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PIECE OF CAKE, PEACE OF MIND

“Exploring, creating, & reflecting one day at a time”

November 27, 2011 THANKSGIVING WEEKEND


You know those fairly rare moments in life when everything seems absolutely perfect? You feel so lucky that it doesn’t even seem fair when you think about all the billions of people out there in the world and how so many of them have problems you can’t even imagine. That’s how I felt pretty much this whole weekend.I know it sounds cheesy or maybe even painfully obvious, but the older I get, the more and more grateful I become for everything I have. I was born into a pretty spectacular family filled with hardworking and intelligent people (albeit weird and somewhat socially awkward). I’ve had chances to travel to corners of the world the majority of people will never experience. I’ve eaten foods that many of my friends don’t know exist. I go to a world class university in a beautiful little corner of the most wonderful state (this is an absolute fact). I’m on track to get a dual degree that will probably land me a job straight out of college, if I wanted it, but instead I get to make the decision to go to law school and take a different path. I’m never hungry and I’m in pretty good health.

While everyone was posting all those ‘what I’m thankful for’ statuses on facebook this past weekend, all I could think was, ‘I’m thankful for EVERYTHING’.

Like I’ve mentioned in a few other recent posts, I’ve had a fair share of ups and downs this semester but I’ve come to realize (with a little help from this amazing song by the Local Natives) that the lower our low points in life get, the higher the high points seem. I’m not sure how this will sound to other people, but essentially I’ve come to realize that it’s all relative. Happiness, love, everything. You can’t know true happiness without knowing true sadness and you can’t know true love without true hatred. All these opposites go hand in hand and ultimately, the deeper you delve into one side of the equation, the deeper you can then delve into the other.

And thus from this mindset sprung the greatest Thanksgiving weekend I can remember (and there wasn’t even any turkey involved!).

Overall my weekend wasn’t terribly exciting. Most of my activities centered around food, as they should have considering the holiday, but that wasn’t even the part I enjoyed most necessarily.

On Wednesday night I went to Craft in LA with my parents and ate an amazing four-course (or 6 if you count the three separate dessert courses) dinner of oysters, steak, cod, scallops, butternut squash pasta, beet salad, and like I said, tons of dessert. It was really really delicious.

Thursday morning I went to Monterey Park with my parents and some extended family to eat ‘yum cha’, or dim sum. Thursday night it was just me and my parents again (because my siblings didn’t come home), so we opted to go a bit of an nontraditional route and had korean barbecue at Genwa. It had a sleek, trendy exterior that made me nervous upon arrival, but once we were served my fears of a wasted, sub-par korean barbecue experience left me. The food was amazing and the atmosphere only lent to the experience.

Friday I went shopping with my mom and got more clothes than I know what to do with. My parents have never been big on supporting a clothing habit for me, which I’m now very grateful for. But Friday was slightly different and now I feel like I don’t have to go clothes shopping for a solid year (haha we’ll see how long that lasts..) which pleases me because I really do hate the physical process of shopping.

After stopping by my completely gutted house in PV and seeing how much work they’ve done on it so far (it’s pretty crazy seeing the house you’ve lived in your entire life nearly nonexistent) my parents and I headed to my uncles house for hot pot. MMmmMMm. Usually reserved for Christmas in my family, hot pot was the obvious choice for a belated Thanksgiving dinner because my house is usually where the holiday is celebrated. I had approximately one billion gigantic shrimp that my uncle got for us (he’s a bit of a seafood connoisseur because he works at a seafood distribution company) and somehow still made room for homemade chocolate hazelnut gelato, courtesy my cousin’s wife Karen, and PARADISE CAKE from King’s Hawaiian. Now, I’m not generally a huge cake person, but paradise cake is in a league all its own. It’s composed of three colorful layers—guava, passionfruit, and lilikoi, I THINK, though someone will probably correct me, layered with whipped cream and guava syrup. It’s seriously amazing. End of story.

Oh and that leads me to something else I’m ultra grateful for—aside from having physically traveled all over the world, I’m grateful that my neighbors and friends growing up were so diverse. I gotten to experience life as a Hawaiian, a Japanese person, a Korean, a Jew, and so many more. It’s something I know a lot of people aren’t exposed to but I can’t imagine what my life and interests would be like now if my upbringing and surroundings had been any different.

Yesterday I had lunch with my mom and dad before picking up Garett from upstairs and heading back to Berkeley. The drive wasn’t bad at all, and upon my return, my new (well, technically it’s used. but it’s new to me) 11-16mm f/2.8 lens was waiting for me. It’s soooooooooooooo cool and I can’t wait to use it for SUPERB’s upcoming events and all that jazz.

Now: I’m freaking out a little bit about the problem set I can’t finish, the LSAT’s I realized I want to take in February, and the WWOOFing trip to an Italian winery I’ve been planning in my head these past few weeks. If you didn’t pick up on it already, I’m REALLY FREAKING GRATEFUL that I live an awesome life.

And I’m glad I finally got around to writing this post because I will probably be reading it and rereading it during finals week when I’m feeling pretty miserable. Hopefully it’ll remind me of what’s really important.