thanks to my buddy Warren, Boston has been a relevant city in my life the past three years. as a freshman in college, i found myself in Boston whenever an urge to get away from New York came over me. my first experience of Boston came a few weeks after 9/11 when two of my friends and I went up to MIT and boarded a cruise boat to attend a semiformal thrown by Warren’s chinese student club. later that year, head and jeff joined me on a “road trip” as we drove to Boston to hang out with Rich and Anita, MIT cats that we met through Warren who were kind enough to host us. my summer before sophomore year, i went up yet again, this time with graceface and reggie, and we spent several days with Warren including a night in a huge home of a lawyer who was away on vacation, thanks to Warren’s frat connections. since then, I have been in Boston two more times, once with Hsin as we took a winter break trip, and once last year during spring break with Nigi as we visited Warren and Novi (at Harvard) and also found ourselves throwing money away at Mohegan.

Boston, for me, is a very unique town in that it’s not quite as grand and magnificent as New York or pretty and interesting as San Francisco nor is does it feel as monumental and important as Washington DC – and yet, the town gives off a distinct aura that is tough to capture with words. i think of cold weather, Ally McBeal, a true college town, Red Sox / sports-crazed, rude white people, and very very limited offering of quality Korean food. driving along the Charles River, it’s been a sweet treat for my memory to recall the different faces of Boston – the icy frosted waters during the winter, the cool glistening blue amid the not-too-impressive skyline in the summer, and clear reflections of the colorful foliage in the autumn – there is a puritanical austerity to the environment and yet it feels cozy and very down-to-earth.

i write of Boston because tomorrow, i will be embarking on my 6th trip to Boston. while the number may still be relatively low, i feel as if this trip will mark the end of my college experience away from Columbia. as a senior, Boston (and to a degree, Dartmouth), has been the getaway spot of choice. perhaps i will visit once more before the school year ends, but to know that this trip may be one of the last conjures up sentimental thoughts and makes me aware of how fast the times have gone. was it only yesterday that i tasted the late-night delights of Quan’s Kitchen or walked the streets of Harvard Square stopping by at Au Bon Pain for a chicken grilled sandwich?

the mean streets of Boston, see you tomorrow.

a plateau of very subtle emotions – sometimes a little depressing and sometimes a bit happy – has characterized a great deal of my experiences in the past year. as i perfect the art of dismissive nonchalance – not so much as in a lack of enthusiasm but as in a lack of emotional investment – i feel as if i have been floating through the various landscapes and going through the motions. do i get nostalgic still? surely, but i feel as if that is something i can protect myself more effectively from as well. gone are the days when it would literally hurt the stomach, or “heart” in romantic terms, to think about the lost opportunities or the screw ups. nowadays, life just waltzes by and i am often just sitting down. and i don’t think it is a situation unique to my own circumstances – when i watch films such as lost in translation or garden state, the celebration and specific framing of indifference and detachedness from the surrounding world is something that my peers seem to identify with as well. perhaps we are all looking to be sedated and shielded from emotional excesses. after all, it does sound like the “cool” thing to do.

but i cannot help looking inwards and criticizing a certain degeneration of my personal ways. in reality, i am probably not any lazier than i was as a first year student. however, the idea that i am probably not any more productive or driven as i once used to be disappoints me. there was a time when i knew how to regiment life more effectively, and while i was probably not as “happy,” it certainly pleases me nowadays to look upon such a glorious time. but perhaps such productive times are a mythical creation of my mind. were i to recreate and relive such memories, will i be able to convince myself that i am back on the right track? how about those PK Mission: Impossible lists that i used to write up in high school? get a 96+ average on all english tests, score perfect on all history tests, run for 100 yards each game, write 3 articles, etc. – such was the life i lived, a life with some sort of standard, albeit very practical to the degree of being shallow. do i dare try something similar this late in the game? have i become too comfortable with this life of “who cares?”

Operation Reclaim Life [yes, very corny]

1. Sleep more – lack of sleep leads to extention of unproductive moments as well as unnecessary emotional backlashes that include excessively self-defeating infatuation, loss of self-esteem, and whining. Recommend increasing sleeping hours from 4 to 6 each night.

2. Exercise more – lifting increases patience, or so i read in a fitness magazine once. having a fit body boosts self-confidence and also maintains health. try mandatory gym time at least 3 times a week.

3. Read more – quit being lazy and get those 80-100 pages in each night, no excuses. be able to digest dense material and really be curious to know more.

4. Write more – better pkblog entries, better life documentation, and more creative insight. cannot risk becoming completely uninteresting. already boring enough.

5. More money – embrace the Gekko creed of “greed is good” and work ass off to make money. “whoever says that money is the root of all evil doesn’t have any. look at the fucking smile on my face.” haha, movie quotes aside (can you guess where that’s from?), money is a great way to measure productivity and self-worth (because metrics such as ‘popularity’, ‘coolness’, or ‘nice’ are so subjective and transient). this means getting websites done on time, pressing for payments, and actually being a real business man.

there are some other areas i should probably think about, but as with any proclamations of self-improvement, this one will have obstacles – namely, the incumbent lifestyle of free-flowing actions that include drinking beer at 3am on a weekday to chill out, watching NFL Primetime at 2am before the day an important assignment is due, or having a long-winded conversation with a friend on AIM at 4 or 5am when class starts at 9am. college allows for such behavior, but perhaps it is time to cut down and focus my energies at increasing my personal value. the beauty of it all is that only i will be able to judge myself properly, but whether or not i will remain true to my intentions still hangs in the balance.