Don't Worry be Hapa

There is a mix of minor and major reasons why I don’t like Kerouac’s On the Road. I think it’s a bit full of itself many times. I think that the train of thought prose, while entertaining initially, grows cumbersome. The characters are slightly lacking. But my main problem is something I believe very few others have a problem with. My main problem is that Kerouac writes one of my favorite lines in all of literature and then proceeds to ruin it by contradicting what he said. The quote is: “A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” 

An emotion that I completely and totally understand-a statement that is almost painfully true. But then he ruins it by meeting the girl within the next ten pages and having a relationship with her. Good for him, but bad for the reader. Instead of being this fleeting moment of beauty and potential disappearing as it does all too often in life, he coincidentally runs into her. UGH

I just watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. I’m afraid to say what I’m about to say about it because I don’t want to oversell it and make anyone who actually reads these stupid posts have too high of expectations, but here it is anyway:

From the beginning, I knew this movie was going to be good. I honestly don’t understand all of it, but I love that. This movie, while short in length, packed in a range of emotions and heart.

Every once in a while, a movie comes and truly inspires, fills that void within-calling for beauty and artistry, love and pure emotion-and this movie helped fill that void, at least for a little while. I wish my writing, drawing, painting, or any artistic skills were more refined in order to express the residual beauty of the movie, but alas, I cannot. Instead, just watch the movie.

So I actually went to classes this week, but I’m going to ignore that portion of my life for the more entertaining and fun events.

1. Barca Game

I’ve never really been a big fan of soccer. That’s a bit of an understatement, but regardless, the FC Barcelona game was a phenomenal experience. A couple reasons why I think it was better than any other previous soccer exposure:

A. The closeness of the game

We sat 5 rows back from the field. You could smell the grass, hear the players, and see the skill up close and personal.

B. The crowd

I was actually more impressed by the fans of the visiting team, Cordoba. They sang or chanted throughout the game despite a thorough and complete shellacking by Barcelona. I don’t know exactly what they were saying the entire time, but I definitely heard some Spanish-equivalent F-Bombs directed at Barca fans. In general, there was a lot of great back-and-forth between the fans. It was awesome.

C. No replay

It’s much easier to see flopping when there’s replay. I’m sure there was a lot of flopping during the game, but from my viewpoint and without replay, I didn’t notice it. Therefore, I didn’t have anything to be pissed off about.

It was a great experience and I loved every minute of it (which was about 100 minutes total due to no stoppage, making it the fastest sporting experience I’ve had).

2. Calcotados and Tibidabo

On Saturday, we took a trip up the nearby mountain to Tibidabo, a city at the top. We walked up more than half of the mountain and got to a restaurant for lunch. We ate calcotados which are sweet onions, specially made here. They are actually planted twice (I didn’t know you could or why you would do that until now). They are also delicious after being cooked in a fire. They also happen to be very delicious.

The other interesting aspect of the meal was drinking wine through a spout. Farmers would use this glass vase with a spout to drink wine instead of carrying cups. They would not put their lips on the spout so it’s kind of like waterfalling a drink but with red wine and with a greater arch. I was successful the first two tries but got a little too adventurous on the third try and received a face full of wine.

After lunch, we went to the top of the mountain via a funicular. We had to walk a while but when we hit the top, it was more beautiful than I could imagine. The cathedral was beautiful. The view was beautiful. The cloister was beautiful. I wish I was Catholic to have truly appreciated that building, but I was thoroughly impressed with the experience. Just look at the pictures on facebook if you want to see what I’m talking about because I don’t have the 1000 words to describe it.

So it’s been about a week since I left home and a lot has happened since then. Even the highlights will be long, but I will do my best.

The flights were long. Very little is relevant except a Spanish woman was extremely adamant about me turning off my iPod during the descent (I turned it on for about a second to check the time). Also, Madrid airport is amazing.

For the first day, orientation was a sleep-depriving blur. We all crashed as soon as possible. We went out that night and walked to the pier. It was a beautiful night as it has been all week and due to the 2:1 ratio of girls to guys we had, we were a highly sought after commodity among the local bars. For some reason, if you said “New York” at one of these bars, you got 3 euro drinks instead of 9.

The next day we got to explore a bit more. One of the first things you notice is the architecture of the city. Almost all the buildings are interesting and beautiful. I have never seen such variety in style and shape in one city. There is almost no uniformity whatsoever. 

We got to meet our “Guardian Angels” who are Spanish students that help guide us around the city and Barcelona life. My group’s GAs are Gemma and Miguel who are both amazing. For lunch, we spent a great deal of time exchanging idioms. My favorite of theirs was “cinco contra uno” (five against one) as slang for masturbation. More late night activities happened that night, but nothing particularly stands out except an extremely drunk Spanish guy who followed us on our way back to the residencia. 

The next day we toured the Barrio Gotico which is the Old Barcelona, complete with narrow alleyways and extremely old buildings. A tour guide walked us through, thankfully, because I would definitely have gotten lost. I guess it wouldn’t have been that bad though, since almost every building had a piece of history. One of the most interesting buildings was a church (Gaudi’s favorite). During the Spanish Civil War, when a bomb raid happened, the children would gather in this church. One day, a bomb landed on the church and as they evacuated the building into the plaza, another bomb landed on the plaza killing about 42 people, most of which were children. They have never renovated the bullet-hole ridden and concaved facade of the church in honor of the children.

That night, we went out with the Guardian Angels for more excellent food, a mixed drink bar, and a discoteca. I decided to try and follow the Spanish way of life and stay out until 5 am. It was not easy, but I managed to do it, and subsequently slept for a very long time.

The next night was the parade for Dia de los Reyes Magos. I didn’t really have much to eat since I woke up only a few hours before we had to meet at Placa de Catalunya. Dia de los Reyes Magos is supposed to be the coming of the Three Wise Men and is essentially a second Christmas for Spanish children. They write letters and during the parade, place the letters in nets the parade walkers carry while walking on stilts. Copious amounts of candy are thrown to the crowd as well. The parade was fairly long, but also interesting.

Afterwards, we got some excellent churros and hot chocolate. I assumed the hot chocolate would be, well, american hot chocolate. However, it was just melted chocolate in a mug, full to the brim. Along with every other meal I’ve had, it was delicious. We then got some cheap dinner and watched a bit of the Bengals/Texans game at an Irish bar.

Almost caught up.

The next day, Sam and I went up to meet people at Park Guell, but we left early to explore a little. We ended up at the top of a ridge in a park, but we had no idea where we were so Sam asked an older man running by which park we were in. He stopped, told us what park we were in, but knew we actually wanted to get to Guell, so he told us to follow him. He walked us about 10 minutes out of his way to show us this excellent and breath-taking view at the very top of the hill and told us how to get to Guell. The place we were at translates to “The Bunkers” since it was used as an artillery site during the Civil War. We eventually met up with our friends and went to Guell which is the Gaudi version of Disneyland and Dr. Seuss. It was cool, but not as good as the other place. Anyway, I’ll write more later. This is long enough.

TL;DR: Barcelona is amazing.

Hi I’m Spencer.

I’m from Cupertino, California.

It’s in the Bay Area. San Francisco.

No, it is in the northern part of California.

I go to school at Tufts University. It’s near Boston.

I’m double majoring in economics and psychology.

Ya, I don’t know what I’m doing with it.

Haha, ya me too.

Repeat

swordface:

Now I must search for the seventh seasons episodes I have missed and catch up. In the mean time I am going to go watch the Torchwood series. What else have I got to do?

British Comedies:

The IT Crew

The InBetweeners

Anything with Ricky Gervais

British Cop shows:

Luther

Life On Mars (starring The Master, also has sci-fi elements and great music)

Ashes to Ashes (spin-off of Life on Mars)

David Tennant:

Hamlet with Patrick Stewart as the King, how awesome is that?

If you really have nothing to do, you can watch Doctor Who from the actual beginning. Good luck with that.

Just a couple of things.

I’ve been quiet for a pretty long time on this thing because, for the most part, I like to keep my private thoughts private. When I put these words down on tumblr, they’ll always be accessible and available to be used against me. That explains the silence.

Numero 2:

The easiest way to live an angry, outraged, and unhappy life is to take yourself too seriously. For that matter, taking anything too seriously. There are very few things that cannot be taken too seriously…genocide, children soldiers, and bears. Ok I exaggerated on one of those things because I am…say it with me now…not taking myself seriously. Most of the people I know on here and the people that follow me have seen about two decades of life on this planet. Disregard the first few years for an inability to comprehend anything substantial and middle school (because face it, we all regressed a bit in middle school) and you have a bunch of 12 year olds talking about the secrets of life, the universe, and why I may be sexist because I’ve lamented about being placed in the friendzone in the past. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t some pretty damn smart 12 year olds out there, but everyone poops and on tumblr, the poops take shape into words and paragraphs that are supposed to revolutionize the way people think and behave and is best exemplified by #TRUETHOUGHTS #REAL. Sorry if I can’t take you seriously when you’re trying to tell me who I am.

San:

Everything is relative. If you talk to me for five seconds, my political and religious views are right out in the open. I don’t hide what I believe and I’m neither ashamed nor proud of it since it has become a part of who I am. I’m not the type to flaunt my parts around. I’m also not the type to make fun of others for their parts. Previously, I thought of gay republicans as oxymorons-emphasis on the morons, but that’s not the only two things they are. Labels are just idiotic and while there are some fairly contradictory ideologies for a gay republican, it’s their own decision and if they came to that conclusion, good for them. 

Tumblr really seems to be a competition on who can be the most righteous while complaining. TL;DR version of many popular Tumblr dialogues: all men are rapists, Romney supporters are stupid, I am an individual, my opinions are better than yours, my life sucks more than yours, at least you’re not a woman, at least you’re not a minority, at least you’re not poor, you are close-minded because you don’t think the way I do, sepia picture of random background with hipster words in different fonts using a slightly clever play on words and most likely something along the lines of I am free from the restraints of society, etc. 

Shut up. Just listen. Not to me necessarily, but just to other people. Listen and shut the fuck up. Also, laugh. Laugh at yourself. Laugh at others. Laugh at the needless bickering and pointless arguments. Laugh at the self-righteous world-changers and the squeaky wheels of the internet world. Laugh at stuff you probably shouldn’t technically laugh at and laugh at how insignificant this all really is in the grand scheme of things. You’ll feel better.