Heinz Dilemma

Over the last couple months, I've been blessed with a full-time job. In my last post, I mentioned being jobless but it only took me 1.5 months post graduation to obtain the job I have now. I didn't do it on my own. I have such a supportive friend whom I've known since middle school. She spread the word for me and helped connect me to a job related to my field of interest. I could not thank her enough. Yes I treated her out and took her to a concert haha. But honestly, you know that when you find a friend like that, you should never let her go. She's a lifesaver.

The blessings didn't stop there, I'm blessed with a loving family. Cousins that try to keep in touch, parents who continue to pray for my successes. My friends too. I'm blessed with few friends that understand me and accept me for who I am. They understand my awkwardly outspoken humor and they're always keeping me updated on the next nerdiest thing. I'm blessed with physical health, the ability to walk, talk, and think on my own. I remind myself never to take that for granted.

But why do I have morals? As of late, it does not seem at all like a blessing to have morals that most others don't. There are things that I could never do to another person. Things that society deems as negative but people do anyways. These morals I have keep me from being able to accept the hurtful things that others do to me, because I'd never do it to them nomatter the circumstances. This brings up the Heinz Dilemma (I actually learned stuff in college):

A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

As for me, when I start to become the victim of unmoral actions, I start to wonder why I'm still moral in the first place. Karma doesn't work on my part.

Graduated! Now what?

18 years of school and I'm finally done. I'm not really sure what to say about it except that I'm relieved. Although I love school and wish I could be there forever, these last couple quarters have been the most stressful and challenging periods of schooling for me. I guess it's because I've lost my academic stamina or that it began to slow down.

Whatever place I am in in life right now, I didn't get here on my own. I'm so incredibly thankful to my family, especially my mom, and all my friends both from high school and the ones I've made at school, especially my coworkers. Each and every one of them has inspired me in so many aspects of life. I've learned the most from them indirectly, not by them verbally teaching me. I learn by seeing how incredibly positive they are in certain situations and how much strength and confidence they have in how they view and handle challenges in their lives. When I want to better myself, I look to them. No matter how much I feel thankful I don't think I'll ever be able to show them how much they mean to me through words. But they, all of them, are absolutely incredible.

As for me, I've graduated only 5 days ago and have no job. I have not gone without a job for 5 years and this feels weird. I feel like I'm not in control of that aspect of my life. It's the one aspect that has made me feel stable and now it's gone. I know a lot of us are feeling the same way right now and it's tough. It's really really tough. This summer, it's not really about pursuing my dreams. I feel like pursuing my dreams would involve going to grad school. I haven't wrapped my mind around the prospect of that yet. I just need to make money to continue being able to pay for gas, bills, and living expenses. I've been looking for office assistant or administrative assistant jobs but things are looking pretty bleak right now. Unfortunately, I've succumbed to applying for retail and food service jobs, which isn't so bad, but I'd prefer a Monday-Friday 9-5 job. This is where I'm at right now haha. Gotta push through and be positive. Things happen for a reason.

Wow it's been a while

Thanks to constant reminders from a close friend of mine, I've finally gotten back onto this blog. I think I ran out of ideas so quickly and therefore couldn't really post anything new. I don't know how some people can be so original online and always come up with new topics to talk about. I figured maybe I should keep up a habit of taking pictures of certain moments in my everyday life and have that as a reason to post something regularly if I don't have anything specific or interesting to talk about. I'll leave off with a picture of my pinteresting habit during class.

Sushi Addiction

The title says it all. I'd like to thank my good High School friend Duy Tran for introducing me to the world of sushi. That could have possibly been a sarcastic thank-you since over the past 7 years, I've faced an ongoing sushi addiction. When I was little, the only sushi I ever ate were the refrigerated california rolls from Costco, which, I now think are so gross. Then in High School, Duy treated me to Kyotori, a local sushi restaurant. I tried the Crunch Roll and an assortment of sashimi samples. The crunch roll was obviously delicious but the sashimi tasted so weird and jelly-like. Somehow after that, I grew to love it. Kyotori became my go-to sushi place for a couple years. I regret to say that I spent most of my Krispy Kreme paychecks on sushi there during high school. After Kyotori changed their sushi recipe (maybe because of owner change), I started going to Miyako, which was in the same plaza as Kyotori. Miyako has fresh fish and they give you free miso soup and cabbage salad if you dine-in. I go there regularly still. This is a bad addiction, very bad, because one roll costs around $8-10 and I normally eat 2 to get full. That means each sushi meal is approximately $16-20. This adds up...fast. I am especially fond of raw fish, ie Salmon sashimi, and those are more expensive than the cooked stuff.

I find myself getting sushi at least once a month. Sometimes, when I'm unhappy, stressed, or made an accomplishment, I get sushi. Most of the time, I just do take-out, and eat it at home in front of the television. When I find a friend who loves to eat sushi, that's when I actually dine-in. Sometimes I just convince my mom to go eat with me and I offer to pay. There's something about the atmosphere of a sushi restaurant that's just so elegant and comfortable. The beautiful methods in which the sushi rolls are plated adds to the fanciness of dining in. It's not good timing, this addiction. I need to save up for post-grad-hood...but I live for good food and that's my excuse for continuing to throw out my money on this stuff. WHY CAN'T MY FAVORITE FOOD BE TURKEY SANDWICHES OR SOMETHING. I can't help myself. This blog wasn't meant for me to talk about how to fix this addiction or reduce it, it's just to rant about it. Thanks!

BGCGG

The poll on the right is created by me. Feel free to answer it! Anyways, I was offered an internship position from the Boys and Girls Club of Garden Grove! I am so happy about that. Since I'm required to do a quarter long internship next quarter for my graduation requirement, I spent the past month sending emails to different sites and interviewed with a couple of them. The Boys and Girls Club was the first site I interviewed at. I came in thinking that I was applying to work with the kids in the after school program, plan extracurricular activities and tutor. However, they are actually looking for Case Management Interns who work at other branches in the program that deal with troubled students and issues such as truency, alcohol or drug abuse, and other misdemeanors. I was a little anxious at first when I thought about having to work on these cases as an intern but then I thought that this would be a good challenge for me and it will test my interaction and counseling skills. I was proud of how I interviewed at the site. They had me take a bilingual test, which I have never done before. I was so scared! They gave me a paragraph in english and I had to translate it out loud in Vietnamese while a Vietnamese bilingual supervisor listened. I did better than I thought I would. The Vietnamese supervisor told me personally that I did well and that she would advocate for me to be an intern for her. It was so entirely flattering. I tend to have little self-confidence and I didn't see myself as doing as well as others probably see in me. This totally boosted my self-confidence. I didn't hear back from the site after a few days and decided to attend my interview at Oak View Branch Library in Huntington Beach. It was an after school homework help program that I applied for. The supervisors there are so entirely nice and easy-going. They basically told me I can take the position if I wanted it. I told them I had other sites to think about and that I would get back to them. A down side to this second site is that it is extremely far from home (approximately a 30 minute drive from home or 15 minute drive from school where-as the Boys and Girls Club location is 10 minutes from home). Another downside is that I've already spent the past few years tutoring and doing homework help at Friendly Center in Orange. I still tutor there and I feel like since I'm required to do a quarter-long internship, I might as well find something that is challenging for me and will help increase my people skills for future work.

So today, I received a call with an offer for the position. The reason why I was so ecstatic was not just because I was able to get an internship at my top choice site but that it really boosts my confidence in my ability to attain job/work positions without any help. When I got my first job at Krispy Kreme in high school, it was because I mentioned the name of a girl I knew who worked there previously. I worked there fore 9 months and during that time, my employer directly told me that I would not have gotten the job if it wasn't for my connection with a previous worker. I totally brought down my self-esteem. However, I self-attained my jobs at JCPenney, the school food court, and as a student assistant. Now, with the Boys and Girls Club was my first interview site and the first place to have offered me a position. Maybe my interview skills are better than I thought:)

Post-Grad

I just took my senior portrait photos today. Oh man. I don't think they turned out well. I'm just hoping the cap and gown photos did so that I can buy copies for my family. Good portrait photos don't come easy for me because I have a hard time smiling when I'm told how where to place my chin or how far I need to tilt my head. It's too unnatural. But taking the pictures today made me realize how close I am to graduation. Wow. It's pretty crazy how fast time flew since high school graduation (photo on the left). I guess I'm feeling the same way a lot of us graduating seniors feel right now: it's going to be bittersweet. I want it to be over, but I also don't want it to end. There are so many things I like about being a college student (besides getting half off on Amazon Prime memberships and not having to pay monthly fees for a bank account). It's the fact that I feel like I'm taken care of. I'm independent, but still dependent in some way. As a college student, your day varies. You'll have long 10 hour days, but 3 hours of it would be classes, 4 hours of work, 3 hours of club/organization commitments, and maybe a few hours of volunteering. I like the fact that we're not just stuck doing one thing every day. I know it's going to be like that after college. That's one of the things I'm not looking forward to. I mean there are positives to post-graduation...it's weird but I can't really think of any right now, only because at this point, I don't have anything planned for post-grad-hood. I have friends who have applied to grad school so that they can continue being a student right after receiving their bachelors. There are friends who are doing Teach for America exactly one week after graduation. I have friends who know that they are taking a year off but will be applying to grad school the next fall season. Me? I don't plan on applying to grad school anytime soon nor do I have any nonprofit org commitments. There's just so much mystery in my life right now and it's okay...for now, but when June nears, I'll probably scramble in a panic to find a job. Ideally, I'd want to get a full-time job at UCI, but at this point, my life could go in any direction.

Clean Eating

Ever since Winter Break, I've thought about how badly I wanted to tone my legs. Shorts and swimsuit season is coming up so this would be a good time to start. I began to do at-home thigh toning exercises that I found on YouTube and I felt a lot of improvement over the course of a week. I also decided to count my calories, limiting myself to 1200 calories a day and realized that I eat half of those calories for breakfast. Anyways, this calorie-counting and eating right lasted me until school started (about a week & a half) and I went back to eating whatever I could afford. Healthy eating and exercising is so hard to keep up with while going to school and work and doing all that hibbityboppity. This goes a long with trying to save money. I haven't exactly given up on this idea of eating good (emphasize good & tasty) healthy affordable foods, but it is soooo difficult. I have full days' worth of school and work. I'd rather make food at home to bring to school than buy low-quality expensive meals at the food court but it's' really hard to find something that tastes good, is okay to make a day ahead, is low-priced, and might not need heating up. When I put all those factors together, all I can come up with is SALAD, which is not exactly a bad thing, it just gets really boring. But here's a picture of a salad anyways...