Heirloom tomatoes that make a wonderful tomato salad with basil and balsamic vinaigrette (homemade of course!)
Why A = Failure
1 year ago
Monday, August 31, 2009
Stuff I like on a Monday
Heirloom tomatoes that make a wonderful tomato salad with basil and balsamic vinaigrette (homemade of course!)
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Today is Wednesday
I think lately I have been more than blessed with things to do and friends to see. I am also really surprised that my stay at home was not boring at all! I was definitely preoccupied and somehow didn't even find a need to sleep as early as 10PM like I usually do when I am home. Movies and How I met Your Mother definitely had a part to play in that.
Spending time with parents, family, going out to eat, seeing old friends were definitely all very healing things that could not have come at a better time. Physical healing paired with emotional nourishment -- a very satisfyingly lived summer indeed.
I've been reflecting a lot that I have definitely been receiving richly this summer. A lot of love, care and just joy from doing things I want and love to do. Like yesterday going to trivia night , having breakfast/brunch with dear friends and just having fun being a 20 something year old. I hope this will bring me to a place where I am able to love freely again, because I have been running out of that lately. I want to care and vision and walk WITH people again, instead of just being kinda inconsistent and half-heartedly present in a lot of my relationships.
I realized also that even if I don't want to do something, that love is many times more of an action than a feeling and that good can come out of me doing something even if it is half-assed and close to an empty gesture. I know doing good and choosing to act out of the reason for love will not bring myself any glory, but be glorifying to the one above. Meh. just a thought.
Okay, stay tuned for more creative breakfasts and random thoughts later...
Amber
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Those days
I kind of miss those days somewhere in the time of grade school where we'd all sit in our "table groups" or clusters and it didn't matter how different we were culturally, socially, racially -- except for the occasional beezy or d-bag, we all just talked and got along just fine. These days, we seldom, if at all, talk to the people in our classes because 1) given the size and arrangement of our classes and 2) because people are just so different when they're older.
Our levels of vulgarity and values, our interests and world views become such a dividing factor in our day-to-day human relationships. It used to all be about our favorite cartoons, snacks we loved, things we're learning... but now, I feel like I have nothing in common with the person in my class that talks about getting wasted and trashed. Or do I?
All in all, I appreciate when people near me talk to me, even if it's mindless small talk. I've been trying train myself to return the favor and try to make a friend or two in class and it's worked! I challenge you to do the same! Kind of scary, but I think it's something most people appreciate. Oh to be optimistic and excited about meeting people... (the feeling sometimes wears out, but embrace it while you can!).
Amber
Our levels of vulgarity and values, our interests and world views become such a dividing factor in our day-to-day human relationships. It used to all be about our favorite cartoons, snacks we loved, things we're learning... but now, I feel like I have nothing in common with the person in my class that talks about getting wasted and trashed. Or do I?
All in all, I appreciate when people near me talk to me, even if it's mindless small talk. I've been trying train myself to return the favor and try to make a friend or two in class and it's worked! I challenge you to do the same! Kind of scary, but I think it's something most people appreciate. Oh to be optimistic and excited about meeting people... (the feeling sometimes wears out, but embrace it while you can!).
Amber
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Come and go
"I can't... remember... the name, gah!" I say in anguish as I try to give my sister the name of the restaurant my parents and I went to in the Marina district of SF a while ago.
"It was a really good place with excellent scallops and that... other thing we got, can't remember what -- risotto? something with duck?" my dad helps me along the process of recollection.
"Meh, I'll look it up on google later. It was a good place though."
This was a conversation I had just yesterday at one of SF's finest places to eat called Zuni Cafe. We were coincidentally talking about restaurants and none of us seemed to remember this quaint little restaurant that served pretty good tapas we went to a while ago (I looked it up today and it's called Isa).
Thinking about it later, I realized that I can eat at X amounts of nice restaurants -- from ones opened by renowned chefs, to ones with spectacular pre-fixes menus, to ones that source their ingredients from this and that local/organic farm, to ones that fetch impressive ratings on yelp... and yet... how many of those meals do I actually remember what I ordered and how I felt when I ate it? Or how about the restaurant's style, the ambiance?
No matter how spectacular or impressive the place, I remember but few fleeting flavors and delectable moments.
I must say that we humans are definitely creatures of habit... as we may not remember a dish we had somewhere someplace, but after a few tries at In n' out the taste makes a place in our memory harddrives. Likewise, I think we're the same with a lot of things -- remembering the likes of a person after just meeting them, what we learn in classes, the art we see in museums...
Everything has a moment, a place in our lives, but time smudges lines of faces that were once clear and muddles memories that were once fresh.
On a personal note, I think I forget/leave behind most things very easily. You can see that with the relationship with my things -- not much can make me happier than tossing out the unused, outdated or just things that annoy me for that moment. Things that were once well-cherished, shiny and new. These things come and go in my life and some things, in reality are more easy to let go them others. The relationship with some thing was once thriving. It was in my room and I would see it and use it. And then eventually I just had no use for it anymore and it was like I never had it at all to begin with.
This is a cold reality that also goes the same for human relationships. Like a nice meal at a restaurant, my experiences with people can be joyful and rich at the moment, but erode over time. It's so sad that we can forget all the laughs, the conversations, the sparks and replace it with apathy, weariness and irritation. I'm thinking that this must be the same mechanism for marriages that go downhill, for friends that hit rough patches, or just moving on in general.
Nothing lasts forever. Nothing remains. But there is a reason and a time for everything. I try to write things in my journal to help me remember. Maybe I should start some sort of food journal for my meals....
Amber
"It was a really good place with excellent scallops and that... other thing we got, can't remember what -- risotto? something with duck?" my dad helps me along the process of recollection.
"Meh, I'll look it up on google later. It was a good place though."
This was a conversation I had just yesterday at one of SF's finest places to eat called Zuni Cafe. We were coincidentally talking about restaurants and none of us seemed to remember this quaint little restaurant that served pretty good tapas we went to a while ago (I looked it up today and it's called Isa).
Thinking about it later, I realized that I can eat at X amounts of nice restaurants -- from ones opened by renowned chefs, to ones with spectacular pre-fixes menus, to ones that source their ingredients from this and that local/organic farm, to ones that fetch impressive ratings on yelp... and yet... how many of those meals do I actually remember what I ordered and how I felt when I ate it? Or how about the restaurant's style, the ambiance?
No matter how spectacular or impressive the place, I remember but few fleeting flavors and delectable moments.
I must say that we humans are definitely creatures of habit... as we may not remember a dish we had somewhere someplace, but after a few tries at In n' out the taste makes a place in our memory harddrives. Likewise, I think we're the same with a lot of things -- remembering the likes of a person after just meeting them, what we learn in classes, the art we see in museums...
Everything has a moment, a place in our lives, but time smudges lines of faces that were once clear and muddles memories that were once fresh.
On a personal note, I think I forget/leave behind most things very easily. You can see that with the relationship with my things -- not much can make me happier than tossing out the unused, outdated or just things that annoy me for that moment. Things that were once well-cherished, shiny and new. These things come and go in my life and some things, in reality are more easy to let go them others. The relationship with some thing was once thriving. It was in my room and I would see it and use it. And then eventually I just had no use for it anymore and it was like I never had it at all to begin with.
This is a cold reality that also goes the same for human relationships. Like a nice meal at a restaurant, my experiences with people can be joyful and rich at the moment, but erode over time. It's so sad that we can forget all the laughs, the conversations, the sparks and replace it with apathy, weariness and irritation. I'm thinking that this must be the same mechanism for marriages that go downhill, for friends that hit rough patches, or just moving on in general.
Nothing lasts forever. Nothing remains. But there is a reason and a time for everything. I try to write things in my journal to help me remember. Maybe I should start some sort of food journal for my meals....
Amber
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Haterade
I think I must have accidentally sipped on some of that nasty stuff because I am feeling the hate bug right now. It's infecting my system to the point where I am just not making any sense, but I think it's a VERY interesting state of being that might be VERY interesting to write about right now. So here it goes --
I don't know why, but all of the sudden, a good portion of my energy is being channeled into great annoyance for a certain beloved college group I belong to. Not directly at any specific person/persons in particular, but just the collective as a whole.
I think the word I am feeling is trapped. Suffocated by that body of 150 something persons -- whom face yours is so familiar to, whom your business is so accessible, whom your awesomeness is based off of well, how awesome you are.
WHAT MAKES SOMEONE AWESOME? What if I don't want to be awesome? What if I just want to be some jerk that annexes herself into her own little world and did her own thing? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM MEEE??
Okay yeah, I'm a part of a caring group of people who care about people who need care. Let's sit in a nice little circle deal with our college, and transitional 20's age drama. Let's talk about how we feel about so and so and this and this. I have drama. But why should I give what comes out of a horse's butt about stuff that I feel at the moment doesn't even deserve acknowledgement compared to the important things in this world? The poor, the hungry, the needy. The nameless, the faceless, the shamed and the forgotten?
Okay, wow. I'm thinking pretty intense thoughts aren't I? I think it's really important that I am away from Davis from a bit and to process this funkiness in a new environment. This is good, I think. I think its' good to question and to rearrange the pieces of things I used to hold so dear and believe in... perhaps into a better collage of what represents me.
Haterade. Cynical cider. Disillusionment dew. Again, I am drunken on these things and will regain soberness in a day or so, so don't take anything I say here as truth or what I truly believe in. gahh I'm just sick from thinking about it right now.
I'm out,
Amber
I don't know why, but all of the sudden, a good portion of my energy is being channeled into great annoyance for a certain beloved college group I belong to. Not directly at any specific person/persons in particular, but just the collective as a whole.
I think the word I am feeling is trapped. Suffocated by that body of 150 something persons -- whom face yours is so familiar to, whom your business is so accessible, whom your awesomeness is based off of well, how awesome you are.
WHAT MAKES SOMEONE AWESOME? What if I don't want to be awesome? What if I just want to be some jerk that annexes herself into her own little world and did her own thing? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM MEEE??
Okay yeah, I'm a part of a caring group of people who care about people who need care. Let's sit in a nice little circle deal with our college, and transitional 20's age drama. Let's talk about how we feel about so and so and this and this. I have drama. But why should I give what comes out of a horse's butt about stuff that I feel at the moment doesn't even deserve acknowledgement compared to the important things in this world? The poor, the hungry, the needy. The nameless, the faceless, the shamed and the forgotten?
Okay, wow. I'm thinking pretty intense thoughts aren't I? I think it's really important that I am away from Davis from a bit and to process this funkiness in a new environment. This is good, I think. I think its' good to question and to rearrange the pieces of things I used to hold so dear and believe in... perhaps into a better collage of what represents me.
Haterade. Cynical cider. Disillusionment dew. Again, I am drunken on these things and will regain soberness in a day or so, so don't take anything I say here as truth or what I truly believe in. gahh I'm just sick from thinking about it right now.
I'm out,
Amber
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Bite into a juicy apple
I just bought a Macbook today. And it came with a free iPod Touch. And I feel a little guilty.
My dad so sweetly gave his best wishes for me to go on with the purchase, even adding that he wants me to add in the better tech. specs and everything (I declined). However, as I'm typing on my really bulky, heavy but perfectly functional dell laptop, I'm caught in a conundrum. Did I allow my soul to be given into the consumerist seduction of being told that I deserve a new sexy and souped up computer? Or will this really be a worthwhile investment that will provide long-term usefulness to help me be a better student, employee, be better organized, etc.?
Macs, as you are well aware, fetch around $1K a pop. That's a lot of money that I am privileged and undeserving to be able to spend on such things for myself. Here is my rationale:
1) My current laptop is 4 years old and nearing its time for retirement. Processing is slow and memory is running out and it's just very vulnerable to viruses and other such problems.
2) My current laptop is really heavy. Taking it to school and other places is doable, but difficult. Macbooks are light and very portable.
3) My current laptop can be donated and given to someone in need of a pretty functional and durable laptop. (sigh yeah, all whilst I enjoy the benefits of the best in the market. what a jerk i am!). Still deciding if that should go to Computers with causes or One Laptop per Child.
I guess it's inevitable that we will be faced with many decisions regarding purchases of big things such as laptops. It's important that careful thought goes into it and that we are ever grateful and acknowledge how lucky we are to be able to have that ability to have laptops, computers, electronics etc. And perhaps to think about what we could do to improve the life of someone else in the process by considering donating to someone who would be so blessed by the things we don't want/need anymore.
My dad so sweetly gave his best wishes for me to go on with the purchase, even adding that he wants me to add in the better tech. specs and everything (I declined). However, as I'm typing on my really bulky, heavy but perfectly functional dell laptop, I'm caught in a conundrum. Did I allow my soul to be given into the consumerist seduction of being told that I deserve a new sexy and souped up computer? Or will this really be a worthwhile investment that will provide long-term usefulness to help me be a better student, employee, be better organized, etc.?
Macs, as you are well aware, fetch around $1K a pop. That's a lot of money that I am privileged and undeserving to be able to spend on such things for myself. Here is my rationale:
1) My current laptop is 4 years old and nearing its time for retirement. Processing is slow and memory is running out and it's just very vulnerable to viruses and other such problems.
2) My current laptop is really heavy. Taking it to school and other places is doable, but difficult. Macbooks are light and very portable.
3) My current laptop can be donated and given to someone in need of a pretty functional and durable laptop. (sigh yeah, all whilst I enjoy the benefits of the best in the market. what a jerk i am!). Still deciding if that should go to Computers with causes or One Laptop per Child.
I guess it's inevitable that we will be faced with many decisions regarding purchases of big things such as laptops. It's important that careful thought goes into it and that we are ever grateful and acknowledge how lucky we are to be able to have that ability to have laptops, computers, electronics etc. And perhaps to think about what we could do to improve the life of someone else in the process by considering donating to someone who would be so blessed by the things we don't want/need anymore.
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