THESE!


AND THESE:

Your result for The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test ...

Pure Dork

35 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 52% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Dork, earning you the title of: Pure Dork. Like our friends Napoleon Dynamite & co.

It's not as though you were some whiz-kid in school. Oh, sure, you probably did okay in some classes, but were probably awful in others. Certainly most people thought you were smarter than you thought yourself to be. And it's not that you have some overriding passion, like computers or Star Trek that sets you apart for the crowd, though you likely share some interest in some of those sorts of things. You just like to be yourself, and want to express yourself for who you are.

And, really, there's nothing wrong with that. Being who you are often invites scorn, and so it's a difficult thing in a world that rewards conformity. Be proud of your dorkiness, for often it's just another word for individuality. (I'd vote for you!)

Congratulations!

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Thank you! Thank you!

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Take the Ultimate Test. I know you want to.

...that I don't have.

But well, ok, aside from the possibility of leaving most of my beloved books behind, everything is finally in order and I really shouldn't complain. While date of my departure for Tokyo had been pushed to a later date (prolly around the last couple weeks of May, which, by the way, is about 2 months later than originally planned), at least now, after months of guessing games as to the actual details of the sponsorship - the whats, the wheres, the hows - everything is finally clear. Although I did suffer a hellish week of anxiety after the selection interview that the agency didn't tell us about, and I had to do some very serious reevaluation of my priorities and personal faith (for a moment there, I did believe I was not going to pass!), I was finally assured of my slot and informed of the details. And since I found out that the school I'm going to is in the Chiyoda ward, and that Jinbocho, the book town, is just around there, I'm now a happy dork indeed. =)

So for the mean time, while I'm waiting for another email and further instructions, I'm stuck at home with Nihongo lessons, ebooks, KAT-TUN, j-music, doramas and my online dork squad for company. I've already resigned from my work last March (because I was supposed to go to Tokyo then, eh) so I'm broke, but when my parents or my brother gives me a bit of cash after running errands (one of the few benefits I enjoy being the youngest) I do sometimes go out of the house once in a while to hang out in my favorite airconditoned bookstores (bookworms' heaven, that). Aside from that, though, I'm almost officially on social hiatus now.

No, I'm not being anti-social by virtue or by default (or because I don’t have money to spend, although that’s part of it). I think...I'm simply, as I had said in my previous post, starting to clean my slate in preparation for my new life in Tokyo.

Before I made that decision, I had thought back to the previous years - too many wasted opportunities, too much wasted time, too much wasted effort, too much wasted feelings. I had lost myself and my dreams over what others want me to be and what they want me to do. But now I'm going to do what I want, and if it means declining a social gathering with "friends" who had long since grown out of the simplicity of child-like friendships and had moved on to "adult" social circus- I mean circles, then that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

Does this mean I'm severing ties with my friends? HECK NO. I'm not the one who had thrown the friendship out of the window. I'm simply the one who wants to preserve it the way it originally was. The funny banters, the senseless chatters, the serious conversations, the hopeful discussions of goals and dreams, the sincere gestures - they had grown out of that. I haven't. And I want to protect it from the awkward, grown-up get-togethers where they secretly think that dreams of Scotland travels and coffeshop-bookstores are childishly unrealistic compared to having a stable, monotonous corporate career, and that building relations with officemates are sometimes much more important than hanging out with your friends. They can call me idealistic, mushy or anti-social (or all of the above, I've been called that and worse), but that's who I am. I've been trying to change that all this time, trying to "grow up", trying to keep up with them so I will not be left behind. But spit, it was a nightmare.

Does this mean I'm resisting change? Does this mean I don't want to "grow up"? Double HECK NO. On the contrary, I'm welcoming change with open arms. And I've decided to grow up - but I don't want to grow old. There's a spit of difference.

Life is full of irony. I honestly think that if a person can stay as a child at heart - honest, sincere, loyal, unassuming, unsuspecting, laughs when happy, cries when hurt or sad, open to life and learns from it, believes with a simple, unshakeable faith – then maybe... he/she can GROW UP without having to GROW OLD.

I know, that sounds like another idealism, but I've tried the normal process of "growing up", and I didn't do well at all. No siree, not at all. It was a bloody tiring process, it was. So now, thus - I shall try something different. I can't erase past memories of sadness, pain, failures, humilitiatiion, disappointments, stupidity, or bad haircuts (what-the-hell-was-I-thinking-that-effing-haircutter!-kind of haircuts), but I shall leave them where they belong - the past. And I shall not even allow the tiniest remnants of regrets and longing. They own my past, they molded my present, but they won't dictate my future. No siree - no way. I shall clean my slate, and that's that.

To prove my point, I have not only decided the sort-of-social hiatus (just “sort of” because I still meet with a couple of my Tokyo-mates once in a while, and I still try to see my friend Min when I can), but I had also thrown away boxes of old notebooks, papers and letters last month. At first I only thought of cleaning up before I leave so that that the people at home won’t have a hard time when they move to our new house in Laguna next year (although they might still shout bloody murder once they find out they will still be hauling over five heavy boxes of my books), but then I realized that I was actually trying to clean up my life.

Let me tell you this – I have this innate ability to accumulate things over an amazingly short span of time. For just two weeks, I had managed to accumulate lots of print outs of Japanese lessons and notebooks in three large paper bags. Imagine what I was capable of in the span of my entire school years from gradeschool to college. Granted, I had thrown bags and boxes of old notebooks and papers and who-knows-what else over the years, but I still had to spend several weeks to sort out my books from useless stuff that had to be thrown away. In the end, I had to throw out almost ten bags of trash. And I realized, while I was ripping notebooks and letters (I always rip personal stuff before throwing them out), I realized what they were – reminders of past friendships, evidences of past failures, blueprint of useless pursuits. At the back of my mind, when I decided to clean up my room and dispose of these things, it was an analogous decision to clean up my life. Because with my ability to accumulate junk, I also have the tendency to accumulate memories – good and bad ones.

‘Tis a quirk in my memory, indeed. While I’m notoriously known to have frequent memory gaps, forgetting names, words, even small details of my life, my head can retain a strange selection of memories that I can pull out by accident or at will. I had this classmate in high school who is now a vocalist for a local band (I honestly can’t say if the band is popular or not, but maybe I can settle with mildly popular – they appear on MYX anyway, at least). One look at her on the tv screen (I was watching a MYX concert then) and I knew who she was. I joined their mailing list and introduced myself to her, but she can’t remember me.

People are a curious lot, yes? Just a few years out of high school and she forgets a classmate who once became her closest friend when all the others in class turned against her. As for me, on the other hand, it has been eighteen years but I could still remember my “best friend” in kindergarten who stabbed my arm with a pencil.

But even if I may not be able to totally forget Joan, my-pencil-stabbing kindergarten friend (I wonder what had happened to her, what with her tendency to violence and all, hehe), or anything else, I have already “thrown them away” to the past where they belong. I’ve ripped them up and yes, siree, I’ve thrown them away – those reminders of past friendships, evidences of past failures, blueprint of useless pursuits.

A clean slate, mate. And now I shall start a new life. And where else? “The Land of the Rising Sun.”

...and the sun rises - the start of a new day.

I love accidental analogies. Hehe.

But in the mean time...the waiting game continues.

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Ah yes. Fate. Shall we dare? Shall we tempt?
Mistress of mystery and reason beckons -
Or was that simply a trick of the light?
Indeed, who can clearly see?
In that shimmering haze of bright colors amid the darkness.

Come, let us walk down that road
So we may see where it leads.
We shall laugh and we shall cry
The path will twist and turn and crisscross
Until we reach her bosom.

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Fate has its own brand of sense of humor called "chance". =)

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P.S. I need a new layout. O_O

Â
Â		I will marry Jin Akanishi.	Â
Â		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Tokyo in our fabulous Apartment.	Â
Â		We will have 2 kid(s) together.	Â
Â		Our family will zoom around in a White classic volkswagen.
Â		I will spend my days as a Bookshop owner, and live happily ever after.	Â
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I was browsing through the old posts in my blogger account a while ago and suddenly thought of abandoning the whole place, or even deleting it altogether. I had successfully posted in it last night after 3 months of writer's block, but as I was rereading the old posts, especially the ones from 2007, I realized that some, if not most, of them are just downright...pathetic. I can try to make excuses for myself, since it was the year that I got sick and was stuck at home for months, alone and with nothing but frustrating and depressing thoughts for company...but then...it's still pathetic. I was pathetic. I had let myself slide into the pit and actually wrote myself further in. There are just too many bad memories written there. There are even some that were not written, but still floated between the words and the dates.

I want to forget. I want to move on now.

I'm off to Tokyo in about two weeks time. Although there are times when I become afraid of the uncertainty of it all, I still want to go. I want to start a new life, and I want to start with a clean slate, so to speak. When I leave, I want to leave pieces of my old self behind. I know, deep inside, that I am, and probably always will, be someone who can love people who can't love me back, care for them even if they don't care for me, put their needs ahead of mine...but right now, I think I want to leave some of those people behind for now, and think about myself for a change.

I'm sorry. It's just that....I got tired somewhere along the way.

I probably won't delete the whole blog - after all, I wanted to preserve a bit of it too (not to mention that I have a few online friends who still lingered there once in a while). But I shall probably erase every damn reminder of my pathetic past, and then I will start over.

Yes, just a page test for now. I can't settle in front of the computer long enough to think properly because I'm waiting for a signal from my old boss that my last paycheck is ready for pickup. I should be ready to pack up and leave just in case, which means I can't yet start on my download and conversion tasks (although I had already managed to hoard a handful of Jin pics a while ago XD). Anyhoo, I'm also supposed to start on my article assignments and then go back to my Nihongo audio lessons, but I'm too restless and distracted, so I'll leave them for the next day....again.

And I just noticed that I'm now faltering at grammar and sentence constructions. I hate you, writer's block, you. It's been months, dammit.




PS. I'm not abandoning my blogger account. And I'll prolly just start posting here again when I'm already in Tokyo.  Or as soon as I get rid of my writer's block. >_<