Study.

Read the Word.

Work.

Wall decor.

Write. Or blog.

Inspiration comes in the evening (late at night when I should really be sleeping) and I get giddy with excitement to start doing the things I want to do. Inspiration comes at night and I forget sleep (or rather I can't) as I want to do everything all at once. Inspiration comes when I drink coffee. High with caffeine (like right now), I start wanting to read the books I have at home, borrow more from the library (seriously), and think of topics (and their post title) that I can write about in my "active" blogs - about three now.

Flying Solo

It's been over half a year now since I've started living on my own and while it's very tiring most of the time, I never really regretted moving out. I've even caught myself saying in the true Austen-language, "It is such a pleasure to run your own home."

When I was deciding to move out, I knew it wouldn't be a piece of cake but I had this vision in my head of me cooking and baking and having a jolly-good time while at it. So with that, I continued my pursuit of finding the best place for me and I did. I moved in and so all the boxes still needed to be sorted out and organized and furniture moved to their rightful place but I was a girl on an adventure. So instead of sighing heavily with all the work that's ahead of me, I just did it. Saying that I was exhausted to death by the end of it is the understatement of my existence. Okay, I'm exaggerating but I was never THAT exhausted. And I slept like the dead that night. By the end of the week, I was asking my mom "How do mothers do it? Do ALL these house chores?" My mom's only reply  was, "Add kids to that."

My vision was shattered and replaced with the reality that I have so much responsibility now over my life. Who knew taking care of myself was a whole lot of hard work? Responsibilities that needed to be paid off came in every month without fail and nothing every stays clean in the house. If I wasn't raised by my parents to be strong, I would've ran back crying to them in the first month of my moving out. And instead of feeling sorry that I had a ton of things to look after, I was grateful and I still am. God has never abandoned me and I rarely felt lonely in my place. That's not a front I'm trying to put up, it is the truth. I don't deny that I do feel lonely but it's not enough to make me crumble. Sure, the responsibilities at times overwhelm me too much that I feel suffocated (the reality that I'm in this for life scares me) but these feelings are quick to pass with a a quick prayer and reminder that God is in control. As I always say, "I am where God wants me to be."

I Connected The Dots And Saw God's Plan

Inspired by the speech given by the genius Steve Jobs during the 2005 Stanford University Commencement Exercise, I looked at my life to see if I can somehow connect the dots - from as early as I can remember to today. There wasn't really any significant event jumping on to me which gave me God-did-this-He-is-so-amazing-goosebumps moment (does this make sense?). It's probably because I've lived my life already knowing that God's hand is actively at work, whether I am aware of it or not, He has never stopped in giving aide. Like some sort of taken-for-granted knowledge, I need not acknowledge it, but it will remain a fact. I already know everything is God-given. So I stopped looking for that Godly-moment in my life.

Later that evening, I talked with a friend who's having a hard time right  now, getting stressed out about a circumstance in her life that she so wants to be fixed. As I was giving my advice (helpful, I hope) about how she needs to face this, being her voice of reason, I was hit with an epiphany which of course I shared with her.

A Visit To Whytecliff Park

It was another good sunny day a week before, on a Sunday - too good to waste lazing inside a house. And so like what we've been doing the past couple of sunny weekends, we decided to set out early morning for a drive to Whytecliff Park in West Vancouver. It was a good hour drive from Richmond (ok, that's just my estimated time) and so we got there at a good time, when the sun's rays still wasn't harmful to the skin.

Like all parks or lakes that we've been to, it was quiet, and surprisingly so, not much crowded. There were a few families and some recreational group of friends who went there to scuba dive. The park is surrounded by the Horseshoe Bay, near the BC Ferry Terminal, where you take ferries to go to Vancouver Island. So seeing a speedboat or a jetski in the waters comes as a no surprise. Of course, there's also the occasional BC Ferry ride which would startle the calm waters and send big waves to the shoreline for a couple of minutes. Other than that, it was a really calming place, quiet and reserved.

Blossoms at Buntzen Lake

Some Fun Out In The Sun

Excuse me for the very cliche title, the summer heat seemed to have parched my creative juices. But never mind that, what's important is we have summer heat! Lol! Allow me to explain - we've had quite a gloomy start of the summer that everyone out here in the west thought the sun wouldn't be too present this season. I'm not kidding. For weeks at the start of summer the forecast was variably cloudy, showers and chance of rains - it was mid-July and we're all wearing jackets and have umbrellas over our heads. Summer bummer indeed. 

It was a funny sight too, I remember we had our annual company picnic, it was the 22nd of July and we were out at the park around 12 noon, wrapped tight in our jackets and wishing we could make a campfire. Haha! And one of my co-workers, upon arriving commented, "So it's a beautiful February day." That gave us all a chuckle. 

On to the adventure....

The first long weekend of the summer came and it was a bit cloudy. But because there was no forecast of shower, we set out to Delta and picked strawberries! It was both fun and tiring. It was fun hunting them big red strawberries down and tiring because we had to bend down to pick them. I felt so old because I suffered leg and lower back pain after. Haha!

I shudder to think what the future might be

1945.

There's nothing special about that year for me personally, I just happen to see it in an article I was reading. It made me think, it's 2011 now. Very random, right? It then brought me back to imagine what life must be like then, without the aid of technology we all enjoy now. And sadly, we can't live without at times, and I'm guilty of that as well.

I remember my "massage nights" with my Mom (read: me massaging her. Haha!) and while I don't exactly look forward to slaving the night away, I was always excited because it meant bonding and story-telling moments with her. We'd talk about her love life, "funny" ex-boyfriends, friends, school, and the most basic of girl talk. But what I enjoy the most, aside from the hilarious terms she used to describe her exes, are her childhood memories of  her life in the island of Marinduque, where everyone seems to know everyone and community activities are in abundance and attended by most families in town. I would beam at hearing her describe their make-shift toys from seashells and whatnot, the games they played, adolescence years, singing and dance contests she and her friends competed in, funny sister stories, and basically everything under the sun. Those were good times that seem to scream simplicity and joy. I've had my own share of memories in that town which are centered mostly in the swimming pool, playmates, clubhouse, makahiya plants (I was so amazed to see the plant close its leaves at the slightest touch), and the playground. And yes, I would use the same words to describe the first three to four years of my life I spent there.

Hearing these stories, I would look at my life in the city and be a bit saddened that I am almost always cooped up inside the house, afraid of strangers lurking about. I did enjoy school though as there I had friends I always hang out with. But still, a little part of me longed to be able to go out without fear and have neighbor playmates, and enjoy community curricular activities like the ones my Mom had. As a 90's kid, pastimes include watching cartoons (remember Remi, Ceddie, Cinderella, Heidi, Little Women, Mary And The Secret Garden?), going to the mall for some eats and movies, and reading books. Most playmates at home are fictional, the characters from the books I've read and cartoons I've watched.

While I know some of these simple activities are not totally lost in time, they sure have evolved into something more virtual. Games and activities now require a gadget or an internet connection to enjoy and mostly everyone owns a mobile phone. Simple cellphones are now even in the danger of extinction as we were introduced to smart phones. And of course, the idea of a phone's purpose not limited to talking and texting was most appealing and thus, well bought. I mean, being able to surf the internet, check your email, watch video, listen to music, and play games at a press of a button - what's not to love right? While we thought that was it, Apple had a multimillion idea, taking the "with a touch of your fingertips" idea literally and transforming it to what we now know as iTouch and iPhones. "Apps" are now what we depend on to help us what we need or to just pass the time. Internet, of course, is not far behind, with Google monopolizing the industry enough for us to coin the term, "Google it" to find information on anything we need to know. Anything. Internet has produced stars out of YouTube videos and bloggers, and created a whole new industry to supply to its growing needs, the online marketing where keywords and pay-per-click advertising matter as much as three meals a day.

Whew! That's a whole lot to take in right? But it doesn't end there.

For us not to lose "socializing skills," the genius by the name of Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook; Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone together put up Twitter; and Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai joined heads to create Foursquare. Everyone's now entitled to their own opinion in their very own personal space free of charge in the blogosphere world of Wordpress, Blogspot, Live Journal, Tumblr, to name a few. Photography is now almost everyone's hobby with the help of DSLRs and online sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket. Instant messaging and video chatting through yahoo messenger and Skype have now made it so easy to connect to someone from across the globe. Online shopping and bidding made possible by Ebay and Amazon. Online social networking at its finest - everyone's now connected and always updated with news from around the world. Wow. Oh my gosh. We can all go on and on about these changes as we're all witnesses to these. It is so easy drown in them, right? It's so easy to be dependent 'cause they offer the ultimate convenience in our fingertips. All these within a span of what, 10 years? Wow, right? I mean, didn't we all use to rely on 3.5 floppy diskettes before to save up our reports and homeworks? Lol.

But what I love about these is that they don't only offer convenience and entertainment, but also knowledge. With the news sites taking to twitter to share their news, we're all informed of what news-worthy events are happening in other countries. History and vast information are at our beck and call should we want it. Everyone now has the chance to be creative and showcase their creativity in different platforms. People could become knowledgeable should they know how to utilize the different platforms technology has offered for us to use for our pleasure.

It seems the possibilities are endless.

For that, I shudder to to think what the coming years would bring, what new knowledge and technology people are going to come up with. Technology has become so far advanced in as little as a decade. What can 10, 20, 50 years bring? I cannot even wrap my head around the thought. The future technology might not come as a surprise at that time as everything evolves in an orderly manner, but if we compare it to what we have now, we might just get amazed.

I don't know for you, but if God-willing, I'd like to be there in 50 years time to see what has changed. And hopefully still sane enough to understand it all. ☺