Hola. There’s not much to say right now. Actually, there’s a lot to tell but not much time to say it all. It’s been one hellova ride this last week. From checking out the Tofu Festival to catching the Projekt NewSpeak show, to finishing up my last days of work, to scrambling to pick up my friends from LAX, to downing sake bombs at Tokyo Delve in Hollywood, to having a BBQ, to hanging out with friends, to packing, to driving to Vegas and back to move some of my larger items, to helping my roommate move some of his belongings to his new place, to negotiating my moms unexpected visit, to finally trying to gather the last of my things for 1 more drive to Vegas.
I’m going to keep this short now and have a long post next time. Hopefully with some pictures and maybe even some videos to see. For right now, I’m not even trying to work everything out. I’m just trying to brave the storm.
The other day was quite a treat. I was paid a visit from Mr. Jeremy Richard. After catching up with our current situations and our future plans we went to pay his cousin, Leena, a visit in Rancho Cucamonga. We picked up Leena and had lunch at BJ’s with Leena’s mom. I always find it interesting to hear about other peoples lives. Just knowing someone else’s story opens new thoughts in my own mind. It’s like reading a book but you 
get to learn about the characters in person.
After a whole day of discussing mental health, personal well being, and family I have found more support of my belief that eventually we will all want the same thing in our lives. The more we talked the more I realized this. It’s as if the stories are the same but the details are different. Some say that when people write a book or script that it generally follows a formula. I see the same thing with life. Life, in general, follows a very basic formula. The details are what makes life interesting. And there is no limit to the number of details that can be added to a person’s life. However, the details don’t simply get added. The details interact with each other and each additional detail to create a complex framework that brings out our individuality.
Ah, and that is life. Much like a dialogue between two people, the details of an individuals life go back and forth creating new details that are not added to the persons life but created from the interactions of the persons life. Confused? Let’s just say a dialogue is the exchange of thoughts between two individuals. When I’m talking I am simply expressing my thoughts. Conversely when you are talking you are expressing your thoughts. When we start exchanging our thoughts in a dialogue we create new thoughts that broaden both of our minds. Thus, the interaction creates new thoughts we never would have concluded of on our own.
So… any thoughts?
I have a confession. I have seriously underestimated the world. Growing up I considered myself pretty smart and fairly athletic. I’m also tall (it’s a perspective thing and it makes a difference). And at some point I also became very confident. The issue of confidence is important because whenever it was that I became confident I also started to underestimate the world.
It probably started in high school at Archbishop Riordan in SF and kept growing since then. Definitely though my college years at UC Davis my underestimating the world had started to affect my productivity.
At Davis I figured I could do as well as or better than most the other students in any class without having to work too hard. For the most part I was not wrong. I did well enough in all my classes to pass without ever spending too much time studying. I did study. However, I rarely ever spent much time with any subject until the night before a test.
The story is pretty much the same with sports. I was good enough to compete in cross country, track and wrestling in high school. The problem was I was good enough that I never realized that my physical weakness was keeping me from becoming a real competitor. There is a huge difference between being able to compete and being a real competitor.
Being just above average has allowed me to get by. Worse yet, I know I’m above average and I’ve been underestimating everything that goes on around me. More specifically, I never realized how hard everyone else works. I thought that if I did as much as the people around me I would always stay ahead of them. I’ve taken into consideration that everyone has a different starting point. What eluded me was that everyone works much harder than I thought. I’ve been sub-par in my work. Slow and steady wins the race like the confident turtle who keeps his pace.
There is a fine line between confidence and cockiness. I try to stay humble while playing on that fine line. However, while I’ve been fooling around on that fine line I’ve been getting ahead of myself and I failed to see the world start to pass me by. It’s like watching the bus start to pull away and you’re a block down the street but you can still catch it if you haul ass. Confidence and cockiness is a tricky thing. We have to be confident in ourselves but we must beware of becoming cocky. Like the cocky hare who underestimates the confident turtle.
Be confident but also respect the world and never underestimate it.
Since JV is back this weekend we’ve been working out more. Well, he’s continuing to work out without missing a beat and I am working out more. We did some cleans and shoulder exercises the other day which was a good jump start workout. JV did much more of a workout than I did. I’m just not ready quite yet. I also threw in some squats for myself because I feel my legs are getting much weaker than they should.
Then we went running yesterday morning. This is really sad because I don’t know how far I ran but my legs were screaming “WHY US?!?!” on my way back. Of course I headed back before JV. He did a 3 mi+ run. Now even though I was not able to stay with JV for the whole run it was still a good start to getting back into shape. With that I think I can get back to doing my little daily exercises.
What I do is add little workouts to my daily living so my body stays active. For example, every time I use the bathroom I have to do pull-ups. Before I take a shower I do some push ups. Before I went to sleep I used to do squats with one leg and toss a basketball straight up while on my back (to improve my shooting accuracy).
All of this really helps to get back into shape and improve overall strength. I’m not going to get bigger, gain weight, become super strong, or crazy ripped from this but it does help keep me away from becoming a slug.
The best success I have had with the little daily workouts are with pull-ups. When I started I could only do 3. That is pretty weak. Eventually, I was able to do 17 pull-ups (I add a pull-up each week) which doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m all that strong but it does mean that I’ve made an improvement. Though, it is 3 pull-ups shy of my goal of 20. Oh well, just gotta start over. I’m currently at 8 after falling back to 3!
As if you did not have enough to worry about, now you have to be cautious about tow trucks coming by in broad daylight towing your car away! I’ll provide some links to different stories but let me share my friends story.
This last Friday night (Aug 10) my friend called sounding very depressed. After initial hellos I find out that a car was stolen from in front of her house in broad daylight! From in front of her house! In broad daylight!
She had a BMW that was non-operational. She was looking forward to removing parts from it to be used in another car. In fact she had already removed some vital parts making it physically non-operational as well as on paper. In the meantime, she had it up for sale to get rid of the chassis. Earlier in the week she got a call from a guy who was interested in buying the car. He came to check it out and offered somewhere between $500-$800 for the car. They declined the ridiculously low offer. A few days later they see a couple guys who they’ve never seen in the neighborhood before checking out the car. By Friday afternoon when she got back home from work… the car was gone. Now the car was non-operational. Physically as well as on paper. So they figured that someone had to have towed it. They filed a stolen vehicle report with the police and found it yesterday. Guess where they found it? In a bloody towing facility! A towing facility whose number matched the number that called them about buying the car AND it happened to be right next to a body shop that was owned by the guy who offered to buy the car! What do the police do? Absolutely nothing. The car was reported unregistered and abandoned to the TOWING COMPANY. Apparently anyone can report a car in this manner to a towing company and have it towed. They do not have to involve the police to have it towed. Now, even if you can prove that the car belongs to you, you still have to pay the towing company all of the fees they charge for towing, releasing the car, storing the car overnight, and towing the car back. A complete loss and nothing illegal about it.
There are other ways this scamming works. Upon doing some reading I found out that people will make it look like they are selling the car and have it towed. Sometimes they just tow the car for no reason and they’ll make one up to have you pay to get the car back. Here are some links:
Car thefts increase due to towing scam.
Southside Towing Fraud under Investigation Illegal Tow.
Some tow companies will rip deep into your pockets with the single objective of getting as much money out of you as possible. So be careful. If your car is being worked on, do not leave it on the streets. No neighborhood is completely safe. Is there anything that can be done? It doesn’t look like it. If I ever hear any good news from my friend I’ll update the story. For now, she just has to accept the loss and be more cautious. It sucks to be paranoid about every little thing but there are a lot of shady people out there. That’s how it is sometimes. Accept the loss and move on. In the end it’s just a car, though there was a lot of financial and emotional investment in it, and there are many things we should still be thankful for. This is not to say that we shouldn’t find a way to put these crooks in their place. It’s just as it is right now there isn’t anything that we know of that can be done so we shouldn’t stress or obsess about it. It sucks. C’est la vie.
