..accomplished

I feel accomplished today--i guess, it should be yesterday. I've made a personal best in the 100 free. It's nothing to really write home about--the actual time, that is--but I feel happy that I did a good swim there. I got a 57,4s in the 100 free and my split for the 4x100 relay was a 57,3s. Not bad. I think these are all-time bests for me.

So, I'm thinking of goals for the next half of swim season.

Sub-55s 100 Free.
Sub-1m10s 100 Breast.
Sub-25s 50 Free.
Sub-2m 200 Free.

That is of course, if I get the chance to do these events.

tired. period. punto.

"I am having a very good day."

"South Coast Plaza, I love you."

"I'm gonna start a Little Saigon in every city. And there will only be Lee's Sandwiches."

--How do they do it? How do they keep their prices so low?
--It's probably because of the immigrants.

--If you don't like spicy food, then you can take the jalapenyos out.
--I'm brown.
-*What?
--I'm Indian, [with a Southern indian accent] we're the epicenter of the spice trade.

oh by the way

By the way, i have a mad desire to hold someone as i sleep tonight. Sigh. Missing that loving feeling.

Things got busy all of a sudden.

I went to competition today. i'm dead. I'm going to bed. Just wanted to tell you guys that I'm alive. That's about it.

Is There a Doctrine in the House? - New York Times

"Promoting democracy is one American foreign policy goal, and rightly so, but when it comes to relations with China, Egypt, Russia or Saudi Arabia, other national security interests must bear equal or greater weight. Moreover, promoting democracy is too difficult to be a truly viable doctrine. In Iraq, where the United States used military force to oust a regime and occupy a country, the costs have been too high and the results too uneven to furnish any kind of model for future operations." (New York Times: 8-XI-2005)

I'm tired...

So today, actually yesterday, now that it's 1am, I had a good day. I'm slowly mentally detaching from y'all know who. It's a needed step to some semblance of normality.

I'm tired...it's been a long day as well. I was beat from swim practice. I have to wake-up at 7am-ish tomorrow, in about 6 hours. It will be a tough week to complete everything I need to do. Sigh. I'm putting things on "the list" and they're getting done. I feel uber motivated and i'm following through. I feel happy because of that. I feel accomplished and that my life is moving at the speed that it should be.

I talked with my parents a bit last night--Sunday--over Skype. I don't think conference calls work so well. It's a nice idea but I don't think it works so well. We'll have to see how the other conference calls go.

The pearl is going to be the thorn in my side. He hablao con la peruana y la japonesa y estamos de acuerdo que ya hay que cambiar algo, sentimos que trabajar en la perla ahora es una pesada, o sea, quiza en otras palabras una pesadilla. Nos pesa y nos cuesta un monton. LaJ y LaP fueron a hablar con la avisora (que es la palabra?) de la perla y parece que todo les haya ido bien con aquella discussion. No he escrito exactamente sus quejas--no los quiero dejar aca--pero son importantes.

I'm ready to go to bed, so I shall.

Zee posting iz hier.

So yesterday was the day. Awesome. Glorious, kinda. But hella fun anyways.

We had the first home Soka Swim meet. I bet siobhan would be so happy. It was a lot of fun. There were three teams involved: Mills College (Oakland, CA), Chapman University, and us--Soka University. It was a three-way meet scored with three dual meets, for the girls, and for the guys it was a head-to-head dual meet. We won! The guys won! I think everyone did a good job in their races. I can see that everyone has improved quite a bit, even from just last week. Really it is all about doing it a few times, until your a bit more comfortable with it (I'm talkin about competing, hier). Personally, I don't think I got personal bests--but I did better than I thought I would on a few races. My events were the 200 Free Relay--anchor position, 200 Medley Relay--free/anchor position, 200 Free, and 100 Breaststroke. The total time for the 200 Free relay was 1:36:00 or something crazy like that--I've never seen that time before. Sadly, I can only say that I anchored the that relay like nothing else--I probably pulled the average time down. Hehe...no really. I swam with Ankur, Nate, and Jarvis--they're definitely faster than I am. The 200 medley was the same people--I want to check out my times to see if I'm getting better in any of them. This meet was the first one where I've swum "individual" events--the 200 Free and the 100 Breast. I did a lot better on the 200 Free than I thought I would: a 2:07 or something like that. I don't even want to know what my 100 Breast time was. What sucked was that the only Chapman guy that was in the event beat me by a second or so. I felt good the first bit and then around yard 75 I just puttered out. Sadly, I think it was a mental breakdown, not being focused on the race at hand that was the leading cause to my defeat there. I started thinking about the race that I would have to do in just one heat--the 200 free relay. I need to keep that in check for any other individual 100 Breasts I do, cuz that's the place it's usually at. Ojo!

So, now to today. The morning started early with an SGI meeting--planning for the November 18th District General Meeting. This was the youth division being crazy and planning out the meeting. I have to speak to Masa Mochizuki btw. Remember this andy, remember! Anyways, we had to plan out the presentation of the part on the Soka Gakkai's history. We worked out what I hope will be an awesome self-reflecting question session. The meeting is on the 20th--in two weeks! Wow! We also came up with bodhisattiva names. Hopefully we can get everyone to make up bodhisattiva names at that meeting too.

I spent a lot of the day studying. I've had a continuous break from 7:45 to now though. We had Indian Curry, made by rekha. May the she be showered with great respect...the food was amazing. Not enough curry, but still it was a gloobery slice of heaven.

Afterwards we watched the Simpsons and Family Guy. I have a new name for "fellatio," by the way: "a trouser-friendly kiss." And right now I just had a bit of El Pollo Loco. I feel good. Like you should on a Sunday.

this is going to be a tough week. There's so much to do. I have a "Final" Capstone Proposal due.

European Standardised English

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl. Zen ve vil rul ze world!!

Tired.

Today:
-Finish a paper
-Turn it in
-Work
-Swim
-Eat
-Dance.

Questions...

How about a complexified answer. The one exists. But, so do the many "ones." It really depends on who/what you want out of a relationship, I guess. I'm thinking the "one" exists for a lot of people. There's a lot of marriages going around where both partners are faithful and truly have found "the one." On the other hand, you do have a lot of people who are "turned on," and not just in the sexual way, but you know, in the mind and soul kinda way, by many people--I know people who are descent and good people who have had many "ones." I can't say both are really that wrong and that one or the other has been better for either. They've just had a very different history.

Is that what I wanted to say? I think so.

I need to breathe

I feel, much like I do while swimming, that I'm outta breath. But much like in swimming, I guess that's part of the process of becoming a better swimmer. Challenges are so tough this semester, tougher than I expected them to be. Here I am, trying my hardest to find the sunshine. I'm seeing glimmers of it, but perhaps I'm still in the midst of night waiting for the sun to rise. I see it. Barely. It starts with a growing lightness coming from the east. The change is barely noticeable, but the black sky above me has slowly started to turn a deep blue. Oddly enough, it's a warm blue. It's there, I can tell it is, it just hasn't happened yet.

Thoughts

[News recap]
-Strike by SEPTA in Philadelphia. Hmm.
-Alito Jr is the nominee for Justice of the Supreme Court
-Political Crisis in SDP (Social Democratic Party) of Germany
-Methodists remove openly lesbian minister
-No apology and no shake-up, according to the White House
-Koizumi's cabinet shake-up causes anxiety in Japanese Media
-Young man with Asperger's syndrome is the killer in AV

Happy first day of November.

Goals:
*On track with Capstone [11 XI]
*Swimming better [30 XI]

Happy

Happy first day of november.