On Karma

As a 20-something year old, I often times feel like the 6 month old child that just learns that hitting your head with a spoon HURTS. You know the seen. The baby is bouncing in the chair happy about who knows what, when inevitably the kid hits his head with the spoon, and then what happens? Tears come streaming forth. With lound cries for good measure.

To those older than the infant, its patently obvious that hitting yourself hard with a solid object hurts, but how the hell is the baby supposed to know? That's how I feel about the lesson on karma I've learned recently. Older, more wise, folk know what I'm about the lessons I've learned. But how the hell else was I supposed to know?

Over the past few weeks I've been lamenting about how crappy things have been happening TO me. To me, is important b/c I don't think I had a direct hand in anything that happened recently, they just happened.

The first thing that runs through my mind when shitty things happen is, "why ME??? what did I do??" The answer dawned on me today. Case in point (if you read the other post about the dentist thing, you might want to skip this part)-

When I was in NY my tooth chipped. I have no idea why, i was just biting my thumb/biting my nail, then bam, chipped. Its not a huge chip, hardly noticable - especially given everyone's self absorption. People are too self absorbed to pay that much attention to you. Regardless, I spazzed. It happened on a weekend so when Monday came, I called every dentist possible to schedule an appointment given the type of insurance I had. Before I went on break I enrolled in this "Discount savings plan" for dentistry coverage. The advertisement came through my school website so I figured, better that than nothing.

The plan has a website so I went on in and looked up doctors around the area and found one, made an appointment and vuala! I got to the office and the dentist was over-eager to get to work on my mouth. After she heard that I hadn't been at the dentist in for like ever, she was even happier. "We're going to give you x-rays, clean your teeth, blah blah blah." I told her to slow down. Given that I had a discount plan and not insurance, I only had funds to fix the tooth that chipped. She called in her receptionist who said that she had called the number that I gave her that was on the card and they said they covered pretty much everything and 80% of cosmetic stuff. I was weary but since I had never called the number, I thought the receptionist would know better than I.

For teeth cleaning, x-rays, and bonding my chipped tooth, I was charged $22. What a deal! I thought.. When I got home I realized that the bonding might have been crappy work. When I got back to California I got a call from the receptionist saying that the insurance company said that the claim for the work was improperly filed and that they might have to send me the bill. I thought, "HA! There is no way in hell I'm paying that bill. Especially if the work done wasn't that great." Guess what happened. A week later, the bonding that the dentist put on chipped right off! It was as if karma said, you don't want to pay? Ok. Say goodbye to the work.

Easy come easy go.

Now I'm starting to realize what my mom said once about karma being blind to certain things. She mentioned that karma only knows when you do harm. For example - a government official put on deportation duty. This officer might find a case given to him where a man, who is applying for citizenship. After investigating the man's background, the officer may find that the man has been arrested in the past for gang activities. Under the immigration law, the man is eligible for deportation. The officer decides to use this law to justify deporting the man. All of a sudden tragedy strikes the officer's family.

My mother would argue that the officer will have shitty things happen to them because of the action of deporting the man, even if the man was involved in illegal activities. Why? Because that man also had a grandmother who depended on the money he sent to her as her sole income. Now that the man is deported, the grandmother has no source of income and is left destitute. As my mom tried to explain to me, "all karma knows is that the officer caused great harm to a family. Yes the law says that the man should be deported, but regardless of what laws we construct, their are natural laws at work. Bad energy will beget bad energy."

Hmmm I thought. Does this mean that we should always turn the other cheek when we see something wrong just because we don't want to have shitty things happen to us? "No, thats stupid" my mom said. She mostly said that when things like that happen we just have to be aware that life isn't always black and white. There is a lot of gray area and that there are forces above and beyond human control that balance energy in the world.

So in essence, karma isn't fair. I wonder if it even operates on the idea of what's "right."

Case in point my chipped tooth. Is it fair for me to have to pay for services that were badly performed? I don't think so. But, b/c I don't pay, the dentist who took time and resources to do the work (even if shitty) doesn't get compensate = bad energy hanging around me.

I think karma also has to do with why my skin has been so bad lately. I often talk shit about my classmates. In a way I guess I carry an air (sp?) that I think I'm better than people. This is not my true sentiment, as I think that the people I'm in class with must have incredible talents above and beyond my own (even if I don't see it on a daily basis), BUT I probably do come off as arrogant since I generally just don't care. Being arrogant, or even coming off arrogant = bad. So what happens to me? My face breaks the hell out to bring me down to earth; to make others realize that I'm not as flawless as I may seem to appear.

Fair enough.

So then the question is raised, does karma only work if you know you've wronged a person? I'm not sure about this one. I mean I know its not a good thing to not pay people. I know its not a good thing to talk about people in a bad way. But what about those people who seem to be nice and all but just have shitty things happening to them all the time?

Well I'd venture to guess that either A.) They're not as nice as you think or B.) Karma may work on a macro-level; in the sense that it can be greater than an individuals life such that there will be people in life who have it absolutely shitty and there will be people in life who have an amazing time with everything.

My mother also has this saying "don't let karma use you." Meaning, don't put yourself in a position to do harm to a person b/c you think they clearly deserve it because you will pay for it later. I'm pretty sure I know the person who dented my car over the weekend. There aren't many blue cars in the parking lot and this woman is particularly horrible at parking. At weak moments I just want to walk over to her car and kick it! But, I will not be used by "karma." She has it coming to her, as would I if I was the person to give "it" to her.

Today I also realized that I've been focusing on the negative aspects of karma. It should stand to reason that if I do a lot of good, a lot of good will come my way. I'm convinced this is why I've seen so many doctors with really good skin. I mean they look so good for their age I usually guess they're at least 5-10 years younger than they actually are. Med school is kicking my ass right now, so I don't exactly have time to be saving orphan kids at the moment, but maybe I can work on being a nicer person to people even if I don't know them... or care :)

I'm sure that as I continue to mature I'll refine my thoughts about karma a bit, but these days it makes more sense to me than anything else.

There's Gotta be More to Life

I think recently life has been trying to send me a big hint, an FYI. I'm pretty sure of it as things just seem to be going crappily. What's the message? Don't sweat the small stuff and take the time to fight for yourself. These messages may be somewhat antithetical, but I guess it makes sense. My mom has constantly been telling me these two things, but I think in life you have to rack up enough experiences and be willing to see the message in order to really learn any lesson that will stick.

My crazy roommate situation (see October, I believe) taught me the latter lesson. If nothing else, she was always fighting for herself and her issues and guess what? I walked away -$800 partly due to her selfishness and she lost no money or time. I don't want to become a more selfish person. Lord knows I've been trying to become less selfish. But there are times when I keep mute because I'd rather not go through the trouble of standing up for myself. I think it also has to do with a control issue. I end up pulling way more weight than another person, not always because they dont want to do something, but because I don't tell them I need them to do something. I realize I do this b/c I don't want to deal with having to depend on another person for whom I have no control over. Case in point - my current roommate's dog keeps attacking my dog. I effin hate my roommate's dog. Not only does she attack him, but then she pees on the carpet as some kind of way of marking territory I guess. It's effin annoying and also teaches me the lesson of never having or living with a female dog again. So I initially saw two solutions - move out, or keep my dog locked in my room. Both of these solutions do not factor in any efforts my roommate can take to make the situation better and reflect the fact that I'm always thinking of what I need to do as opposed to a broader view of what everyone needs to do. I reallly don't have the time nor energy to move and the idea of keeping Max locked in my room everyday just didn't seem appealing. So instead, I finally decided to actually "compromise" with my roommate. We would altnernate the days on which each dog could freely roam the common space while we're gone and she has to be extremely careful of the whereabouts of her dog when Max is around. Problem fixed. Stand up for yourself and what you need Bang and make others accountable for what needs to happen. If I would have done the same thing in my roommate situation, I would have asked her from the get-go to help me select a roommate by putting up ads and interviewing people. If she refused then at that point I would tell her that I will find whoever is willing to move in then and it would have saved me the headache of finding a good "fit." And saved at least $300 lost in rent due to someone moving in the middle of the month.

Don't sweat the small stuff...

After coming back from London where I stayed with my uncle and aunt for a bit, both of whom are dentists, I chipped my tooth. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. I was biting a nail and a small piece chipped. My mom looked at it and said that it was hardly noticible. But for whatever reason I freaked out and immediatly went to a dentist. I called the dentist, told them the kind of insurance I had - its not so much insurance as much as a discount plan for dentistry work - and went in to see someone the same day. The dentist was so eager to clean my teeth and perform x-rays but I was hesitant b/c I knew I had a discount plan, not actual insurance. The receptionist assured me that she had called the number on the card and they told her they covered preventative services and would cover 80% of getting my tooth fixed. So the dentist whisked me away and started performing procedures. At the end of it all I paid 20 bucks. Not bad.

Though when I got home I started to think the work the dentist did was shoddy. I could feel the bonding she put on my tooth and every once in a while, some of the bonding would chip off. When I returned to California, about 2 weeks later, I received a phone call from the same receptionist. She asked me if I gave her the correct number for the Dental plan and said that my insurance company sent them back the claim form and said that the claim was filed incorrectly. She asked me if I had another form of insurance and then said, "I just want to know who to send this in to. I don't want to have to send you the bill." I thought ha! after such shoddy work I'm not paying a dime over what I've already been charged, and I voiced my concern about which dental plan she was talking about. Anyway, I haven't really had time to deal with that issue. And then something funny happened. I was biting on a tortilla chip, granted a particularly hard one, and the bonding that the dentist performed, came off!

So now I'm faced with the possibility of paying a big dental bill for shitty work! I wonder if I would have just waited to have things done in California, or if I would have said, "you know what, it is hardly noticible, not worth worrying about," that things would have turned out better.

Not to mention when I got back I vowed to get my finances in order. And the funny thing is I've been double-billed, lied to by agents, and just generally frustrated with trying to make sure everything is paid off.

And the mother of it all, today I walked out to walk my dog and saw my car. Someone dented it.

The weird thing is that I didn't have a massive anxiety attack. I just looked at it, took some pictures in case, shrugged my shoulders and went on with my day.

I've decided that if I don't want to suffer from a major coronary heart attack, I'm going to have to stop worrying about the inconsequential stuff. My life has been extremely tough at times, but I'm still at a place a lot of people would for. I went to a good school, gained a lot from it intellectually and personally, and I'm in the process of achieving my life long dreams. So really, everything else is small stuff. I don't even have much time to sweat the small stuff since there are things in my life that are the size of boulders that need to be attend to first.

Hopefully things will stop going crappily soon.. but I'm not holding my breath :)

The Root of It

I was talking to another friend of mine that I hadn't spoken to in a while (notice a patter here? sigh)

Anyway I was cathing up with life and I told her how the bf was going off to training and how I felt bad that I was being mean to him almost everyday until the actual day before and to my surprise she gasped and exclaimed, "I know how you feel!"

My friend is engaged and her and her fiance lived apart for two years while he was still in school. She told me about the ridiculous fights that they would have and how prior to them being long distance, she could count the amount of fights they had over 3 years on one hand. After he moved, they were bickering almost every couple of days.

One great thing I got out of the conversation is that my friend helped me see why I was so annoyed at the bf and being nit picky.

For one, you're already annoyed that you don't get to be with the person. But then you tell yourself you can understand b/c they are supposed to be doing something important. But as soon as they deter from any course of action they originally said they were going to take, tempers flair.

I don't know if this is a girl thing or not. I'm not exactly sure that guys always feel this way. But I guess its a lesson in why its bad to play the blame game on others when YOU are feeling bad. I mean of course people can purposely or inadvertantly cause you harm, but there are always layers to an issue. You may think you've gotten to the last layer until you suddenly realize that there is another issue at hand.

I guess you know when you've gotten to the root of the problem when you try to fix it based on its cause and it actually works. Blaming the bf for slacking didn't make me feel better. But understanding that I was more annoyed with the fact that he wasn't with me AND decided to do something else helped me let go of the reigns a bit.

Now I can dig my heels into this quarters work and hopefully make it through!

I can tell its going to be another few months before I can catch up with people again.

In the meantime, on with life...

Not seeing the trees for the forest

My mother and I came to the same conclusion about something, at about the same time. I am too focused on the future, and have little ability to just live in the present. "Life is about the journey, not about the destination," my mom said. I completely agreed w/ her. My focusing on the future so much gets me in a lot of trouble, and weirdly enough, can make me unrealistic about things.

In an earlier post I wrote about advice a friend gave me about choosing between a fixer upper and a modern home - go with the modern home. In other words, if I find that my bf's traits aren't exactly compatible with my own, I can find someone who fits perfectly.

I still don't know if I agree with the perfect fit, but as I am slowly learning how to see what's here today, instead of fantasizing about the future, I'm starting to wonder if the 5% that my bf doesn't have is the 5% that I NEED to have.

Earlier in the week he asked me what I was going to do w/ my weekend. I told him I was so behind that I was going to spend the whole weekend studying. He said that since he had to take the GRE on Monday that he was going to spend the weekend studying as well.

Well yesterday he called me drunk. I don't usually associate drunkeness with the ability to get much work done the following day, so I assumed right there that his plan to study would be shot to hell, regardless of the impending exam. I couldn't blame him too much since it was his father's birthday and his family did all plan to go out for dinner, so thats ok. I was feeling especially crappy about other things yesterday so I didn't much feel like talking to a drunk bf so I sort of cut him off and hung up on him. He called back asking if I was mad at him and I briefly told him that I wasn't and that I was having issues with other things. He probed further, but again, there is no use talking to a drunk person about something important when you are in fact sober, so I told him that there really was no point in talking about it and that I'd talk to him later. He then asked "are you on the rag?" I told him no, then hung up. I swear if he was in my presence I would have punched him in the face.

Today I was attempting to procrastinate so I called him later in the evening. I knew he was driving from the noise in the background and I thought, hm, I thought you were going to study, but it sounds like you're going to get drunk again.. so again so much for that. I really shouldn't have asked what he was up to since it just pissed me off further. "Yeah we just went to Hooters, it was disappointing, now we're going to some bar. blah blah blah." Again, annoyed and not wanting to really talk about what was annoying me I told him I had to go back to work. He wouldn't let me get off the phone and kept asking me inane questions - probably sensing my annoyance and trying to combat it - and ended up apologizing for his "on the rag" comment. If nothing else, my bf is good at knowing what pisses me off and apologizing for it if he can. But there are other things that would probably make him feel bad for admitting so he doesnt mention them. Like the fact that he scrapped the whole studying plan. He probably knows that I am judging him on this but doesnt want to say anything about it b/c hey, what's the point. It would only make him feel bad for not being able to stick to his plan.

After I got off the phone with him I started thinking w/ a new perspective. In my hopes of building a future together, I kind of ignored/downplayed our potential incompatabilites. My bf's a smart guy; not intelligent but smart. - My mom used to hammer in the difference between smart and intelligent in our discussions when I was younger. To her, smart means that you are able to make decisions quickly based on few facts and little understanding of underlying principles. Basically, you're good at synthesizing data on a superficial level. Intelligence, to her, meant that you were pretty much book smart. An intelligent person can read, understand, and then synthesize data based on this understanding. So there are certain domains that an intelligent person would excel in that a smart person couldn't and vice versa. You can be both smart and intelligent, or one or the other, or neither :) My mom feels that she is smart and that I am intelligent. A superficial example is the fact that I couldn't find my way out of a paper bag b/c I'd probably overthink it and get lost, but my mom would get out in record timing. I think the underlying principle is that smart people rely on instincts that are particularly attuned to their environment and their work, whereas intelligent people rely more on their knowledge base and intellect. I always liked my mom's definition of the two, so regardless of whether its valid I still stick to it when describing a person.

But I digress. So my bf's smart, and sometimes impresses me with his wealth of knowledge on topics he spends no time thinking about in a given day. But smart doesn't always get you where you need to go, just the same as intelligence can actually hinder a person. So in my head, even if you think you're smart enough to do well on a test, maybe you should sit your ass down and study just to make SURE you are not making assumptions about your intelligence level. But more importantly, my bf seems almost allergic to intellectual persuits. He left UCSD, an arguably good school, to go to Cal Poly, an O.K. school, why? B/c he didn't like the social life at UCSD and he didn't like that the curriculum focused on pontificating to no end. He found the exercise of thinking endlessly about something to be useless. Cal Poly offered a different curriculum. Apparently a major part of Cal Poly's focus is to teach its students how to be the best at their trade. And that's what he enjoyed.

That's fine, but I guess I've always felt that the move from UCSD to Cal Poly is a defining part of who he is. He is O.K. with not being the best if it means enjoying the moment for what it is. That's ok I guess. The problem with this view though is that if you're constantly choosing to enjoy the moment rather than exercising some degree of delayed gratification, when do you ever get to where you want to go?

I admit that I'm almost TOO good at delaying gratification, and living from moment-to-moment can be a good thing. But at some point, I feel the latter way of life impairs your upward movement - socially, intellectually, financially, career-wise. More than that, I'm also really coming to terms with the fact that I won't be the same me in 4 years. Med school is a process that breaks you down so it can build you back up. My undergrad experience was the same way and I became a better person for it. But, it makes all the more sense to me now why couples rarely make it through the ordeal. People can change dramatically in the way they think and behave in just 4 years. Yeah, they may be the same people at their core, but the process lends itself to a lot of transformation. Therein lays the problem - instead of growing closer to a partner, you can actually grow farther and farther apart. So instead of becoming 100% for each other you may get down to 75% or 50%.

As I talked to my bf tonight I thought to myself, OMG! can I imagine talking to him after having a full shift in the PICU about how he just got back from Hooters? Ahh heelllz no. And I think that's why I was pushing so hard for him to go to grad school, b/c I know, if he doesn't take the time to emerse himself in deep intellectual pursuits, we are going to be in different universes when I get out of school.

I've decided that I'm no longer going to push him to do anything. I can't force what will or won't happen. If he chooses not to go to grad school that has to do with who he fundamentally is and I've heard enough stories about how trying to "change a man" just does not work. Except for the longest time I didn't think I was changing him. I thought he wanted the same things I wanted. But maybe we don't really want the same things...

Before I got off the phone with him he asked me if I was doing anything tonight. "No, I'm studying." "Isn't there anything going on?" "There is always something going on. I just choose not to participate b/c I need to study. And for that matter, I've lived in this area long enough to know that, ain't nothing special going to happen if I do go out. And I'm in med school and I need to devote time to this." He then went on to say how he and his best friend were just talking about that fact - that I was in med school, and not only med school but a prestigous one, and how it must be insane blah blah blah.

Part of me still wonders if I am judging him prematurely. In a conversation I had with him a while back I learned that he feels strange about turning 30 (he's currently 27) and that he wants to get all of his "saturday nights hangin at the bar" days out now since when he turns 30 he feels that he'll be too old to go out anymore... Plus I'm just so used to people who are constantly achieving amazing things even at a young age that I wonder if my vision of what's acceptable at what age is a bit skewed. But do these doubts even matter? I mean its not like he's going to wake up on his 30th b-day and think, wow I'm 30 now, time to get more serious than I've ever been!

Sigh, I don't know anymore. Having the conversation with my mom was definetly eye opening. I used to think that focusing on the future was for the best. For me, seeing the forest was way more awe inspiring than seeing the trees. But now I'm starting to understand that if all you are looking at is forest, how can you trully understand the individual parts that it is comprised of? I will try to live more for the moment and try to realize that I can't just hope that things will get better. I have to make things feel worth doing everyday.. well at least frequently enough that I don't want to impale myself on something sharp :-/ And with all of this gained perspective, I also know that I can't force people to do things that they don't want to do b/c their lack of desire to do them may reflect who they are rather than just the nature of the thing. If that makes any sense...

Rambling terminated :)

The Womb

On more and more days, the thought of my leaving my room seems so damn unappealing. I dont even enjoy venturing out to the rest of the apartment. I just like my room. This may sound awfully weird for someone who loves her friends and loves to be entertained by them, but I just had a thought.

I once read somewhere that the theory of introvert vs. extrovert is that introverts had a rough childhood and thus, learned how to keep to themselves and handle their own problems. I've always known that I am an introvert, but this room business is making me believe the aformentioned theory more and more.

Maybe, introverts had it so rough that we try to recreate the one time when things were great - being in the womb. My room is nice and warm b/c I have my space heater blasting. My bed is nice and big and comfy. And my bed pretty much doubles as my desk so I can reach everything I need.

Ok, I know I'm sounding like a 35 year old obese woman who can't leave her house but really. Med school is getting tougher and tougher, and its getting harder to handle the little bumps in life with all the stress that is already accumulated. So I think now I just long for the days where all I had to do was float around and sleep. Everything else was taken care of....

Sigh

The Wrong Reasons to Dump a Person

There are a few quotes that come to mind when I read the title:

"If you have someone with a good soul and they care about you, you should hold onto them like the grip of death. You know what happens to women who dump good men? They end up with endless subscriptions to Match.com and Eharmony gripping happy pills."

"If you look back on the time when you first met, first started to get to know each other, and still smile, there is a reason to continue loving."

I'm bad at remembering details, so those quotes weren't verbatim, but they convey a basic point. Summed up well in a Pussy Cat Dolls song, "No body's gonna love me better, I'mastickwitchu forever."

LOL. Ok I'll stop w/ the bad song lyrics, random quotes, and strange title and get to the point.

I recently caught up with a friend I hadn't talked to in quite a while. As is what happens with girlfriends, we got on the topic of relationships. She told me about her current situation, I told her about mine. One thing about my situation made her concerned. I expressed to her my concern about my bf's path to his destination. He wants to run his own business, he wants to give back to his country and all that jazz, but he never seems to have a solid plan as to how he's going to accomplish these things. Or better, he has a plan, but he doesn't think it all the way through which causes him to scrap plans time and time again. For example, giving back to his country. My bf for a while wanted to join the Marines. Well that was a fun 6 months of arguing back and forth about the value of doing such a thing, especially at a time of WAR; and not just any war, a badly run war. Finally his dad talked him out of it using practicality - If you want to be around to do the things you want to do in life, joining the Marines may not be your best option. My bf never wanted a career out of the military, just some experience doing something "difficult." But for some reason it took him 6 months to realize the extremity of joining the Marines. But he still wants to give back so he's joining the Army National Guard. The one reason why I don't argue with him over this is that he is going through the officer program, which takes 2 years, and he's going into the engineering sector. So as one of his friends told him, he'll probably help build a fence in on the US-Mexico border. I don't know where the war is going, but hopefully in 2 years they won't be misusing the National Guard as much as they are now.

So he's got that goal planned out finally, leaving the whole running his own business goal to be accomplished. The problem with the business goal is that here too, he does not have a solid plan, just a destination. One week he wants to go to business school, the next week its law school, the next its, "Screw grad school! I can do it on my own." For whatever reason, his indecision makes me nervous. Especially since I love having plans. Sure I scrap them every now and again, but having a solid plan on how I'm going to get somewhere puts me at ease.

My friend picked up on this and gave me the following advice: "Do you want an old beat up Victorian that you can remodel or do you want a new modern home? The right package is out there, you don't have to work on a guy and hope it'll all work out in the end. You especially don't want to spend all of your 20's on one guy and regret it. You're at a school with a lot of options, you should date around."

I appreciated my friend's advice. She is older than me and has more experience in the dating world.. so for a day or two I thought about her advice. And I've ultimately decided that, for me at least, it doesn't make much sense.

We all have our faults. I may be going to med school but I'm not the "warmest" person of them all. I can be condescending and/or negative. I don't know a lot of things about life and in many respects I'm still really naive. I can be really judgemental or narrow minded. I can't cook, and I get sick a lot. There are probably a lot of things about me that someone would have to see as a trade-off. E.g. I wanted a stay at home mom who cooks brilliantly but instead I got a workaholic doctor who can't boil water.

The point being that, my bf isn't perfect and neither am I. And for the most part, I don't believe there are perfect packages out there that contain EVERYTHING you want. Maybe I could find a guy with such a great plan he started running his own business at 25 instead of 35. But maybe that guy wouldn't love me as much or wouldn't put up with my dog, or wouldn't be genuine or generous, or wouldn't have a backbone, or wouldn't want to make me happy.. The list goes on. To me, it seems that to gain some things, you may have to lose something else.

So I've concluded that, instead of doubting my bf so much, I should just be supportive for the most part and point out weaknesses in a plan, not to get him to scrap them, but to get him to think hard about how he wants to achieve a goal. And if we ultimately end up together great, and if not, there is something to be said about just living for the moment and enjoying what you have today.

And back to the title of the post, I can't dump someone because they are not my perfect vision. My bf's got 90% of what I want and to dump him now in hopes of finding 95%, or 100% just seems retarded since most men probably are at 25% i.e. "well, he's male." I've heard too many stories of women dumping or being dumped by guys only to spend most of their time looking for that same type of guy again. No thanks. People break up all the time for one reason or another, but I'd rather it be an extremely legitimate one - e.g. he doesn't want to marry me - rather than a minor one.

Also, if we grow old together, maybe we'll both reach the 100% level for each other.

Ugly people need accessories and London is slightly Overrated

As I sat in the Bluewater Mall in the U.K, apparently the biggest mall in the country, I looked in awe at all of the teenagers and pre-teens who were dressed so impecably! I turned and asked my mom, "WOW! These people dress so well! Better than NYC! Why?" My mom replied, "Because they're ugly. Ugly people always have to try harder. We don't need to try this hard in the U.S."

Aha. Whatever the case may be, its hard to deny that pre-teens in London are way more fashionable than a grown, Jimy Choo shoe wearing, middle-aged woman in New York City, and leagues ahead of anyone in California. As I browsed through the H&M in NYC, the difference between London and the states became even more apparent. Since I had only been back in the states for a few days, I still had an eye for London fashion. With such an eye, the clothes, at what I used to think was one of the more fashionable stores in the city, looked drab and plain. There is no doubt that the U.K. H&M has clothes that were way more stylized, fit much better, and made you feel like a rockstar when you put them on. In the NYC store, I mostly saw women trying on sweaters and sweatshirts. Not much style in that.. but such is life.

The U.K. fashion sense is one of very few things that I enjoyed about London, making it "slightly" overrated, rather than wholely overated. Truthfully I kept forgeting that I was even in another country when I was in London. I kept thinking I was in NYC, even with traffic going in the wrong (haha) direction.

But here is why I love the United States of America, above and beyond the U.K., there is a sense in the states that you can be whatever you want to be, whereas in the U.K. there is a stifling atmosphere around a person. Everyone seems so conformist in the U.K., despite their fashonista ways. I can't truly pinpoint the feeling but everything just seemed so blah. Men hardly glared at the one or two beautiful women in the entire city. I mean if everyone is so blah, I would think that the men would oggle the ones that were above and beyond.. but no. Men kept to themselves, and so did the women; making me wonder how they ever got together in the first place. Also, the druggies apparently only come out at night. In NYC it is common to see some cracked out individual claiming to talking to the President of the United States, or the King Rat of the NY sewers. But in all my time in London, I don't think I saw one outspoken crazy person.

One might ask oneself, why in the hell are outspoken crack heads a good thing? Well they're not, but I realize how distinctly American it is to truly feel that you can express yourself. Some of the crazy people talking on the streets of American cities aren't clinically crazy, or high on drugs. They just have something to say and they say it. When I first moved to California, I realized the lack of cat calling from the men, made sense for the suburbs, but there was not much of it in the cities as well. Again, why am I measuring anything good by cat calling? Well I think cat calling is a good pulse on the "realness" or expressiveness of a culture. Walk outside in a trashbag in NYC and someone will comment. You might get a whistle, or a, "girl its too cold to be wearing a trashbag." Whatever the hell it is, you'll get SOMETHING. People in NY are all too happy to just EXPRESS themselves. And for California.. its nice, but its rare to meet a "real" person who expresses their "real" ideas.

The other thing I hated about London was that I realized it was way more racist than America. In the U.S. not every racist wears it on their forehead, but if I see a person with a white sheet over his head and a hand gun, I at least know to stay away. But in London, there is just this subtle air of racism. People will hate you because you are not European but they won't say it, or act it, but you can tell. That's almost the worst kind of racism there is. Having a face of racism is much better. You can fight a face, you can fight something that people admit. But in the U.K. ha! If no one admits it, how are you to know who, or what to fight?

All in all I had a great time in the U.K.; ot because the U.K. is great but because I got to see family that I had never seen before and had only talked to over the phone. I was even there when my uncle's wife gave birth to their first child, a beautiful baby girl. Babies are soooo cuuuute! :)

But yeah, I'll go back to London to see family, and maybe for the shopping. It didn't feel so great everytime I spent my dollars, knowing that I was paying twice the price for something. Though, that does make me more sensible about my shopping. How much do I REALLY need this?

If I learned nothing else, I surely learned how much I appreciate being a citizen of the United States. Every country has their problems, but I'd much rather work through the problems here, than the ones over there.