my life

I CAN DRIVE - I am the meek prius driver whom everybody drives around to cut off and pass. I am okay with this.

I HATE AUGUST - It's life...although some overnight canoeing will hopefully get my mind off missing everyone.

I LOVE CUCMBERS - and strawberries and lemon/orange wedges to throw in alongside a handful of ice cubes in my CamelBak water bottle (which I accidentally broke the other day, RIP, guess I'll have to conjure up another whopping $14 for an overpriced piece of plastic that I love)

I DON'T NEED EVERYTHING - I'm cleaning my room every day to tidy things up before I pack for Europe and for UPS. And every day I find more things that make me think, "I really never needed this/these, why did I buy this/them?" or "I'm such a pack rat. I don't need every single note that I passed with Michelle in 7th grade algebra or every English paper saved since sixth grade...wait, yes I do." Okay, so maybe I still hold on to some things...but I have a nice little (just kidding, HUGE) trunk for all my nostalgic memorabilia.

NEIGHBORS DON'T ACTUALLY LIKE ME THAT MUCH - I'm sorry I sometimes invite to my house people who sometimes don't carpool. Sometimes. Occasionally. And I'm sorry they sometimes move into your territory but hey it's not like you peed on the grounds to mark it yours (yeah..you just paid over 1.2 million dollars in lieu of defecating to indicate property). Also I'm sorry that I'm a bad driver and I don't always look around when I'm pulling out of the driveway. Also I'm sorry that sometimes I play music too loud.

LOSE WEIGHT, OR GIVE IT AWAY - Yeah so since I'm not the small girl I once was, if anyone wants some cute clothes (they're still pretty I promise! I had good taste in middle school/early years of high school!) sizes girls 12 to women's 25 in jeans or size 0...let me know. Or maybe I'll just get together with some friends and have a massive great garage sale with baked goods involved.

That's it. That's my life. Notice how my subtitles and descriptions became increasingly longer. Heh

Universe: The Ultimate Sly Fox

Here's the story: for about fourteen years I lived a solid life (satisfied with friends, the general area, academics, yet still curious for something a little more), for about two years I lived a sad sad life (devastated by loneliness, confusion, depression, yearning and desperately aching to escape), and for the last year and a half my life has been, in a word, wonderful. And that sixteen-year built-up desperation for escape dissolved somewhere along the last few months and now I have all these plans that I made way before, plans that I don't really want to keep anymore. I'm sure that I'll eventually see how it worked out when I'm older, but for now, as the blog title so aptly describes...I'm distraught. I've bonded with all these people along the way and now it's rendered me dependent on not this soil but the relationships I've made. Kids, never forget that - relationships are life. They are so important. For so long I've told myself that I don't need people, humanity is a lost cause, all I need are books and music, and while aesthetic and literature is essential to life, there is nothing better than coming together to emanate an almost tangible energy of laughter, wit, friendship, and immense joy and love.

Sap's over. Back to napping.

Been lacking

I've fallen very hard for the temptations around me. The diet is dead, but alas, I have found hope: http://www.skinnytaste.com/
http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/dietplan

Anywhoo, I looked at myself clad in a swimsuit in a mirror today and thought "MON DIEU!"

change is of the essence.

I'm not trying to thin out before prom/summer/beach season (although that would be nice, I don't think I have the willpower to lose weight so quickly), I just wanna become accustomed to a relatively healthy diet that follows me throughout college.

So anyway, I've been learning the art of thinking. Well kinda.

"I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them." -Chopin
"Expectation is the root of all heartbreak."-Shakespeare

fred & will. my main men.

mmmm blt lettuce wraps sound good...lettuce wraps in general sound good. or lemonade from the hummus place. or anything from the hummus place.


"don't forget me, i beg, i remember you say 'sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead.'"-adele

well that's 2 percent of the thoughts of my day. the end

La noyée

Ten points to Carla Bruni for making the best songs to listen to while lounging around in bed, sleeping in, and/or spending extended hours being lazy in pjs

Something about the acoustics and the raspy French voice. It makes me feel like I'm living a careless, worry-free life in Paris. And for a few seconds, minutes, or hours i can feel like this girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oWGD5yYS9g

Healthy playlist.

I guess I'm feeling a little okay, I mean today was not horrible, although I still feel a little suffocated and a little cramped and a little too big, like taking up too much space in a room too small and unfit for me, but it's okay for the most part. I have every right to feel good today. A record was made in the Boston Marathon (that's why I love April 18), my friends came home from Coachella, and my family and friends are healthy and safe and are in no immediate danger. There are so many tiny things that get me so down all the time, it's like my eyes are ridiculously clear and I have strangely good vision that allows me to see infinitesimal, limitless flaws in this world. Small things that get implanted in my head that grow seeds for horrible hypotheticals and anxieties. But there are so many other great things that I should look at. It's hard. I think that's why I need to be introverted sometimes. Many others often misconstrue my introverted self as me being upset or angry, but sometimes I just need time for thinking about everything, so I can settle down a bit and look at the brighter aspects of things.

To be listened to amongst freshness and light colors. Like carrots and cucumbers.

Her Morning Elegance - Oren Lavie

Dream - Priscilla Ahn

Opus 36 - Dustin O'Halloran

Souverian - Andrew Bird

Natural Disaster - Andrew Bird

Unfolding Fans - Andrew Bird

Le Festin - Camille

Drops in the River - Fleet Foxes

Sun Giant - Fleet Foxes

Birds - Kate Nash

Torch Song - Shady Bard

Day one.

From a day I have learned this: being healthy is an inconvenience. You can't grab nutritious items off of a sale rack at the grocery market like you can with a bag of Doritos or Lays Chips. So to maintain a healthy diet, it's going to take some extra work in this trans-fat-infested American society.

Day one quick snack:

-Baby carrots (washed & peeled)

-Cucumbers (washed & cut)

-A dash of salt and pepper

-Sesame seeds (your discretion)

-About a pinch of parmesan cheese (finely finely grated)

Take these ingredients and throw em on a plate. Literally throw them on. It sounds like an odd concoction of foods, but it tastes so fresh and surprisingly, there's a real quick in the outcome (I'm not sure whether or not to call it a salad). On the side, I added a thin slice of light cheese just to get my small intake of fat/dairy. Mmmm mm mmm.

I also bought a ton of lemons today at the market - hopefully I can make some sort of lean lemon chicken dinner this week :)

Thoughts

The more I think, the more I feel I am suffocating. The air is clearer in Tacoma. I cannot stay here for long, I must leave everyone. I must leave you.

I will leave all and miss a few. But I must leave.

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The girl who ate everything

I try. And with that first step I immerse myself into a realm completely separate from my reality, a dimension not of this world. I indulge. Walking a little further, I more fully appreciate all senses involved, most prominently that of olfaction, of taste, of palate. I devour. It is constant, and yet I am unaffected by the curse of habituation. I do not become accustomed to the should-be familiar taste, touch, feel, smell, sight.

And this is my very problem. I eat everything. I love to eat. I love to eat everything. And I can't stop...but I'm going to make it a point to do so. I'm not stopping my constant need to feed for physically aesthetic reasons (if I wanted to be stick skinny, I would have strayed from eating so much in the first place). But I'd just like to experiment -- there are thousands of healthy food recipes out there, and making an art out of creating more such recipes could be cool, interesting, and who knows, maybe even a little fun?

So this is my last hurray. Tomorrow begins a new day, a new week, a new month (lol jk it's still April) - a new chance to renew, cleanse, and throw some detoxification in my diet. Today I eat cannolis, tomorrow I eat plants. I will throw out my old pantry and refill it with flax seeds, raisins, fruits, and shove vegetables into my refrigerator. I already love broccoli and cucumber, and I hope to expand my personal list of yummy greens.

I'm already excited. I love tossing cucumbers with just a hint of salt and pepper - and that's all. No messy dressing to drown my greens. Minimizing the effort while maximizing outcome.

I will take numerous photos and document my edible experimentations. Be prepared for smoothies, salad, wrap, sandwich, and soup recipes. Okay that's all.

More apologies.

"What have I become? Something soft and really quite dumb, because I've fallen, oh, 'cause I've fall- fallen, oh 'cause I've fall-fall-fallen so far away from the place where I started from." ("Die Alone," Ingrid Michaelson)

Last week, I spent about an hour reading, browsing, perusing, and reminiscing by looking through old scrapbooks and photo albums that my mother made when I was little. I looked at the photos of me as a newborn, an infant, a baby, a toddler, and I found myself in a confused state of tears. Surely I am not crying because I miss this, I thought, for I don't believe that anybody can truly yearn to relive these years as there are no mistakes nor regrets to fix. I spent some time thinking about it, and this is what I realized: I apologize, past me; I am so, so sorry to the young Ashley who used to hold high hopes for herself. I have taken each and every one of my young desires and goals and shattered them all, unknowingly. I could not stop thinking about how disappointed young Ashley would be if she met me. For too long I have consistently told myself "I am the same person I was yesterday." Clearly, this is not the case. Young Ashley, I am so sorry. My life is not over yet, and I know I still have room for change and years of potential achievement/accomplishment, but nevertheless I regret and apologize.

More post-it notes against my bedside wall.

"He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink…"

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

--Sydney J. Harris

“The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.”

--Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

--Sylvia Plath

"You have nothing if not belief."

"“We read to know that we are not alone.”

--C.S. Lewis

"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction."

Chuck Palahniuk

8 April 2010

My voice, approximately one year ago.

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done with apus. struck down by severe writers block (about that world lit paper..). too much lost. food. drank 2234234234 gallons of water cause my westmont water bottle is really cool and fun to drink from. i sound like a five year old idiot.

OBVIOUSLY MY LIFE IS SO COOL!

1. The love stories we've all heard of are usually relatively similar to one another. Person A meets Person B, some sort of relationship ensues, and after a long period of romantic dates and moonlit walks on the beach, Person A and Person B fall in love. And then there is the love story between me, myself, and Boston.

1b. The absence of oxford commas annoy me. No they don't annoy me, the absence just makes me really fidgety and irritated. Yeah they annoy me.

2. This year has time and time proved to be the most academically challenging and demanding 300 days of my life..but it is still my favorite year so far. I love love love being a junior so much. Old enough to boo the underclassmen, young enough to still ask the seniors how to pass freaking calculus. Plus I've got the coolest teachers and I've come to love where I live.

3. ALEX TURNER? WHERE? yeah I like him.

4. I'm going to name my kids: Holden / Adeline / Amelie / (Anton?)

5. I really like reading so i go through short phases in my life where i am infatuated with the fictional world an author creates (pride and prejudice, the time travelers wife, more recently the assault..)..during these phases, i tend to birth an extreme hatred towards numerous people in my real life though. it's seriously ridiculous.

6. Ashley minus sleep plus doubleshots galore plus apus-induced stress equals..insanity during zero period.

7. I'm really gonna miss the beach and in n out. And Pedros. But I'll have Mr Bartleys and the river to look at and .. I can find other places to get cheap mexican food.

8. LLLOOSSSSTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

9. I'm really bad at walking.

10. I might appear to be just another quiet asian..but in my brain lies a mastermind plan to recover and save the united states. and the world.

11. Meet my twin, Patrick Carl. I've got a temper too. Just ask Summer.

12. I know every single Calvin & Hobbes cartoon published

13. Most girls my age complain about their boyfriends being enigmas.. I on the other hand complain about the enigmatic, the notorious, the famed..COLLEGE ADMISSIONS PROCESS!

14. I think I'd rather be denied than waitlisted. Being denied is like, oh hey you suck let's chop your head off. Being waitlisted is like oh hey you kind of suck but there are people that suck more than you do so let's put you in line for the guillotine. it's like dying a slow death. Ok I honestly have no clue what I'm talking about. I just want to be accepted to SOME college.

15. When I was little I was given at least four easy bake ovens by my mom's friends. I never used one of them.

16. It's not that hard to amuse me

17. I loooooove driving :) do i have me permit? NOPE

18. I don't want to pursue the things I like. I'd love to be a history major but I don't see any exciting well-paying jobs in that field. (yes i admit it i like $). I'm not HUGE in math but I'm down for some relatively easy calculus so mayyybeeee econ?

19. Orange County gets a really bad rap. yeah, most of it's pretty artificial, but in general, i like it. the people are cool, there is almost always something going on, the beach is a short walk from school, etc etc etc

20. I watch 90210. and I get crap for it. Still one of my favvvvszzzszszzz

21. I have never eaten sushi in my life. I have never read a Harry Potter book in my life. (I did, however, see part of the Harry Potter movie when there's a big troll and this girl with big hair gets his boogers all over her broomstick or wand..but that is the extent of my Harry Potter knowledge. also: i know the theme song)

22. I used to join 345345 groups/fan pages on facebook but then I got paranoid that colleges look at prospective students' profiles so I promptly deleted a handful of them based on their levels of appropriateness, or lack thereof

23. APUS + Calc + Pazeian book + world lit paper = today. love you too, spring break

24. Frederich chopin is my secret lover who feigned his own death. Psh did you really think such a genius could be brought down by tuberculosis? .... :(

25. my mom has sun's toothpaste (from lost)

i had to add this:

26. my computer red-underlined the "toothpaste" i wrote in 25 and i stared at it for like an hour thinking what was wrong cause it looked fine to me. only many moments later did i finally realize that i had written "toothpasfe" instead of "toothpaste." how genius am i? really?

I think I'll go to Boston (again, and again, and again)

The love stories we've all heard of are usually relatively similar to one another. Person A meets Person B, some sort of relationship ensues, and after a long period of romantic dates and moonlit walks on the beach, Person A and Person B fall in love. And then there is the love story between me, myself, and Boston.

(the above set of words is taken from a little blog post i wrote exactly one year and two days ago. i'll publish the full post after.) (and the above photo is taken from february 2010, when i stayed at the sheraton in the back bay.)

i admit it. i'm a bit ignorant. i overlook the great aspects in other areas and cities for boston. i am vividly aware of my tunnel vision, but i don't care. i need to end up in boston - there are so many opportunities and careers available, not to mention all those non-profit internships, etc. it just comes down to applications and housing now. i know i have my undergraduate years to worry about that...but i have to start thinking now.

My apologies, sir, ma'am

This is a blog. I am 17. Ergo, this is a blog written by a teenager and, as my headliner so aptly indicates, there will be angst-ridden, hate-filled, even hormonally instigated words throughout this website. Additionally, there will be grammatical slaughter amongst my words, so I apologize in advance.

One: You underestimate what I feel. You are unaware of the four-year heart that has hardened and calloused because of the knowledge of the immense disappointment I carry home with me. I bring nothing to the table - no talent, no achievement, no credentials with which you can delightfully tell your friends and our family. You are not proud of me, I know this much, but I would not be proud of myself either if I were you (I am not currently proud of myself either).
It is not only my sub-par academic performance that renders you so disappointed with what I've become; it is my extreme independence and my choice to openly express myself. I am a disappointing individualist who emerges too loudly from a family-oriented culture and a collectivist last name. I speak too loudly or too softly. I am tolerant of my own persona, yet I am constantly and vividly aware that I am the incorrect piece lost in a large puzzle. I do not fit in. I am okay with this; you are not. I am sorry - it will be over when I leave in five months.

An integral contributor to all angst-related feelings is a model. For me, that model was and is Sylvia Plath, author, poet, thinker, writer, artist...and recently, somebody took the liberty of creating a Plath-inspired playlist. It's ridiculously apt and for that, I recommend everyone give it a listen or two. Sylvia Plath's iPod

A Rainy Four Years

this photo evidently does not encapsulate the campus as a whole, but it can be hard to find a good shot of an entire college campus (despite UPS’s small size).

so, i applied to the University of Puget Sound on a complete whim. it was January 15, and i was suddenly paranoid of rejections everywhere. i was a little frazzled, so i thought i might up my chances of getting in somewhere by applying everywhere. i wrote the UPS supplements in ten minutes and submitted my app right away (i did this with many other schools as well).

i got accepted by the schools to which i was forced to apply, waitlisted to those i loved, and rejected to those with which i obsessed over for a very long time. after a long process of blood (papercuts?), sweat, and tears, after going through 100,000 different emotions everyday for a long long time, after making/deleting/listening to excruciatingly random playlists (from blink 182 to laura marling to pet shop boys to pitbull to radiohead to queen), i’ve decided to commit to UPS. i don’t think any school gave me any financial aid but UPS gave me one fatass scholarship (cheers to not being completely broke after mere undergraduate years), their campus is pretty, and one of my great friends from thousand oaks has already committed. tacoma is beautiful and lies in a close proximity to seattle. it’s also near canada (just saying?).

so i’m going to hug UPS harder than i’ve hugged anybody before. well, maybe not as hard as the hugs from my going away party in 9th grade. but still, i’m going to embrace this pretty damn hard, and i’m gonna savor every moment of my next four years.