heave-ho! hi-ho! ho-hey! hi-hey!

this will be one of those oh-shit-ive-got-nothing-to-say-at-all-but-ill-post-anyway kinda posts.

it's true: life is much more peaceful without whining. i've been trying to learn to be happy with whatever i have right now, enjoy every waking moment, and not think about the squillion things that i really want but don't currently have. life sucks, i won't deny that. but among all the suckiness, there exists some little things that can cheer you up once in a while. the key, or rather trick, is to dwell on these little happy things instead of the sucky things.

my research is going nowhere right now, and the fact that my professor has a phone meeting every morning until noon does not help because i can't talk to him until after noon, which means i only have about two hours to try doing whatever i'm supposed to be doing before he leaves his office to go catch the bus. words cannot describe how irritating and frustrating it is when your research is going nowhere and you have to do a presentation in six days, which includes two days of the weekend.

but then i thought to myself: this is annoying. i think i'm just gonna go enjoy a cup of coffee and think about other things that does not make me unhappy. ooo cows. and hence i've been spending lots of nights at starbucks over a cup of coffee thinking about cows.

a girl once told me about how she sometimes gets frightened by her own innerself who is always telling her to control her own emotions. "i'm such a control freak," she said, and apparently it's something that she's unhappy about. but whenever she complained about such a thing, i've always thought that self-control is something that i really need. i've lived the previous twenty years of my life relying on emotions, and all it's been doing is nudging me closer and closer to the brink of insanity. self-control is NOT discarding your emotions. it's having control over your emotions. when you've mastered it, you will be to alter your emotions at will, and that is when the old saying happiness is a state of mind becomes true.

if the girl i mentioned above is reading this, i have one thing to say to her: thank you. not just the stuff about self-control, but i've learned a lot from you during our short occasional encounters.

living in minnesota without a car has been a blow. no words can describe my frustration for not having a car and having to rely on other people for transportation. if you're thinking "it's just a car, get over it," you deserve to be horsewhipped and be forced to read this entire blog, starting from the very first entry. one of the very few things that have helped me overcome constant frustration i experience during the past two college years is being able to drive around alone at night, enjoying music from the radio or the ipod. a car is an essential thing for me to have, but that is not a need i can fulfill during my ten-week stay here in minneapolis.

so i took up walking.

the only difference between walking and driving is that you get tired faster because you are using your leg muscle more than if you were to be driving instead. but both gets you to places, it's just that the latter brings you to farther places, and when some stupid, terrible shit happens, driving away is a better escape method than running away. but when there is no stupid, terrible shit that happens, even walking can have the same effect as the driving that i've missed oh so much.

the ipod i plugged into my ear is, of course, another significant factor, since music makes people happy. especially happy music in particular. like moxy fruvous' king of spain and arrogant worms' pirate of saskatchewan. thanks saru for sharing these lovely songs with me. i owe you lots.

the wise forrest gump once said "life is like a box of chocolates; you'll never know what you're gonna get," which is absolutely true, but too bad the producer started yelling at him before he could say more about chocolates. let me reiterate three of them:

1. life is like a box of chocolates; you'll never know what you're gonna get. so you grab one blindly and put it in your mouth, but you don't keep that one particular chocolate in your mouth for a long time, otherwise it'll turn nasty.

2. life is like a box of chocolates; you'll never know what you're gonna get. if that one chocolate you picked happened to have some caramel in it, you have two things you can do: a) enjoy it, if you love caramel, or b) spit it out, if you hate caramel as much as i do because all it's good for is to get stuck in your teeth and annoy you for the rest of the night, grab another one and hope this one does not have caramel in it.

3. life is like a box of chocolates; you'll never know what you're gonna get. also keep in mind that some chocolate are bittersweet.

here's one to the good things in life.