The Second Year: Make or Break

I was determined to post a blog entry up before I went to sleep tonight. However, I stared at the blank page for roughly 25 minutes. So for lack of better things to blog about, I decided to import some things I have written down in my journal. This will primarily be a combination of two separate journal entries by separated roughly four weeks. They are titled 'The Second Year' (8/31/08) and 'Make or Break' (9/27/08). Both are fairly similar in terms of the topic and focus, so I just decided to combine them into one. I've edited out some names and such and corrected some poorer grammar (I'm sure I will still spot plenty more grammatical mistakes).

In many ways, this year will be a make or break year. Primarily, the academic portion will be the most at stake. I really need to anchor myself and get it together--especially this first quarter. Then, I will need to apply to the colleges which I plan on doing after the quarter ends during Winter break. I really hope that I can get into either Georgia Tech, University of Michigan, or University of Maryland. I also am planning on applying to Carnegie Mellon, which would be nice if I got in, but come one, I dream realistically.

Old friendships will probably be the next big thing at stake. This is the infamous second year where I will lose contact with close friends after not seeing them for the majority of the year. I don't know how it will end up, but I really hope to still be in contact with most of them. However, I am already beginning to feel many of my closer friends starting to slip away from me--or maybe I'm just slipping away from them. I can't really figure out as to why most of my closer friends have stopped talking to me. The internet makes keeping in touch so much easier and a lot more convenient. When I call these people out, I suddenly get criticized for being insensitive. Was I that bad of a friend? Am I still that bad of a friend?

It's tough being a good friend. On the outside it seems easy enough--just give without expecting anything in return. However, it hurts so much on the inside to just be constantly used without any slight bit of appreciation in return. Often times, this leads to being felt like I've been taken for granted. Yet letting these feelings known to others would only eventually lead to me being a bad friend. What hurts me the most is how most of the people from my own class at SMIC has completely stopped talking to me. SMIC was a rare and unique experience that should have left use to be closer, more unique friends. I guess not. Sure, I left early and missed out on a lot of experiences that they had, but nobody else in my class was there from that very first year--which was still the toughest--so how can they use that reasoning to back up their actions for ignoring me? I really thought that I got a positive experience from Shanghai. However, with each passing year, it just seems to get worse and worse.

I guess it is also my fault for losing a lot a of close friends. Maybe it's because I don't give off any indication that I am needy to anyone. Maybe it's just my persona and that I'm not worth remembering--or at least I don't stand out as much. Sometimes, it's as if I was never part of their lives--like I never existed. Maybe I am just an imaginary friend in their lives and the more I try to stay in touch, the more they get annoyed and try to suppress me. Most people can cope with this by moving on in college. There are plenty of opportunities to make new friends and forget about the past. I'm sure this is also a big reason as to why most of my close friends choose to ignore me now. However, I don't get those kinds of opportunities at a community college--which just makes everything worse.

Maybe I should try and be more dramatic. I could post this journal online--that might start a stir if anyone reads it. However, I highly doubt a lot of people would read what I have to say.

And there you guys have it. A little bit of some things that I journal about on my bed right before I go to sleep. There aren't a lot of positive entries in my journals either, so I guess that will be something that I need to work on.

PhotoBlog: Week 2

A lot of my sunset and cool cloud photos are taken from this spot. This is the view from the backyard deck of my house. It would be much better if that giant tree wasn't there, but that's not something that I can change. Regardless, I really like the shapes of the clouds and the colors of the sky that evening.

Sunsets and clouds are always a good combination for photos. There are usually a lot of colors and a fairly high dynamic range. The shapes of the clouds are always different from sunset to sunset, giving each sunset and cloud photo it's own 'personality'. Depending on where the photo was taken, silhouettes will usually turn out really nice with the clouds and sunset as the background. Trees tend to do particularly well in this regard.

This particular tree would have been nice had I gotten a better angle on it to get more of the tree's silhouette instead of just the top of the tree. Unfortunately, there is no way that I will be able to get that kind of shot because there will always be way too much clutter behind the tree. Yes, there is the method of superimposing a silhouette of a tree over the spiffy sky. However, I'm personally not a big fan of doing drastic photo editing and pass it off as real photo.

The extent of my photo editing would just be cropping, correcting exposures, contrast levels, and some hue saturation. However, I would still prefer to shoot it correctly on the camera and do no editing at all (apart from adding a border and crediting the photo). I am amazed by what some people can do to manipulate photos and create them into something that is really cool. However, I am more so disturbed when they try to pass it off as real photos. I am starting to like all the things that can be edited when shooting in RAW. However, it sometimes just takes too much effort to process a photo for letting others to view such as on Facebook. It also takes up so much space on the memory card.

PhotoBlog: Week 1

Well, to start off my new series of PhotoBlogs, I thought it would be appropriate to start off with the first picture I took with my Nikon D80 that I really liked. However, before I get into the picture, I'll introduce myself and how I got into photography as well as the current photography gear that I have.

I would have to say my first interest in photography would date back to when I first moved to Shanghai in 2001 and received (usurped) my (dad's) digital camera. It was an Olympus D-510 2.1 megapixel camera. Everywhere I went I would carry around the camera and just take random photos--mainly of the spiffy tall buildings in the Lu Jia Zui area. However, after a couple of years, I slowly stopped taking pictures outside of special occasions and events. I'm not really sure why, but it just happened. I still have that Olympus camera and it still works.

I didn't get a new camera until after I moved to Seattle, WA in 2007. I was working at OfficeMax and had earned myself some money, so I bought myself a new camera. While working at OfficeMax, I was able to get a feel for all sorts of cameras and learn a lot about them so I could sell them to customers. I was particularly fond of the Canon Digital Slph series cameras. However, because I had a spiffy special discount from HP for taking some HP courses, I got the HP Photosmart R937. This was the camera with the largest touch screen at 3.6 inches. It was pretty cool. I used it for a couple of months shooting random things, though honestly, it was just more fun to play with the features. Sometimes it just takes a new toy to spark up an old hobby. My oldest sister then 'borrowed' this camera from me and I never got it back since. I ended up just giving it to her for her birthday. She still uses it till this day, so I'm completely fine with it. In fact, I'm even happy that she uses it all the time just because of the fact that she's using it. Due to the fact that our family was pretty out of date on digital camera technology, I decided to get my dad the Canon SD 870 IS Digital Elph and other sister the Canon SD1000 Digital Elph. Both are really good cameras that I wish I had kept for myself.

Finally, when June 2008 rolled around, I decided to shell out some more money to get the Nikon D80 off of Craigslist at a pretty good price. I armed myself with a couple of decent lenses as well. After a couple of days figuring out how to work the camera, I was shooting away at almost everything experimenting with different settings and just constantly getting a feel for the camera. In the early stages, my main subject was my sister's dog, Padua, because he was always around the house.

I shot this picture with the Nikkor 18-55mm VR f3.5-5.6 lens in the black and white mode of the camera at 55mm focal length, f5.6, and 1/8 second exp time in fairly low light. I'm not exactly sure how the picture quality will turn out upon uploading to the internet, but it's probably much worse than the actual quality of the photo. Anyhow, the main reasons why I like this photo are his facial expression and the fact that he's looking through the doorway that is filled with light. Kind of like coming out of the dark and heading into the light. It's nothing special really, just more of a candid black and white portrait photo of a dog that I shot from my chair in front of the computer. The exposure could have been a tad bit better, but it's not too bad considering I had no idea what I was doing at the time. The amazing thing about this photo though was that Padua stayed still long enough for a 1/8 second exposure time to not make the whole picture blurry.

As I was typing this PhotoBlog up, I was also thinking about how I should go about maintaining it. I figured that I should go about on a consistent, once a week basis and upload at least one photo. Most weeks will probably consist of photos that I shot throughout the week if I did do any shooting. Otherwise, I'll just post up photos I took in the past.

Picking Up the Phone

Zhongnan's Corner: 79 posts

The Cornerstone: 22 posts

What the, how do that happen? Okay, I admit, I have started to prefer writing in a journal rather than typing in a journal a while ago. However, that was mainly due to the reason that I could lay on my bed late at night and write until I fall asleep. Regardless, I will begin to update this journal a lot more regularly from this point forward (yes, that's what I always say). Nobody really reads this anyway, but I still find it a lot more amusing to type in.

So a lot has happened since my last post such as me quitting my job at OfficeMax in July. I will also be staying in Seattle at the community college for one more year. I have switched my major from Architecture to Engineering. However, once I transfer, I may take up a double major in Engineering and Architecture and possibly even a minor in Photography and graduate in 2013. That would be the ideal plan. But as always, my plans fail.

I have taken up a renewed interest in photography. Unfortunately, photography is so expensive now. I should update my websites on the left side of this blog to include the site where I upload my photos. I should send in my photos for the Clark County Fair competition...they seem pretty easy to win at least something. The photos I saw there weren't that impressive. I guess another option I have that would help me update this blog a lot more often is to make it a photography blog as well, that would be cool.

But anyhow, on to a new topic. For the past three years, I have been trying to contact Jessica Lin. Jessica is a former schoolmate of mine when I was in Shanghai and probably one of my favorite friends due to her bubbly nature. However, she has fallen off of the radar of everything three years ago and I have never been able to get in touch with her again. I've always been calling her cell phone and home phone, but nobody would ever pick up. Then, one random night three years after we've last had any sort of contact, she picks up. It was rather exciting getting to hear her voice and just spend time talking. It didn't really matter what we were talking about, but just the fact that we were finally talking again was enough to make me happier.

Hearing her voice brought back a flood of Shanghai memories. I worked hard to supress those memories not because they were bad, but mainly because everyone else has already seemed to move on. Nobody else seems to remember the good times spent together as misplaced expatriots in a large city--at least nobody else seems to care. I know it isn't true though and I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people out there still that feels the same way, but oh well.

Anyhow, over the course of the next week, I will slowly transition this blog more and more into a photo blog--at least I will try to. Post some pictures up, talk about them, yadda yadda yadda. I guess I'm excited about photography for this year just taking pictures and such. I will need to invest some more into different kinds of lenses, though. Other things I'm kind of excited about this year would be classes for this quarter. So far, after about 4 weeks, classes have been pretty good. I think I will do really well this quarter, which will help me when I'm applying to other schools for transfer. Last but not least, I'm excited for the Portland Trail Blazers, whoohoo.

What the, how did Zhongnan get another post up before I even got this one up?! Okay, it did take me over a month just to type up this post.