Milton Nascimento e Seu Jorge

... are gods.

well no.

well yes.

they are both.

They are amazing, they are wonderful, they are musicians of another planet.

C:)

Lagoa

Lights reflect a shimmering surface as the hill further off sparkles like it is on fire.

In truth, I look over Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, where the sparkling kindling is not for fire, but the lights of the favela, also known as the Brasilian slums.

First world and Third world clash, when really, the country is only known for its third. Beautiful beaches, beautiful people, and a beautiful language coupled with dirt and metal shacks that welcome you as you drive from the airport into the heart of Rio. What a place.

Cars whiz pass, again, using the lanes only as mere suggestions. Couples walk and runners jog around Lagoa beautifully lit around it circumference. The lights reflect off of the lake like spotlights in a laser show and looking at this view, it is hard to believe that this country is anything but paradise.

Voices from inside startle. Voices from outside suggest tranquility.

I don't mean to be poetic. I think I actually do a horrible job of it.

Oh, mosquitos. I forgot that those things exist. Mosquitos with Dengue? Even better. But I have yet to encounter one and i have et to be bitten by one, so perhaps for now, I'll be okay.

I wish I could accurately describe this view. It's impossible. It is beautiful. And if i woke up and went to sleep looking at this view every single day as I grew up, I think I would've grown up to be a very different person. Very different.

C:)

Guaraná, Acai, Matte, e Brasil.

Bom Dia. Bom noite? Boa noite? Boa sorte for sure.

What an interesting country.

It looks like Hawaii, feels like Japan, and the people remind me of Spaniards. My mind is on overload and when B asks me a question, all I can do is sit there and stare at him blankly. It makes for a great dynamic.

The air is so humid that I feel that i could drink the air when i was thirsty. Exaggeration? Perhaps, but not a completely inaccurate one. Life here is lazy. You couldn't tell that by watching the cars whizzing below. There was a cary that switched lanes in between two other cars that didn't originally give it space to cross lanes. I don't think they know how to drive between lanes here, either. It's kind of like... "get out of my way, and i you don't, it's your own fault." It is as if the lanes are a suggestion rather than a law, and the people here are not big on taking suggestions.

The living room is spiritual white, as I might call it, clean and uncluttered. Very different from the other expat house that I'm used to where everything was country style and overly ethnic. No, this one is clean, simple, earth toned, and very calming. I feel that it's a reflection of the state of mind of the mother. This mother is less... "scrapbooky" and more "chillaxed in a spiritual way," though she seems to have her crazy moments if given the opportunity.

I don't even think I should be making comparisons, but here, I suppose i'm free to to do whatever I want.

So the clouds and the fog has rolled in, but now it's not rolling out. Unlike Terry might think in LA, this is actual fog, not smog like down south. This fog won't kill you, where as his fog would.

Its green and tropical here but in a unapologetic way. It compliments the spiritual white that I named the living room. It all works. I think my mother often tries, but it doesn't quite fit together the way she might want it to.

I had no expectation for sun here, so even if it is cloudy, it doesn't bug me much. It kind of adds to the beauty and idea of "amazon." I'll take it as it comes. I don't even think it's that's chilly. Chilly would be having to wear a sweatshirt or a sweater over my clothes, but sitting in a tank top watching fog and rain is not chilly, it's just the Amazon.

Uneventful day, I suppose, but very relaxing.

I may like this country and it's multitude of fruits and such.

I may like this language as well.

We'll see, eh?

bom noite. or maybe it was boa noite.

in any case.

C:)

Bucket List

The Bucket List:

- publish something
- learn to speak French
- learn to speak Portuguese
- visit India
- travel around South East Asia
- learn to play the Drums
- get my nose pierced
- paint a mural
- visit South Africa
- visit Switzerland
- swim by a large waterfall
- go to the Maldives
- be in the New York Times

to be continued...

C:)

Clearing the Mind and Heart

Homuncular... That's a chart often used by brain people.

It shows how sensitive each "part" of your body is. According to Scientific American Mind , that is why we enjoy kissing. According to the Homuncular chart, our face, or more importantly, our lips, have the most nerves.

It's like, "hello, let's make out, and exercise our most sensitive body part!"

Haha...

But on to the topic of my title.

I've decided that I need to figure out a way to clear my mind and heart when certain emotions or thoughts begin to arise. Right now, I think the best way I can do it is by meditating on it. I generally like to clear my head and steady my heart beat to a really slow beat so that I can put my body to a complete rest. I feel that if I meditate on clearing my mind, there will be a certain thinking that has to occur to make it happen. I suppose I'll just have to understand that as a given.

Maybe by practicing and honing down the skill of "clearing" my head and heart, I'll be able to do it when I'm not in a meditative state.

That is what I'm going to work on this weekend.

I realized that my thoughts and emotions are determined too easily by this one constant in my life. While I like that constant, I also want to be able to be independent from it.

To be independent from it, unfortunately, doesn't mean to simply be physically distant from that constant. It means that I have to be able to free myself from any emotional and mental attachments or connections that I might have with my constant.

So this is my goal this weekend.

I will clear my mind and my heart. I will work toward clearing my mind and my heart.

And in the process, I'll also stop by that spiritual store that I liked so much.

That's exciting.

What is he talking about? I am excited. I just don't show it because for some reason you make me less excited.

I am excited.

Very.

C:)

Homuncular Flexibility

Apparently this website doesn't acknowledge "homuncular" and an actual word. What the computer doesn't know is that it is a word, because that's exactly what is being discussed right now.

Homuncular Flexibility - Jaron Lanier, pioneer of virtual reality.

Why study virtual reality?

You know, I'm not sure. But I think the best response could be that, that's where life is taking us. Anything related to technology is slowly moving in that direction, so it only makes sense to study. If our entertainment industry (e.g. Shrek, WOW, Second Life) is going in that direction, and that's where the money is (and not to say that our lives are revolved around money, though in our Capitalist society that is Western Culture, it's a fair assessment), then it only makes sense to study this.

And I say this as my professor twists his arm back and forth, round and round, to describe the relevancy of our movements in relation to variability of movement.

Or something like that...

There are those of us who feel bad when we don't pay full attention in class, via, let's say, surfing the internet during class. We are not fully engaged in the conversation, and probably aren't getting much out of the 50,000 dollars that you pay for class. That said, however, compare not being fully engaged in class due to a distraction versus not paying attention whatsoever because you've fallen asleep. Now that is just as bad, I feel.

At least, if I'm on my computer, I'm paying attention because I'm awake, so if the image in front of me changes, or the voice of this little, well dressed (kind of) guest lecturer changes, I'll notice it, and give him and the lecture the attention it deserves.

If you fall asleep though... well then that's just out right rude, because the lecturer knows for a fact that you're not paying attention, and furthermore, may make the false conclusions (maybe) that we are disinterested and thus would rather be asleep than be engaged in his presence. Whatever the case may be, falling asleep during lecture, in a small lecture room, where everyone can see you asleep, that is breaking the rules of lecture etiquette 101.

So apparently, my tongue does not have as many degrees of freedom as many people do. I can't do all those cool things with your tongue that many people can.

Ugh. That said...

That said...

He (professor that will remain unnamed as he is a prominent member of the virtual reality and HCI world and could very well google his own name and land upon my blog...) ended lecture early and abruptly for reasons, I think I accurately assume, mentioned above. I think too many people were falling asleep. Hey! The weather's gotten better, it's warm in the lecture, and the lights are off so that we can all mindlessly copy down bullet points from the great invention that is PowerPoint. Why shan't we fall asleep?

"Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!"

Thank you blogspot.

now good bye.

peace

C:)

let's begin...

After discovering this idea of "blogging" nine years ago, I question why it is that I'm starting one again... I think I'm drawn to this idea of "published thoughts," when really very few people will see this. Nonetheless, this is one of those "spur of the moment, i have nothing better to do" things.

I sit in the corner of a theater, like I have been doing for sometime, seriously contemplating, for once in my life, what I want to do for the next few months with the opportunities presented in front of me.

Looking back, I don't really know why I began blogging. At one point, and perhaps quite recently, I realized that I had been blogging for quite a long time. I haven't, however, "published" anything for a while. Perhaps this will be a good mental exercise.

I have yet to figure out what I want to shape this blog to be. It may just be the daily ramblings of my life. It may also be a platform for opinions and ideas that I usually don't share... Like politics, the news, drama that has been circling around me. I don't share much, even to the people I love, and yet I find it perfectly reasonable to say exactly how I feel and what I feel to perfectly good strangers that may stumble upon this blog.

It's a mystery that comes with modern technology. I mean, even as I type, this website is "autosave-ing" everything that I type. It realizes that technology cannot be trusted, and thus makes it appear as though it cares about what you write, and wants to save it for you so you don't ever lose it.

I just hope that my blogging here does not stop me from my other writing that I have been doing.

So perhaps I should clearly define now as to what I want to use this for.

I think this will be a canvas for my opinions -- opinions that I may not write in my journal, but want to share with someone (that would mean you, anonymous reader), and perhaps I can present it with a bit of umph, gusto, and humor.

Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea.

So for now, I leave you with this opening post of random thoughts about nothing, and leave you with an adieu.

Please come back, and hopefully the next time, I'll have something more interesting to say.

Peace

C:)