terms of basketball. I think something a lot of poker players and a lot of forum members here on LP had to deal with is should I just leave poker? Do I just leave starcraft 1? All the time you put in getting so good at that fucking game, what the fuck was the point?
• To this day, I still think about basketball and get pretty depressed when I think about the last time I played basketball. I played like 3 months ago at a YMCA. With a bunch of fucking high schoolers. It felt so pathetic I guess. Even though I scored like 10 out of 15 points per game for like 5 games straight. Iono it's like MMA, whats the point of beating someone inferior to you? Is there any utility in that? Maybe when you're young and immature but as you grow it really seems like if you were to do MMA, and had to fight a 5 year old and demolished him, it seems kinda pathetic I guess when there's such a clear distinction in class between the fighters. But isn't poker like that too? You're either better than your opponents and "dominate/wreck" them (OH YEA I SO GOOD) or you get crushed by them (THERE GOES MY SELF ESTEEM). I guess there might be a small middle ground for the nose bleeders who I suppose are playing with ego on the line and are trying to genuinely find out where they stand and that's ok I guess. I guess this where I wanna stop about this topic. I feel like I could talk about this point for pagessssss.
• I suppose when looking at life as more of a whole, or imagining your life on your deathbed, you might have the foresight to say or think or even straight up see since some of you here are just straight up smart, gifted individuals: doors open and close all the fucking time. Doesn't really help to dwell. When poker first became illegal in the states, it crushed my heart my soul my dreams (fuck I sound like NEILLY). But I thought it would be my livelihood. I thought I'd make that 300+ an hour some day (even though there was no fucking chance for me). I spent a lot of time that I won't get back being really unproductive. Not that I think it's bad to go through this. It's not like you can just automatically move forward without thinking about shit like this.
• So basically it feels like I have to kiss my first love good bye and there really isn't a positive outlet to ever play basketball again. On top of that it's so fucking weird to be old and playing against a bunch of kids and "dominating" them or playing a bunch of old people and dominating them too. But once again are we in tune with what makes us happy?
• http://youtu.be/mJiN6a7K5fI
• Here's a trailer for Jon Favreau's new movie Chef. I mean maybe food trucks or so overdone or the novelty has worn off or something, but it still looks like it covers a lot of what I'm going through or at least thinking through. Jon started off I think more into producing and directing movies and television but slowly started acting in small bits like "iron man" and "I love you man". Anyway Jon actually spent a few years in culinary school learning and becoming classically trained in real life. Not in the movie or anything. It's weird because his real life experiences mirror the movie events which mirrors certain aspects of my life (insert INCEPTION SOUND EFFECT) and I'm sure parts of yours. Anyway he loved it so much he actually swapped out his home kitchen with a more industrial restaurant style kitchen.
• Is life some sort of revolving door where we should be constantly trying to learn and somewhat master different disciplines?
• Maybe we are allowed to dwell on losses and defeats but should we try and actively keep a "grieving period?" Should we try and say to ourselves ok this event you get 1 day to dwell and be unproductive but u gotta get up and go the next, or that shit was rough, give yourself a week, a month, a year but u gotta go after that?
• Btw I picked up calligraphy. Totally a good use of my time lmao.

What's the fucking big deal with cross fit?
• "CrossFit, Inc. is a fitness company founded by Greg Glassman and Lauren Jenai[1] in 2000.[2][3] Promoted as both a physical exercise philosophy and also as a competitive fitness sport, CrossFit workouts incorporate elements from high-intensity interval training, olympic weightlifting, plyometrics, powerlifting, gymnastics, girevoy sport,calisthenics, strongman and other exercises. "
• How can getting people in particular girls and middle aged office, white collar, professionals (prob the people who need it the most) to do things like squatting, deadlifting, benchpressing, and kettlebelling be so fucking controversial?
• Why is this so fucking inherently bad? Why is it such a "diss" in bodybuilding communities to be asked if they cross fit? I mean there are always going to be odd people who do odd things. But just like mentally ill shooters, that doesn't make guns inherently bad does it? What about every human being who goes through some degree of road rage? You're literally putting everyone in your vicinity in very real danger. But are cars to blame?
• I'm overcoming prob the worst physical ailment of my life so far. Which isn't saying I'm recovering from cancer or something that was life threatening.
• But I did go through radiation treatment. Twice. I did suffer from thyrotoxic paralysis and thyrotoxic myopathy. Go google it if you want I don't feel like typing out all of the symptoms in depth. But some cliffs are that I've been 150-155 for the past 10+ years of my life probably and because of how much my muscles atrophied I wasn't able to walk. I had to be in a wheel chair for about a week. I was at 125 lbs. This was 2 months ago. On top of your metabolism burning everything you eat your metabolism (due to hyperthyroidism) burned my bones as well. My bones were dissolving into my blood. With so much more calcium and extra minerals in my blood, my muscles were misfiring and cramping and pulling on a daily basis. To this day, I still pull a muscle every day. Pulling a hamstring and quads are the most frequent, but some of the more "funny" ones would be randomly yawning and your neck muscles just spasming and your in so much pain and it's just awful. Another one, I was trying to wipe my ass with my left hand (cause I'm left handed) and my whole left side, lats, sides back, all fucking pulled in so much pain. I was yelling in a public bathroom, "Jesus mary and joseph just fuck me in my asshole!" In reaction to my left side pulling I stretched towards the right, and then my lower right abs just pulled and contracted in awful ways. The worst episode by far though was trying to take a piss. You know the muscle where u try and piss everything out? Which btw is totally a sign of how old you are. I remember middle school, just one nice fucking stream and I'm done. Now it's like squirt. Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. Flick, squirt. Anyway so you clench what ever fucking muscle that is. I FUCKING PULL THIS MUSLCE OMG SO MUCH PAIN AT A WORK RESTROOM. I'm like trying to quietly gasp for air, while I'm just in total awful pain like 10 fucking hernias while giving child birth.
• http://youtu.be/HwXE5SSwyYM
• http://youtu.be/xyuH8apkS9k
• Today I fucking benched 225 (although by the time I post on LP might be a few days behind). True. Fucking. Story. I'm not really in the mood to write a more health/fitness inspired blog since it's just been done so many times and I'd be surprised if the ppl here at lp were looking to read anything of this sort. Go open menshealth or something, it's prob more legit then the broscience I'd be dropping on ya. I will say though, I do side lateral raises with 5 pound dumbells and have been focusing on "contractions" more than the weight, set or rep of all exercises I do. I also currently do "half squats" because in my current shape of recovering from knee injury, just hurts and feels like considerable straight on my knee. I'm also 165 lbs and that's in the morning after I piss. Keep in mind, that I think some of the weight has to do with my bones rebuilding on top of muscle and fat. Also I've been suffering lower back pain and im 90% sure it's because of the over muscular development of my upper body in particular chest/arms. But will start doing deadlifts like a mad man and see if that helps. I started off with a waist size of 31 and chest of 34, my waist is current 34.5 (which I hope to reduce by 1 inch but I did gain some fat) and my chest is 38.5 inches (hurting your knee is a great way of focusing on your upper body lmao). Also because my thighs have like doubled in size or some shit all my pants give me "Moose Knuckle" http://youtu.be/pdi8PFlsM2A?t=2m28s
• I do wanna say though, that I do what I call "exploratory weightlifting" as well as "exploratory stretching". When I first started weight lifting like 8-10 years ago, I couldn't even bench the bar. I was a total wimp, this was in high school. So when I got into college I prob really started lifting in sophmore year. Weight lifting actually scared and intimidated me, I didn't want to be scared, or made fun of for doing super weakish looking exercises like not being able to bench the bar. But eventually my roommates were super patient with me and just got me out to the gym where I'd do dumbell press (obviously cause I couldn’t do the bar and on top of that could totally hide that I couldn't do the bar) and other various exercises. I eventually got to the point where I could put like 25 pounds on the barbell and bench around ~100. I guess because of my form, and "cadence" if you will, or time under weight, my roommates thought I could do more weight. So week after week they kept putting more weight till I had 135 or the 45 lbs weight on each side. I felt super accomplished and felt so good about myself but this was short lived. For the next 2-3 months I couldn't improve my weight on the bench press and decided to go back to dumbells. And the most flabbergasting part was that I couldn’t even do the dumbell weights from when I first started. How could this be? How could I lose my ability to push in weight when I finally just benched 135? There are prob multiple reasons like dropping form, but after a lot of thought and bro sicence I realized I was pushing a ton off of my feet on the floor. Like you can legitimately reduce weight by anywhere from 10-50 pounds depending on how hard you push off the ground with your feet. But what is the point of reducing load on your chest when well….working out chest? And so thus "exploratory weightlifting" was born for me. I would heavily modify the way I personally do bench. I put my feet up on the actual bench and off the ground, I still generously arch my back and do bench this way. I find that it reduces your ability to "cheat" and take off load off your chest, and the biggest key, is that it forces your stabilizing muscles in your chest to really balance out the weight. Now I don't know how useful this is. I don’t know if having evenly developed chest is something you should even care about. But it felt important to me in a more "perfect body" sense vs having muscles to show off at the beach. (Which lets be real there are many reasons to workout but most if comes down to cosmetics, the same way girls use makeup. Maybe some of us really enjoy it and it's a hobby but trust me girls and make up is prob just as intricate and time consuming and educating. Maybe we can sublimate even further and talk about how changing your body is a metaphor for changing one's self which I think there IS some truth too, but for most of us, if we really self examine I think it's 90% cosmetics 10% other reasons and this is ok. Just accept your own vanity. I sure have ) Just to kinda elaborate more on my experiences with "exploratory weightlifting" I kept messing around with the bench press with different grips and ways to bench. I think most of us are very 90 degree heavy. When we lower the weight it’s a 90 degree angle at our elbows, and a 90 degree angle from that plane to our shoulder plane. But after doing a lot of pushups through out the years, I actually theorized that the best way to do bench is a "vertical" ish grip and a vertical grip barbell. Granted this bar doesn't really exist and if it does would be hard to set up on a bench rack. But you can get close to it by shortening your grip the way you do pushups like right to your side. And for a long time I used to think this would focus on your triceps more than your pecs but once again you can pushups at your side with your hands up above your head or right next to your chest. But basically when I do these chest emphasizing form of pushups, my elbows are tucked in. And so I tried to recreate something similar on a bench press and was actually able to find a way that better "loads" my chest. (Obviously visit tri-nguyn's site for a free pdf to find out this revolutionary new secret.) All kidding aside, basically when your doing bench press, try closing your grip and when u lower the weight, instead of letting your elbows drop at the side of your nipples/chest area, try rotating them and tucking them in at your side. On top of this try lowering the barbell below your nipples and pushing out on top of your nipples. If you look from the side view this should be more "diagonal" instead of a straight lift. Spoiler alert, this process of tweaking the bench press literally was a 9 month ish process. 3-4 years later I would learn this is the standard way "power lifters" bench. LOL. But dare to be different. Dare to play around with "paradigm" form. Dare to tell people to fuck off and don't be scared of looking like an idiot. I mean we take for granted that the world is a sphere, but we never got to find out for ourselves the world isn't flat. Almost to a point of disservice.
• An example of "exploratory stretching" which is pretty new for me, just started to do it since I hurt my knee is just stand up and put your palms straight up in a cross like stance. And raise your hands all the way to your head like you're about to dive into a pool in the sky. Now in that same stance turn your palms outward. Feel the way your shoulders work and how that puts strain on your shoulders and upper pecs near your clavicle. I mean yea this is more feminine I guess but even doing these small stretches was a bit eye opening for me. Like where your body moves and how it moves this is all second nature to us. But if we could consciously understand the way our body moves I think it would help in terms of injury prevention and allow our bodies to transcend to another level of what we "unconsciously" know our bodies can do, but what our bodies can't do, like limitations to your shoulder joint.
• Before I started grad school I was lucky enough to have a friend invite me to California, where I stayed for close to 6 months. My friend's little brother was a cheerleader for like 15+ years and had gymnastics experience as well as pursued dance in college. Eventually I started helping out and volunteering because I was just curious at the different physical training that cheerleaders and gymnasts go through. It was fucking eye opening and really reminded me of crossfit and all the hypocrisy and bullshit of workout and gym culture. There are so many different ways to train, and so many muscles to train that you just simply can't work them all doing weight training or machine training. "Organic movements" like playing beach volleyball for instance worked out certain parts of my ass that I just straight up didn’t even fucking know existed. Doing balance beam and double bars and gymnastics rings worked out all sorts of muscles that I just never was able to hit in the gym. Oh and dancing. Being fluid and having so much control and balance over your body, and how much strain these "organic" isometric ish movements could challenge your body to do is just mind blowing.
• It's like wat slark says man, "Your body's a cage. I just set you free." Most of us are prob going to be living in our bodies for the next 60+ years and this is prob a lower bound or under estimation. Why not invest a little in terms of eating, and working out and try out different movements and exercises? I mean beyond the scope of like training "heavy" and sacrifice form for one week out of the month where you normally train "Medium" with good form. Why not do something like join ballet, or a real hardcore kettlebell gym or do kung-fu or learn to row (like in a boat you asshole not in front of a machine)? Or do a fucking full ironman triathlon?
• Yea these are all good ideas that we'll never get around to unlesss you're jinro, fucking boss.
• This gurl just fucking turns me on omg
• Ignore the fucking provoking/aggravating title http://youtu.be/uO_jfEk-adw
• Btw I haven't worked out in over 8 days, but I look ripped as fuckkkkkk

• There were a few posts throughout the year about wanting to look more mature and professional and how some of us were ready to drop the volcum tshirt and billabong pants look.
• I remember looking through some of the posts by some people claiming to be "knowledgeable" about clothing and nearly spat out my drink in hand when looking at used clothing on ebay that literally went for like 400 fucking dollars for a jacket or sweater or some shit.
• Basically 3-4 months passed from those posts when I was invited to my first wedding. I was surprised I was even invited cause this friend and I hadn't really talked in a really long time. We were high school friends but by now prob close to 8 years have passed before we had any real meaningful conversation.
• I guess it's kinda fucking stupid the things you say and the things people remember about you, cause for whatever reason I guess I said something that he needed to hear back in highschool when his parents were getting divorced. Anyway he paid for like 10 of us, to all get MTM suits + Shoes + shirts + flight. He works as a software engineer for a really big company although he specializes I think in audio drivers or audio technology (don't ask me I don’t know shit about this). Which is super fucking cool because he was always pursuing his passions and made his own electronic music and was a kinda pseudo celeb in college for DJing.
• So he paid for these $300 dollar shoes…which we got "more than half off" which at the time I was skeptical. But these are "cordovan" shoes, and not the color, but the fact that these are a certain part of leather that doesn't wrinkle and therefore won't crack. They tend to ripple, and my god I've never seen such a deep fucking shine. For the people who have to know, these shoes were by the same standards of "Crocket & Jones" although they aren't allowed to label it as such since we were offered these shoes at a pretty heavy discount. No lie, I've seen legitamate Crocket and Jones shoes like the ones we got, but they had the C&J logo and retailed for $700…
• I always knew I had wide feet. I'd buy a size 8 in nikes for like 10+ years of my life and maybe size down to size 7.5 for converse or something. But I was always annoyed at how there was still space in the toe area but the width of the shoe felt tight.
• Well it turns out I have incredible small feet. I'm not even a size 7.5 but a true size 7. But as I kinda expected (but never even knew existed) my width was a DOUBLE E. wth they have customizable widths now? I guess if you were to tie my feet, like if I stood on top of string like at street crossing or if I was doing a deadlift but with the bendable barbell underneath my feet and tied a ribbon (this is a terrible way to explain/describe but deal with it), the bottom of my feet would be just a single E, but the fact that my feet are I guess "hill-y" like not flat, but come up a lot (iirc this is called having a high instep), then I'm a true double E, or 7EE.
• I think this is what it takes to kinda get into something like fashion. Something that's been almost perverse to you for so long. Spending so much fucking money on shirts, shoes and suits. It just felt so foreign. But this experience man, this set of shoes was just eye opening. Like stargate into some other dimension of fashion. I think it takes a moment like this for most people to really start appreciating clothing and fashion or I guess menswear or men's style. Just the level of materials that go into such a gorgeous piece of clothing, the construction, the handcraftsmanship, it really reminded me of the depiction of the Japanese in "The last Samurai". Just a lot of detail and a lifetime pursuit into one's skill in this one small esoteric thing like handcrafting shoes.
• And the MTM shirts and suits we got, I thank my friend fucking daily, cause he had the foresight to understand having a tuxedo isn't very practical at all. But having a summer-y suit (either a silk-linen or cashmere-linen blend) in a really nice dark professional blue would be the suit I most often wear in the Florida climate.
• Anyway I don’t wanna talk too much about this topic as there are just better resources out there but here are a few shots of more "casual" weekend wear. I have these photos because I get asked about what I would wear as a student (I have a blog somewhere far from here about how to do college right and I get asked about what students could wear especially since blazers are way too formal for campus life).
• Here's a tip on life as well as fashion "Living within your means is the most liberating stance you can take in the evolution of your style, but to live within your means doesn’t mean settling for what is cheapest, it means having less but having better. A single great cigar, once a month, with one great meal is better than a hundred cheap smokes. Likewise with clothing, to be ‘cheap’ often does you more disservice in the way you treat your own things. If you have two great pairs of shoes and three well cut suits, all of which you treat with something like reverence for the joy they bring you to wear, you will always look sharp. So, for myself at least, after many years dealing with all things classic menswear, I have come to this conclusion - cheap is always just cheap. Less, but better, is the path of the quality man."
• I find the above so much more relevant when it comes to things like treating your parents out. Which I guess now that I make money is something I try and do more.
• Fuck going to Chile's and TGI Fridays. It's so much better to save a bit and go to a real 4 star restaurant and provide your parents with a service and quality they haven't really experienced. My parents are blue collar workers, and it's always a real treat to give them something like this. Granted I'm not going to pretend like the last drink we had a $25 dollar glass of whiskey was better than Johnny Walker Red/Blue whatever the lowest tier was. But getting well displayed food or brunch for $15-$20 a person is so much more satisfying than taking your parents to the "TWO CAN EAT AT CHILI'S FOR TWENTY DOLLARS" promos.
• Also a bit unrelatedly, if you're doing something like playing dota2, always quit the game if your friend invites you to anything. Even playing super smash bros in person with 4 people at a time in company of like 10-15 people is so much better use of your time. Anything social, for instance watching this bull shit game called soccer and this bullshit once every 4 year competition known as the World Cup is still, much much much more valuable than working out chest that 1 extra hou, or finishing that game of doto. And I'm prob one of the biggest introverts I know. I always start with these invites like they are obligations and annoyances and I hate it, and it feels rough, and now I have to change, and go all the way out to the place were supposed to meet, but iono once I see the people and friends, once I start talking to a few people, or if im hanging out with the boys and I start flirting with which ever poor girl happens to be around me it all becomes worth it.
• The million dollar question: but why does clothing matter? Why does fashion matter? Isn't it just being vain? Isn't it just succumbing to group think? Look at yourself slave, you're wearing suits loL? Fuck man, I don’t even know how to answer this or if there are still people who really believe or abide by this. I guess why stop there, why do you do anything except for eat so you can live? Why play dota2, why try and get better at any of your passions, why play sports, why fucking listen to music, why develop a palette in music and movies and tv? Why look at art, why go to concerts or to your opera, why do anything? Why spend a bunch of money on $10+ cocktails? Why even leave your house you miserable fuck. This is what makes us human. I mean does art really serve a purpose? Why have such strong feels about Japanese cars or German cars or US cars? Why develop and research such a wide body of knowledge of different workouts and supplements? Why are there competitions of people trying so fucking hard to solve a rubicks cube? http://youtu.be/Pwq7mxexHeU
• I mean yes we're here because of some fucking accident mirrions of years ago. And yes we have only one purpose in life. And that's just to pass our genes. Maybe we're such complex creatures where this seems so far from truth, but look at a grasshopper, an ant. Is everything we do a more complicated version of a mating ritual? Is everything we do just a birdcall or flaring out our wings or neck?
• OK maybe this isnt what I REALLY wanted to say. What I REALLY wanted to say is that, nearly everything we do in our lives has to be an attempt to forget that someday, someday real soon, we are going to cease to exist and that no one will really ever care, and our lives will never have really mattered, and that the world will never remember you. So go bash fashion, but go wear tanks to show off your well deserved biceps. So go flame music and art but go drive your lit up neon japanese car (none of these are meant to be flames, just are meant to illustrate that we may prefer some form of "fashion" over another arbitrary form of "fashion", to me these are all human interests and I have no say what human beings should pursue). Do what you gotta do in order to live another day I guess. It's what makes us fucking human I guess. And maybe not in a good way haha.

• So back when I was 24, in my 2nd semester of business school (a joint masters program while I was pursuing a phd in econ, which I ended up bailing on but got an "exit" masters for) I locked down an internship in risk management in the middle of that semester that would begin the following summer.
• So I was pretty relaxed, the future seemed a bit more secure, my dota2 mmr was finally 4200 (and because of that I was finally able to LEAVE THE GAME FOR GOOOOD [I started off 3900, and once again, that autonomy or becoming better at something was intrinsically rewarding. Even though it was such a fucking grind. How can a number like mmr be so fucking meaningful to me? Why do I have to desperately reach 4200 where you are top 1% of doto players? Fuck MOBAS and icefrog is the worst human being of the 21st century true story]).
• I noticed I still kinda would get these break outs and pimples. Like what the fuck. I'm 24 what's going on here face. Why are you still getting pimples? I guess for being asian, my family background comes from the old farms in korea. So I just always thought that acne was just a phase u go through, u get a few scars, u pop a few pimples, whatever.
• But considering the business environment I would be put into in a few months, I decided to get more proactive about helping my skin.
• After doing a lot of research and being a jew, but just mainly poor, I started washing my face with that foamy anti-bacterial soap that’s in every gym, restaurant, bathroom.
• I would use that to wash my face. And this would help a lot. I had a really oily face, and would wash my face like 2-3 times a day with that super harsh soap because it was anti-bacterial, and the research that I read said, that a big cause of pimples was bacteria.
• While my face got better and honestly prob looked the best in years, I started to break out again. What the hell is going on. Well it turns out when your skin is constantly dry chances are you're going to start breaking out again.
• And so I went back to the internet, and realized I was forgetting a really important step of moisturizing your fucking skin.
• So basically to summarize (just because this works for me, you might need something different), exfoliate your face once every 2-3 days. Less if you shave which is prob the best way to exfoliate (which is just a fancy term for removing and scrubbing off dead skin cells which bacteria could feed on). I don't use any bull shit soaps for this. I use the green side of a fucking kitchen sponge. With bar soap. Granted I gently exfoliate the skin on my face, I still think that "scrubs" and exfoliators don't do shit. Maybe if there was much more sand in these scrubs or you have access to the beach or something you could exfoliate that way lmao. The 2nd step is to moisturize. I used Lubriderm for a very long time with very good results. I couldn't ever really afford the better stuff, but after a few girlfriends gave me a few of the more "luxury" moisturizers I just couldn't go back. But I think the cheap stuff like Cetaphil and Lubriderm which you can buy both at Wal-Mart should hold you over for a very long time. Well as I stated earlier, I only exfoliate once every 2-3 days. So the other days I'm just looking to "maintain". I use mild soap like bar soap with my hands and just wash the dirt/grime and just moisturize.
• I pretty much mirror this routine with my body and hair too. I don't think you're supposed to scrub your body down all that much but when I do I use the green side of a kitchen sponge for my body as well. It's supposed to remove dead skin and dirt so why not actually remove it? I never understood the point of a loofah was lmao. Like my face I just use Lubriderm for my whole body and tend to apply a very small amount mixed with water. I only exfoliate once every 2-3 days and just run bar soap or a milder body soap on the days I'm not exfoliating and then I apply lotion. So pretty simple stuff.
• As for hair, I used to get those cheap $10 haircuts from some korean ahjumah and it would always be so bad. So I'd let it grow more "shaggy" or the asian version which to be honest turned out to be a very cute and charming and boyish. Which is an ok look when you're in undergrad. But once again at 24, iono something just changed and I WANTED a different look. I WANTED to be more business professional. Which is interesting in of itself like what spawned this change? Was it organic? Is it just society? But we can discuss this elsewhere. Anyway once again this was something that frightened me, I felt like such a phony just like when I started working out but decided to just keep shopping around for hair cuts. For the first time in my life I think paid like $20-25? At the time I asked for something that looked like Ryan Gosling's hair part in "Crazy, Stupid Love" It took me like 2-3 different hair stylists until I finally found someone who could give me the hair cut I was looking for. Now I ask for Leonardo DiCaprio or Jonah Hill in Jump22 which is basically the same clean part with a little extra trimmed on the sides
• http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1636154/thumbs/o-KIMMEL-JONAH-HILL-140220-facebook.jpg
• It took a while with hair to figure out exactly what I was doing, but you'd be surprised at how much my routine mirrors the way I take care of my face/body.
• So after I found a hairdresser whom I trusted I just bombarded her with questions. Why do I need a hair dryer, what is the point of conditioner, what is the routine I should follow. And she did a good job relating it to laundry. Like my nice shirts, I like to use a little detergent, and then add a bit of fabric softener and then I tumble dry. The detergent cleans the clothes, the fabric softener ,well, softens the clothes, and the dryer gets the wrinkles out and adds "volume" or expands the clothing fibers to let it hang better and shape better over your body. And she had a really nice sense of humor. I remember she "berated" me in a cute way because I was washing my hair with bar soap which would dry out my hair and make her process of cutting my hair a huge pain. But likewise you have shampoo which cleans your hair, conditioner which softens it up or "moisturizes your hair" and then hair dryer which adds volume and takes out the wrinkles. Even for short hair, adding volume by blow drying your hair, definitely makes it look more professional and sleeker. But just like over exfoliating your skin (both your face and body) I think shampooing every day is a big no no. If I take a shower at night after a long day, then im just washing my hair with shampoo and letting the oils I accumulate through the night act as my "conditioner." I always take a shower in the morning and here I'll just skip washing my hair or using conditioner. I def still blow dry and add a bit of product, some hair wax that's honestly almost humorously over priced. Conversely if at night I just did a quick rinse after working out or something, my hair in the morning might have a bit too much build up of oil and dead skin, and then I'll go ahead and wash/condition blowdry my hair. Pretty easy stuff.
• WHY IS THIS SECTION SO LONG LOL.

I’m currently on vacation for about 10 days and I've prob never consumed alcohol so responsibly. I used to be a "binge" drinker I guess which is normal for the college setting but lately I'm just sipping on mimosas and bellinis albeit sipping for 4-5 hours. Maybe after the 4th day, it stopped feeling good and so I stopped drinking period. I guess likewise the "resting", "relaxing" phase of the trip also began to wane and that's kinda how I ended up writing most of this post although not all at once. I guess I'm looking forward to working again and being "productive" which I am beginning to too clearly see as a form of "self-imprisonment" or "self imposed rat race." I say this because sometimes I can see clearly through my actions, see through the sublimation of my decisions like being productive and I can see it even if its just for split seconds that everything I'm doing is an attempt for me to divert attention from real life shit. I'm not super happy with the way these posts came to be, I feel reading them, they lack focus, are extremely in and out, and super unprofessional which is kind of a turn off for me. But at the same time, maybe certain topics just need the heart and soul of a 16 year old who still wants to play professional basketball, or the angst of a social loner in college, who struggles to make friends. There are so many paragraphs and points I feel I left unfinished and just simply did not have the endurance or the courage to finish my final thoughts.

That one year I spent working at Starbucks part time:
• I wanted a job at Sbux, because back in the day in terms of part time jobs and coolness factor, Starbucks had to be king. There wasn't a better place to work during that explosion and cancerous like expansion of this very average coffee shop. But they did stuff like call us partners and gave us good benefit like dental and medical. And if you ever really worked at other places like Sbux basically in customer service or food service, the job is always going to suck and there are always going to be customers that make you want to come in the next day and act out your darkest GTA fantasies.
• It didn’t take long before the novelty of Sbux wore off, and it felt more like Publix (a grocery store, which I expected and kinda said during my interview "I know people who haven't worked in the food industry might find the work here glamorous, but I know it's a lot of hard work, a lot of standing on your feet and handling customers while multitasking. I can promise you I'll come in everyday on time and will always be ready to put the customer first" where I had worked part time for a few summers in high school. But like any shitty part time job, the best or meaningful part is in the co-workers and just bonding with them. Back then where I was 16-22 I just straight up was not a "well adjusted" kid. I was quite lonely, and if being entirely frank, I felt a lot like Elliot Rogders. I felt like a loser, I felt like my life was 2nd and 3rd rate for being asian. Never got the girl. Parents likewise were pretty distant. But I guess just being asian and on top of that Christian, my view was that it was my duty to accept that we were all stepping stones and that we were collective group. To accept your lot in life. To let god take care of you and sort your future. All you have to do is have faith. So maybe that actually helped me out during these hard times although I've come to apostate myself from both of these beliefs. It's honestly amazing, pathetic, repulsive but sc1 and war3 dota was the only thing I needed I guess for a very long time.
• Anyway it was nice having friends even if they were co-workers. We still got along, and they would buy alcohol for me and score the occasional dope. We all had our issues and shit. And it was just nice I guess not to be lonely. To go grocery shopping with someone, to go grab a slice of pizza with someone. You know? It's like hard to go watch a movie by yourself, or go to all you can eat wings by yourself. It just doesn’t make any sense.
• Anyway my manager was in her mid forties I want to say. And she worked hard, efficient and treated all people nicely. I always was a bit hesitant to respect her, because after all she worked at a fucking Starbucks as a manager. It wasn't till later like 6-8 months into working where we went out for some drinks or something (it wasn't just us 2 that would be weird but the whole team) and we were watching some stupid irrelevant sports event. A lot of us drank too much and ate too much. I was single at the time and no this isn't a story where I get to bang my manager. But I guess half the team was in relationships so they had rides, but I was def drunk and didn't have a ride. So the night wanes and she offers to let me stay at her place. She lived in a pretty fucking nice house. And I saw a lot of pictures of her family, her husband and her son. But they weren’t in the house anymore. I've never actually seen them visit her or even hear her talk about her family before. I was a bit too shocked and assumed she was divorced so I didn’t ask about her family but based on the way her house looked it really felt she surrounded herself with these memories of her family her son and husband. It had that weird vibe like nothing was moved in a very long time. Anyway the morning after she invites me for breakfast and we go all the way downtown to really fabulous, cute, rustic break fast place where I got a good fucking bowl of grits + chorizo and sauce, fluffy eggs, with a super spicy mocha espresso and a french muffin. It was so good and my first experience with "artistic" or "fancy" food. I thought all you can eat wings at alehouse was the nuts man. I don't recall exactly how the conversation started, but back then I sucked ass at small talk and stuff. So I like commented that it was a beautiful morning or something like that. And the food is great! And she just smiled and said something like "I'm glad you like it." Anyway I started talking about my own problems cause I was a selfish prick like that back in the day and she just listened and gave really good advice on life. She would say stuff like "life can be good, life can be bad, but the best stuff in life is the part where you get to share it. Share experiences with other human beings." And at the time I had no clue what she was talking about. But looking back it seems to me that doing good things as simple as sharing bread with other human beings, sharing a really average bottle of wine and laughing about it are the small moments and victories we need to keep goin in life. And she told me a quote, a mark twain quote (who has to be number 1 for people I'd like to have dinner with dead or alive) and says "Don't let school get in the way of your education." Even then I didn’t fully understand what it meant. But school is like some bubble that protects you from actual experiences in the real world. Maybe it's too clean of an environment and ends up making us sicker since we fail to produce the immune system and any toughness so we're allergic and repulsed by everything. Again maybe they shouldn't have told us the world was flat and let us figure out it was a sphere. Maybe we should have been allowed to rediscover the wheel and the joy that comes with it.
• In the book Brave New World, there's a drug that basically placates and subdues the entire masses (it was called soma). And I remember reading it in high school and just the irony that so many books were banned but how was this book not banned? It was basically describing the students in high school. Kids were drinking, smoking MJ, but even more hilariously were being prescribed Ritalin, Adderall and a plethora of other drugs. I wrote a paper on this topic in english, and even thought I hated my english teacher, I remember he wanted a word with me, and said he really liked what I had written. But that it was a taboo topic and I should be careful what I write and think as it can make me an outcast or some weird shit. Iono I told him something like we all have our soma and mine was this game I played called sc1 and war3 dota. But looking at the world today, I feel like this drug exists in a much more explicit way. Yet it's hidden in plain sight so to speak. Can you imagine if someone actually made a drug that is like facebook and instagram? Something that chills us and just passes 6 hours in a span of seconds. Where we can get off living vicariously through these pictures and moments. And the extent of our social needs feed off ofa few reduced lines of prepared text?
• Is there anything wrong with this? Once again in high school when I first read about soma, I couldn't understand why we WOULDN'T want to embrace it. I felt so down and life just fucking felt dull more than anything else. Like it was the worst kind of life. Neither hot nor cold, just lukewarm for like 15+ years. Never got bad enough to make me want to take my own life, but so uninspiring and so un-stimulating where I thought about suicide every day. And then I took biology class and learned about evolution, and maybe there still is survival of the fittest, and maybe I simply just had inferior genes, genes that didn't cope well or were ill suited for the current state of the world. But anyway don't we all take soma? Aren't we all high in our way? Can't family and kids be your soma? The corporate ladder or magic the gathering? And is this really that bad? These don't seem all that pernicious, a lot of these "time wasters" seem like creations of benevolent people but something just feels so "evil" about these, no? Maybe just me. It's so arbitrary a guy who abuses alcohol is just a drunk and looked down upon, but isn't it super obvious that people hurt themselves more by watching 6+ hours of tv/facebook/ig?
• Father, let's assume half of the american population go to church. That’s 150m people. And lets just assume that these people go to church 50 times a year over 52 weeks. And just to further simplify they go to church for just 1 hour. That's 7.5 billion fucking hours. What the fuck do you do father? You're a man of god and this is what the good people of christ can do for other people? Spend 7.5 billing fucking hours and produce nothing? What is there to show for? What have we done? What is our impact? Father I don't understand. Father I'm so confused. There are sinners at my high school, non believers who have volunteered their time to build houses for the homeless, who have committed time to feed the hungry. It's 2006 and people are still starving to death father. In america of all places. Isn't all their suffering all their blood on our hands? Can we really stand by and do nothing? Meanwhile John Park (we'll use a pseudonym) comes to church 5-10 times a year, works almost every Sunday (this is a sin), but provides jobs to a quarter of this church, and so many jobs to other non believers (he was a very successful business man, but because of this as a korean church we obviously gossiped behind this guy's back and donations every time we could), he donates money and hires the teachers to run our Korean school on saturdays, yet he's the sinner? He's the one who hires SAT tutors for the kids at our church, the one who's money you used to build this christian youth center, the basketball hoops we use. But he's the man who needs redemption? He's the one you're waiting for, for confession? He's the man who turned his back on god? [Well in that case he's the man I'll follow. He's the sinner I want to my spend my time and future with. He's the man who's changing and shaping the world into what he sees as good. It's because of him so many families can feed their children and provide opportunities. What can you and your god do for me? For the community? For the people around us? What is your purpose? Why do you breathe? Why do you waste air every Sunday with your meaningless worthless sermons? For a man who has devoted his life to god and has created a personal relationship with god, what is your purpose if you still can't understand god's will? Why so many empty and unsatisfying words at every funeral?]
• Back to my manager at starbucks. Turns out her son died in a car accident when he was 16. Her husband a few years later never got through or over it and ended up hanging himself. She was a fucking architect and her husband was an engineer. This is the woman I judged. This brilliant woman was the person I pitied for working as a manager at starbucks. Here's a human being who actually experienced adversity. Who despite all the circumstances some how keeps waking up the morning after. I hope I'm not sending the wrong message here, it definitely isn't that she should be your role model for being able to keep living despite all her awful circumstances. I don't know what I even want to say on this topic. But here's a real fucking human being. Fuck I don't know what to say.
• I guess I was planning on including one last example of a guy who died too early. I was going to elaborate in paragraphs the kinda guy he was. But basically he was super fucking gifted and talented and was borderline evidence that there was a god. I guess normally you kinda hate this kinda guy. Like christiano ronaldo. You can't have it all otherwise people start hating you for it. I guess his redeeming quality that put all our ego's at ease was how goofy he was. If you ever saw a dr.giggy poker video, this guy's personality is basically the same thing. In his junior year he legitametely made 170k for the school, through our school's endowment investment club (only reserved for the truly brilliant). He got an offer from Goldman Sachs to run his own trading group (which is unheard of for a guy in his first year out of college). 3 months before he would graduate he was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. And there was never a picture of him still not smiling like a goofy mother fucker. He was smiling in his hospital patient dress clothing. He was smiling with a bunch of needles and bandages on his head (I don't know the whole story but I have a feeling they cut into his head just to make sure it was inoperable). And then the pictures of him in paris and london, and milan, and barcelona. The guy was goofy and optimistic to the very fucking end.
• I just wanna stress these aren't supposed to be stories about enjoying what you have and it's not right for you to be unhappy. I don't know what the point of these stories are either I suppose. I wanna say human love, but that's not really accurate either I don't think.
• Kinda to continue, in US being unhappy and depressed is such a stigma. Our culture so highly stresses that success and failure are merely a function of hard work and sometimes a bit of intelligence. But the story is more often told of hard work. Even in a really misconstrued way like "bash your head against a brick wall enough times and it will crumble." When the doctors were trying to figure out what was wrong with me, my extreme heat intolerance, my higher than normal body temperature, my high blood pressure, my constantly elevated heartbeat, my insomnia that legitimately lasted 3 days at a time. I didn't know I was still depressed. I actually felt less depressed than I was in high school. But I remember being judged. Judged because I hated going out in the sun and people started saying really stupid shit like "Oh it's because he's asian and wants to preserve his pale skin." No you asshole, apparently it's because spending 30 seconds in the sun causes me a level of discomfort that you have no clue about. Or having a hard time giving public speeches and presentations, "is that kid mentally retarded or something?" No, apparently it's very difficult to talk in a calm demeanor when your resting heartbeat is 110 and you're forced to wear a suit when you already suffer from extreme heat tolerance. Or worse of all that kid is so depressed, he has everything he needs to be happy, he has a roof, food and 2 living parents! I'm sorry I don’t actually control my thyroid and my actual hormone levels. The thing is, I've been both people. The guy who judges as well as the guy who's being judged. And while I tried to cutback on being judgmental, until you're in a position where you actually have 0 control over your physical or mental ailments you don't quite understand how judgmental the world has collectively become. Winter comes, you're 5 years old and get a cold and you're sick. Do people like make fun of this person? Do people say things like "it's your own fault you should have worn a sweater?" or "quit being a bitch you 5 year old, man up and get over it." I know I know, this example is ridiculous. But is this any different from mental illness or depression? Is it any different then being born black and in poverty? Is it any different than ending up an alcoholic? I guess what im trying to say is if you're not actually consciously in control of your physical and mental well being, then what actions are you truly responsible for?