I love to YouTube Russell Peters, his comedy films make me happy. Russell Peters was born in Canada. He performs mostly made up of observational comedy where he uses humor to poke fun at the subjects of race, class and culture, often using his own life experiences as well as impersonal of different cultural accents to illustrate his act.

I love his rich facial expressions plus the way he talks and these make his jokes never get old.
Here’s one of my favor is about immigrant parents they beat their kids which I experienced back in china.

Russell Peters – Beating Your Kids

Upon hearing that we were going to be reading “Chopin,” I immediately thought of Frederic Chopin–the pianist.  Obviously, it wasn’t the case that we were reading something from the pianist, but the shared surname between the pianist and the author had a direct association with the term “legato.”  Legato is  a style of articulation (which was championed by Chopin) in which the individual notes almost overlap over each other.   The notes play after each other in a very smooth and connected fashion, hence “legato’s” literal definition of “tied together.”  This style contrasts with “staccato” which is a more articulate form of articulation, but is also more disjointed.   The first video is an example of legato, while the second video is an example of staccato playing (particularly from 7:06 until the finish).

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/EXS5c6TXhKo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fk2kfD5ZKls" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Let’s return to the idea of “tied together,” though.  The idea of “tied together,” while using music as a diving board into a broader pool, makes me think of something fluid.  Water attracting water, as an example; you could see this when you look out of a train window and watch the raindrops streak across into the other droplets of water, and when combined, the unified droplet continues streaking across the window and out of sight. Here, we see that water attracts its likeness.  It’s a weird and roundabout way of get to this conclusion, but ultimately, we can say something similar in regard to humans and how we choose our support network (particularly our friends and acquaintances). But why?

It’s evident that it’s not too often, if at all, that we willingly choose to hang out with people that we don’t enjoy or have anything in common with.  However, unlike water, humans have minds of their own, and are inherently different from each other.  What’s the difference between the droplet of water that stays in place and the droplet that streaks across the window? Not much, really.  The obvious difference between humans and water is that humans are living things with individualistic thoughts and fundamental differences.  Human interaction can’t be explained like chemistry’s explanation of water molecules bonding.  Humans align themselves with things of their likeness, but due to inherent differences internally (with regard to mind and personality), it seems that there’s also a more “selfish” side to co-mingling with other humans.   It may simply be an instinctual matter of confirming or reaffirming one’s existence by aligning themselves with tangible objects (including people) that resemble them or represent their values.  Maybe it’s through confirming one’s existence as an individual as a result of comparing themselves with other individuals (whether similar or different), people realize their own uniqueness.  With a sense of individuality, the thought of living for yourself is a realization of freedom.  I believe that this was essence the freedom, happiness, and wholeness that Louise Mallard experienced in “The Story of an Hour.”

Darryl Bethay

The last two weeks were pretty hard time for me. I am taking 6 courses this semester and all the midterms and paper assignment showed up in the last two weeks. Even we had 2 long weekends but I didn’t fool around. I just spent every day doing the assignments and preparing for my midterms. I shouldn’t be struggling if I take less than 6 courses and of course I have the choice to take less. Is taking 6 courses a wrong thing? I can’t help asking myself this question.

However, it takes no time for me to figure out the answer. The answer is no. Even though I am so stressful but I am happy. I am happy because I can learn the things that I want to learn. I am curious about the things that I don’t know: Logic, American history, Spanish, Law, marketing and of course this class. They are all new to me and I am so eager and aggressive to learn all of them. I even have the plan to learn Japanese, Italian and French which are not requirement for a BBA degree.

People say “Curiosity killed the cat.” It is true that curiosity is killing me now but I will survive. It is very unlikely that you will mess up the things that you really want to do and have spent time on. For me, it is good to have curiosity instead of being ignorant. I feel so strongly that I am right and that’s why I write down “Happiness is the pursuit of truth” as my thesis in the paper. At first I don’t know why “truth” seems broad for so many people, but as I am writing this free post, I think I get it now. I have to use my own words to describe my feelings instead of just summarizing others’ points, even though they are fantastic.

The cool breezes, the beautiful architecture, the decorated sky, and the “Duomo” are all the striking elements that make a florentine evening. It is experience for all to have. I still reminisce about my time in Florence, sitting in a restaurant near the “Ponte Vecchio” with a perfect view of the river. The river was a pink and purple reflection of the luminous sky above. The off yellow color of the buildings and the roughed red color of the bricks complemented the flow of colors under the bridge in an almost fictitious way.

The Florentine collection by Paolo Costagli takes its influence from these florentine evenings. The amethyst and pink sapphire used in the jewelry accurately captures the vivid purples and pinks in the evening skies of Florence. The 18kt gold complements the gems much like the yellowish color of the florentine buildings. The collection allows you to wear the beauty of a florentine evening.

my pictures are not loading 🙁

I am on a cleanse called the “Master Cleanse” and I have not ate a single meal since two Sundays ago (October 2, 2011 to be exact). Of course my post would be about food because ONE: Food is the only thing on my mind these days, and TWO: Food is like, awesome.

I am doing this cleanse because I want to try to start eating healthier. I figured that it would be best to cleanse my body from all the waste and toxins, and start fresh. Basically throughout these ten days I had to drink 60oz, or more, of pure organic lemon juice, grade b maple syrup, cayenne pepper and filtered water. Today is my tenth day, and I couldn’t be any more proud of myself. So far I have lost ten pounds, and I want to keep going.

The meal that keeps springing up in my mind throughout this cleanse is the chicken salad from Chipotle. YUM YUM YUM YUM!!!!! Oh, and shrimp pasta. YUM times 1,000! I can not wait to eat this salad, I seriously have never craved salad like this before.

But even though I want to eat healthier, I feel like this new diet plan I have for myself is deleting a chunk of my life that really does makes me happy.

BUT I am really really proud that I made it through this cleanse. Seriously, can you go ten whole days without eating anything?  I bet many couldn’t even last two days. Trust me, even on my first day I was ready to give up.

Well after I do the Ease out method, I should be eating regular meals by this Saturday-Sunday. The ease out method is just a way to get me back to eating normally again. I can’t just eat this salad right away because my body is not used to food, so I have to ease into it. By the time our class meets on Thursday, I should be drinking pure orange juice as a part of the ease out method, and on Friday I will be eating soup, mostly the broth (which I am really excited for). I am really happy with this torture I put myself through for the past ten days, and even happier for it to end! Yay me! =)

Okay, random things make me happy… I was going through the list in my head and I thought I was weird. Sometimes, I just feel like a kid and curl up with a mug of hot cocoa and my textbooks, so that I’m happy and inspired when I’m studying. Chocolate definitely makes me happy. I mean it releases the same chemicals in the brain that make us feel like we are in love. I fall in love with every bite.

I’m happy when I talk to my baby sister. I miss her. Coming away for college has been hard, but I don’t now when I will see her next. Just her being around makes me giggle for no reason. Whenever we are together, we get so stupid and laugh about absolutely nothing. And the crazy things we’ve done. Sigh. I love her.

Love. Love makes me happy. A little scared, yes. But happy. I don’t know what it it is, but no matter how upset I am, there is something about Eric’s eyes, that just makes my heart melt. I mean, maybe that’s what happiness is, you know? Letting your guard down, feeling a little insecure, but absolutely protected. Like nothing can ever touch you. Hmmm…. I guess love makes me feel invincible.

I like popping bubble wrap. I used to climb into boxes and just pop bubble wrap all day. Made me a happy baby. I like the smell of freshly-cut grass. I also like how the air is at 6.30 in the morning. I guess that and the Starbucks frappuccino really wakes me up. And if I have had enough sleep, whuch rarely happens, waking up that early is not so bad. Manageable. I was dancing on the train today. Everybody lay dead, but I was dancing. Singing at the top of my voice in public, running around like a complete idiot, all that makes me happy.

I like new clothes. Weird as it is, finally acquiring things that I’ve wanted a long time doesn’t please me as much as getting something completely random. And I love gifts.I really like spending money. I love the ka-ching! And then the guilt starts kicking in. I can’t stop shopping. Hey, it makes me happy. And that’s the dream, right? I’m livin’ it. I love saving good food for last. I get rid of vegetables real quick to get to what I really ordered.

I love books. Old books, new books, the smell, the crack, the sound of an mid- 20th century hardcover…I love the smell of Barnes and Nobles. And rain. I love warm baths and cold milk make me happy. I love Taylor Lautner’s abs and Messi’s smile. Diets make me unhappy. I know I’m not the prettiest of girls, but I do know I’m happier than most skinny girls.Mmmmm….mozzarella cheeseburger deluxe, a nice tall glass of beer , and chocolate cake to finish. That’s why fat people tend to be jolly. 😛

I like being able to find the perfect position in the library armchairs. To be able to find an armchair to sleep in, firstly, is a feat. But finding the right spot, so that neither your neck nor your back bothers you…is bliss. And I love puppies and babies and parties and laughter. Happiness for me also comes from the happiness of those I love. To be able to bring home a report card that makes my parents happy, is great. Just little things, I guess. Not money, but little affectionate, sweet little nothings make me happy. But you know, a pair of new shoes never hurt anybody.

A weird title, I know. However, a good explanation will be given.

 From my minimal knowledge of Freud, I know that he studied dreams. The study of dreams has always fascinated me. Our minds can imagine the craziest things and we are just along for the ride. I find how our dreams can help us solve dilemmas in our lives intriguing. The unconscious mind is force not to be taken as a minor component in our lives.

The scariest phenomena of dreams is deja vu. Deja vu is, as dictionary.com describes,”the illusion of having previously experienced something actually being encountered for the first time”. I guess to some it is an illusion while to others it is a reality. The mind is a powerful being who can say with absolute certainty that deja vu is actually an illusion. Perhaps I am just a bit bias because I experience deja vu fairly often or maybe because of the belief in the supernatural in my culture.

Russians are very superstitious people. Most grandmothers know how to read cards, palms and dreams. They say that the gift passes down to the most stubborn child. My great-great-grandmother was actually a fairly well known “gadalka”(russian equivalent to a psychic) in her region; my grandmother told me a story of one man in military. He was presumed dead by everyone, his wife needed to know if it was true. She asked the gadalka if he was alive; my great-great-grandmother asks to look at a ring of his. As she looks she tells the women that her husband is alive but missing a leg. In a years time, the man returns to his wife missing a leg. Back to my point, my grandmother has the ability to read cards, my father has feelings when bad things or good things will happen, much like a sixth sense, and I experience what my grandmother calls stupid premonitions.

Many believe these stories to be a way to swindle money out of people. I do agree that most are just con-artists but there has to be those who do know how to control their minds to make this happen.

A dream dictionary for those who want to understand their dreams: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary

So its 4 am. Why in the world am I still up trying to do my English homework? It may seem absurd, just as Freud does, but it’s really not, because I had a little nap earlier on. Well, I know I will regret this in a few hours, but I finally got myself to focus on Freud, and cannot stop until I have completely expressed my views on him. Freud is one man who not only interests me but also drives me crazy. I really would want to meet him one day, if he wasn’t already dead, just to figure out what kind of a person he is, and where his absurd thoughts come from. The first time I came across this man was in my ap psych. class last year. He is a profound thinker, who was obsessed with the human mind and internal drives. While I found interest in some of his ideas, I wanted to question his thinking and give him a wake up call for others. I mean he’s probably a nice guy and all. It’s just that some of his thoughts and ideas just seem absurd. All of us are humans, and so we all of course are always thinking, and finding ways to perceive and define the world around us. We all ask others and ourselves a ton of questions, to gain knowledge and help ourselves define the world a little better. So Freud was the same, except he questioned the world a little differently than we do. He questioned things like dreams, internal desires, the conscious, the unconscious, pleasure, pain, etc.

I found interest in his approach to dreams and his idea of symbolism and internal desires in dreams. I found the idea of the id, ego, and superego very interesting, as it classifies our internal desires and seems to make sense. However, I find his focus on ‘sex’ to be disturbing, especially with his whole pyscho-sexual stages of development and the sex drive being present in infants and children. Obviously he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, but simply as a drive that can be fulfilled for an infant by sucking to get food. However, he thinks that if needs are not met, it will later affect the baby’s personality in a bad way. In totality, I find this idea of his to be absurd.

I found Freud to be a little bit confusing in the reading, with his scrutinizing and analytical approach to the idea of pleasure and pain. He looks closely to see its relation to “the quantity of excitation present in the psychic life” and discusses something called “traumatic neuroses”. He is the kind of person who just seemed to make matters more complex than they really were. His abstract thinking is a cause of this. However, I enjoyed reading the case of child-play in which a child was studied to see how he reacted to pain and pleasure within his play. It was very interesting to discover that an 18- month old child was able to deal with the pain he received when his mother left him by turning the idea into a game of asking his toys appear and disappear. When his mother died when he was 5 years old, the boy was not sad at all. This shows the profound effects one’s childhood can have on their future. The boy turned the pain, when he was young into a game, it seems that even when he got older, he still thought of it as a game. This idea of the importance of childhood has also come up in some of Freud’s work, and may be one of the few things I could agree on with him.