In all honesty, it isn’t very much of a conflict.  It’s something particularly minor but it’s one of those things that you don’t really expect to deal with, even though it’s common.  It’s something that happens to other people, but not to you.  I tried to tell my boyfriend why I was so upset, and while he could understand the situation and that we knew that I was really upset, he couldn’t really emphathize with me.

It’s because I live in the world of crappy girl politics.

They say that some people never change.  I didn’t realize how true that was until I ran into an old high school “buddy” at the restaurant that she and her family owns.  After a grueling night of fun and obligation, I just wanted to spend some time with my boyfriend so we decided to go out and grab some lunch. When we arrived, I was surprised and a little speechless to see her.  It’s not like we never got along, but we were never very close, either.

The minute that I saw her, I should’ve listened to my instincts and ran out of the restaurant.  Maybe not “run” so much as “dodge her every subject and ignore as much as possible.”  I have no idea what it was about her, or about me, but for the first ten, fifteen minutes that I was there at the restaurant, she practically pulled up a chair at the table that she sat my boyfriend and I at, and asked me every question that she could think of, regarding our past mutual friends.

What happened between her and high school, I have no idea.  I can guess from her questions that she isn’t as close with her old classmates as she used to be.  I, on the other hand, am in pretty good contact with those people because she used to be a close friend of my older brother, whom I’m close with.

So, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to answer every one of her questions and update her on the status of my friends–emphasis on “my” friends, not “her” friends.

Not in the same sense, I think.  Yes, they were her friends at some point in time, and I’m 100% positive that if she were to pick up the phone and say, “Hey,” they’d just pick up where they last left off.  But the thing is, what I should have done was said, “Why don’t you just call them and ask?”  Not only would that have cut off the Q&A ten minutes earlier, I probably could’ve ordered and that fantastic food would’ve arrived by now.

Of course, social ettiquette demands that I not be a _betch_.  I wasn’t raised that way, so I thought I gave her answers that were in mutual territory–things that were general knowledge to most of our friends, things that she should’ve known but she didn’t.  Like, the fact that my brother hasn’t been in a relationship for two years.  Or, the fact that our once mutual friend’s father passed away five years ago.  Those things should’ve been a major red flag in my face.

For someone that’s so interested in what’s currently going on in their lives, she hasn’t been around for at least five years.  Does that or doesn’t that mean that she has no right to know unless she asked herself?

I makes me livid now to think about it after she’s already done her damage.  What I believed to be common knowledge, wasn’t.  I should’ve said: “Pick up the damn phone and ask them yourself.  Be a good friend.”  I should’ve known that she wasn’t my friend, that I couldn’t trust her, and that she had no right prying in my life or the life of my friends.

Like I said, any way I look at it, it’s my fault.  I told her things that didn’t really need to be said.  If she was truly their friend, she’d know.  Things five years in the making?  There’s no one else to blame for saying the things that didn’t need to be said.  But I want to blame her.  I want to confront her and say, “What the hell?  Didn’t I tell you these things in confidence?”  Even if we were standing in the middle of a crowded restaurant during lunch hour, what kind of person does that make you if you can turn around and tell someone else the things that I said in less than three hours?  What the hell?  What I told you wasn’t fodder for gossip, it was stuff that I thought you should know, you know, stuff that was important. But now, she’s turned that information into petty gossip and all I can think is, “I just can’t trust you.”

Have you ever told someone something that you didn’t think was gossip–you really, really didn’t think was gossip at all–until that person repeated it in a way that was damaging to you?  I don’t know; I just don’t know how this could’ve happened.

Maybe it’s high school, maybe it’s girl politics.  Whatever it is, it sucks.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Stolen from J.T.’s Blog — http://tiongathan.blogspot.com

When the vocals are done right and the instrumentals fade to black, you know have a cover done right. It’s then when you know that it’s not just about the artist, but the song and words and inspiration that only music can tap into.

That’s what it’s like listening to aozorafantasii’s cover of Replay, originally popularized by SHINee.  If not for her, I wouldn’t have learned the lyrics to the song and I probably wouldn’t be as obsessed with the English version as I am now.  Then again, it’s very hard not to remember the echoing chorus by the original’s boy band wonder, of course.

Since Lisa’s (aozorafantasii) hit the web with her English translation of Replay, tons of fans have been taking their time and making an effort to remix the Replay.  There’s my favorite notable performance by Asian Covers ~ who are adorable! ~ with their English version, with rap, of Replay.  Other than these two outstanding fan groups, let’s just say I’m glad that YouTube has a big server.

On a side note, Lisa is kind of inspiring. There’s no other way to put it. She recently graduated from Berkeley and now she’s traveled to Japan to work on her Japanese and her music.  It’s really inspiring to me because I’ve studied three years of formal Japanese, and I still don’t think I know anything. It would be great to be able to learn more and work on becoming fluent in Japanese, so I’m really envious of her but at the same time, I admire her very much.  Those who chase their dreams are meant for great things, so I don’t hold anything against her. Aja aja, aozora! ^^ We’re rooting for you!

If you have some time, I’d definitely take a moment to listen or download some of her music from her Wordpress blog.  I’m currently listening to You Don’t Know and Tabi.  Tabi is gorgeous =)

We’re all looking to the future now, something brighter than the fallen dreams and crushed hopes of yesterday.  That’s not me being bitter, it’s me looking at my wallet.  With the future, we can all think of bigger things: better phones, smaller laptops, and a cleaner, neater, friendlier Web 3.0.

The idea goes like this:

An imaginary girl named Lucy, whose mother has just been told by her doctor that she needs to see a specialist. “At the doctor’s office, Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser,” we read. “The agent promptly retrieved information about Mom’s prescribed treatment from the doctor’s agent, looked up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones in-plan for Mom’s insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent on trusted rating services.” [1]

What it really means is this: throwing away all that fear and dread that comes with providing way too much information on the interwebs and embracing that which pops the personal bubble.

Footnotes:

[1] Coauthored by Berners-Lee in Scientific American (Read More)