What was, what is and what ought to be

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.

D. H. Lawrence 

allegedly one of Banksy's
taken from The Boston Globe

My whole life, my father hasn’t been much of an advice giver. He usually just let me make my mistakes and help me learn from them. (Before I move on, let me take a moment and say this: my dad is the best dad a girl can ask for. I really don’t say this enough.) But I will never forget the one advice he has ever given me. He said, “You can’t be an idealist forever. Of course it’s good to be an idealist, but the world is not ideal. You got to learn to accept that. Otherwise, you’re bound to be disappointed your whole life.”

And my, is he right. The world is a cynical place and being an idealist in the midst of all the capitalism, opportunism and cynicism is hard. So as I grew older I started to become more and more realistic, and as I became more realistic I became more cynical.

Let me paint a picture for you. A couple years ago, I was a high school kid. I was a volunteer at several organizations that provide free educations for kids from poor families. I was in many debate competitions talking about many world issues. At that time, when I discovered new things about child trafficking, nuclear war, genocide or any kind of violation of human rights, I was enraged. I cared. I talked about global warming before it was trendy. And as I was doing all that, I felt like I could really make a difference. One thing at a time. I could really do something and I really wanted to do something.

In college, I found another kind of idealism. I spent college smoking weed, having fun, listening to the best music there is out there, talking about what life is all about. We thought about buying a van and just lived life as a hippie. We didn’t care for money. Money, we didn’t have much, but happiness we had plenty.  I learned to take life easy. I learned to be chill. I learned to just go with the flow. I learned that life is an adventure and you can be anything. Absolutely anything.

Today, I’m a corporate girl. I am working at a law firm editing documents for rich people; documents that will help them get richer at the expense of the working class. My partner, the only other person in my department, and I were talking about that the other day. He said, "What we are working on is the kind of stuff that activists burned." I guess he felt the same thing I feel. Here's the difference, his family is depending on him. He doesn't have a choice. I do.

I don’t even have the courage to be who I really am. I go to church because I have to, never mind that I’m an atheist. Even worse, I no longer care. When I read about corruption, murder, prejudice, violation of human rights, I no longer care. I just shrug. I no longer believe. I no longer believe that I can change the world.

I’ll tell you something, my dad is right. Being an idealist brings about a lot of disappointment. I have been disappointed plenty of time. Here is the thing though. Being this girl, this corporate girl who has become a realist, I disappoint myself. I don't know where I'm going. And right now, I wish I could go back.

So Minnie, I guess this week, at least for us, is the week when idealism dies.

Cheers, 

-Bubbalub-

Crossroads, good times.

First of all, Bubbalub.  Your second last post made me so sad.  Second of all, even worse, mine is nothing more cheerful than yours.  So we would have to accept the fact that our blog feed is going to be a little (yeah right, a little) gloomy these days.  But that's okay, life wouldn't be as interesting without these dynamics, right fellas? (Please just pretend to agree with my last statement even if you don't, I know I know who appreciates the unfortunate/bad things when they actually happen?  Obviously trying to cheer myself up here).

As Bubbalub has mentioned, indeed it's been a while since our last post.  And yes, we're that lazy that no effort was made to retrieve the password for quite a while.  An urge to spit out our stories has been  eating us up this whole time, but yea wonder why we didn't try hard enough to get our password back (and when we finally did, well it took us 3 minutes, if not less).

So a lot of things have happened to me too in the past several months.  I got an internship at a fantastic NGO back home (and for the sake of confidentiality, I'll keep the NGO anonymous), learned so much from it, but it just changed the perfect image of my future goal to work in an NGO setting.  The highly dependent nature on donors completely ruined my ideal view of NGO work.  It disturbed me so much the fact that they had to beg (for the lack of a better term) money to donors for their programs to work effectively.  Not to mention, the complicated requirements the donors lay out before they agree to give some money.  You tell me that my ego gets me, and yes it maybe a part of the reason why it disturbed me but still, it just created this paradox of social work.  And if anything, it conflicted my beliefs.  Anyway, long story short, this brought me back to the business concept that Bubbalub and I have worked on for quite a while.

Way to go on escaping my idealism huh? Well, sorry my friend, but I just have to agree with Madonna that indeed, we're living in the material world.  I am not very patient, either.  So to make my dreams come true I'd have to work my ass off and make my own money.  And of course, I have some student loan that I'll have to start paying back after graduation.  And yess, I'm graduating this December.  I've been freaking out thinking out entering the real life.  My life nowadays is basically filled with six classes, part-time jobs, and endless job hunting. And just to better illustrate my job hunting experience, I've been clicking the "Jobs" or "Career" hyperlink of almost literally every website that I go to, it started with some consulting companies, advertising companies, aaaaand...it goes to Pandora, Urban Outfitters (and it might get to Weather.com too sometime soon I believe).  Yes, it's a little intense, I'm just sayin.

Love life? Well.  I bitched too much already, so I would say it's going fine now.  Not to say that I'm dating anyone still. Ha. But I've been kinda talking to this guy since late June.  We'll see how it goes.  Okay fine, it was a little more complicated than that.  I talked to two different guys during the summer, and it didn't end up very well with one of them.  I'll talk about it later.  Seeing people having more serious relationships at this point of time kinda make me rethink about my commitment issues tho.

Anyhoo, that was a quick recap of my life recently.  When many students in my major have already had jobs lined up for them, I'm still working on making up my mind.  Pressure, pressure!  I usually work really well under pressure, but not sure if I really like this kind of pressure now. Fingers crossed to that! 

xx,
Minnie

Stick Boy, Match Girl and Oyster Boy

Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love

Stick boy liked match girl

He liked her a lot.

He liked her cute figure,

He thought she was hot.

But could a flame ever burn

for a match and a stick?

It did quite literally;

he burned up quick.

The illustrated poem above is one of the poems in Tim Burton's collection, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy. You gotta love someone who creates a character called Oyster Boy.

Paradox

Taken from Mahalanobis

It’s really weird how exciting things can happen; yet life still feels pretty… bland.

It’s been a while since the last post. We have so many excuses for that, but bottom line: we forgot the password. A bunch of geniuses aren’t we?

Since then, many things have happened. I have found a full-time job, stayed there for four months, and got another job. God saves my CV. I straightened my hair, so bye bye Janis Joplin’s hair (fingers crossed in a couple months I’ll have my old hair back). Oh, I started with the ex again and then had this huge fight and not talking again and met him once and haven’t talked to him since. And Minnie, well, Minnie has some interesting stories.

Our business venture is not quite ours anymore, it is soon-to-be Minnie’s business venture since I am too occupied with this full time job thing. (I’m so gonna rant about this bizarre thing that is a corporate job). Well, a lot of things have happened.

Despite all the fascinating stuff happening around my life, somehow I feel lost. I mean I love my job, I love my family, I love the few friends I have here and things are pretty perfect, but I don’t feel like myself.

I feel like I have to adjust myself to my community. People expect you to meet their expectations around here, and I just can’t handle that. Hell, I am probably the most liberal person you will ever see, and this country is a very conservative one. I can’t say what I want, I can’t be who I am. Hell, I can’t even say my conviction out loud.

So that’s all from me. This is one of the most exciting points in my life, and I’m frustrated.

Cheers,

-bubbalub-

We Love...Dan Savage

It has been a while....I know.  So much for keeping my promise to keep up with the blog after we got separated. No more promises.  I'll do my best to spit out my random thoughts into this blog as often as I could.
Sooooo, it's time to talk about the inspirational Dan Savage.

Who is Dan Savage?
Don't feel bad if you have no idea who he is, I didn't either....until one of my classes offered an extra credit opportunity to go to his talk and write something about it.  So I thought, why not, my grade could definitely use some help, going to a talk wouldn't require that much of an effort anyway.  So there I was, in a 700-something-capacity auditorium.  I was 10 minutes early, and the room was packed. Then I started thinking that this guy must be quite a big deal.  It turns out that Dan Savage is a gay advocate, who is also a love columnist in "The Stranger" (which I reckon to be Bubbablub's fav newspaper, at least  a year back).  He has a B.I.A.H.I.C (i.e. boyfriend in america, husband in canada --as he put it, a sarcastic term that he created to call his partner in this land of freedom where gay rights are still furiously debated) and a 13-year-old son that they adopted since he was still a few months old.  He was AMAZING.  I'm not even kidding, there is no more perfect person to advocate gay rights than him.

He started by talking about his "IT GETS BETTER" campaign that is aimed for gay teenagers who are abused mentally and physically for being gay (see the video below).  There are thousands of video and they are amazing (trust me you could literally spend hours watching them and still be amazed by them).  He talked about how hellish growing up as a gay --as he put it "Straight kids don't go home and get dragged to church being told that they are evils." 

After talking about the campaign, he answered questions that the audience submitted anonymously to him.  Some questions are just toooooo straight forward and I'm pretty sure I'd embarrass myself in front of the audience had people aimed these questions to me.  Some asked "Is it wrong to tell a guy's girlfriend that he's been cheating with me? Also he's a douchebag."  And his reply: "So are you."  Someone also asked if he has been monogamous since he committed to his partner and things got intense for a split second after he replied saying that he'd label himself "monogamouish."

Spending 2 hours in the middle of a busy week just to sit down and listen to this guy talking was clearly worth it.  We need someone who isn't afraid to talk to the world and is willing to support our gay peers out there.


Minnie.xx.

Martine

In one of our conversations during that 3 months that we were roommates for the second time, we found out that we both used to love the same children book. The book is originally titled Martine. We fell in love with the book for the same reason: it's gorgeous illustrations.

Picture taken from "As the Rain Kiss the Sea"

Look at that gorgeous illustration! how can you not be in love with it?

Picture taken from Brocante Vesseaux Aubenas
look at that cute little "non-cat"

The books follow the story of a little girl named Martine. Every book tells different stories that she and her cute little dog experience, like taking the plane for the first time, cooking, celebrating her birthday, gardening, helping her mother taking care of her sister, even joining the circus in her dream. 

The books were written and illustrated by Marcel Marlier and were originally written in Belgian.

Oh I used to love love looooove this book. So tomorrow, I'm going to go through my storeroom and find these books cause rumor has it, I still have them. SO EXCITED!!!

Cheers,

-Bubbalub-

In love with Martine since god knows when

Between love, friendship, blog, work, school, and other stressful stuff

It's been 5 months since our last post, and we have failed fulfilling Minnie's promise to keep posting. 

So here I am, trying to get us back on a roll.

In that 5 months, a lot of things have happened. 

Minnie and I have started a business venture together (more on that later, no promise though)

I have moved out of the country (the sentence is so confusing since I don't know if I should say moved out, moved back, or just moved)

I have found a new freelance job that got me stuck in this love-hate relationship (love the money, hate he monotony)

I have reentered this ridiculous relationship, or lack of relationship that is, with an ex that got minnie facebook-yelling me (thanks a lot, btw hon)

Taken from Me,Myself,andI

And a lot other things that you'd find out sooner or later. 

Anyway, today I was browsing around when my mind suddenly brought me back to this little blog. I realized how much I miss Minnie, the stupidly complicated talks we shared when we were roommates, and our weird takes on a lot of stuff. 

So here we go. 

We might be in different continents, Minnie, but I propose that we continue writing in this blog so we can keep sharing our weird takes on life. Shall we? 

No one reads this blog,

but somehow it makes me happy. 

Cheers 

-Bubbalub-