Another year, another year added to my age.

I could barely remember that I was 22 anyways. After 21 it doesn’t really matter that much I guess.

Had a lazy birthday this year but still I am extremely grateful for my friends who came over to my house to celebrate with me this weekend and on Monday.

On a side note, Facebook Timeline shows you how many people post on your wall for your birthday. I thought it was pretty cool.

Here’s my progression:

2006: 2 people
2007: 0 people
2008: 36 people
2009: 46 people
2010: 23 people
2011: 47 people
2012: 78 people

Looking at timeline stuff can sometimes be depressing. Looking back you see conversations with people who you have stopped talking to or lost connections. So, as lame as it sounds, I was actually pretty happy that 78 people took time out of their day to acknowledge that it’s my birthday. Yea, a birthday post is meaningless, but just to take the time out to say something IS meaningful. It is acknowledgement that there is still some connection there. It means that between 2011 and 2012, I have managed to create new connections and/or rekindle old connections.

And that’s a good thing. This world is nothing without friends and family. Thank you to everyone for being a part of my life.

On a side note, I spent like 10 hours in the past two days working on a song. It’s not that good, but I’m gonna try to upload it tomorrow. I really should sign up for vocal lessons already.

This is so catchy. There’s something awesome about the simplicity of this cover. One instrument (if you don’t count their voices, which are pretty damn ggood).

It’s all fun and games until your wheelbarrow floats away.

My mind is so blown right now.

To follow up on my previous posts talking about different flows, check out this video with a bunch of people imitating hip-hop/R&B/pop artists:

I’m surprised they got so many people who were able to emulate different rapping styles and look pretty close to the part.

See if you can name everyone without looking at the description! I got more than half but missed a handful. Some of the impressions are really spot on!

ps. That Beyonce #couldgetit.

I’ve been messing around with Ableton trying to make some cool beats. When you start trying to create art, you start analyzing art more. When I started filming, I started watching films with a much more critical eye. Noticing what angles certain scenes were shot from. When sliders/panning was used to achieve certain transitions.

Well now that I’m trying to make some beats, I’ve been listening to music with a more critical ear. The amount of layers in songs that I’ve listened to for years kind of amazes me since I am now hearing different parts of the song that I never noticed were even there before. I’m also listening to different rapper’s rapping styles and trying to add some more variety to my own rapping style. Right now I’ve mostly been trying to use a Childish Gambino flow and I usually do my word inflections like how J. Cole does it. Gonna practice a more singy flow like Wiz Khalifa and Drake and see if I can pull it off.

One song that I’ve playing on repeat is Wiz Khalifa – We’re Done:

This song is really short so it’s kind of a pain since as soon as it’s over I want to hear it again.

I really like Hip-Hop beats that sample female vocals so I’m trying to listen to those songs more and I’m trying to look for cool songs to sample at the same time.

Anyways, I looked up the sample for this song and it was Demi Lovato – Our Time is Here.

I dunno how Wiz found that song, but… I guess that means no song is off limits to sample.

On a side note, Demi Lovato kind of looks like Rebecca Black in this video.

What’s up world.

Happy New Year! It’s interesting how we put so much significance in the arbitrary changing of the calendar year. To many, the New Years day signifies a fresh start – one is to simply let go of negative experiences of the previous year and hope for the best in the upcoming year. This is gonna be a really long post. Grab some popcorn and a drink or pass on this post if you don’t like reading some of the most interesting shit ever.

So let’s do a recap of my year:

- Broke up with Pamela on my birthday.
You don’t know how annoying Valentine’s Day is for single people until you break up the day before.

- Graduated from UCSB with a B.S. in Zoology.
4 years and I finally made it out.

- Took the GRE.
Aced it. Ain’t no thang.

- Worked at Kabam and got laid off.
First time getting laid off from a job. It’s always good to have different life experiences. At least I didn’t actually want the job as a career. Met a lot of interesting people here.

- Went clubbing in Vegas for the first time.
Also my first time throwing up from drinking.

- Finally started working out seriously.
Gained 12 pounds of muscle. Never felt better. Never looked better.

And last but not least:

- Officially ended my 7 year relationship with Pamela.
From friends to best friends to lovers back to strangers again. No contact rule in place.

All in all, a pretty eventful year.

I did love Pamela with all my heart. I don’t think there’s anyone who would doubt that. In 2007, during a group project for English class, Amanda asked me if I could see myself marrying Pamela. I said yes, but I could see myself marrying a lot of people. It’s not whether or not you can see something happening that causes it to happen or not. The stars still have to align. You still have to put in work and dedication. In Costa Rica, my friend Jamie said that at our age, it’s a terrible time to fall really in love with someone. The odds of it working out just aren’t high based on how unstable everyone’s lives are.

This was not news to me. I thought long and hard about this in 2007 when we graduated from high school. I had a choice to make. Stay in a relationship and hope for the best, or end it. I had an opportunity to go to Japan for 3 months to work the summer after we graduated, and I knew that if I was going to go off for 3 months before going off to college, the relationship would be dead in the water. So I decided that what we had was important enough to me that I wanted to pursue it further and I stayed home for that summer and we continued our relationship through college.

She did not like long distance at all, but there’s not really anything that anyone could do about that. I did tell Pamela that I would understand if she wanted to break off the relationship at any time. And when she finally decided she wanted to break it off, I understood and I accepted her decision, knowing it wasn’t an easy one to make.

People say you don’t know true love at 15. If a 15 year-old-kid now told me that he was in love, I wouldn’t believe him either. But the fact of the matter is I fell in love with someone at age 15 and I stayed in love with that person until age 22.

Judy asked me if I regret missing out on some college experiences because I was in a relationship the whole time. The answer to that is no. I live life through active decisions. I missed out on bucking some bad broads (and let me tell you, there were some bad broads that wanted to get bucked), and I didn’t go out as much as I would have if I didn’t have a girlfriend. I’m naturally a very talkative and flirty person, and when I saw the opportunities to flirt, I would try to limit talking to girls. What this means is, as soon as I saw interest, I would have to watch what I was saying to make sure they didn’t read any wrong signals coming from me.

But while I missed out on the whole dating game in college, I experienced plenty of things that few others have experienced. I had a best friend who I could talk to about anything without fear of judgement or disinterest. And I learned more about the female life than I will ever need to know. I experienced true love, an exhilarating joy that many in this world will never know.

People say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. For me, I’m too damn smart to not know what I have while I have. I’m just too dumb to be able to keep it. Honestly, I’m bad at long distance. It does take it’s toll on you. If I could, I would never recommend a long distance relationship for anyone. But when blood flows to the heart, there’s not enough blood to flow to the brain. There’s no room for logic in love. And that’s all figuratively of course, since the feeling of love is still centralized in the brain and the heart just pumps blood. Science sure crushes metaphors.

Still, I live life with no regrets because no matter what I am doing, I do what I feel like. To regret something after doing it would be to chastise myself for being myself.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m still hung up on Pamela. I’m just giving you some context about my experiences while voicing some of my feelings to whoever’s interested in reading. If she asked me to get back with her at this moment, I wouldn’t. Two weeks after she broke up with me, I would have already said no as well. At the time, I was working 40 hours a day and I was so damn busy that I think we would eventually have run into some problems sooner or later.

Anyways, when we broke up I told her that I hope that she finds happiness, and I do mean it. I don’t know who she’s talking to, who she’s dating, and I don’t want to know. I just hope whatever and whomever she does, she’s happy.

When we broke up I told her that she would never find another guy like me. That sounds like something angry that you yell at someone when they’re breaking up with you, but I truly believe that. This leads me to one of my biggest revelations of 2011:

Just because bad things happen to you, it does not mean you’re a bad person. Just because you get rejected from someone or something, it does not mean that you’re not adequate. How others treat you has no effect on who you are as a person. If you love yourself, there’s no reason for other people not to love you.

I am an awesome person. In middle school, I used to look in the mirror when I was a nerd and wonder why people made fun of me every day at school. I thought I was funny, smart, awesome to talk to, but people weren’t giving me the chance. This is the key for me: Even in the face of people making fun of me each day, I’ve never woken up and not thought I was an amazing person. I have so much self-esteem, I wish I could take some of it and give it to these girls with low self-esteem and we could all have ourselves a better world.

I’ve always said “everyone who talks to me likes me”. There’s very little reason not to. I take solace in this and this is where my overwhelming self-confidence comes from. I don’t know what you call it – self confidence, arrogance, pride, whatever it is, I have it in spades. People who don’t know me and read what I say may think that I am stuck up. I’m not at all. For someone who thinks they’re awesome, I’m incredibly down to earth. Hence me calling myself the nicest asshole you’ll ever meet. I combine the best qualities of an “asshole” and a “nice guy”. Two ends of a spectrum that many people get thrown into.

Now I am thinking about dating but I really don’t want to jump into a serious relationship right now. This is where the dilemma starts for me. I’m not a selfish person. I don’t live without thinking about others. Knowing that I have many awesome qualities, I think that if I started dating girls, they will fall in love with me and want something more serious than I can give them at the moment. This actually is a huge scare for me because I don’t want to mislead anyone or hurt them by asking them out and dropping them.

Now some people will scoff and think that I am completely unjustified in thinking that a girl would fall in love with me that easily.

C’mon. Have you been reading? Trust me when I tell you it’s harder to keep a girl in love with you for 7 years than it is to have a girl fall in love with you. I’ve only met one person as funny as me, and that was in the mirror. I know a little bit about everything in life, which means conversation is never boring. I’m not the best looking guy, but I’m better than average. I’m not the kind of guy who turns heads when he walks into the room, but I am a guy who can say stuff without automatically being labeled a creeper because I’m ugly. What I’m saying is, I don’t rule myself out from anyone based on looks alone, and I think my personality allows me to reach for 10′s. Lofty, but hey, it’s rare to have someone who’s so multifaceted. There are some people better looking than me, some people smarter than me, some people funnier than me, some people who have more hobbies than me, some people who talk better than me, some people who are more confident than me, but I have not met someone else who combines my high levels across the board into one person. Side-note: it’s pretty annoying when hot guys and ugly guys can say the same thing and one is considered creepy while the other isn’t. Women….

For these reasons alone, I don’t see myself being friend zoned by anyone very easily. I should be able to ask out almost any girl I want to. But for now, I’m gonna relax and live the single life. Not the single life as in going out on the prowl trying to get into a relationship, but the single life as in spend my free time doing things I like to do. I think everything will work out eventually. I’m a catch. No reason to sell myself short right now.

Finally, you’re all caught up on my love life. Now we can talk about resolutions.

In 2011 my resolution was to become cooler. I think I’ve accomplished that somewhat. I never really have hard set resolutions because it’s too hard to accomplish them. However, I am going to try it this year for the first time ever and see if it works. I call my regimen “the year of the beast”, because when someone like me continues to improve themselves, the only term adequate to describe them is:

“beast”.

My outline for the year:

- Start putting up YouTube videos. I’m doing comedy videos. There’s a mini-series that combines Biology and comedy that I have been scripting. I also wanted to make some short films but a lack of actors/actresses is making it a little difficult. Comedy vids that only involve me may have to be it until:

- Make more friends. Not being in college makes it harder to meet new people. I want to get out and network more. If you’re going out, tell me and I’ll come with!

- Continue working out. I’ve seen plenty of improvement in the past 3 months that I want to continue working out.

- Start playing tennis again.

- Take vocal lessons. Learn how to sing.

- Continue practicing guitar.

- More rapping! Also get better at producing beats.

- Publish some picturebooks and/or start scripting my comic book.

- Start yelping. I use the website so much, but I never share my input. One review a day means I’ll have 365 by the end of the year.

- Take more photographs. I don’t think I want to do a 365 project, but I want to try to post one photo every week.

- And the most important all-encompassing resolution: become famous. I don’t show up for the results when I search for my name on google. It is a pretty common Vietnamese name, but I want to change that. This is the internet. I believe I can make it, and I will make it, and I’m gonna bring everyone who was with me from the start with me. You can help me by sharing my YouTube videos with as many people as you can when I start posting them or buying my books when I finish them.

This list seems unreasonably long but I know that if I try my best I will be able to knock off most of these from the list. No school, no relationship, no work = no excuse. This may be the busiest year that I’ve ever had. The year of self improvement. The year of the beast.

If you read all of this post, you must be incredibly bored. Still, thank you for taking your time to read. Happy New Years. Let’s get things started.

Son, I am amaze.

After taking Art History and seeing how long it took for artists to develop techniques to show perspective, I’m pretty amazed at how this guy can grasp those concepts without ever seeing what he’s drawing.

And as a bonus: He’d be pretty damn good at the Cranium game where you draw with your eyes closed.

Vanessa Bryant claims that Kobe Bryant slept with 105 other women throughout their 10 years of marriage. That number is actually a little lower than I expect for a Superstar athlete. Let’s be real here. There’s something about being famous that makes girls wanna buck you. I’m pretty sure becoming famous doesn’t make your dick taste better, but the way even ugly, barely-famous mofos have flocks of groupies, I’m not exactly sure.

This whole situation shows a whole lot about the current marital situation and the fidelity of celebrities in general:

It’s pretty damn hard for a lot of normal people to stay faithful, so how do you expect stars who constantly have attractive groupies (and I bet a ton of ugly ones) throwing themselves at them to not stray?

I’d like to believe I would stay faithful to my girlfriend even if I had hella girls throwing themselves at me, but since I’m not in that situation, my words aren’t very useful. But I don’t think I would want to date a famous person or if I were famous, I don’t think I would settle down into a long-term relationship. At least not until I got bored of all the groupies. It’s not really fair to your partner. If you’re on a diet and people wave donuts in front of you every day of the year, it’s pretty hard for your partner to believe that you’re never gonna have a craving, slip up, and eat a donut.

She done knew he was cheating on her. You don’t just find out overnight that your husband has slept with 105 women overnight. So why did she wait until now to claim that his cheating was “too much”? Because now that the marriage has lasted longer than 10 years, she gets alimony, aka a shit-ton of his money. I guess that’s her paycheck for staying with a guy for 10 years when she knew he was cheating on her with other women all year? If only all women with cheating boyfriends were so lucky.

I haven’t really been following the Dark Knight Rises but this trailer is so damn good. Christopher Nolan is amazing. The trailer really follows the concept of “Every 10 seconds, keep the audience wanting more”. Can’t wait for the movie now.

Also, just wanted to say this is the first post of my new blog. I haven’t blogged for a few years but lately I’ve had too many thoughts in my head to keep them all locked up. Prepare for entertainment.