il s’agit de vous et moi.

so the other day, out of urgency, i randomly combined some of my initials to make up for a stage name “MC Shael.”

What I didn’t know was it was actually a name, a hebrew name, meaning to ask for God.

coincidence? I don’t think so. call me “MC Shael”

today i got my first pay check after the recession hit.

well, not the first one but the first big one. I knew I was not doing a really good job at it since I only get to come in once or twice a week. It is difficult for me to learn and remember all the procedures necessary to perform well in the office. However, when my boss said “You were less than what I had expected” and told me that he had cut my paycheck, I was really sad.

For seconds, I asked myself what is the purpose of me working there if they don’t like it, I don’t like it, and now I have to take this to my face.

May this be a lesson. I hope this will be a drive for me to become better and to reach my true potential. I know I am more than what I seem and I know I am far more capable than what I am doing now and I definitely do not deserve to be working in such environment.

May this be THE lesson, for I do not wish to continue living this way.

Can’t say that I am not depressed.

can’t say that I am not disappointed.

I just talked with my alumni mentor yesterday. Turns out, she is having a hard time utilizing her contacts to get her daughter a job. What chance do I stand? I have no contacts at all. All I have are 3 pieces of papers: a diploma, a resume, and a cover letter.

Can’t say that I am relieved.

I’ve been anxious about what to do for Linda’s birthday. I sent her a cheesecake factory gift card last year. But what about now? I wish I could give her a ring, but I am broke. If I give her a ring, I might just starve to death this month. In the end, I found her a cute card with yellow envelope and sent it off with a gift card for Bloomingdale’s. Thanks to all the ladies I’ve asked for help with.

Can’t say that I am …

at peace, even though I say it to people a lot.
happy, because people don’t talk to me anymore.
helpful, I want to but my mind is a mess
free. you would think but somehow i manage to keep myself very busy, from dawn to dust.

Can’t say that I am not frustrated.

The world has been so different lately. The news, the current events, and everything on the media nowadays is just so different than what I was used to when I was little.

As a class of 2009, it is just so different, the moment I came out of the college. While in college, everyone is the same, we are all one of the students. But once we are out, some excel and become integral part of the management, some move on and become graduate students, some took over family businesses, and some become lost and never spoken to ever again. I sometimes wonder if all the other classes were the same as us. I guess the answer is yes and it’s just I have never paid any attention to.

It seems even funny as I am reflecting back to what I had done right and wrong, and they all seem so little to today that it almost doesn’t even matter. What exactly did I do in my 4 years of college life? I don’t seem to remember. I lived as if I walked my whole life in sand and as I move on, the waves from the ocean of time just rush in and erase all the trace I had made. I don’t have anything to look back on, to be proud of, and to feel that I had accomplished something and not a shame to my parents and to God.

You may say that if that is the case of what you feel, why don’t you start by doing something now? Make something out of yourself now. But there is something that I feel like only I know and no one else knows. There is something that is preventing me from seeing myself as equal as others. And until the day I am done with it, I will never be able to be as confident as I should be.

And because of it, I have this false sense of everything is useless, including me. Sometimes I even hope that 2012 will be true so that I don’t have to live anymore. I know this is wrong and I have to erase this thought out of my head, but it’s just part of my brain and I can’t stop it.

I really really hope I can just be alone and dwell myself into some music. But with family, it is so close yet so far away.

(Ayumi Hamasaki – Ballad)

I love estimation. Aside from that, I love to prove others wrong. I am the type of person that you see in TV or movies that would just go with their guts.

I remember once when I was in elementary school, we had a competition where the teacher would give each teams an amount, such as a liter or 500 cc, and the teams would have to use the given containers to take out the exact amount of water. The closest team will win.

When my turn came to represent my team, my designated amount was 10 deciliter. And my container was a sandwich-shaped plastic box. When I put that under the water in the bin to take out 10 deciliter of water, I remember one of my friend who sat in the front row was yelling at me that it is too much and that I should take out some water. But I went with guts and counted up to 10 in my head, as if each second represents 1 deciliter.

My happiness came from the moment when the teacher measured the water in the container to be exactly 10 deciliter. No one has done that before in my class. No matter what measurement it is, never an EXACT, and I did it.

With that gut feeling, I knew what I could do and what I can not do. I knew I could play basketball, I knew I could get a perfect score on that test, and I knew which colleges I could get into, and the percentage of chance that I might not be able to.

This system has worked for me until college. I guess somehow along the line, I under-estimated myself and thought that my intelligence can only allow me to get a B in college. Well, I was dead wrong. In fact, I could’ve been a straight A student in my college, just as well as I was in high school.

And after college, the system hasn’t worked since. The hardest part of this economy on me is the fact that I don’t know where I am in accordance to the market. What kind of job will I be able to grab? I know I can do this job, but do they think I can do it? Ok, so with my resume and experience, I think they would think I can do it. Yet, the next day all I get is still a rejection letter. I lower and lower my expectation everyday but I still don’t know where the line is.

Being unemployed doesn’t hurt me at all, what hurts is not knowing who would employee me if the economy would normal.