My name is Michael Rivera and I am a Filipino-Chinese, 18-year-old student living in Canterbury, but originally from Hong Kong. My parents divorced when I was two, and when I grew up, there were two sides of me: the wild, outdoorsy, gutsy side, and the conservative, intellectual, scholarly side. I spent two years living beside a beach in the countryside. It was then that I learned how to swim, how to fish and how to ride a bike. I love the outdoors, especially when having barbecues and hiking. Outside of that time, my more studious side of me reads, writes, and has a great interest in a broad range of subjects including: television and film, travel, anthropology, human cultures, linguistics, food and drink, psychology, philosophy, literature, forensics, Greco-Roman mythology, European history and politics, South American culture and geology. My deepest love goes to, well, my best friend. But the love that exists just a tiny fraction below that amount of love goes to television series, beautiful beaches, lime margaritas, and books considered classics.
Feel free to e-mail me if you have anything you want to share, suggest, criticize, inquire or comment on! :D
If I could go back in time five years ago and meet myself and have a conversation with the thirteen-year-old me, I would tell him that there isn't anything he can't do if he tries hard enough. Only my parents, my closest friends and I know my deepest, most fundamental flaws, and one of the ones that keeps cropping up in my life is my willingness to give in to pressure, to the difficulties placed in front of me.
Someone once told me that it's way too easy to give up and do nothing. He told me that most people are born with either a need to always keep trying 'til they reach the top, or no such compulsion at all. Either they are goal-orientated, or they're happy-go-lucky.
I was born as one of the competitive ones who thirsted for success. It mattered to me who won at Monopoly games, and what grades I got in primary school, and who could be the most fun to be around and have the most friends at school.
But somewhere along the way, I know I gave up on myself. I started giving in to time constraints, not caring about the grades, or the attendance, and openly accepting punishment from my family and my teachers. I was kicked out of the house one time, I slept past school way too often, I thought to myself that the education system is a joke, I squandered my pocket money, and I became this self-absorbed, antisocial prick because being a friend to everybody was just too troublesome.
Because being well-behaved, and 'fighting' for greater and better things was just too difficult. It took up my time and energy, and that was the reason I gave myself permission to give in.
I can't do that anymore, I have to stop. All the best opportunities that have slipped through my fingers have slipped because I gave up. And five years from now, I don't want to talk about going back in time and telling my current 18-year-old self not to give up on something just because it's hard.
If I'm going through Hell, I have to keep going. I guess the point I'm trying to tell you (i.e., myself), if we're not seeing any purpose in doing something, it's possible that we're just not seeing it in the right way.
For those of you who have stopped by to just find nothing here, I am so sorry to have abandoned you like that. It's been a busy week with an important essay due and a test to take, but all of that is behind me now, and I've had thirteen hours of sleep since all the craziness ended because I was utterly exhausted from all the work and reading I had to do. It is such a relief, and I should be rocking the blogging world for the remainder of March or so, on all four of my blogs, so you can look forward to that just as I am looking forward to writing them and reading your comments.
As I was saying, getting all of that university stuff out of the way is such a relief. There's a certain lovely feeling you get with relief, the relief of being able to eat after hours food-deprived, when you finally conclude your conclusion of your essay or report, as you're reaching the end of that final downhill rollercoaster ride, and when the buzzer goes off and you win the basketball game by just one point. Relief is that satisfying, calming feeling you get right after you find out that the sky isn't actually falling.
I find that one thing for me that distinguishes a good friend from a great number of acquaintances, or a loving family member from a large number of relatives, is the number of times they provide me with that feeling of relief. Everytime I feel like I'm about to breakdown and submit to the pressures in life, my parents, my family, and my best friends are there to not just tell me that everything's going to be okay, but also explain why and how it will be okay.
It's impossible to be one-hundred percent independent, co-dependency is crucial for anyone who wants to survive. Since the New Year, I've noticed that I have gradually become less reflective and less mindful of myself as I've become more and more entrenched into my studies and the things I have to do. It's mostly because I just have a lot of things to do, that's all. It's simply a matter of not having enough hours in the day to find time to sit back and relax.
Ah, but now I get to do just that for a couple of weeks.
Sometimes, (and by 'sometimes', I mean the many times in which I'm sitting about just contemplating life or writing an essay, as well as the off-chance that I'm actually in the middle of working out or some other intense activity,) I suddenly stop doing whatever I'm doing, and feel like time is standing still, and everything around and within me has stopped moving, and the only thing that continues to run is the train of thoughts in my mind.
And then I feel like my soul is emerging out of my body, and I'm watching myself, criticizing everything I have going on in that moment in time, from what I chose to wear that day, to how high my expectations are for tomorrow, from how yesterday's actions have changed me for better or for worse, to how what I'm doing at that moment in time is relevant and beneficial in the bigger picture called my life.
This out-of-body experience only comes about when I have too much to remember at one time. It's kind of like an automatic system reboot that follows a system overload to prevent it from overheating. I just felt like that a while ago. And I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders right now.
Too often, I burden myself with too much to handle - and I spread myself too thin and end up with a couple pieces of very bland toast. A very good example of this is how I say I will blog everyday, but actually don't because I want to catch up with some television shows. However, I'm still not up-to-date on those because I have some work for university to get done. And I haven't gotten that done yet because I have some personal networking to do on Facebook - catching up with long-time-no-sees and photos to "like" and leave a "comment" under. I haven't got round to that because there are TV reviews to read. I haven't gotten round to that because there are webcomics to catch up with.
But my music playlists need serious updating. And a friend told me to check out this new anime series. Wait, my cousin asked me to read this book. And this other friend told me to watch a series of videos on Youtube. Now, I'm hungry. Now, I feel dirty, let me go take a shower. Now, I'm sleepy, I'm going to go to bed.
Oh, shit, 7am already?
Darn it.
...I didn't get to finish yesterday's blog post.
I seriously need to get more organized.
Or maybe I should throw away some parts of my life.
I don't want to, though. I wish I was more high-powered. I wish I did things more efficiently. There never seems to be enough time in the day...
I just got a conditional offer from the University of Kent in the UK, but you know what?
Hip hip no hurray, because I'm damn tired of school. I hate to be a complainer like the rest of them, but I think I deserve the right to rant and protest like an archetypal adolescent after seventeen years of not complaining. I'm so sick of each and every one of my subjects ruining my meals, my sleep, my weekends and my daily livelihood. Why do Hong Kong schools need to be this way? Why do international schools need to be this way? Why does the final year of high school have to be this way? I hate complaining, I hate complaining about this so much because I know it only gets more difficult and pressured in university and at work. So what if I get an offer? I still have to apply for scholarships and student visas. I need to sign up for financial aid thanks to my parents' crummy divorce , familiarize myself with the course, buy new textbooks and get myself a part-time job as soon as possible. When it comes time to leave, I have to make plans to see everybody, I have to make plans to see the right people in the university/country of my choice, say goodbye to everybody and everything I know here, pack up everything in my room to move somewhere else 'cause God knows I can't afford to fly back any time soon. The way life is going to be in the next six to eight months is simply not humane to me.
I don't feel like a robot. I feel more like the living dead, my body's degradation after so many years of attaining education has caused me to become so pessimistic and tired. I want to fall asleep on my own accord, whether it be in bed or on the bus to school or on the plane going to holiday and not have a pen in my hand or my textbook on the floor or my laptop on my lap when I wake up. It kills me that my room is such a mess, with books, sheets and folders lying around everywhere. I'm so worn out and lazy whenever I catch a break that I can't even walk out of my room to dump my school clothes into the laundry basket, or even walk out to throw out the countless boxes and plastic bags that used to contain takeout.
I'm tired of staying up so late trying to slam out 1,500-word essays, only to wake up to 200 words done. I'm tired of waking up at the very last minute, to rush to school, to rush to school to finish those darn essays. I want to take a proper fucking shower, I want there to be enough time to wash my fucking hair. I want time to read and to watch my television series without a pile of homework sitting next to me, without a spreadsheet or a word document open on my monitor. I want time to really spend time with my family and friends. Gosh, I'm not even attending a very important Chinese family gathering because I have to work.
What do I have to work on? Well, let's see... There's the 4000-word essay on Hell that I was meant to finish in September 2008, I have a Math portfolio that isn't a bit of fun at all, there's Theory of Knowledge essay and presentation ideas to come up with, Mandarin group oral as well as a Mandarin essay, the data response I have to do for Economics, as well as two portfolio assessments, an oral commentary for English to prepare, four Chemistry practicals, on the titration curves for four different types of neutralization reactions, the hydrolysis of dihalogenoalkanes and the oxidation states of vanadium, the Chemistry past paper to complete, notes to copy down from Physics and Economics because I missed one lesson of each subject thanks to my oversleeping and another three practicals to write up for Physics, to do with the half-life of brick dust, Planck's constant and the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, all of which, I'm sorry, might as well be mixed with dry twigs and leaves to make fuel for a bonfire because I don't give two shits about any of it.
I trick myself, my classmates and my teachers into believing so because it's right. What I really care about is my damn happiness, health and well-being and sorry if this sounds shockingly self-centered but I am worried that I do not live happily, healthily or well. I hate complaining about school, I've never believed in complaining about it, but this is what I swallow because I know hatred towards school is not the right mindset for a student. I just need to be more efficient with my work. It's such a pain in the neck, but fine, back to work. If you're going through Hell, keep going, right? That's the motto, so I've heard, on this blog...
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