another year gone by

i don't know what it is with me and my birthday, but more often than not something bad has occured. something that's sad, traumatizing usually happens on my birthday and i think i've become very wary of this day in my life. i don't recall much about the earlier years, but having a birthday in the summer time in the USA is usually not good... it didn't help that i wasn't much of a popular kid in school either. i remember once on my 10 birthday or something, only one person i invited showed up. a few other friends were away on vacation and i actually had to call a few of them to remind them that it was my birthday and asked them if they were going to come at all... sigh...
the teenage and older years didn't help much either. there seemed to be a lot of friction going on with family members at the time, and i just remember not ever enjoying family outings. there just never seemed to be a time (even on someone's birthday) where people could just put things behind them for a few hours and just try and be happy.
i think the worst must have been around this time last year when i lost what i considered to be at the time, my best friend. i don't take things like 'best friend' very lightly at all. in fact, i must admit i don't even have amongst all of my good friends, a 'best' one. i don't think i know one person now that i would be comfortable sharing everything there is to know about me (sorry to you guys if you ever happen to read this). i have a lot of very good friends who i am comfortable telling all sorts of things to... maybe 75%... but that other 25%, well i guess i wanted to save that for my best friend... :(
in any case, around this time last year i lost my closest friend i have ever had in life. someone who i felt knew me and understood me better than anyone else, and i had shared a ton of stuff with. she's not dead or whatever in that sense, but something terrible happened between us this time last year and i guess i've been traumatized since then.
there's a difference between knowing that someone is physically gone from the world, and there's a difference between knowing that someone is still there, but gone from your life. sometimes i don't know which one is harder to accept. to say that i miss our friendship is akin to saying you miss the sunshine, or the warm breeze that you get on a spring day. oh well, life goes on. this year i had a lot of unexpected people whom i received well wishes from. but the one i was silently hoping for never came.
so yeah, i'm kind of glad that my birthday is over with. i usually don't want to make a fuss over it, but somewhere deep down inside of me is a little guy who wishes everyone would remember this date and that they would make a big fuss about it and throw me something big and we can all be happy. but there's the other part of me who's afraid of what might happen again and would rather stay in his room and not let the karma of his life repeat itself.
i guess i took the sad way out.

Heavenly Day

Oh heavenly day, all the clouds blew away

Got no trouble today with anyone

The smile on your face I live only to see

It's enough for me, baby, it's enough for me

Oh, heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

Tomorrow may rain with sorrow

Here's a little time we can borrow

Forget all our troubles in these moments so few

All we've got right now, the only thing that

All we really have to do

Is have ourselves a heavenly day

Lay here and watch the trees sway

Oh, can't see no other way, no way, no way

Heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

No one at my shoulder bringing me fears

Got no clouds up above me bringing me tears

Got nothing to tell you, I've got nothing much to say

Only I'm glad to be here with you

On this heavenly, heavenly, heavenly, heavenly

Heavenly day, all the trouble's gone away

Oh, for a while anyway, for a while anyway

Heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

- Heavenly Day, Patty Griffin

Have yourself a heavenly day... even though sometimes things may not seem to be that way

scuba diving!

i've been fascinated with the underwater world since i was a kid, and finally, FINALLY after many many many years of dragging my feet and dreaming, i'm about to enter the underwater world for an extended period of time. yes, ladies and gentlemen, i am about to learn scuba diving :)
i'm a bit nervous, but i think the excitement about being able to see the underwater world in its glory won over the part of me that held back a bit. besides, the chances of being bit by a shark or what not are pretty slim as far as i can tell. i stand a far greater chance getting hit by a car crossing the street.
so i'm going to go learn this coming weekend, and it should be good. it's a two week intensive course that spans the entire weekend, and by the end of two weeks i will be certified to go do some basic open water scuba diving. i don't really harbor much desire to go very deep anyways. i'm rather content exploring the shallow coral reefs as opposed to diving wrecks and going really deep. call me unadventurous or unambitious, but i think i'd like to be able to safely move up and down the water without having to worry about the nitrogen level in my blood stream getting too high. that just seems unnecessary.
this will be the start of a whole new world of adventure for me - i definitely plan to go travel to places where diving will be part of my itinerary. bali, hawaii, palau, australia, sulawesi, andaman, belize, red sea here i come!

Under the sea, under the sea

Darlin' it's better down where it's wetter

Take it from me.

Up on the shore they work all day

Out in the sun they slave away

While we devoting full time to floating

Under the sea

Shrek? Shrug more like it...

I recently went to watch the adventures of that green ogre on the big screen a few days ago. And I must say - they milked it for all it's worth. Literally... The first two Shrek movies were cool because they were so original in satirizing fairy tales and what not, but there was nothing new, original or funny about this new movie that came out. I recall sitting in the theater, only laughing about 3-4 times. There's only so much that stupid gingerbread man, and him popping a button that you can take. There's only so much cuteness you can take from the silly donkey-dragon babies, and those ugly little ogre babies. Yech... I get chills just thinking about it.
Now, before you label me a cute-hater (which I can be sometimes, except for real human babies, and baby animals), I watch cartoons as well, but I have my limits.
Anyways, I felt that Shrek 3 was a completely unnecessary movie. If they stopped at the first two, I am pretty sure people would have loved it because they were genuinely funny, original and made people guffaw with laughter. The plot in number 3 (don't worry, I won't spoil the 'plot' for you), was lame, weak, stupid. Whatever you want to call it. In my humble opinion, this movie was a C- at best.
Now, not all of the last movies in a trilogy are bad mind you. LOTR was f-ing awesome, but dragged along a bit towards the end. Star Wars was f-ing awesome. Spiderman was ummm, ok I guess. What killed Spidey for me was the numerous plots, subplots etc. that made actual development a bit hasty for me. Matrix was cool, but pretty unbelievable in some of the things that was happening (but then again that whole movie was pretty unbelievable... or was it...?). So I guess it ranges all over the spectrum in terms of being completely awesome, or complete crap. Shrek falls very close to the pit of the later.
In any case, that's my movie critique of the day. I am going to watch Pirates sometime this weekend, and boy I hope I don't end up wasting 3 hours of my life. But then again, there's Kiera Knightley, which might make it more bearable... but then again, all she did in the last movie was pout around and look hot. Heh... nothing's perfect in the world, issit? ;)

An unexpected loss

Today, I found out one of my highschool classmates was taken away from us. He was training to be a physical education teacher, and he died when he went camping and a tree fell on his tent, killing him. I confess to not knowing him very well even when we were classmates.
I blame my shyness and general lack of confidence in talking with people 10 years ago. But in the end, there were tons of people who I never got to know who have flitted out of my life over the years.
Life works in mysterious ways that is for sure. Sometimes the most unlikely people have their lives taken away suddenly from us in one way or another. Sometimes the seemingly most unworthy scum bags seem to be allowed to thrive and get away with what they are doing. I know it is wrong to wish something bad on someone, but sometimes it seems so unfair.
I guess the lesson to really learn is, live everyday as if it were your last. I know I have been pretty bad at this - there are days where I just end up wasting my time.
I hope I get wiser...

Sunrise

My name is Ewok for all purposes, and this is my blog.
I had another blog I used to store my memories in, but it was filled with old troubled ones of the past, and this blog is dedicated to a new start. You see, I wasn't a very happy person in the last 10 months for reasons that I might reveal later on, but recently I knew I had to put these troubles, painful memories and bitterness away. There's something about pain and anger that makes you different. It turns you into a bitter, jaded and difficult person to be around and well, I was tired of being that person.
So this is to the new Ewok. To a new start, and to a banishment of all the bad things that happened before.
I hope you can stick around as I embark on this journey of mine. There will be times when I stumble and fall. There will be times when I go on ranting about something or another. But bear with me as the road is not easy. Life was never made to be easy, and mine will be no different.