soulscape

As you can easily see, I changed the wordpress theme/design of my blog again. I think this one’s a winner! You can do so much with it, including move around all the elements, and choose different ways to display your recent posts, videos, etc.

Since it does have the feature to show videos, I’m adding another video also. This is another dance piece we did at Mosaic. It’s to the great song “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard that won an Oscar for Best Original Song (from the movie Once).

Hope you enjoy my new site!

I think it’s about time I caught you faithful readers up on what’s going on in Alan-Land. I have a sneaky suspicion though that I lost the 1 or 2 of you who had been coming by here once I switched to a new look or “theme” for this website. I dunno. You never know whether those sneaky suspicions ever have any truth to them. For all I know, my readership has gone up from 2 to 3. Twenty minutes ago I was lying in bed, realizing that, once again, I was not going to be able to fall asleep just yet. It’s been that way this week. I’m getting over a cold, and a general lethargy has overtaken me that generally also results in me not being able to fall asleep. Fall asleep later, wake up later, of course. Yesterday I was not able to fall asleep until sometime around 6am. Yes, 6am.

Tonight, it’s a good thing, because after I got back up, I decided to do a long overdue cleaning of my room. I have yet to pack my bag from last weekend’s trip to San Diego. Also, I have a cheap clothes rack from Target that broke a few days ago under the weight of my many, many jackets. I do love my jackets. But what to do? Should I tape up and fix the cheap broken rack? Or go by another cheap rack from Target? Ah, the deep questions of life.

While looking for some tape to do a quick fix of the rack, it dawned on me…. I was supposed to take my contact lenses out! I scheduled an appointment next Friday for Lasik eye surgery (Intralase to be specific). I never take out my lenses — although I do wear Night and Day lenses which you can supposedly leave in overnight, everyone and their mother would agree it’s a bad idea to leave them in as long as I do. Anyway, I need to not wear contact lenses of any kind for the next week leading up to my surgery. Wearing contact lenses affect the shape of my cornea, which will affect the calculations that will go into my surgery. I’m going to be spending a pretty penny, $4,000 to be exact, to do this, but it’s cutting edge technology at a cutting edge lasik surgery center: Clearview down in San Diego. My ex-roommate in San Diego, Phil, used to work there as an optometrist.

That’s a lot of money, but I allocated $1,500 in my medical flexible spending account at work so I have to spend that much, and the other $2,500 I’m going to probably make monthly payments for over the next 12 months. If this means I will stop my disgusting habit of leaving in my contact lenses too long, then so be it. If it means I will have 20/20 vision or BETTER, then hallelujah. What it also means is I’m wearing second-hand glasses loaned to me by Clearview for the next week, so if I run into any of you during the next 7 days, then you will see what no one has seen in over a dozen years: me wearing glasses. They’re thin-framed glasses whose prescription doesn’t even exactly match me, but hey, better than spending money on getting new glasses that I’ll only use for a week.

Anyway, I also, while cleaning up, found a video game I need to return to the rental store by tomorrow, so not being able to sleep also probably saved me about $8 in late fees. Sometimes it pays to not be able to sleep. Lastly, of course, getting back up led to me writing this almost useless post, my first post in about a month. I hope you’re all sleeping soundly in bed right now. Although, it’s is Friday night/Saturday morning, so some of you young’uns might even be still out on the town. Party hardy then, young whippersnappers….

Change can be good in life. It can refresh you, and bring new challenges. So voila, I’m changing my blog’s “theme”. I use the Wordpress content management system, which makes changing themes very, very easy. Not sure how I feel about this new look yet, so don’t be surprised if I change it again sometime soon….

Edit: Feb. 11, 2008 - OK, gonna try a different theme. I wasn’t feeling that last one I tried….

Actually…I’ve been blogging for more than three years. But this current blog, and all of its postings, go back about three years to late October 2004. That was about a month after I moved back up to Los Angeles (spent two years in San Diego) to return to UCLA. This is just as well, because I would hate to have to go back and read pre-2004 stuff. I vaguely remember how troubled and immature I was in the “old days”.

But I just finished skimming through all those posts of the last three years. I did it, because my friend Mike told me he just went through and read some of my stuff. I figured I might as well go through and check that I didn’t write anything too crazy. But what a ride — all the memories of the last three years. I am not a prolific blogger, but I blogged just enough to give a hazy picture of what I had been up to since I moved back here.

Blogging or journaling may not be easy to keep up, I know I’m not very good at it, but it is nice to be able to go back and see how things were. It has been a roller-coasting ride, from going back to school and getting my degree, co-leading the dance ministry at Mosaic, all those trips, rehearsals and rehearsals and rehearsals galore, and to think so much stuff was left out.

I confess I do tend to keep quiet about certain topics.

But lately, I do notice a lot of my posts were getting longer and more private, talking about family history and that kind of thing. One thing that is lacking is any mention of a love life. Well, that’s because,…er…there has been no love life for a long time. In fact, once 2008 arrives, I will have been single for just about five years. WOW. Half a decade of single-hood. That sounds depressing. Boy, I just took the wind out of my sails. OK, this post ends now.

OK so my short daily journaling experiment got sidetracked. That’s mostly because I WENT TO THE NAPA VALLEY this past weekend. Don’t want to get too into it at the moment, but let’s just say it involved a 10-person limousine, four beautiful wineries, a luscious sip of golden 1992 Nightengale dessert wine, great food with a great view, and a bonkers GPS system.

In short, it was just the rest and relaxation I needed after some very hectic months. Looking ahead to the next month and a half, I have trips to South Africa (Johannesburg & Cape Town), Chicago, and Montreal looming.

Life is good. (Except for my fantasy baseball team).

I don’t journal enough nowadays…or well, I never really journaled enough.
Once a year maybe. Once every six months? I’m not really good at doing
anything consistently.

Can I do it for a week? The reason why I bring it up is because I noticed I
am really tired today. Then I noticed that every once in a while, I have
days like this where I feel completely useless. I probably feel this way a
lot less than I used to, but it still happens pretty often. Then there are
days I feel energized and ready to work.

So I wondered to myself today, is there a pattern here? Maybe this is kind
of a cyclical thing, like one day low, one day medium, one day high, then it
starts over again. (Although I expect I am tired today because we performed
the CRAVE Show last night, maybe more on that later).

So that led to me thinking: maybe I should record my mood and energy level
each day, to see if there is a pattern. I also read today that Ronald
Reagan used to journal daily at the end of his workday. So there, a couple
of things came together and voila, I’m writing this post about journaling.
Maybe I’ll start now.

Alright, so I don’t have a counter on here to tell me how many people have come by…at least not yet. But judging from the lack of comments, I don’t know that many people are coming by here.

It’s understandable though. Many of you who would even bother going on someone’s blog or personal website have been sucked into Myspace. Of course I have a myspace account, as is evident from the link on the left (ahum, click on it, click on it, click on it - end subliminal message). So why have a personal blog page such as this when I already have a suped-up myspace page, complete with dance videos, a slideshow, and links to a cross-section of my friends.

By the way, I assure you I don’t have 200+ friends, although I do have 200+ myspace friends. We all know it is not one and the same. So back to the question: why also have a personal blog site such as this one? (Especially when no one seems to come to it?) Sure, many of you don’t have myspace accounts, or even if you do, such as the Chienesque, you don’t seem to frequent it much.

But if I’m keeping this page for you folks, what can I do to generate more traffic? But that also begs the question, why do I care to generate more traffic? If I really wanted to keep in touch with people, I can call right? We all know that there’s different layers of friends. There are the friends that are in your immediate life, i.e. the friends that when you feel like going for boba on a Wednesday night, they’re the first ones you call. Immediate friends usually live really close, but I think the other requirement is that they’re somehow “built” into your current life.

For example, many of us change immediate friends when we change jobs. We make easy friends so when we have new coworkers, we automatically have new friends that we see virtually every day. Currently, many of my immediate friends are from my church. Not only do they live nearby, the fact that we share a church ties us together, and many ways our lives are integrated with different events that relate to our church (in this case, Mosaic).

Then there’s a different layer of friends, which I don’t have a name for, but which include good friends we’ve made over the years but who have “moved on.” Or is it that WE have moved on? This include college buddies that now live far away, or ex-coworkers who you just don’t have as much time for because you have NEW coworkers. How about when you went to that great conference/camping trip/overseas missions trip/etc and made that great friend who leaves in another city/state/country?

Some of us are better than others at keeping in touch with this type of friend. My friend Cheryl seems to be phenomenal at doing this. When she was living in Los Angeles with her husband, it seemed that almost every weekend she had old friends visiting from the East Coast. She was quickly making new friends in LA, but this did not seem to affect the fact that she was still nurturing those old relationships from outside of Los Angeles. Then, when she moved to New York City, those of us in LA were still very welcomed into her new apartment in NYC.

Now this post is probably becoming longer than the average blog reader is going to want to read so I’ll stop here. But, friend, if you are reading this, I’ll take any advice I can get on how to make this a more pleasant and worthwhile visit for you.

It’s been two months since I’ve posted on here. I really have looked at this website since then, saying to myself, “You should post something,” but then I usually respond to myself with a “you have nothing to say.”

Of course there’s been something to say, but it never seemed pressing enough to take the fifteen or twenty minutes it would take to process what was in my head and to type it out. Many times that seems to be the case in my life, writing just takes a back seat to everything else.

And it shouldn’t be that way, at least not forever.

But anyway, the movie I mentioned in my last post, “The Promise,” well, it sucked. Nothing much more to say about that.

I have a little more to say about my job situation. Last week, I put in my resignation at SEIU Local 99, the union I’ve been working at since the end of January. It was just time to make a choice, and to take a risk, since it’s becoming more and more apparent that the job at the union is not gonna jive well with my life of dance ministry. They had rejected a request for me to take two weeks off in August to go with a Mosaic Performing Arts team to Johannesburg, South Africa. Then I got asked to go for a week to Missouri to dance at a camp in June.

When it came down to it, I just realized I needed to take a shot at working for a ministry-based organization. So I’ve been lobbying Mosaic for a few months now. Just yesterday, I talked to Jimmy Duke, who’s on the lead team for Mosaic, and who is now restarting Pastor Erwin McManus’ company, Awaken. It’s going to be rebuilt from the ground up, venturing into film production and music, among other things. We had a good conversation, and I agreed to come work for Awaken, handling its IT and web needs.

I’m excited in a way I’ve never been excited before for a job. YAY!

So once again, I’m in transition, and the rest of 2006 definitely looks exciting. More later, as I’m typing this while at a teahouse chatting with Homer C, the bitter rapper supreme.

May 2, 2005
Monday, 3:49am

This might be some weird version of the morning pages idea from Julia Camerons book The Artists Way. That reminds me I still need to get a copy of that book to Dorathi. Which reminds me I need to buy some thing for my ACA Secret Stalkee. Ive never been good at this gift-giving thing.

Well, aside from wanting to do a version of the morning pages, I wanted to chronicle what I have dubbed the Busiest Month of All-Time, May 2005. May just started, and sure enough May 1st gave a glimpse of what things will be like for the next 3-4 weeks.

A break down of May 1st:

2:30am - Went to bed after making the umpteenth revisions to the KidsMosaic Mothers Day dance mix.

8:40am - Got up, didnt shower, left for William Carey University

9:35am - Got to WCU, started running rehearsal with the kids while Reggie Brown taught the regular Sunday morning dance class. I went over the beginning playground scene with the kids plus the handful of choreography I had. Reggie took over roughly 10:35am after the class was done. I told him I need to run outside to let Denise Cai interview me in connection with the Turkey Trip in late May. Went outside, waited around while she and her friend Donna was interviewing David Arcos. Ended up talking to Mike Tyus while waiting. Told her I didnt have much time, she ended up just videoing me dancing in the middle of the basketball court. I run back down, help Reggie for about fifteen more minutes. Then told him I had to take off.

11:40am - Left WCU to go back home. Homer had crashed the night before and I needed to see if I could record his rap for the Create music/dance piece this following weekend, May 7-8. I called and ordered lunch from Noodle Planet, picked it up and got home around 12:20pm. We ate – he wasnt done with the rap. I left him at home while I went to pick up Prisca Kim and Joe Cruz from the UCLA campus to go to DVS rehearsal.

1:50pm - Got to the LA Fitness in Long Beach a little early for rehearsal. Dennis Caindec is teaching the opener today for our set. He ends up about ½ hour late, so we also worked on the girls and couples pieces while waiting. Dennis piece is pretty tight and matches the music (homers beat mixed with the imperial march). Prisca catches another ride back while I take Joe back and meet up again with Homer.

5:15pm - Im back at my place. I had been debating whether I should go to my distant cousin Kieus wedding reception (he only told me about it a couple of days ago), but finally decide that I want/need to go to Mosaic. Besides, I dont feel like having all the old Chinese relatives staring and talking about my long hair and eyebrow piercing. Homer still isnt finished writing the rap – probably too busy tracking our match up in fantasy baseball (I win the matchup 8-4, yeah baby). We take off for Mosaic, which is in Los Feliz today at 6pm, instead of the usual Mayan 5 and 7pm.

6:15pm - Get to Los Feliz. I like the vibe and setup here today. I also got about 16 support letters for Turkey with me. The message is on Focus which lives me a little restless and on edge since that doesnt seem to be a strength for me right now. Pastor Erwin says something along the lines up we gotta give up other dreams in order to focus on our God-given dream. The 16 support letters go quick, I wish I had more time to make more. I make sure Homer has a ride back (hes gonna eat with some of the peeps), since I gotta take off for ACA rehearsal which starts at 8pm.

8:30pm - Im late to ACA rehearsal. The girls clean their jazz piece while some of us guys clean the locking piece. Thankfully we dont go too late.

10:30pm - Im back at home, trying to do some midterm study questions for Soc m167 (Contested Sexualities). I think some of this reading is crap. My study mates are giving me conflicting instructions on which questions to do. The midterm (and the Soc 116 midterm) is this Wednesday. I get distracted by fantasy baseball stats. I do some of the reading to get going, then Homer gets back around 11:30pm. Sounds like they went for sushi for dinner. I decided to make some ramen while he tries to finish the rap.

2:00am - After agonizing over the last few lines (what rhymes with puzzle?), Homer finishes his 16-line rap. I record him on my digital voice recorder, put it in my computer and mix it over the beat. He gets a CD of it so he can practice it for this coming weekend. I get on the computer and start back on those study questions.

3:30am - Im finished with the questions, email them out. I also send out another email to David Arcos about the dance piece next weekend. I send out another email to remind some other dancers about rehearsals we have the next two nights (Im gonna hafta miss ACA rehearsals cuz of this) for some dance performances we have for a conference called Origins next week. I email the newly minted copy of homers rap to the others participating in the piece next weekend. Im confused, who have I emailed and what do I have to email left and - say what?

3:49am - Im done but instead of going to sleep (I have a full day of classes tomorrow plus a 4 ½ hour long rehearsal), I decide I must start this chronicle of my month. I decide maybe Ill put this on my weblog, even though I wanted people to read my last post first (The Flying Sim part I).

4:15am - I think Im done. Im gonna post this on the blog, and then nite nite, I have to wake up in about 4 hours. I think I hear birds chirping outside. I DO hear birds chirping outside.

Been nearly three weeks since I posted — it’s my first post of February and only my third of 2005. Just goes to show how out of it I’ve been. Looking back on the past couple of months, I realize now that I was slowed down by bronchitis. I think it developed from the cold or flu I picked up at the end of November and I ignored it until a couple of weeks ago when I finally went to the health center at UCLA. Anyway, when the doctor asked if I had felt any fatigue I said no but, looking back, I probably was fatigued. The slow start is catching up to me now as I have my first two mid-terms coming up this week, and I also have a dance piece I have to put together for church Sunday.

The theme for the piece is “Revolt”…breaking out of conformity and finding individuality and power. I’m using parts of “Tough Guy” by the Chemical Brothers, though most of it comes from a song called “Tango Forte” by Dublex, Inc., an electronica gem I stumbled upon. Anyway, tonight’s my only chance to mix the music the way I want and then to choreograph it, because I scheduled the first rehearsal for tomorrow night.

With lots of catchup reading and studying to do and the dance piece also on my plate, of course I find myself posting to my website for the first time in weeks. Ah, typical.

By the way, Happy Chinese New Year…I only know it’s this week because my parents kept calling me to come home for dinner last night. It’s actually on Wednesday, but they cooked up a feast last night, and my mom told me to be careful this year, because as a rabbit, and this now being the Year of the Rooster, it’s supposed to be a bad year for me (financially, as she seemed to believe). Well, I’m rejecting that notion because I already had my fill of financial problems over the past year, including the past three months, so this year BETTER be a good year. Good thing I don’t believe in the Chinese Zodiac.

Movie Notes: Yes! Another teaser trailer for War of the Worlds came out on Super Sunday. You can see it at www.apple.com/trailers. Also, check out Kung Fu Hustle too. It looks like a very promising and entertaining movie from Stephen Chow. There’s also a trailer for a movie called Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior where they advertise the star, Tony Jaa, as the heir apparent to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. It does look like he’s got some skillz.