Semi-anual Update

I'm not off to a very good start on this thing. But I shall try to make amends. Motivation comes from a number of sources. First, soon to strike off to distant lands, I've realized that there are a number of individuals in my life with whom I would like to keep up with. This seems to be a premium way of keeping up with friends, allowing to share and read about what's going on at your own pace without the pressure or chance of offense when you don't get to things as often as you'd like. Technology is great. At first Facebook seemed promising. Boy was I wrong. Allow me to deviate for a second to address the evils of Facebook. Yes, the evils. I firmly believe that Facebook directly contributes to the defuncts (at least as they are perceived by myself and fellow bachelors in my company) in the social fabric of BYU. It, along with other modern marvels such as the cellular phone and i-pods, erodes the capacity of young people to interact in a personal and intimate way with their peers and facilitates accidental or indirect communication, depending on the intentions of the user. On top of this, it magnifies superficiality exponentially, a serious problem for dating and people who can often be superficial, such as myself. For all of these reasons and more, I have decided to minimize my usage of Facebook and will not use it any more in tending to my relations with others. I realize that this may seem contridictory as I am now using a blog in order to communicate, which could be viewed as taking the lazy route as well in relationships. However, I think it is the best method possible to keep everyone else and myself in the know on what is going on in everyone's lives. And of course, this will be supplemented by real-life interaction and communication as regularly as possible. I just realized that this is all really only one reason to blog and I mentioned that there were a few. Oh well. Ok, so there's the reason why I'm going to start blogging.

Now, life. It's good. In fact it's great. I am having the time of my life. It's been a while since I've been able to really say that. In fact, for the last 3-4 years I have been so wound up about the whole marriage thing that I have been forgetting to enjoy life. Between feeling down and in a sense inadequate while looking for someone to date and the tortures of failed relationships there have been times when I've felt really good. It's usually for that month or so when I feel like things are going well with the person I'm dating, and at those times I'm definately flying high. But now, I'm not dating anyone. And my life is underlined with a deep satisfaction and anticipation for what lies ahead of me. I fully realize that even though I could get married sometime in the next couple of years, I may be a bachelor for a long, long time. And I'm totally ok with that.

I'm finishing up my last semester at BYU. Highlights are my scuba class, my drawing class, and my Political Science capstone in political violence. I, along with many others I'm sure, have been temporarily disillusioned with politics as I've witnessed the defeat of Mitt in the primaries, but the world will go on. Kenny, Kyle and I went to a Chinese show last night to celebrate the Chinese New Year. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Despite not understanding anything that was being said or sung, I absolutely loved it and had serious regrets once again about not going with them to China last summer. One or two thoughts on the night. There were a number of performances, musical numbers, dancing. The singing was absolutely atrocious, but that was made it so cool. They were just having such a great time. It was stereotypical Chinese karoke (spelling?) stuff. At one point they brought out these six adorable little boys all dressed up and in bow ties. They sang some stuff in Chinese then starting singing in English. They sang a little kids song "The fifty nifty United States." Then they went on to sing a song listing every one of the fifty states. It brought tears to my eyes. It made me realize again what an amazing place we live in. Where people from all cultures come and embrace the ideals of America. It made me so proud to live next to immigrants from all over the world who really get what the country is about and work hard so that their kids can have a better life. It was really good to see a culture who gets America and wants to be a part of it. I have a really problem with immigrants who take that for granted, so this was really a great reminder of how many solid immigrants we have here in the states and how much they contribute to society. That was thought one. Now, the bad thought. The last performance we saw was by two white American guys on their guitars. After seeing a whole night of humble, funloving, good-hearted Chinese performances, we were subjected to the most pompous, juvanile, and egotistical boner guys I've seen in a long time. They got up like they owned the place (despite the fact that they were the foreigners in the largely Asian crowd) and came down and gave one of the worst performances I've ever seen. The subject material of their performance (the robots killed all of the humans...) was supposed to be humorous, but when combined with their brash attituded, it just made me feel really ashamed in front of all of the Chinese folks there. Not that I had anything to do with them. In fact, they represent the segment of BYU males that I detest the most- the bad-a guys who assert themselves in a loud fashion and live a life of superciliousnous and superficiality. And as a reward, get the attention of a large population of the girls, many of whom are good girls who I'd like to date, but are for some reason attracted to the guys who are going to, yes, make them laugh and be fun at first, but who will almost always end up treating them like garbage. Not to mention that their volume and jokes get old really fast. Anyway, no bitterness here. Anyway, we followed it up by Polynesian food (close enough to Asian) and a Chinese movie to really welcome in the new Chinese New Year the right way.