O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain

i'm cycling across the country this summer! i can't wait to ride along the west coast and through the grassy plains. how i will live the song America the Beautiful. the gorgeous change of landscapes is going to trump all the shame i feel for the country's politics.

i am awfully excited about the trip. i have certainly finally found my motivation to get through this spring semester. when i get stuck on my thesis or a paper, i'll just think of all the things i will see, and all the 'cooky' people i'll meet along the way. i do wish, though, that someday i'll get to ride through southern U.S., around new mexico,arizona, and utah. it will be too hot to do it in the summertime, so we're not going to do it this time. but imagine the canyons and the red mountains!

our route--the trip will take us about three months...start in the middle of june, through july, til the end of august. we're starting on the west coast, ride along the coast first, probably through northern california, oregon, and part of washington. then head across the country, participate in ragbrai through iowa at the end of july, then head back up to either nyc or boston. since we're not going with a program, we'll get to choose where we want to go depending on what we want to see!

currently, karen noiva and i are going together. we would love to have one more person to join us. do you want to come??

going back in time

time travel is amazing, let me tell you. i'm leaving seoul at 7.30 pm, and getting to new york at 7.30 pm, of the same day. i wish i could teleport. that way i could travel anywhere in the world with just with a blink of an eye. but i suppose i'll be spending most of the 14 hour flight sleeping anyways, so maybe when i open my eyes again, i'll be in new york.

i'm sitting at the airport in hong kong, fully appreciating the free wi-fi. last week flew by with a blink, and now here i am, waiting to fly back to the states. even though i spent these past two weeks playing, i feel like i learned a great deal--a great deal about friend and family relationships, and how people find happiness in their lives. i'm glad i got to see all my friends (well, almost all), to help me understand life outside of mit. they made me realize that you don't have to be one of the brightest, the student with the highest GPA, or one with tremendous contribution to the world to have a meaningful life, and enjoy life happily. and i also found out that even the smartest people have many flaws that don't allow them to lead a happy life. i used to idolize my second uncle, because he was the smartest one in the family, having majored in physics for undergrad and got a phd from mit in nuclear engineering. but when it came to family relationships, he wasn't able to handle the problems very well.

then there are my windsurfing friends who never cared about school at all, and even if they did care, they didn't do well. yet they found themselves. they found jobs and got windsurfing instructor/coach licenses. some of them even got to travel (the States, Europe, Australia, China--Tibet!) and participated in exchange programs. as i listened to them tell their stories, a strong admiration for them grew inside of me. maybe i admired the way they they found their own path, found out who they are, and have their lives settled with a very particular goal for the future. and here i am, at the crossroad, about to graduate, and not having a single clue what i'm going to do, and what i will become. talking to them made me feel unusually old, maturing faster than i expected. it's unnerving.

in the dark of the night

i'm still suffering a bit from jetlag, so i thought i would be lame and spend new years by myself, sleeping. but then to my surprise, my cellphone rings obnoxiously at 3 in the morning. it was alan fung saying he was 'in the area' at lan kwai fong, and if i wasn't too sleepy, i should join him and his friends in the festivities. i felt pretty awake, so i decided to go out. lan kwai fong was still filled with people and the bars were still blasting music. i saw this guy standing in front of 7 eleven and i didn't quite recognize him, but figured he must be alan because he was the only guy there standing by himself. his face wasn't as long as it used to be, but everything else about him was definitely the same as ever. skinny, talkative, open, friendly, and always laughing and cracking jokes. he was as chill and down to earth as i hoped him to still be. calvin was supposed to be there too, but he stood us up.

we went into one of the small clubs, where he paid for my cover charge. the best thing about having guy friends is that they insist on paying for you. he and his two friends got me a drink. and while they were walking back, a drunk girl hooked her arm around his waist and said some words of affection. hahaha. the music was pretty loud, but we had a nice area to sit and mostly did a lot of laughing and catching up. his friends just came back from exchange in holland, so they gave me pointers to my europe trip. we also danced to a few songs in our seats, or as alan calls it 'shake shake shake' (funny gesture). when the club closed at 4ish, they all walked me home before taking a cab back to their places. the escalators don't run at that time in the morning, so on the way they kept stopping and complaining about how far uphill my place was. it was a nice comic end to the night. i have to admit, though, that my butt/hamstrings have been extremely sore over the past few days, probably from walking up the steep hill everyday.