Moving On...

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone had a good year last year and may you have an even better year this year. For me, 2008 was a great, eventful, and meaningful year. Got a new laptop, new phone, bought an iPod, got to go to Japan, came "home" to Toronto, which also brought back good memories, and had good "endings" with my friends in HK (not as in our friendship are over, but as in things were great and warming before I left and even after i left, we're still doing good). It's been a year of new hopes, good evenings, new accomplishments, and good endings. Now I don't do New Year's resolutions because I don't believe in them cause from the way i see it, New Year's resolutions are only a spur of the moment thing where people only keep them in mind during the New Year's and after the "New Year's period" is over, it's usually completely forgotten, so for me, there's no point in doing it. But what I will do is state what I'd like to wish for in the new year of 2009. For 2009, I wish for a year of close and meaningful relationships, a year that's fun and eventful, with things taking on a new and fastinating approach. (it may sound like any typical greeting wish, but I'm specific with my choice of words on this one so it does mean something) What wishes do you have this for year and what are you looking forward to for 2009?

What I did above was a thing I'd usually do each year on my "diary" on my forum site that I mentioned that I have been on for the past 5 years, "vT" (just a short form of the actual name). And speaking of "vT", like I said before about how the loss of vT would hit me sooner or later, while it's starting to get to me. Now that vT's dead, it made me realize how much lonelier I've become since vT has always been my primary escape from reality or when I'm not able to do anything outside. vT also brought me a bunch of "e-friends" who I talk to when there's no one else to talk to but since I'm not close enough with some of them to have their contacts, I may never see them again now that it's gone. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, but yeah...meh...

On the subject of loneliness and such, I just wanna comment on something about the relationships between people and how things change in terms of that as people grow older. I know, I know, I'm going on about the whole aging thing again but I wasn't quite done back there because there was another reason (among the many others, lol) why I've always hated growing up. Anyways, I've noticed that as poeple grow up, they seem to grow...colder as well...how should I put it...like colder in terms of relationships. Remember what I mentioned about the masks we all wear? Well in my opinion, it seems like these masks become more...well, concieving for some, as they grow older which makes it harder to actually personally get to know people. And it also seems like they don't make as much of an effort to maintain relationships with people. I think it's all because people become more self-orientated since they've grown up and are able to take care of themselves, so they don't rely on people as much. But then again, humans are social beings, and everyone's scale of socialization is different. Some are satisfy with how things have become when they have grown up. Some just don't care, and some are not satisify because they just don't seem to get enough of that closer and more relationships as they have experience or got to have experience, such as myself. And as I speak for myself, for people like me, when we don't seem to react much on this, it's not because we wanted or liked it to happen this way, it's just case we've gotten used to it.
Oh, and I also thought of something else I'd hate about adulthood, it's how people become busier and more occupied so that's mostly why they don't have as much time for other things. I mean for example, i have friends who have already started to work and it seems...well life seems to have become dull for them, no offence, since they ahve to work all the time and nothing else really happens any more. I call them up and ask them how they're doing and every time they seem worn out and...yeah. Working your ass off in an environment you might not necessarily like and be stuck in there for quite a repeative and long period of time and not necessarily have much of a choice on that either, can't imagine when one day i'd have to do something like that as well...
But oh wel, what can we do about it. It's life...you have no choice to accept it and move on with it. Just like how I've noticed that despite how much I hate the "adult effect", i can feel it slowly creeping onto me...I dunno

Enough of the down tone-ness. Once again, wishing everyone out there all the best as we all move along with the new year, our lives and whatever's next. God bless!

Merry Christmas!

I really don't know what is it I want to say in this entry, I guess I'll just be posting a brief entry on how Christmas was and how it went. Well first of all, it's my first Christmas back here at "home" and I delighted to celebrate back here since I've always complained about how lacking holiday spirit is, while I was away in HK and China. But you know what I find interesting? It's like while I was in HK, I would make a much greater effort to create holiday spirit because I felt like there wasn't enough of that, but yet now that I'm back, i hardly do much and it just seems like an ordinary holiday, with not too much going on but just chillin'. The little things that have made holiday a bit of something were two things...snow and Christmas trees. I always say that winter's not the same without snow and finally, there's snow; haven't had a white Christmas for 7 years now. Despite how snow turns into slush which I hate a lot, and how it's also difficult to walk when that slush turns into ice, I still love that white stuff. The other thing that made my Christmas were Christmas trees. I have not had a Christmas tree at my place for Christmas in 7 years now. I bought this tiny little 60 cm (2 feet) Christmas tree for my room (can't get a huge one, they're expensive and I have nowhere to store it), put it on my bedside table, decorated with lights and stuff. And I can tell you that despite its small size, everytime I look at that little Christmas tree, it just puts a smile on my face. Even though I haven't done much this Christmas, just the snow and Christmas tree itself already made it look like Christmas. You have to learn to find the blessings in the little things.

Other things that are worth mentioning about this Christmas, I got a microwave from Amanda since i kinda need one for the convenience of eating. The phone I mentioned last time was part-Christmas and part-birthday present from my parents, so yeah. Aaannnddd, i think that's about it. Oh, and I also won another $10 from the free ticket I won from the second lottery ticket I bought on my birthday. As for what else I did for Christmas, well like I said I didn't really do anything. I did my usual routine in sending out dozens of Christmas cards to all the people I care and I nearly spend all my birthday money for Christmas; funny how the things I received, most were given back out.The only person i could celebrate it with this year is my grandma, and all we did was have a buffet dinner on Christmas Eve and stayed over for these couple of days. On Christmas Day (today), we didn't do anything really since it was just the two of us, stores are close and there's nothing to do really. I wanted to go to church today, but it turns out the church around my grandma's place didn't have a service for Christmas today which kinda upset me. The only service they had was for last night on Christmas Eve which I should have realize but forgot. Although it upsets me that since Christmas was suppose to be celebrating Christ's birth in the first place, but then again, the important thing is the way you bring about the meaning and what's in the heart, right? Well that's about it...for now. Again, Merry Christmas (whether or not you celebrate it i'm still gonna spread and share my joy for it)! And now for some pictures, I took tons of pics cause I couldn't get the perfect picture, so I'll just post the top ones I like the most and then you decided, the rest is in my facebook/myspace/MSN Space, etc:

 

 

Eaton Centre itself

 

Toronto City Hall, during the winter, with the Christmas tree far in the background and people skiing on Nathan Phillips Square

 

PS: all of these pics were taken with my new camera phone.

Counting Up / Counting Down

Well "counting up" to my last blog entry about my whole nostalgia thing, there are a couple of things I need to say about it. First of all, i just found out yesterday that the forum site (which I'd call it by its short form name, "vT") I've been going to for the past 5 years...'died'...the server/provider had a bunch of problems and finally it's gone now...It seems so coincidental that I joined that forum site right when I turned 13 and it died...now right after my **th birthday (thou shall not speak of the evil number lol). Now this upsets me because I've had a lot of history with that forum and I felt like it was, what I call, "a witness of my life" (or teenage life for that matter). During my days of absolute hell in Mainland China for two years, I relyed on three things that kept me alive, my diary (not this one, the offline one I keep), prayers with God (though it was also during this time that I had my spiritual crisis and lost my faith for a short period of time in the middle), and the Internet - in particularly that forum site, vT. I felt like it was my window to the world back then, and I even made lots of "e-friends" which I became very close with (remember my post on "Confessions of an Internet Citizen"?...yeah, there was more to it...my life online also consists of friends I have on there that are so close that we mail each other things, talk on the phone, and go on webcam, etc., yeah) through that place, and now it's gone. You might be thinking, "oookaaay...big deal, weirdo", but everyone has their weird little quirks and this is me. All I can say is that it's like the feeling of having a really close friend for the past 5 years that you have had a lot of fun with and had helped you get through the worst of days and suddenly it 'died' or went away and not coming back...Although as of yesterday, I'm still not greatly affected by it because lately i've received a new phone for my birthday/Christmas present from my parents and the spirit of Christmas is still upon me, and I'm still feeling cheerful at the moment. But I think sooner or later, it will hit me like how for some people, like my Grade 5 teacher described it when he talked about how he reacted when his mom died, there weren't much reaction when the news first came, but then one day when they started thinking, "hmm, it's been a while since I've visited so-and-so, i better...oh wait...", and that's when it hits them...

Moving on, oh, that part I said I got a new phone. Yeah, the phone that I was originally using broke down for some odd reason and I sent it back to HK (where I bought it...random NOTE: Asia and Europe have the best phones in the world...and sadly, North American phones suck!), hoping it can be fixed. But it couldn't be fixed so my parents said that I pick out a new phone and they can send it over as a birthday and Christmas combined-present. I originally picked out the new Noka N85 (awesome phone!) but my mom got me the N95 - 8GB verison instead, thinking that it's better since the model number's higher and the phone itself is better. I understand her logic, except the model itself has been around for half a year now. But nonetheless, it doesn't matter and I still LOVE it all the same since the functions are similiar and I did wanted it before the new ones came out, so I'm very happy about the new phone even though i don't have a lot of people to call really. But anyways, presenting my 4th phone, the Nokia N95 - 8GB verison:

And continuing with that whole nostalgia thing, after posting up the pic I took for the last entry, i've been wanting to do a picture timeline of the places I've been for a while now, now that I've got most of all the pictures I've took since I got back here (you have already seen them already). So here goes:

Born here on 2:06 PM (EST), Sunday, December 2, 1990:
 

Up till I was 3-4 years old, i moved between my parents' (both me and my biological father) apartment and my father's family house, and then after they were divorced, me and my mom rented a place before we finally settled down...here

which was where I stayed from ages 4-8, with my grandma mostly around while my mom had to work nearly all the time, and during that time, from kindergarten till middle of Grade 3, I studied here:

Mom remarried to my stepdad and then we moved to his place, which was in the western suburbs of Toronto - Mississauga and lived there for about 2 years from 8-9, where I also studied from the middle of Grade 3 till after I finished Grade 4

after my siblings (half, but I don't care if they're half-related or full-related or whatever, i still love them) were born, we needed to move to a bigger place, so we bought a house waaay up north in the edge of the northern suburbs, in a community called Nobleton:

sadly, while I was up in Nobleton that day, I couldn't manage to take a pic of the school I studied while I was there - Nobleton Senior Public School

then went to mainland China because of some business problems from my parents and was there for 2.5 years...hated China so damn much that I didn't take any pics (then again, i didn't have a camera then...even if i did, there was really nothing that was worth taking pictures of)

then settled in Hong Kong for 3.5 years after things in China didn't work out at all
i didn't take any pics of where we lived in HK (since the apartments in HK ain't that pretty lookin), but there are pics of what my room was like (the outside of homes in HK might not be good-lookin but the insides is still a home right?) and a pic of the school I studied in

and now...no pics of my school, only the room I live in

so yeah, even though this was kinda unnecessary, but there we go. a timeline of pictures of the many times I have moved. see...this was what I was talking about in my previous blog entry

and like I said, the spirit of Christmas is cheering me on. afterall, this is the first Christmas I get to spend back here in Canada. with the snow, the Christmas spirit, the tree, etc....yeah, I'll get more into that when Christmas comes. until then, let's count down for Christmas. take care, God bless, everyone.

Things Will Never be the Same Again

 Heh, funny how everyone else forward to growing up and have "freedom". Oh, and speaking of "freedom". On my actual birthday, I decided to exercise as much of my "rights and freedoms" as a "legal person" as I can. First of all, I called in the school to skip and authorized my absence; no more sneaky sneaky skipping any more. I've always wanted to rename myself to something else: Ivan Matthias Martin Mordalfus, it's a long story but since I've always hated my dad's side of the family and wanted to disconnect my surname from theirs; wanted to start a new family line since it seems like most of the names in my family were from jerks; also wanted to change my middle names as well while I was at it since I never liked it either. Even though I'm now legal and have the right to do so...I found out that I had to be in my province for the last 12 months in order to do so, meh. I also tried increasing the limit in my bank account (currently it's a pathetic $100 per day, free 15 times transaction per month), but couldn't do anything like that until my account has been around at least 6 months. Wanted to finally change my bill back to my name as receipant instead of my grandma's name...but couldn't unless my grandma was there as well. Despite all this talk about "new rights and freedoms", I still found myself restricted by certain restrictions. Like I said, it feels as if nothing has really changed much...I dunno. But the only other right I was able to freely and willingly use was to buy a lottery ticket...which I scored 4 numbers and won about $50-something. Wow...4 numbers on my first ticket, there's my little birthday present from God. :) Oh, and I also got 5 confirmed gifts from people too. So that I was happy about. But anyways, I spent the whole day out on my own, doing whatever. I wanted my moment of solitude, so I literally disconnected myself from everyone I know on that day because I did not want to talk about my birthday much really. On that day, I also went to revisit the very first school I attended, from kindergarten to the middle of Grade 3, White Haven Junior Public School, as well as the neighbourhood where I used to live while I was there. Also went to the hospital I was born in, on the exact same time I was born on, to signify and mark my official exact 18 years. Then spent the rest of the day, wandering around. Interesting how as I looked at all these places, so much has changed and so much is still the same. For example, "Scarborough Grace Hospital" is now called "Scarborough Hospital - Grace Division", yet it's still the same hospital, and how White Haven used to have portable classrooms and now they're all gone and replaced by a new block of the building, but it's still the same school. I hope the same can be said about me...things have changed for me, but I'm still the same. Here are some pics I took that day:

The End