Kaiko’s place is nice.  The sofa makes a soft bed and the insulation for the apartment is much better than the house in PG.  No complaints.

I finished watching “Just Married” about half an hour ago.  Ashton Kucher and Brittney Murphy.  The premise was marriage at young age and the perennial issue of whether love is enough to sustain a marriage over time.  The movie was… blah.  But, it got me thinking.  It got me thinking about Alicia Keys’ song, “When You Really Love Someone”:

‘Cause a man just ain’t a man if he ain’t man enough

To love you when you’re right
Love you when you’re wrong
Love you when you’re weak
Love you when you’re strong
Take you higher in a world when you’re feeling low
He’s giving you his last, ’cause he’s thinking of you first
Giving comfort when he’s thinking that you’re hurt
That’s what it’s like when you really really love someone

Shit.  It’s like listening to a critique of my love for L.  How can I say that I really loved her if it was conditional?  Did I really love her as much as I did if I don’t feel shitty when I think about our break-up?  No heartache.  No regrets.  No “fuck-I-lost-a-good-thing” feeling.  I’m glad it’s over.  I have that feeling Tim Robbins got when he crawled out of the sewers in “Shawshank” — the exhilaration of freedom.  But, that’s it.  How could I have loved L. so truly and deeply if my happiness now can be equated to Robbins’ after escaping prison by crawling through football fields of feces?

It’s a fucking mystery that I’ve tried to solve with all my closest of friends.  No explanation so far really strikes as the right one.

I suspect that I’m just really, really, really pissed off and I’m trying to keep an Hiroshima-type explosion on the down-low… a Southeast Asian tsunami-like sobbing session at bay.  Did this break-up fuck me up so bad, so deeply that I’m still incapable of fully experiencing its full effect?  Was I so thoroughly wounded that I had to shut off my ability to feel about anything related to this relationship?  It would make sense.  I close out any feelings so that I wouldn’t feel the pain, and, as a side-effect, I feel like I’m over L.  I feel like I’ve moved on, that I’m neither attached nor feel the love I once had for her.  Geez… and I thought I was good at understanding myself.

When I drove home that night after leaving R. and her friends, I started thinking about how much I missed that feeling.  That feeling of being around someone who made you enjoy the moment.  Carpe diem.  I always live for the future, work for that day when I would reach my various goals.  When I was with L., I just loved being around her.  I didn’t care about the next day or worried about the future.  I didn’t mind what we were doing as long as I was with L.  I didn’t care where we were going as long as she was going with me.  It was… goddammit… love.

So, I was driving home and David Gray starting singing “Be Mine”:

From the very first moment I saw you
That’s when I knew
All the dreams I held in my heart
Had suddenly come true…

Fuck.  I was bawling.  The tears ran down my face and clouded my vision like the rain that poured on my windshield as I entered Monterey that night.  It felt so good to cry.  I hit the repeat button just so the lyrics could elicit all my pent up emotions again.  Could I have been any more morbid?

I wrote it off, though.  I wrote it off as my feelings for R. that were twisted into my recollections of L. But, maybe those tears were genuinely for our dead relationship?

Whether or not I’m suppressing the full impact of this break-up, I just hope it doesn’t manifest during any new relationship.

I am taking forever to reflect on this past year and the new semester is about to begin.  Damn… where to begin?

Career
I quit my job as a loan officer in 2004.  The money was less than what I expected and I learned what I needed to learn to continue on my own.  More importantly, I was inspired to go back to my original plan to be in international business.  I want to keep my license.  And, I still need to come up with a business plan to launch retail mortgage as a side business.

Academics
So, I applied to b-school.  And, I got into my school of choice (although, admittedly, my school of choice wasn’t very selective).  Now, here I am, at Monterey.

My degree will involve three semesters.  I just finished my first and most difficult one.  It was difficult because I had to do the International Business Plan (IBP) right from the get-go.  A typical MBA student is supposed to take the IBP only in his last semester.  And since I’m an Advanced Master’s International candidate, the school’s curriculum deemed I was ready for the capstone course in my first semester.  Although I was a bit nervous at first, I soon realized that I was more than capable for the task.  Although stressful, I had a very successful semester.  I impressed a lot of new people, learned new skills, and managed to keep good grades.

I still need to write an entry about the IBP itself.  But, I’ll save that for later.  I think I’ll just keep this entry a topical summary.

Social
I met relatively few people compared to my days at Humboldt.  During the first couple of months when I started my undergrad, I met over 50 people.  By the end of the first year, I could not walk across campus without saying “Hi” to twenty.  After my first semester here, I’m lucky if I can remember ten of my classmates’ names.  The IBP really consumed me.  My social life was completely forsaken.

However, there are a few notables.  During the summer program, I found a new good female friend, R… I chuckle at the thought of this friend:  R-nita Scandalita.  She’s not as wild as the “aura” around her seems to convey.  I wouldn’t typically gravitate towards someone like R. since I’m such a boring guy.  But, we were able to talk openly and we developed a strong friendship that continues even though she’s back in Virginia.

S. I met through R.  And, while R. went back to the East Coast, S. stayed here at MIIS to study Translation & Interpretation.  S., although from Beijing and this being the first ever in the United States, speaks English better than most Americans I know.  Even more impressive, when she’s doing her interpretive work, she has a British accent.  How cool is that?  In a way, S. replaced R.  But, to my slight disappointment, S. does not appreciate the degree of disclosure that I am used to with R.  All in all, she is a great friend.  A great person to spend time with.

I made some guy friends, too!  F., I met through an MBA classmate.  He came to MIIS from Taiwan to improve his English and study for his GREs.  I helped him a bit as a language partner.  And, he helped me a bit during my Mandarin summer program.  When the partner bit was over, it translated into a good friendship.  F., sadly, moved further north to pursue his graduate degree in aerospace.  But, I hope to continue my friendship with F.  He is very mature and has a very good heart.

B. I met from odd circumstances.  He asked me out on a date.  As soon as I cleared the air about my sexuality, we were able to hang out.  He is also very mature and somewhat of a film buff.  So, I hope he doesn’t mind having another straight friend.  I’ve lost contact with him over the Winter Break.  So, I hope to rejuvenate the budding friendship we had before the final hours of IBP threw us to the winds.

Love
I broke up with L.  Quite a tragedy considering how much I love(d?) her.  I guess it’s a bit ironic, too.  Besides taking me for granted, lacking in affection, being a bit naive about men-women relationships, giving off a cold, stand-offish personality, and missing critical conflict-resolution skills… L. is a great woman.  She’s smart, determined, assertive, and holds strong family values (not in the Republican-sense… hmm, on second thought, she is pro-life and a closet anti-gay, holds a strong self-responsibility stance towards marginalized people — perhaps she’s a Republican afterall?  Haha!)  But her nose has been in her textbooks for too long and she is not as well-rounded as I imagined her to be.  Yes… I know.  Since when is anybody who we imagined them to be?  True.  However, for me to have loved her so strongly only to be taken for granted even before we’re even married, I came to realize that she could not make me happy.

Anyway, a huge entry can be made about this event in my life.  I’ll save that for some other time.

In other Love news… I have been on the dating scene for a bit.  Can’t really call it much, but there were some prospects.  Now, sad to say, there are none.  No one interesting.  I’ve met many women whom I can have a good time with.  However, I haven’t met a woman who can inspire me to write in verse like L. managed to do at one point.  I don’t think I will for some time.  Shucks… such a tragedy.  I loved writing poetry.  I loved thinking about what to do next to sweep her off her feet.  Damn… I loved being able to say “I love you” all the time.  Eh.  The yearning will pass.  I will love again.

Family
My parents are doing well.  They don’t seem to be arguing as much.  My dad finished remodeling the master bedroom after a decade being a “work-in-progress.”  His next 10-year project?  The roof.  Hah!  Oh, which reminds me: I worked with my dad to redo the roof.  It’s only partially done, but what a great feeling to work side-by-side with my dad.  As a teenager, I hated working with my dad because it was such hard labor.  And I’m such a pussy when it comes to getting my hands dirty.  But, having grown some balls over the last eight or ten years, and minus the raging horomones that augment any emotion, I really enjoyed being in the hot sun, ripping off the shingles of our roof.  It had a strong feeling of accomplishment.

My mom is still dealing with her diabetes.  It is more or less under control, but I worry about her sometimes.

My little cousins are all growing up.  I can still terrorize Feigao with impunity.  And, I can still pick up Tracy in my arms.  I doubt I’ll be able to do that when I come back from the Peace Corps.  I better enjoy each moment while I can.

Personal Accomplishments
I think I lost my fluency with Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”  I haven’t practiced that piece in quite a long time.  I also haven’t picked up my guitar either.  So, musically, I’ve degenerated.

My Mandarin, having not practiced regularly and deliberately, also have decayed.

My fat, however, gratefully fell off.  I went from a 180 going on 185 to a 160 going on 155.  Although I may be slimmer, I have maintained much of my lean muscle.  So, I no longer have a spare tire.  I can see more definition in my arms, my chest and my abs.  In the physical sense, I’ve done well.

I would still like to learn Beethoven’s “Appassionata.”  I want to sing some Jackie Cheung songs in Mandarin.  I want to learn more about wine tasting.  And I want to learn how to use Flash to develop my own webpage.

I also want to develop my own investment system.  After taking that Financial Statement Analysis class this Winter, I have taken a new interest in an hobby of mine.  So, I guess I should add that to the list.

Conclusion
The year 2004 was a year of new beginnings and abrupt endings.  The outlook is bright.  I’m alive and healthy, and I still got a lot of uppity goodness in me.  So, here’s to 2005!