Scrabble and Green Tea

          Some people go out and attend parties, out of control fun and craziness. While others sit in their rooms and watch T.V., have a movie night and gossip until the sun rises. And...then there are those few in between who spend their weekend away doing nothing out of the ordinary, average and maybe a bit boring to some. That's my friends and I on this Saturday night.
           We are those few in between people....spending their time with quiet and average fun and "Yes, they do exist." We play Scrabble and sip Green Tea, and if we want to go crazy maybe we might make Hot Chocolate and eat Popcorn! But, Scrabble and Green Tea is the staple for this Saturday night fun-tastic madness. Who does not like Scrabble? The intense concentration, mind-jumbling, agonizing, frustrating....ugh! What the hell can you do with a 'Z' and 'P'? And you try to keep your dignity and pride, not wanting to call for help or be the one that makes those 'In' or 'Too' (small two-, three- letter words that even 1st Graders know and make bigger words off of that). Saturday couldn't be any better and any more fun than this!

            And, who can forget about Green Tea? That tantalizing, aromatic, blistering hot, bitter, ah! I burned my tongue, plain looking tea? When your concentration is waning and your losing focus, starting to hum that Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, "Heads will Roll", and thinking about the video and wondering about the werewolf and...Oh! Sorry, lost track of my thought so...Yes! Green Tea, making that hot water while observing the people that come in and out of the kitchen like that one girl with a red strapless dress falling constantly and the group of guys whistling and making crude, corny little jokes and gestures at her. Or that cute couple walking in sync, swinging their arms a bit and smiling at each other every once in a while or that...well hmmm...the game is still on right? Oh yeah! So, Green Tea is made and we drink that while playing Scrabble or maybe drink Hot Chocolate and play Scrabble but the main thing is we, friends are sitting together and spending quality time with each other.

           Saturday Night to do list: Friends, Scrabble (or any other board game like Monopoly, Sorry, Yatzee, etc.), Green Tea (or Hot Chocolate and Popcorn), some junk food, and just quality time with each other.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

"Those who dare, truly live."

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

"A quiet evening with friends is the best tonic for a long day."

Belonging to Tomorrow-This I Believe

Belonging to Tomorrow

      I believe in procrastination. To push work, events, and job back. “Delay or postpone action.” (Webster Dictionary 2009).

         Clock is ticking…ticking…and ticking as the small hand twirls round and round inside. It doesn’t seem to stop, only twitch after every few turns and keeps on going. I was blissfully away in a cloud of lush dreams as my prone and blank papers sat unmoving atop my dark oak desk. The blinding sun slinked in through the snowball white shades and I rushed, scurrying like a dusty gray rat for the lone yellow cheese, to school; and the prone and blank papers still sat atop my dark oak desk, waiting and waiting for fulfilling words. My round clock with its glittering dust of diamonds tick-tocked and tick-tocked away. Why not wait? Why do it now? Exactly, why not wait?

So, I waited and waited like a grass green leaf frozen underneath a sheet of clear ice in the pond. The blank and prone papers continued to sit unmoving atop my desk day after day, night after night. I had plenty of time to get those papers done, one a 2-page paper on the theme of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and the other a 3-page paper on the effects of WWI; they were not due until Monday and it was Thursday. I had other things to do in my life besides them. I watched SpongeBob Squarepants and White Collar drinking blistering bittersweet hot chocolate. I went on my laptop and surfed the web, finding mountains of new clothing in Urban Outfitter’s and American Eagle. I took the dingy and smelly subway with my 4 close friends to downtown Manhattan, finding hidden “nooks & crannies” of SoHo (South of Houston St.). I ate dinner with my family at a quaint Japanese restaurant with authentic bamboo dividers (plastic I realized later) and kimono wearing waiters speaking Cantonese to one another.

I did anything and everything besides my papers. Why not? I can. I can have a life socially with friends and family like being in a flustered crowd of hens; I can spend time alone, relax like the feeling of soothing hot chicken soup trickling down the throat when sick. I just can. The shining starry night turned to bright sunny day and back again until…the day before my papers were due came around. It was being in a warm embracing dream only for it to “POP” into tiny little shards. I sat at my dark oak desk, took out my trusty purple pencil, and wrote my papers one after the other. I just wrote and wrote, my mind whirring like a palm shaped ceiling fan, until both papers were done a few hours before school started. I procrastinated, so what?

I ran time, took control of it like a puppet master controlling the strings of its puppet, and I accomplished. I am in control and I am living life, procrastination opening the door for it.

Broadway Night  SoHo NYC
-January 25, 2006 From "Untitled Name"by William Sherman http://untitledname.com/ 

-From
http://screensaversky.com/shiny_clock.shtml 

 

Home-Sense of Safety and Security

Keep a Child Alive- An organization that raises awareness and provides help, care, and treatments for children abandoned or orphaned by AIDS carrying parents, children contracting HIV and needing medical help, and providing treatments for those with AIDS.


Have you thought about home? Wondered about whether mom is making soup on the stove or dad reading the TIMES magazine in his green checkered patterned armchair? And...then you realize that it was all a dream, a cocoon of false happiness and safety, you built and constructed to be away from reality. Not all of us are given that homey goodness of a mother and father and siblings in a cozy home, and not all of us are able to keep that homey goodness. We live life thinking about what is mom cooking tonight, what would be for dinner, what is dad going to say about my new car, etc. But we take for granted this short lived world we are living in when our dreams can burst any moment, any second now. 


Think about others for a change...spend a few minutes on the web instead of going to social network sites or clothing/electronic deals to find stories and commentaries of people in Africa who are suffering from AIDS. Be selfless for once in this lifetime and then go back to thinking about your own self and own life.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

"An upset is an opportunity to see the truth"

All Nighters

Why do all nighters exist? Is it necessary, a burden, a statement, a habit? Why bother at all?


More and more questions pop into my head as I contemplate this out of the ordinary concept..."All Nighters". College students are exposed to it and it seems even younger ones are dealing with it too.


My first encounter with this was when I was in 6th Grade, finishing a history project for Ms. Troner (what a name). Middle School! I was already a born all nighter from then on, staying up till past midnight to finish work or to watch T.V. or to do some research for a project. I just couldn't seem to stop...I hit a hiatus from 8th Grade to 9th Grade but it came back again from 10 Grade and onwards. It was like a red itchy spot on your neck that came and go as it felt like it, and nothing...sprays, ointments, salves, herbs, ice bags, etc. can make it go away.


Hmm...makes you wonder, right?