HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Just wanna greet passersby a Happy New Year!

Had two parties in celebration of the occasion - the other one is still going on at this moment. This morning, we went to our very first mass service of the year and it’s a blessing because a bishop was the celebrant.

Anyways, there are a lot of things that I realize every time and I definitely want to share it here and be able to keep note of these as I move on with life. Here’s a special one!

One is taking compliments. If you’re mad at someone when that person gave you a nice compliment, it means that you don’t want to take the compliment from that particular person or you don’t want to listen to a particular kind of compliment.

I think it’s bad to think that way! People give nice compliments because aside from the fact that they don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, they want to show politeness so that we won’t be thinking so badly about them in return and it means that they want to keep us company, they want to keep the solidarity among friendships and other kinds of relationships that they have with each other.

So as a New Years’ message, take a good look at compliments, DO NOT take them as something to prove anything about your appearance or your personality or your achievements. Take them as a sign of people wanting to keep solidarity with the relationship that they have with you, a sign where you have to give others your listening ear and becoming considerate just as how you want others to become considerate about you when you are making convictions. Being considerate between people is a mutual process. When it goes out of hand, one at least must calm down because as proven through experience and observation and peer stories, one cannot extinguish fire with fire.

Again, a HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!

2007 is over?!?!?!?!???

Before everything, please scroll down for my video message.

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Wow! It’s been 3 months since I started up this blog of mine and I never felt so great than ever. I found a home base where I can talk about things that interest me as well as stuff that I see worth talking about. As the year ends, it’s great to be in a place I can call my “blogging/journal writing home”.

My blogging life started all the way from deviantart and it was a roller coaster ride as I get to meet people, discuss stuff, debate and raise issues. To a certain extent it was fun, but at the same time it was frustrating. There were plenty of aspects in terms of communication that I disregarded; thus, I ended my affair with deviantart as a result.

Having a new blogsite means having a new lifestyle and being able to focus a lot more on what I think is very important towards becoming a better person. What is more important than to indulge myself with a lot of things this world can provide me? Yet the biggest fact that I know is that this world is filled with sooooo many things to discover, revisit, utilize, pragmatize and scrutinize.

Thus my expectations for 2008 zeroing on the things I need to focus a lot more on:

1. It’s definitely A MUST for me to study hard Japanese and Spanish to be able to gain all the opportunities to which those languages are being spoken. I need to keep on practicing how to write Japanese. For Spanish, I need to memorize a lot of the words as well as where the accents go. And ultimately, I have to start reading a lot of Correo Canadiense, Nihongo Journal, and other periodicals to continue improving my language skills.

2. I have about more than a hundred books and I only read 11 of them cover-to-cover: “The Pearl”, “The Great Gatsby”, “The Shipping News”, “The Power and the Glory”, “The Alchemist”, “The Fencing Master”, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”, “Kiss of the Fur Queen”, “Snakes and Earrings”, “Lizard” and “Goodbye Tsugumi”.

I read several books yet to be completed: “The Traveller”, “Angels and Demons”, “Futebol”, “What the Cat Dragged In”, “The Cave”, “Atlas Shrugged”, “Memoirs of a Geisha”, “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”, “Paperback Original”, “When We Were Saints”, “Foundation”, “Youth”, “The Girl Who Played Go”, “Homeland”, “Obasan”, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”, “Hey Nostradamus”, “All Families are Psychotic”, “Life After God”, “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Wind Up Bird Chronicle”.

MY GOAL is to read ALL the books I still have to complete and ALL the rest of the books in my library.

3. GET A NEW JOB! GET A NEW JOB! GET A NEW JOB!

4. I do love my family a lot more than anyone else in this world, unfortunately, I’m thinking of going a lot more with friends so that I can improve a lot with my communication skills.

5. Master my Linguistics Lessons through reviewing every book that I used in the program. It’s nice that I’m doing this because I have a lighter load this term.

6. Go to Book Clubs in Libraries or check out Book Reading Sessions around town

7. Do as much volunteer jobs and community service since I need all of them to put in my resume. Being a team player and being a good model to a lot of people is something that my new job will look for… probably hehehe

8. Keep up with Jazz, Gypsy Swing, Classical and Folk music

9. Check out some professors who might be able to have topics that I can use for my thesis. It’s something I really have to try since I wanted to get a Master’s Degree as one of my options.

10. Keep informed with that international exchange program in my university.

11. Get a MacBook or a really fast Windows Laptop. Though this is low priority.

12. Get in shape! Exercise, eat a balanced meal, not too much meat, not too much bread and rice, eat a lot of veggies and fruits, get under the morning sun if ever there is one.

13. Keep praying - cause it works!

14. Keep being open-minded. Being ignorant isn’t bringing you into bliss anymore.

15. Catch up with J-dramas and international films.

16. Catch up with go. Memorize and understand joseki, understand tsumego and tesuji properly, become a lot more familiar with sente and gote.

17. With chess, memorize the attack and defense openings.

18. Keep caring for other people. I feel much better with it rather than caring only for myself.

19. Catch up with Japanese language manga and other indie comicbooks.

20. Enjoy the Beijing olympics as well as the UEFA European Cup on 2008.

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In the coming 12 months, I hope I would be able to accomplish a lot of them (75% should do it). Nonetheless, as 2007 comes to an end (unfortunately), I would like to wish everyone a happy, prosperous and blessed new year!

By the end of 2008, I’m going to look back at this list to see if I accomplished these. It would be a great feeling if I did.