Update and the Fight against BP.

Been trying to keep the blogs frequent, but since I got back to the south I haven't had too much time to write.

When the oil disaster struck back in April, I was busy with finals and experiencing tunnel vision. Right after finals, I was back in Cali for a too-long vacation and then Mexico. Fast forward to now and the Oil crisis has finally caught up to me.

I always told myself I didn't want to have a law related career, or do anything law related anymore during my summers... but now I find myself being dragged into the war.

BP royally fucked up.. I mean, there is no excuse for the their grossly negligent conduct which lead to the destruction of the environment and therefore the seafood industry in the Gulf. What's going to happen is that there is going to be a multi state litigation that will end up being the largest tort action ever in US history.

You're probably wondering, why the fuck should you care? I dunno about you, but my hometown is Biloxi, MS. A town with a lot of Vietnamese fishermen that have lived their entire lives knowing nothing except how to fish. They are now stranded.

I dunno, I felt bad because there is noone from my hometown that is A) in law school or B) a prominent vietnamese attorney.. Its like, I've never been much of an activist, but something like this calls out to me, tells me to get involved.. because noone else is able to..

I haven't been motivated this strongly in a long time, and its a strange feeling.. like I have no control over it, like I'm being pulled by a magnet. But its keeping my mind busy, so I think it will end up being a good thing.

In other news, been listening to this Indie rock band called Stars. I'll write something more meaningful about them later.

A Rough, and Incredibly Long Visit.

6 days in Playa Del Carmen, and no sunburns to speak of...

That my friends, is a feat to be proud of.

Will soon be on a plane back to the states, and by this time Thursday morning, will be aboard another plane all the way back to the big easy. That flight is going to suck, 3 leg flight. I haven't had one of those domestic since the 1990s.

Lets hope things are easier there than they have been on the west coast.

Mexico is a horrible place to find souvenirs, btw.

I honestly don't know what's cooler.

The fact that being in Cancun, my blog has been automatically translated to espanol.

Or the fact that my blog actually has more hits than last month.

Funny thing happened today...
I'm vacationing in La Playa del Carmen at an all inclusive resort.

The trip is actually a family trip, but most of the family are in-laws from my sister's husband's side of the family (u gotta love those multiple possessives).

I won't lie, I didn't want to be on this trip.. i was dreading it. The fact of being away with my family, secluded, forced to maintain a continuous steady stream of conversation.

I've been moping. I don't talk much, I don't really care for talking much..

I mean, call me a cold hearted fucking bastard, but honestly, i'm just not up to it.

There has been but one shining light in this vacation. 5 to be exact.

If it were not for the 5 kids that have accompanied the family on this trip, I don't know how i'd be able to keep my sanity. I love kids. I don't know what it is about spending time with them, but it always puts a smile on my face. Maybe its just because i'm a big kid myself.

As with most of my blogs, i try to keep a main theory or idea. This one just happens to be a possible career choice for I.

If you know anything about me, you know i've never really been adamant on a career. I dunno, i'm good at alot of things, but nothing makes me happy.. and people, let me tell you... happiness should be the crux of our lives.

Being with these kids, and being around them, and knowing how much of an impact a single person can have on a young soul... its made me think about teaching..

Lets get this straight, teaching is crap in terms of pay. But you know what.. when i'm teaching, i never feel sad, i always feel happy. Its one of the greatest feelings in the world.

So lets see how far this can go.

How Time Flies. A story of brutal economics and profound sadness.

I decided to go to the city today to have some alone time. One of the main reasons why I went today, was because I wanted to eat at this mom and pop sushi restaurant that I used to go to all the time when I was in undergrad at USF.

People, if you know nothing of bigger cities and how the economy works, let me give you a primer.

New Orleans food while unique, is horrible in its pricing and consistency.

I'm not bashing southern/cajun/whatever you call it food.. Not at all, I love some of the restaurants here. I'm just saying that food in general in New Orleans on an economic level is not very good.

Theres a big reason why: Competition.

Just hear me out on just one example. Korean/Thai/Indian Food.
There is but one place you can actually get Korean in New Orleans, and maybe a handful of Thai places and a couple Indian places.

If you've ever taken business classes or economic classes, you'll see that there are a few things missing. Namely: Competition.

Now this is good for a few reasons (for future business owners), but also very very bad for you and I (the consumers).

Point 1:
Because there is little competition, if you were to come to new orleans and establish your own korean/thai/indian (im just using these 3 as an example), there are little barriers to entry because the market isn't saturated yet. It would be much harder to start a sushi restaurant because in new orleans, there is a sushi place on every block. If you want to make money people, find a good spot (because location is KEY KEY KEY) and make very very good food, and price it well. The less competition you have, the easier time u have making this trinity possible.

Point 2:
Because theres no competition, we will always go to that one crappy korean restaurant.. because there is no other choice LOL. Sorry, but without other Korean restaurants to compete with, they can charge high (which they do), and not have really good food (which they don't). If u don't believe me, compare the pricing and food quality at Korea House in Metairie, to a good Korean restaurant in a bigger city (houston/atl/NYC/SF/etc).

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Bringing us back to the reasons for my post. San Francisco is extremely saturated in the restaurant market. A restaurant might be here one day, and gone a month later. Its so hard to get a restaurant started, because there are millions of restaurants, so its bad for a future entreprenauer, yet on the other hand, because there is so much competition.. GUESS WHAT?

CONSUMERS: We get the advantage of having good food, at lower prices. More competitors force a business owner to lower prices, and increase quality in order to stay afloat.

Of all the places I used to go eat in San Fran, there was this particular place called Mama-San Sushi, run by a Taiwanese woman and her Japanese husband, and their young daughter.

I fell in love with the place because it was truly a hole-in-the wall mom and pop place. It had charm. I even did some research for them while I was in business school to maybe help them out in the future.

I used to go there all the time for lunch, even by myself, because thats how nice it felt to go there and support them. I loved them.

===================================================

Fast forward 3 years later.. and Mama-San Sushi is gone. Replaced by a Yakitori restaurant instead. I asked the nice waitress what happened, and they said Mama-San had closed down 2 years ago.. right when the economy was really taking a hit..

I really wished I had a chance to run into that family again, I would always tell my friends about how much I loved to go and support that place.. I hope wherever they are, they are doing well and are happy. I'll always remember them.

Crazy how much changes over a few years.

5% not enough.

I've been drinking Cointreau. It's an orange liqueur and tastes just like it sounds. It aint no Maker's, but it'll do. 40% by volume, compared to 45% (Maker's). and now the bottle is almost gone. good thing there should be plenty of tequila in mexico.

Beats the fuck out of thinking and insomnia.

There it goes.. that WORD again.

Sleep, or actually my lack of it, is really bothering me now.. Got no sleep at all last night.. a friend of mine noticed this morning, and there goes that word again, "home". She said i must be "home" sick.

I think that would be a good thing for me to find out in the coming year.. exactly where my "home" is... i would love to think that you can't describe it, you just gotta feel it. But honestly, i havent felt like anywhere was home since highschool. Thats a pretty long ways from where i am today.

Putting my thoughts down as they pop up is really helping though.

10:46 PM

I'm up again, and i'm sure most of you assholes are saying 10:45pm is hardly up. Well, if you've been up since 6am without any naps during the day, its pretty fucking far up. So when i'm up like this and i can't sleep, my mind starts to wander and when my mind wanders.. its a very very bad thing.

I tend to be really good at hunches or getting a good/bad feeling about something. You know what i mean right? Like when you're doing something or you meet someone new, and for some reason u get a feeling.. like something isn't right, or that you should be on guard, or something is bad news. I used to think these hunches were just products of my own crazed mind. But while i was at borders on st. charles with some friends one day, a book caught my eye called "Blink". And all of a sudden, these hunches start making sense.

To make a long story short, "Blink" is about how your brain and body operates extremely fast on a subconscious level to make rapid fire decisions. You can call it "thin-slicing".

You ever realize how Chris Paul has such great court vision to make those awesome passes, or how Drew Brees is so deadly accurate with that pass of his, or how some other athlete performs at an almost godly level? Apparantly, they're masters of this method of "thin-slicing". Their brains and bodies are able to rapidly take in information about their surroundings and therefore allow them to make extremely quick decisions almost without even thinking about them.

When you get a hunch or feeling about something, you usually more often than not get it for a reason. Even though you're not thinking about something immediately, your mind and body are doing it for you automatically, therefore, giving you warnings or bad feelings about something before you can even think about it yourself. Amazing what the human mind is capable of..

I hate to be cocky, but I get hunches all the time. Especially about people.. like for some reason i don't even have to have a long conversation with someone or even talk to them personally for my body to fire off a huge warning signal about them. I dont know why I get that feeling, it just happens without me even thinking about it. Some say I'm really good at it.. at reading people.

So if thin slicing is one end of the spectrum, what is the other? Long planned out thinking.. which is what my mind is constantly doing..

If you know me at all, im a pretty cautious person. I like to run 10000000 different scenarios in my mind over and over again before i make a decision about something. It might sound like a blessing, but its a curse at times too.. when you think about something that much, what it really does is build up doubt.

And thats just how i feel right now.. Doubtful.

I have a plan to come back to the Bay Area after i'm done with lawschool so i can take over the family business of commercial development. If anything in my life is for certain, i know that i will be successful, money will not be an object in the future. Not just that, but my immediate family is small enough, and i feel as though maybe i should be close to them.

But at the same time... i always feel miserable when im here in california for too long.. And now with all this free time on my hands.. my mind has been drifting.. and my more often than not accurate rapid fire thin slicing has degraded into the grey-long term analysis resulting in worry & doubt.

Im not getting any younger.. and life is fast approaching, and i feel like a person stuck at the top of a cliff with nowhere to go but jump off. I dont really know what im thinking anymore, because that's what happens when i start thinking.. i start second guessing myself.

I really need to get out of here, like right now.

GOOD NEWS.

Turns out i got 2 B's so far for spring 2010! 4 more grades to go..

My Face is Numb.

Numb from all the anaesthesic! Shit i hate going to the dentist. Yea, i have really bad teeth, there i said it. But u know what, i've started flossing regularly finally. At least i had the luxury of seeing the cute receptionist again. Too bad i can't tell if shes 21 or 17. Best to just stay away eh. Just waiting for all the anaesthetic to wear off so maybe i can stop drooling and maybe even eat something.

Don't know what came over me today while i was showering, but i kept hearing these chords in my head. It just kept coming out and coming out.. Even had lyrics behind them. But, i had to speed off to the dentist so i couldn't write them down. Really wish i could remember them now.. it sounded really really good.

I must sound either psychotic or antisocial with all this recent blogging. I promise you, i'm not! It is just nice, therapeutic.. being able to talk to something.

You know how some people are able to sit next to each other, and not say a single thing, and still have a great conversation? Thats nice. But being able to talk to someone, and not run out of things to say.. to me thats even nicer. How the days go by so slow here in not-really-home california. Song i'm currently listening to? This one. I really should learn how to put music on my page so I dont have to keep putting ugly links on there..

Something More - Secondhand Serenade.

A speck.

Thats just what i feel like right now.. a speck on a really big blank piece of white paper. Its not a question of if i'll feel better.. Because i know i will. Its just that these things take time, and i just dont know how long it will take this time... I miss her.

So I said i hated Vampire Weekend. Fml.

These days, I find it increasingly hard to find music obscure enough to whet my appetite. Like honestly, I spend days searching for something to make my ears happy.

So this band, Vampire Weekend.. I first heard them blow up the airwaves in San Francisco right before i left the bay area to come back to new orleans. And honestly, I didn't like them. I dunno, i just kinda thought their sound was more akin to circus music than the obligatory loner-esque music that i usually love. But apparantly, everyone else in the world thought they were bad ass. I dunno, they just didn't do it for me.

Fastfoward to 2010, a cool 3 or 4 years later (i lost count folks).. and they actually made something i can listen to? Strange. Wierd.

I really just think its strange how in one point in our lives, you think a certain way. And after some times passes, you might not be thinking in that certain way any longer.

Thus is the definition of my summer.

(i apologize in advance for my lack of nifty music devices that let you listen to it from my page, i have no idea how to embed, if thats the correct term?)

Vampire Weekend - Giving up the Gun. Enjoy.

Long Overdue

I've totally given up. Well, let me rephrase that... I haven't given up completely, but I've decided to refocus my blog to being just that.. a blog for daily musings. I think it's easier to write now, mainly because i haven't written in so long, and I don't have many followers.. and i'm kinda taking a hiatus to social networking to not think about people so much. So, writing now, its much more satisfying because i can finally get my thoughts onto paper (internets paper), and not have to worry about too many people looking into it. But then again, that defeats the entire purpose of blogging right? Fuck it. I never was really into definitions anyways, its whatever i want it to be really. Funny how it has been exactly a year since my last blog. How time flies.

I've been in California, which is wierd (yes i know that's misspelled, its just my thing) because I dont really consider it my home. It seems like I havent really called any place home in awhile. Its kinda cool I guess, its like i've been traveling so much, and doing so many different things in the past 5 or so years, i never really gave much thought to what home really means. But yea, I'm here in California, and not really sure what home is anymore.

Which brings me to my next point. I've had a crazy backlog of movies i need to finish watching, so since i'm here in not-really-home-california, and i've got alot of time to kill, why not get started on watching them?

Today, i watched a movie called, Crazy Heart. Its one of those movies. You know, the kind that starts of slow, is pretty serious in nature, and features a magnificent acting performance. Its one of those movies you dont necessarily bring a date to, and when you're done watching it, gives a great feeling.

Crazy Heart is probably known as the movie that got Jeff Bridges his Academy Award for best actor. Man, did he kill it. To make a long story short, its about a washed up alcoholic country singer going through a troubling time in his life.

The reason for this blog though is not really to discuss the movie, but some of the songs i heard in the movie. Great great stuff. I know country music isn't exactly the proto-typical song genre for young aspiring metrosexual professionals, but im just a big music geek and i like variety. The songs written for this movie were just really good. One kinda stood out, and its called "Hold on you" and was performed by my boy Jeff himself in the movie.

Here are the lyrics, and a link. Loved the movie, if you're bored, give it a watch. Great performance by a great actor.

Hold On You

I’ve been loved
And I’ve been alone
All my life I’ve been a rollin’ stone
Done everything that a man can do
Everything but get a hold on you

Done everything that a man can do
Everything but get a hold on you

I’ve been blessed
And I’ve been cursed
All my lies have been unrehearsed
All the fire that I’ve walked through
Only tryin’ to get a hold on you

All the fire that I walked through
Only tryin’ to get a hold on you

I saw you waitin’ at the gate
But I arrived a moment late
I saw you shed a single tear
And still I can’t get there from here

I’ve been high
And I’ve been low
I’ve been people that I don’t know
Been to China and old Peru
Only tryin’ to get a hold on you

Been to China and to Peru
I’m only tryin’ to get a hold on you
Only tryin’ to get a hold on you