eating etiquette, kind of

I'm weird. I know. But I have to say, I really don't like watching/hearing (yes, hearing) people eat. I don't know what it is. I just don't like the sounds of someone chewing or slurping while eating something scrumptiously. Like when people slurp their noodles (e.g. ramen, udon, etc.), oh my goodness. Such a disturbance. I'm sure it's pretty selfish to not enjoy seeing people enjoying their food, but foreal. It really bugs me. 

There are few people whom I can actually tolerate/enjoy watching them eat their food, but I don't say so to anyone, because I would be met with creeped-out stares. And I would never admit that I don't like watching/hearing you eat, because that would be mean. Ha. And seriously, it's not like I sit there and literally watch every move and every spoonful or even that I try to listen to someone eating...it's just that usually I eat in silence - both silently in the process of eating and also silently without talking - and to have that silence disturbed is something that for some reason beyond me, really irks me.

I write this seemingly out of the blue because today, my brother and I were eating jjapaghetti (Korean instant black-bean noodles akin to the ramen family) for dinner, and the whole time, he was slurping away at his noodles, as usual. He likes to slurp a lot. You should hear him eat ramen noodles. It's like a Korean? Ryu family? thing where you kind of slurp your noodles because they're hot. I do not partake in such uncivilized rituals*. But my brother loves doing it. Sometimes if I tell him to stop, he does it even more obnoxiously because, well, he's a younger brother. 

But yeah. I was thinking about it more in depth though, and I came to a few conclusions:

1. I just don't like noise** when I'm eating.

2. Sometimes, I don't like the way people look when they're eating either. 

a.  I don't like people nibbling at food.

b. I don't like most people eating soup. I don't know why. I just really don't like watching some people eat soup. Something about the slurping/missingthemouthandhavingsoupdribble...agh.

 c. I don't like some people eating huge forkfuls of pasta. Same indeterminate reason as part b.

 d. I don't like people smacking their mouths when they're eating something particularly chewy.

Yep.

*This is to say that I'm a moderately silent eater, but by no means am I an attractive eater. I would hate to watch myself eat too.

**Not environment/room noise; people-at-the-table noise.

btas reflection

So, it's not quite the end of the year yet, but I had a thought today:

Sometimes, I feel very teachy-preachy when I blog, and perhaps my entries don't really reflect what I've been up to and/or how my life has been going. Thus, as a blogging resolution, I'm going to write more conversational, catch-up-ish entries, rather than just reflective, pedagogue-ish ones.

It must be because I'm supposedly an ENFJ ("The Teacher"). One of the best descriptions I've found is on www.personalitydesk.com/enfj-type-description.php. 

K. 

christmas 2008

I cannot believe it's Christmas already! Even though it didn't actually snow today, we still had the snow from Friday, so I guess I did indeed have a white Christmas.

What have I done between Christmas Eve and today?

Let's see:

12/24

- Eat a whole bunch of popcorn (cheddar, butter, and caramel) because one of my dad's co-workers or something of that sort sent us a HUGE barrel. It's ridiculous. And the funniest part is, my grandmother is fascinated by it.

- Eat my mom's amazing baby back ribs for dinner.

- Perform a carol medley with my brother (violin/cello duet. so Asian...haha) 

- Present my Christmas video to my grandparents; my mother cried.

- Stay up mad late and catch up with an old friend.

12/25

- Open presents; all my recipients were quite satisfied.

- Make breakfast (kind of).

- Play NBA Live 2009.

- Become attached to the Phoenix Suns (Steve Nash, in particular).

- Nap.

Pretty satisfactory indeed.

I'm a little bummed out we didn't get to go to the Christmas Eve service, but my grandpa's a bit jetlagged (from exotic Bangladesh haha) and we have an issue in our house (like literally, the house) so...we didn't. Oh well. Time to read Luke? : )

Merry Christmas from the Ryu family! 

you and i (pt. 3)

Pt. 3

"Oh, let's get rich and build our house on a mountain making everybody look like ants, from way up there, you and I, oh, you and I."

What Christmas Should Mean To Us This Christmas

The few times I've actually been out of the house while on break, I've seen a couple of signs along the road that have been saying something interesting: "Keep Christ in Christmas."

Now, I caught up on the last couple of episodes of "The Office" while I've been inside the house (the other 90% of my break), and for the last episode, Phillis plans a Moroccan-themed Christmas party in which she pretty much takes out the whole Christ thing out of Christmas. Looking at a nativity scene on Angela's desk, she sets aside the camel, the sheep, the elephant, and an African king-looking dude, and stuffs the rest into a desk. Furious, Angela says, "I am not going to judge Phillis for desecrating Christmas. There is one person that will though, and Phillis just stuffed Him into a drawer." 

This is what we do though, maybe not so literally, but still. We adjust Christmas to fit our own needs, our own party plans, our own merriment. People get wasted at parties, fight over who got the better gift, and sing Christmas carol spoofs rather than the actual ones. 

We lack Christ in Christmas, forsure, and so, like Ingrid says, (and sure, it's a stretch, but that's what I thought of), let's be above this whole de-Christ-ification of Christmas, and make the things of this world small. Be rich in spirit, joyfulness, and faith. 

Jesus is the reason for the season. : )

Also, check out www.thinkchristian.net; I like the whole idea of the Advent season that it describes.

Merry Christmas! 

you and i (pt. 2)

Pt. 2

"Oh, let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance."

What Giving Should Mean To Us This Christmas

You know those really crappy acronym-y things that you make with the letters of your name?

Spunky

Awesome

Ridiculous

Alive

Honeybunchesofoats

Yeah. I hate these things. I mean, I put them into cards sometimes to be funny/sentimental, but really, this is a stupid classroom activity.

But back in eighth grade, I wanted to make the best name-letter...activity...ever! and so I looked up words in the dictionary so that I could sound smart. Go figure. I don't quite remember what all the words were in general, but I remember using the word "altruistic" as one of my "A" words. I had found it in the dictionary in one of my sixth grade "My Word of the Day" exercises, and I thought it'd be nice to use it again, especially since it sounds smart.

I remember presenting my little acronym-y thing to the rest of the class, and as predicted, no one knew what "altruistic" meant. So I explained it to them, you use it to describe someone who is selflessly devoted to the welfare of others. Okay, maybe I didn't use those exact words, but I said something along those lines. And hey, it wasn't a lie, because both then and now, I would say I put a significant amount of effort into making sure people are happy/well-faring. But I remember this one girl asking me, "Oh, so do you do a lot of volunteer work?" This girl was the vice-president of Jr. Beta. I was taken aback, because I didn't think I would have to justify my adjectives. If I said so, it must have been true, right? Goodness.

I stammered out a "sort of," and sat back down. My English teacher was impressed with my vocabulary selection, as predicted, but I was not impressed with that girl's critical question. Looking back, it wasn't a pointed question or anything; she just genuinely wanted to know. But that question has pretty much haunted me since that day. Am I worthy of being called altruistic? I'm no Mother Teresa, but hey, I've done my share of volunteer work since then...right? 

This Christmas, my family group did not spend $10 buying Secret Santa/White Elephant gifts for one another; before we found out what we were really going to do, I kind of wished we had done so. It would've been sweet, funny even. But what we ended up doing was we all donated the $10 we would've used to buy a sheep for charity. This sheep would be able to sustain a family in an underprivileged country by giving them wool and meat. Knowing this, I suddenly did not regret not doing a present game whatsoever. 

For what do we want lots and lots of money? There's no use denying it - everyone on this earth wants to be rich, or has had such a dream at one point in his/her life. And though there's always a negative connotation to the word "rich," my mom (like all parents) sees the word very closely tied to comfort. Not only can I live in comfort if I'm rich, but I can also donate a lot of money to other people so that they can live in comfort. Idealistic? Perhaps. The selfish human nature within me might make me veer from that goal. But I can surely try.

So with this statement, I think we can take Ingrid quite literally: be wealthy, loaded, hooked up with the ka-ching ka-ching. : ) But make sure you are altruistic. I mean, there's that whole thing about the mad difficulty of a rich man entering the kingdom of God. Make the most of your God-granted talents and efforts, be fruitful, earn lots of money...and always give generously. That's the spirit of Christmas, after all.

you and i (pt. 1)

Ingrid Michaelson is amazing. I say this ALL the time, I know. But I will share her awesomeness with you using one of her "recent" songs (I say "recent" because she's probably had it forever): "You and I." It's a very catchy song, very upbeat and silly, but I like it. I think it contains some Christmas season wisdom, so yeah.

Pt. 1

"Oh, let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France."

What Our Parents Should Mean To Us This Christmas

You know when you're really young (if you haven't had a bad childhood), you say that you want to earn lots of money in the future and buy your parents lots of great things, like clothes, food, new cars, houses, etc. I don't know, maybe that's just me. But I know that doing something nice for our parents when we have jobs is one of the images we have of adulthood.

God did say, "Honor your mother and father," and yeah, maybe buying things for our parents isn't exactly straight-up honoring them, but it sure beats sticking them in nursing homes and never visiting. Not that there's anything wrong with nursing homes - sometimes it's just tough to really take care of them. But for sure, as a dutiful son or daughter, you kind of want to provide them with something, just for putting up with you all those years. 

But I think as we grow up, we tend to lose this mentality. We get too busy for our parents. Our parents cause us way too much stress - they want to know how we're doing in school, they want to know who our friends are, where we are on Friday nights, when we're going to find a respectable significant other, why we aren't exercising and losing weight - and sometimes, we just want to get away so we don't have to listen to them nag. Yeah, I totally get that. But when we do come home for breaks like these, it's important that you're patient with them. That you answer all their questions, respond to their comments, and just keep a smile on. They're honestly not going to be around forever, even with all our health advancements. 

When we get too busy for our parents, we start using up the money we earn only on ourselves. We want to save up our money so one day we can spend it on our mansion, on our Lexus, on our designer clothes, on our gourmet food. And our parents? A nice little fruit basket on Christmas. Y-no. 

So you can't buy them a house right now; you're not even considered rich yet. It's okay though. What Ingrid and I are telling you is be rich in love, patience, and understanding and make the house a little more relaxing this holiday season. I know whenever I come back, my house is a war zone, with my parents trying to mold my brother into an upright citizen, my dad always busy with work and my mother trying to take care of every aspect of the house. But it's almost Christmas, and the house should be a little bit more at rest, so I'm going to try to help out more and keep people at peace. Because as a poor college student, what else can I do? 

That house in France will simply have to wait. 

everything happens for a reason...

...right?

So basically, out of my insatiable curiosity (and bad timing,) I got the sudden urge to see if my grades from last semester were up. And to my not-so-great surprise, a few were up. And to my also not-so-great surprise, one of them was particularly sucky.

Now, let me tell you that I didn't expect the same grades I got in high school, but I definitely did not expect this. I just really have to work hard next semester like there's no tomorrow. There is honestly no substitute for busting your butt, especially for non-genius people like me. 

I am going to get that 4.0 next semester, even if that means complete sleep deprivation and no social life. (Okay, I doubt that I will really be that hardcore, but I can try to put that mentality into my head, right?)

On the flip side, I guess I can kind of see it as a sign from God, two-fold: 1) DON'T GO INTO THAT AREA and 2) You've gotten complacent, so work hard!

Yeah.

no one wants to be alone at christmastime.

Christmas is undoubtedly my favorite holiday. Whenever I hear Christmas carols going, smell the fresh pine, and see people putting up the tackiest winter decorations known to mankind - I don't know, I just get filled with this enormous sense of satisfaction. It's like the feeling you get when you're drinking super hot chocolate while your face is about to fall off from the cold; the warm liquid reaches into the depths of your stomach, and the numbness you feel with your skin is nothing like the tinglingness you feel with your heart. 

I always feel like I need time to prepare my tingling heart for Christmas. I need to get into the zone - start listening to my Bing Crosby/Amy Grant c.d.s, get a permanent peppermint and cinnamon smell stuck up in my nose, and read Luke to commit the nativity story to my mind. I think the worst Christmas I ever had was my junior year in high school, when I think we ended like the 22nd or something, and we just rushed into Christmas. It really sucked, because I had just finished taking finals and I had to worry about my already-awful calculus grade, and etc. etc. But otherwise, I've always looked forward to the season like a madwoman. I'll be craving Christmas in July, waiting around for that simultaneously-cold-and-hot feeling that I, for an inexplicable reason, love.

I love giving gifts, and this is also why Christmas is a perfect holiday for me. If I had all the money in the world, I would spend a lot of it giving people amazing gifts. Unfortunately, I don't have all the money in the world, so I make do with what I have. But just finding the perfect gift, finding something that I know they'll love because I'm a creeper that keeps files on people (just kidding) - it gives me so much personal satisfaction, more than getting gifts of my own. 

But today, when I went Christmas shopping (belatedly, because I didn't have the time or the resources to do so at school), I found this sort of dreariness that you get when you try to find a size 2 in the J.Crew sale section. I needed to find the perfect gifts, but it was mad difficult. I ran into this one store at least four different times before settling on what I wanted to buy from there. And then, I stopped to think: what exactly is all this gift-giving about? Yeah, at the core, it's the whole God-gave-Jesus-to-the-world-yay-joy thing, but really? In our religiously-diluted society? It's about consumerism. And another level, it's just about doing something special for our loved ones, (and sometimes people we don't even care all that much for,) because we didn't have time to really do it during the rest of the year. It's like when guys feel burdened to do something nice for their girlfriends on Valentine's Day when actually, doing small sweet things once in a while makes more of a statement. 

Who gets you? When they give you a gift, saying, "Oh, I know he/she will love it" to the person next to them, how often are they justified? And as much as we, including myself, like to think we get the people to whom we are gifting, how often are we justified? That pair of holiday socks, that vanilla candle set, that copy of the new Dan Brown novel that you'll speed-read through once and place on the shelf - are these truly ideal gifts?

Well, let me let you in on a little secret: the best gift of all time is love. 

Just watch that one scene in "Love Actually", when Keira Knightley's character gets a surprise visit from a guy holding a stereo and a bunch of signs in which he tells her that he loves her. I'm sure most of the human world will agree that that would be an ideal gift, just to hear from someone that he/she loves them. Sure, call me cheesy and cliched, but it's true. Mariah Carey sings "All I Want For Christmas Is You" in the cars that people drive miles and miles to be crowded into a house full of family members that normally drive them up the wall. Spending Christmas alone is one of the worst things that could ever happen to me, even worse than spending my birthday alone. But of course, you can be alone in a sea of people - that's why we need to give love.

So, let me give you three tips on how to spend this year's Christmas. 

1. No matter how you feel about your relationships with the people around you, be it family or friends, be it animosity or full-out unconditional love, make sure you take the time to really be with them. Listen to them. Talk to them. Smile and laugh with them. Be mature for one day and don't let past arguments and hard feelings get in the way.

2. As you're preparing your Christmas gifts, make sure you add in a special touch to let them know you actually care about what you're handing over. I have never bought a card for my parents; for as long as I was able to fold a sheet of paper and hold a pair of scissors without poking myself in the eye or chopping all my hair off (the latter of which I have done), I've made them their holiday/birthday cards. And the best birthday card I've ever received was a handmade one from a friend on my 17th birthday where he included 17 reasons why we're friends. So, even if you aren't the next Van Gogh, I encourage you to make at least one card for someone you care about. 

3. Tell someone you love him/her. If you feel uncomfortable saying those three words, then at least say "Thank you for being my (insert role here)." 

Yeah. Love can be a miracle, and Christmas is a time of miracles, so put those two together and you'll find yourself with more magic than what Hermione Granger's brain can contain.

I'd say Merry Christmas, but I'll save that for a Christmas post. : )

changes: sweetly broken

Final part in the how-I've-changed series.

Let me be up front with you about my faith. I am a life-long Christian by name, but never have I been Christian until now.

Let me clarify. 

I'll be honest: I've always thought I was a good person. Go me. I listen to my elders, eat all my vegetables, and make babies laugh. And on top of that, I thought I was a pretty decent Christian. I wasn't perfect, of course, but I thought I was at a higher maturity level than most kids my age. And in one aspect, it was partly true, because six years of Bible study classes ended in one conclusion: basketball, cars, and girls were infinitely more interesting than Jesus. At least, this was true to the boys in my class. I came from a church that was broken by cliques and had issues focusing on the Word, and because I knew this in my head, I separated myself from this institution over the years. I thought I was above them, above the hypocrisy and above the distractions they faced. I mean, couldn't you at the least be holy in church?

And now, in college, going to GCC, being surrounded by Christians old and new that are regardlessly on fire for God, I have to say, it's a better environment for someone to embrace his or her faith. Perhaps I needed more inspirational people, more devoted people, more focused people (religiously...and otherwise). But after a whole semester of family group Bible studies, prayer meetings, fun hangouts and fellowship, and God-centered Sunday services, I find that there's this deficiency somewhere in my heart. Yeah, it's filled with awesome people. Yeah, it's filled with God. But I think what's missing now is my own effort.

I've been coasting for a while because I was never required to actually drive the car on my spiritual journey. I soaked up the basic tenants, Bible stories, and repeated passages in an osmotic way, just letting it seep in and sit there. I had always approached the Bible in an almost literary way, and because I have always liked reading and analyzing literature, it was "easy" for me to be "knowledgeable" about the Bible. But now I know better. I know very little, only what I know from experiencing intangible concepts like God's grace and love and faithfulness. Ask me to discuss the Bible with random people on the street, and you might as well have told me to go dance in a monkey suit to the Funky Chicken music.

I also always thought I had never pushed away God, because despite my problems with the church, I was too afraid to actually reject Him completely. But I did, because  I thought being too Christian was unattractive and unpopular:

- Christian literature? - not the classics

- Christian music? - lame and not applicable

- Christian clubs? - cult

- Christian blogs/notes? - pretentious

- Christian stores? - intimidating

Being too Christian meant you were close-minded, superior, and just plain weird. The home-schooled girls I met at All-State Orchestra each year pretty much condemned their non-Christian standpartners to hell. Awesome. So I tried to keep my faith a personal thing, putting it in its little box on the shelf, next to my Bible that would gather dust during the week.

I wasn't too good at even keeping it personal, though. I was a hypocrite even if I didn't party and drink and use drugs: I cursed regularly, spoke badly of people behind their backs, lied, despised Sundays, coveted and wished people ill, rejected my brother, and used God's name in vain all the time. I didn't read the Bible, I didn't bother to do quiet times, I didn't try to ameliorate my situation in the church. 

You never feel quite as vulnerable as you do when you finally admit your shortcomings and sins. The average human being lives life thinking about what good things he/she has done throughout the day/week/year, not what he/she has done wrong or poorly. Yes, some of us do think about it in our self-absorbed emo-ness, but when it comes down to it, people without serious known problems are unwilling to admit these things. Even alcoholics and chain-smokers fail to admit that they have a problem, even though the whole world can see it. But it's people like me - the normal, relatively problem-free people who are also Christian - that need to admit their faults the most.

So now, I'm letting go of everything. I know where I stand now, or at least, I'm saying out loud where I stand, because I'm pretty sure I always knew that I wasn't what I was mentally. I'm back to being Christian again, and this time, foreal; I'm actually going to embrace my faith and live it out rather than have a muted politically-correct version of it sitting within the depths of my heart. 

I thought this even before I became Christian, but being of the Christian faith means much more than wearing a cross around your neck on Sundays and praying earnestly in the pews so other people can see you. Christianity is a way of life. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) Truly, no one. Not even my "good person" self. Without really having a one-on-one relationship with God, with Jesus, I'm just living in a shell. No amount of Chris Tomlin, GCC gatherings, and Sunday messages will replace just me being with God. And I think knowing this has changed me the most, in all areas of my life, over this past year.

I'm finally sweetly broken, wholly surrendered. 

changes: the devil wears prada

Part 6 in the how-I've-changed series.

Well, I'm not the devil...therefore, I don't wear Prada, I suppose.

But even in the way I dress or the things I prefer to wear - I've changed. Isn't that weird? Yeah, this change is a little bit shallow, but I definitely think appearance surely defines a person in some way. For example, in fifth grade, I used to have a middle part in my hair, with bangs straight across that parted in the middle awkwardly, glasses that were way too small on my face, ill-fitting clothes from Abercrombie and Limited Too (in my effort to be "in"), and on top of that, I had bad acne and painful braces. Last but not least, I was mad tall - I was one of the tallest girls in my class (hard to believe, I know) and so, I was a walking fashion disaster. I don't know how my mother allowed me to look the way I did then. I def think this had an impact on my personality, because despite my bossy voice or my spunky attitude, I was actually mad insecure.

In the course of this year, I've changed a bit - not too drastically, but just enough. One thing that has definitely changed is my hair - from straight long hair to wavy hair (for the first time ever) to cropped short hair now. Another thing is, I've moved from Georgia to Pennsylvania. This means an increase in layering/winter clothes. I love layering now. I've also become notorious here for being the "beret/hat lady"; I always seem to be wearing a knit beret of some sort. Or just a hat in general. I also wear boots a lot these days - I used to hate wearing boots in Georgia, but now, I can't live without them. 

I think I experiment a lot more...I've had some interesting outfits that I would probably not have bothered wearing in January of this year (and no, not "interesting" in a shady way). I also have a more defined idea of where I like to get my clothes - J.Crew, UO, Gap? But not only that, I just feel more comfortable in my skin. Back in high school, I felt like I had to get up and get dressed well so that people wouldn't think less of me, in the sense that, oh, "nerds" aren't supposed to dress well. But I did, so that I could balance my social side and my academic side. Dressing well was a means for good diplomatic relationships, as much as I hate to admit it. And I still think it's important for many people to put on good clothes so that they have a better chance of having good acquaintance-type relationships in the real world; but definitely, it's not everything.

I love fashion. I really do. And I think I always will. I won't go into anything related to it, most likely, but it's an interest I'll always have. And the thing about fashion is that it's always changing and it's very contradictory sometimes. I thought I would never wear dark brown and black together. EVER. Because that's a crime akin to wearing navy and black together (which I learned from a fashion blog that it can be done well). But I did...several times this semester. So yeah. Fashion is what you make of it.

And...fashion blogs are indeed a total waste of time...but they're so addictive. : ) Just check out: http://www.chictopia.com/user/blog/EverybodyIsUgly (one of my favorites) and http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/ (a classic).