Henry Nam

THOUGHT ABOUT FOOD:  I'm only now realizing the irony of eating veggetarian buffalo wings with an omlet.  

I've been doing pretty well for myself.  Thanks to some wonderful teachers and an incredible support group, this semester turned out to be the most successful of my entire college career.  I actually heard today that I got put onto the Dean's List!  Go figure.  The summer has been far more chaotic than I thought it'd be.  In the span of about a week and a half, I drove 3000 miles.  I've been waking up bright and early (for me) every day to make it to my 8am class.  Today was my last day, and I have to say that even though the work load was quite something, it was thoroughly enjoyable.  I feel like I got a lot of really valuable and relevant information from the class.

Pictures are currently uploading on Photobucket.  I'll fill them in once they're all done.

First is a picture of the Monsterpocalypse Series 2 Booster set I picked up and gave out as gifts to my fellow gaming friends.  It's a really fun game that most people are reluctant to play at first, but it's pretty simple and easy to pick up once you play a couple of games.  Plus, I think the world is really cool.  Just imagine taking the monsters from all those movies you saw growing up:  Mazinger, Aliens, Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, Cthulu, and so on, plopping them in the middle of a city, and letting the mayhem ensue.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play more than a few games since the new year.

Next are some pictures from kite flying at Buttermilk Falls.  The Justice Kite is falling appart.  We used a bunch of plastic bags and my mini carbiner to make a string and hook for the thing.  It worked just fine.  Once I set aside some time, I'll do some more repairs.

Here are some pictures taken after I got out of class early.  It's a side of SMCM that I haven't really taken very many pictures of.  Then again, I haven't made the time to really soak in the beauty of this place.  Schedule's mostly been wake up, maybe food, class, work, homework, sleep, repeat.  I really want to go kayaking, swimming, and sailing again.  Just a matter of finding the right day and making the time.

The following are some snapshots compliments of Csernski of the CreamCenter show at the Charm City Art Space.  There was a HUGE SMCM turnout for some reason.  We welcome new member Paul Lemley to our amorphously ameboid group.  Audience participation was excellent!

Then the following day, Sk8N8, Csernski, and I attended a Breast/Testicular Cancer fundraiser/race.  The turnout was impressive.  We had people from all up and down the East Coast.  The event was the first non-outlaw skate event I've been to (that hasn't been at a park).  I got a chance to ride my Hammerhead.  The poor thing doesn't get very much love.  

Once the pictures are done, I'll be uploading the videos to YouTube and posting them here.

I've got a busy weekend ahead of me (once again) followed by the begining of the second session of summer classes: American Comedy!  Very much looking forward to it.  Hopefully, I'll be able to work some more on my SMP.

Love and Peace,

Nam

I'm in one of my pathetic down-swings on the mood scale, and for no good reason it seems.  Save for the work I'm currently procrastinating on because of said mood, things are going pretty well in my life and for the people who are involved in it.  Inspired by a conversation with a couple of my friends, I'll start with a to do list for the summer:

1. Play hacky-sack every day after class.
2. Go swimming in the river again.
3. Climb trees again.  
4. Go longboarding regardless of whether or not I hvae company.
5. Make some new friends both on and off campus.

I read an article in the New York Times about Japan's policy of paying blue collar workers to leave the country.  The idea is to encourage foreigners to leave so free up jobs for native Japanese in response to the recession.  The immediate thing that comes to mind is that it seems racist, short-sighted, insulting on several levels, and ultimately, sad in its plethora of implications.  But the newspaper is pretty clear on its bias, so in my usual fashion, I'd like to try and put myself on the policy-maker's shoes.  

First of all, I'd like to establish that I'm coming from an elevated standpoint; I see the effects of our own economic downturn, but I've been fortunate enough that it hasn't had too significant of an effect on my jobs, but I suppose with being a musician and artist, when I have jobs, I'm simply not AS unemployed.  But I digress.  The Henry Rollins article I talked about earlier made pretty clear that I can pass whatever judgment may naturally come to me, but I'll never be comfortable being full convicted in my beliefs since I can't relate to the degree of suffering Japan is going through.  I'm sure the policy makers thought about how to best deal with the issue, and though it seems a lot of people disagree (at least the article makes it seem that way), I think that the policy is reflective of some residual beliefs in the country.

The article suggests that the policy is controversial.  That means that I should be careful in generalizing opinions as "Japan's" sentiment.  It's unfair to really claim that Japan has racist sentiments without mentioning that we have a fairly large, anti-immigrant population here in the US.  Japan is an island.  We have neighbors.  Sadly, the arguments for stricter border control make it seem like they with the US was an island.  However, as far as my history knowledge goes, Japanese decendant never engaged in systematic, mass genocide of the indigenous population when claiming the land.  Not on mainland Japan at least. 

I don't know.  It's just shocking that things have apparently reached a point where the country has adopted a policy of open discrimination in response to the economic situation (once again, not to say that our country is free is policies that are very openly discriminatory).  The thing that surprised me the most when writing through this is that I see so many parallels to troubles here in the US that make it difficult to even begin taking any sort of moral high ground.  

- -

In other news: busy, busy, busy.  I'm in the home stretch.  A few more weeks and things'll slow down academically for a bit.  I'm proud of my friends who are graduating and excited to see who I can.  My opinion still stands that the ceremonial aspect of my gradutation isn't something that's all too important to me now, and I feel that the celebration aspect of my eventual graduation will be expressed through how I use the education I've gained.  But maybe that'll change.

Freewebs has now just become Webs, and during the transition, it seems like a lot of things have changed.  As a result, a bunch of things on my website no longer work, so I plan on doing a overhaul and redo a lot of things.  Some of the immediate things on my mind:

1. Fix the music player
2. Update the video player/replace it with my YouTube page.
3. Update the links page
4. Update the Art section and fix the broken links
5. Update my gig schedule.

How's this for a weekend:

Thursday, teach lessons, drive out to Rockville, eat at California Pizza Kitchen, see and a couple of old friends, pick up a drumset from said friends, drive to GMU, see another friend for the first time in years, go to a Blues Jam, sleep for 4 hours.

Friday, somehow manage to get up, get showered, get changed, and make apple fritters in a kitchen I've never been in before, drive out to the Zoo to run an errand, drive out to DC, find out our reserved parking was taken, unload gear, spend an hour and a half looking for parking all around DC, spend 5 minutes frantically running from the parking lot to where we need to play, have the sound guys screw up the wiring, needing to cut several charts, playing a mostly successful set list for the National Cherry Blossom Festival, NOT offend Asian tourists by playing Shanghai Gumbo, NOT get rained on by the 80% chance of rain that favored the 20% that it wouldn't rain, take this picture:

PHOTO CREDITS: Sierra Polisar

Then take this picture ...

PHOTO CREDITS: Sierra Polisar

and NOT have my shirt actually tucked in for any of them, drive up to PA, get dinner, fetch a very special someone from a very discombobulating drive, and have an absolutely wonderful weekend of relaxation and good dining with the best of company I could ask for.

Monday, briefly see my family as they return from the airport from California, drive out to Southern Maryland, hit stupid traffic and construction making me miss a class despite leaving with plenty of time, then having class until 9pm.

Today's been pretty good.  I woke up, studied for a quiz, found out that the class was canceled, did work, prepared for teaching, found out an hour before the lesson that it had to be canceled, did work, updated this, and make preparations for rehearsal for Friday's concert.

Definitely lots to do, but I have the time to pace myself in a relatively comfortable, yet brisk pace.

And a beautiful video:

And a breathtaking video about a flying man:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ueli_gegenschatz_extreme_wingsuit_jumping.html

Love and Peace,

Nam

Dear blog,

All cliches forgiven, at the worst, this week has felt like a kettled filled with my repressed tears that has hit maximum capacity and subsequently boiling point.  The tears were mostly from today while the fire and heat came from frustration and stress.  I need an outlet. 

Granted, my life really isn't that bad.  I still have a roof over my head, jobs that I love, get to eat at least a meal a day, and am in this closed, idealistic place called college.  As far as I know, my grades are the best they've been in my time at school, phenomenal by comparison.  I seem to finally have gotten my act together.  I attend class regularly, stay on top of my work, and have not noticably ticked anyone off, save myself of course.

But if the worst day in a person's life is when (s)he broke a finger nail, as trivial as it may seem, it still is the worst day in his/her life.  That's not to say that this is even close to being the worst day of my life.  Rather, point being that I feel miserable even though I have it pretty good.  Here's my rant.

Sleep troubles mostly.  I'll go to sleep early and not be able to fall asleep for hours.   Tuesday was just one of those silly-stupid days where it felt like the world was trying to tick me off.  If I were religious at all, I would have taken it as a sign from God to not have gotten out of bed that morning.  After a tapas-portion of sleep, I wake up to find that the electricity had gone out in my apartment which meant that my alarm clock was out.  Somehow, I had the luck of waking up 10 minutes before I needed to head out to make it in time for class, but I'm certainly not the type to be able to just wake up and go, especially not when disoriented, groggy, and grumpy.  When I left, a garbage truck was blocking my driveway.  After I was able to get around it.  I got caught behind a slow-moving truck.  Literally after the truck turned onto a different road, the road I was on became a construction zone as who I assume to be either the phone company or the elecitcity people were doing major maintenance.  From my groggy, grumpy, self-centered perspective, it was simply another obstacle.  I turn onto another road.  THAT one is also blocked from construction/maintenance.  After I finally clear it all, I get onto the main road to get to school only to have yet another slow-moving, erratically driving truck pull up in front of me.  Later that evening, I was working on a paper.  I took off my glasses to read some text from a book and in my stupid, blurry-vision state, accidentally closed the Word Document without saving it.  So paper lost.  Great.  When I lost the ability to be productive anymore, I attempted to retire only to be greeted by several hours of sleeplessness from general stress.  I fell asleep by what I assume to be somewhere between 3-4am.

This morning, I received a wake up call wherein a few choice words from my generous caller put me in a further, terrible mood for the remainder of the day.  Even worse, it all turned out to be a misunderstanding leaving me with unjustified anger.  Said words proved to be absolutely degrading to my ability to function today.  My mind kept wandering in class (also not aided by the lack of sleep).  After getting through classes, I had plans to do some minor grocery shopping and gas up my car.  It was supposed to just be a quick thing but ended up taking two precious hours because of some unexpected developments with the plans.  I did what I could to not be as grumpy as I felt. 

I'm the kind of person who, when I've got developing beef/drama with another, cannot just do what's needed.  At least, it feels that way a lot of the time.  The talk with the aformentioned person kept getting delayed, only adding to my frustrations.  After that had happened, I found out from my mother that my grandmother is continuing going through struggles because of the situation in Korea and is also in rapidly degrading health.  I hate the communication divide between us and the general sense of being unable to help either of them in any way.  So here I am with a full plate, complaining to my online diary, trying to find the courage to just sit down and do what I need to.  My travel plans for the break ended up frustrating matters in regards to my midterms.  Since I won't have Internet over the course of the break, I have to get everything done by Friday.  Today was supposed to be my productive day, but it just melted away in a deluge of boiling tears and fiery anger.  I'd like to think that I'm usually not like this, but it's times like this that I really hate living off campus alone.  Argh, stupid college and forced moves.

And my computer is freaking out and not working properly.

So what's good in my life (since I could use a bit of optimism)?

I'm going to see friends and family and actually talk to people over Spring Break.
After break, I'm going to have four new students.
The electricity is seems to be mostly holding up now.
I'm excited about April: more gigs, one of them being the National Cherry Blossom Fesitval in DC!
I got permission from my teacher to skip class for said festival.
I'll be working with more musicians.
Evan and I are arranging "Shangai Gumbo" by Spyro Gyra. 
I had some really great friends who checked in to show they cared.
I'll have to do more drawing for my SMP, the thing I've looked forward to the most.
My father and brother seem to be doing mostly well.
I'm mostly satisfied with my love life.
My academics are still great.
I'm looking to get a new keyboard soon!
Once I get some free time, I have lots of things I want to do!
I can do this.  Just because I haven't been a strong finisher in the past doesn't mean I can't find it within myself, yes?

Taking a deep breath before diving back in,

Love and Peace,

Nam

(Boo to non-working YouTube links.)

Yesterday was long, short, obligatory, and self-motivated.  After a long week of relative sleep deprivation due to the process of making "Jack a dull boy," I missed Call to Arms and essentially had my entire Saturday dedicated to jazz.  The concert went really well.  It was really touching to see all these alumni interacting with each other.  Very much a night of nostalgia.  But excluding the rehearsal at 3pm, we were there from 6:30pm though 10:45pm which didn't leave me with much energy to do much else that night. 

That said, this week went really well.  I've been staying on top of my work and am very proud of myself for being able to do so.  And though any prospects of being productive Saturday were obliterated by the fun concert (and I guess I'm grumbling a bit because we didn't get to play all that much), I have all today and possibly even all tomorrow to get through what I need to.  Tomorrow, it's supposed to now 7-11 inches which is impressive for Southern Maryland.  And since this whole state is so poorly equipped to handle inclement weather (I mean, back in MoCo, school'd be cancelled if there was a CHANCE of snow, haha), it looks like school's going to be cancelled for Monday. 

But now that I think about it, I JUST remembered that literally a week from now, I'll be playing again at the Golden Age concert.  And if Monday is cut out, that means we've lost half of our practice time as a band, and a 100% of practice time for the combo.  Woo, this is going to be fun, hahahaha! 

I have two midterms coming up (it's already halfway through the semester!) and hope to get them done before Spring Break.  I've also been on top of my SMP work, though I'd like to pick up the pace some and finish the writing process so I can get to doodling!  I'm not too terribly proud of the story I have, but I don't think it'll matter in the end.  I've been doing research on a regular basis but need to write more stuff down to show for it so I'll have material to work with when I do my write up next semester.

Well, time to do some laundry and get some groceries.

Love and Peace,

Nam

PS  I love this kid's reaction, hahahaha!

Here's a ridiculously catchy song that I've been loving and hating, but more of the loving as much as I hate to admit it.  Thanks to my father for continuing to introduce me to music I'd never think to listen to. 

The Bird and the Bee - Again & Again

Things are finally forseeably leveling themselves out.  My brain is finally absorbing the information I'm asking it to for school.  And it's wonderful to be learning again!  I know I'll be complaining soon, but I'm actually pretty happy to be swimming in my work, fully immersing myself in academic obligations.  Unfortunately, other important things are taking a back seat, but I set priorities for myself at the beginning of the semester, and if it takes me a flu to put everything back in perspective, then awesome.

But now that I've decided to wrap up for tonight with a post, I do have to say that I'm excited for the future.  I hope I get the summer job, but if I don't I have the benefit of an awesome backup plan in the form of a summer class.  Haha, I guess it's a good thing that I'm actually excited about education again.  It's quite refreshing.

I've been keeping a "Hero Diary" for my SMP which has helped keep me focused on elements I need to be thinking about when I really dig into the work.  I'm on my third concept that I've drafted and still feel that it's not the right one, but it's in the right direction.  I still think that it's awesome that my school's going to give me credit to work on a comic book.  I'm just excited to get to the drawing phase!  Unfortunately, writing has to come first.

Music is looking promising.  In addition to continuing to play with Francis Bridge, I know that I'm eventually going to play for our school's Coffee House.  I'm really excited to do a solo peroformance again!  It's been a while.  On top of that, Liz and I have some new stuff to perform.  I was also contacted to accompany an opera singer-turned jazz performer for a duet with the intent of gigging.  How cool is that?  My creative juices are at a pretty good level.  I'm coming up with new material every time I touch the guitar.  I'm feeling a bit bummed that I haven't been devoting much time to improve as a pianist, but I've gotta work with what I have!

Overall, despite feeling down yesterday, I'm in a very pleasant mood today and feel that I will be for the rest of the week.  Everyone I care about is in moderately good health, I don't have any drama in my life (knock on wood), I'm enjoying the work I do, and things are looking up.  I just need to keep plowing and not lose momentum.

And while I'm in this feel-good mood, how beautiful is this?

Love and Peace,

Nam

Here's a fascinating interview with the ever-insightful Henry Rollins.  You may not appreciate his music or even what he does, but you at least gotta give props to a man who spends a lot of time thinking.

http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/2007/10/26/trailer-park-henry-rollins/

And just for fun ...

In the time-honored tradition of upper classmen being able to look back and shake their heads about how much their respective school had changed since they first ented, I've got a couple of gripes about my own school.  Granted, I've been sick with the flu all week and have had a whopping two meals (and some pistacios) to show for it, but here's my passive method of venting some frustrations.

What set me off was hearing that the SafeRide van's window was smashed in.  SafeRide's a wonderful program my school has that is basically an on-call service to DD people back from bars.  Actually, "bars" make it sound like people in this area actually have options, but considering Boatman's was closed because of a topless bartender, people are scared of Monks because of the "shooting," and a couple of the other places are kind of shunning of the college crowd (for good reason), Green Door the main place to be.  I'm pretty overtly against alcohol and drug consumption, but I realize it's an important aspect of a lot of people's lives, espeically when it comes to socializing and having a good time.  That said, I'm all for free services like SafeRide that get people back home safely. 

If the breaking was intentional that's just messed up.  Car damages are bloody expensive to take care of!  If it was accidental, then shouldn't we, out of good faith, admit to it?  That said, the finance board should be forthcoming with some semblance of a forgiveness policy.  Sucking up the guilt from just walking away and never being found out seems a lot more livable than paying hundreds of dollars, no?  Unless someone actually believes that a vengeful bolt of lightning will strike him (or her) down.  But that's a whole other issue.

Vandalism and destruction of property is really what bugs me, espeically when that property was serving a useful purpose.  A couple of years back, our school tested the FreeRide program where donated bicycles were left on campus for people to use at their leisure.  A few jerks decided that it'd be a better idea to sink the bikes in the ponds and river running through our campus.  One bike in a pond, while a loss, is funny as far as the numerous "what if" stories that resulted, but when the entire program is closed because there were no more functional bikes left, that's just messed up.  It's FREE!  And it benefitted nearly everyone on campus! 

Ugh, I'll leave it at that.

I'm loving this semester, and even though we're a month into it, I feel like things haven't even really started.  Free time has been divided among longboarding, playing music, teaching, writing, cooking, and miniature gaming.  School work's been keeping me fairly isolated at my apartment, but time really just flies by sometimes.  I took first twice in a row at the Monterpocalypse Tournaments giving me an awesome 100% winning streak of two wins.  Basically, that just means I'm the king of dorks for that game.  For now ...

My friends have been awesome too by being uber supportive and keeping in touch with me and all that jazz.  I don't know.  I'm just so excited by so many things and wish I had more time and energy! 

Admittedly though, my eyesight's been getting worse, but I have a follow-up appointment with the optometrist soon, something about the surface of my eyes getting severely scratched with few apparent reasons.  It stinks because my vision with my glasses is getting worse, and it's not something that can be fixed with a stronger prescription.  Not to sound too cheesy though, but it's helping me to appreciate the non-visual beauty in life more.

In any case, I might be going home this coming evening!  Super excited!

Love and Peace,

Nam