360

Got my XBOX 360 in the mail today.
Note: This is not going back on my previous post. I ordered it last week. No more spending. Really

Assessments:
Madden 09 will be hard to learn.
Call of Duty 3 makes me dizzy.

PLAYTIME!

Budget!

Other than food, no more unplanned spending.
This is more of a note to self than anything.
Feel free to comment though.

Are you spending too much?

The Best Series I've Ever Seen.

If you haven't watched The West Wing, I suggest you do. I mean, yeah, I am a huge fan of the Wire and it's become one of my favorite shows of all time. But if you were inspired/thought-provoked by the Wire, watch The West Wing.

Here's a scene from season 4 of the show. The president is on a campain for re-election and two of his top aides, Toby Zeigler and Josh Lyman are discussing the election.

Toby: "If our job teaches us anything, it's that we don't know what the next president's gonna face. If we choose someone with vision, someone with guts, someone with...gravi tas, whose connected to other people's lives and cares about making them better. If we choose someone to inspire us, then we'll be able to face what comes our way, and achieve things we can't imagine yet. Intead of telling people who's the most qualified, instead of telling people who's got the better ideas, let's make it obvious."

It's gonna be hard."

Josh: "Then we'll do what's hard."

A president that inspires. The cynic in me thought I could only find it in a TV show.

Coach.

An addendum to the Hope post. I saw Coach Carter today at the store for $4. Hell yeah I bought it. Plus it has the the Hope music video on the special features. So sick.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

A Good Read.

The Power of One by Bruce Courtenay is an incredibly inspirational book. It's about a young boy, Peekay, who grows up in South Africa during the Apartheid movement. He faces a lot of oppression and goes through a lot of hardships. Still not finished yet, but here's a passage that I found to be particularly thought-provoking.

The scene is of a German music professor, Doc, who teaches Peekay not only how to play the piano, but also many other life lessons.

'His piercing blue eyes looked into mine. "Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life."'

Something I Don't Quite Understand.

My dad's infatuation with black and white westerns. Maybe it's because he's a staunch Republican. Should I tell him that I'm voting for Senator Obama? Hrm.

White guy always wins in westerns. And the minorities are always in servitude. Sound familiar?

Make Your Move.

Yesterday I had a good conversation with a good friend. Two things I love.

I asked if my blog was kinda emo. Her response, "Well, you've almost died twice. So if anyone has an excuse to be emo, it's you." We both laughed.

But as I think about it, I'm pretty far from emo. Or at least what I perceive as emo. I always try to have hope. Look at the bright side of things. Because that's all any of us can do. Right? Hope that the best is yet to come. Yeah! It is. We're all still pretty young. No matter what mistakes or what missed opportunities we might have made in the past, the cool thing is that on any given day, we can try and wipe our slate clean by forgetting about it and by saying we won't make those mistakes in the future. I'm sure we will repeat some of the same mistakes and miss some more opportunities. But we'll also learn from our past and do better on some other things.

Dwelling on the past makes for unhappy present and an unstable future.

On a side note. A special shout-out to Quiz.
Damn, she probably woulda given me her number if I asked for it. Oh those missed opportunities! Haha.

Love you all. (I know that was kinda emo. But hell. I almost died twice :P)

Lolos and Jordans.

My Lolo Agripino (Pinoy) Cabal past away about twelve years ago. So my Lola Maria Cabal has been a widow.

On July 3rd, 2008, she remarried to a man named Perfecto (Pete) Bobis. My Lola is now Maria Cabal Bobis.

They had been dating for a few years. He's a very nice, very spiritual man. He has eleven children from his previous marriage. He too is a widower.

And he guess what he sports. Jordans. I've only actually seen Jordans a few times in my life. But yeah. My new Lolo is freakin thug.

I was really close to both my biological Lolos before they died. And I have a feeling that as we get to know each other better, I'll get closer to this one too.

And maybe I'll have enough money to buy Jordans some day.

Hope.

Every morning I wake up and say my morning prayers
Then I turn on my computer and open iTunes
The first song is always

Twista ft. Faith Evans - Hope.

From the Coach Carter Soundtrack
Pretty good movie
Amazing song

See the vision of the world through the eyes of Stevie Wonder

So Sick.

I told this story a few times in the last few days, so now I think I remember enough of the events to place it down on [smile]itsanotherday.

Late in July I felt tired. I felt tired, so I was sleeping a lot. I thought it was just from the sleepiness of the warm summer days. Plus there were also the trips which were tons of fun, but also quite draining. The Vegas trip: too many memories to count. The trip to Burbank/LA: met some really cool people and reconnected with some of Berkeley's finest alumni (and Rannel :P). But even during that time, I was starting to just be really tired. And when I got back to San Diego, I slept and napped constantly. I thought my body was just telling me it needed more sleep. I had had my fun, but now my body just needed to recuperate.

But my mom seemed to know otherwise. She would ask me if I was feeling okay. And I was. I was just tired. And I told her this. It got to the point where we started arguing because it would be the same conversation every day. "I don't feel sick. I'm not hurting anywhere. I'm just sleepy."

Finally she got so worried that I agreed to go to a clinic. We took blood tests and they were found to be abnormal. My mom (an ICU nurse at Sharp Chula Vista medical center) called one of the kidney doctors she worked with and told him about the results. He said right away that I should go to ER. So we went. In ER, I still felt pretty okay. Then it happened as I was changing into my hospital gown. I had a seizure. I awoke a few hours later in the ER. We went to ICU that night.

Still, I didn't feel pain or sick at all for the first few days/nights in the hospital. Cousin Wally surprised me maybe my third night there by flying down and coming in. He, along with Kyle, Jae , and Hai visited me the next day. Pretty good times chatting it up and laughing about good times. Everything until that day was pretty coherent for me and I still didn't feel sick at all.

Wally slept over that night. That night I had the first of my many very real dreamish states that I mentioned in the No Rest for the Weary post. In this dream I played many "games" in which I was trying to reach an ultimate goal. I had to either build something or solve a puzzle. The first few games were really hard and tiring, but as the games moved on, I started to get a hang of it and they got easier and I could solve them faster.

I woke up the next morning and felt rejuvenated. I had a renewed understanding. Somehow I knew that the "real world" would go the same way my dreams had gone. I would get better at it, but things were about to get really hard. I woke up Wally and told him this.

"Wally I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I know I'm gonna get better. I know it. But it's gonna get much harder first. I'm gonna get much worse before I get better."

And all throughout the day, it's weird, but I could almost predict what was gonna happen and what people were gonna say to me. Almost like I had lived that day already. Almost like it was one of the games and I had played it before.

And I was right. Later in that day was when I got really, really sick. I started forgetting stuff and losing time. Most of the time I went back to playing the games in my head, and again there were hard and easy games. From then on, most of what I remember from that admittance in the hospital were only flashes of the real world. I would come back every so often, but for the most part I don't remember whole conversations or anything like that.

One of the flashes I remember was of Wally saying something to me as he was leaving to go back to the bay. I remember he was agitated. He said, "Don't worry Nicky, you'll be okay." I thought, "Yeah, I know."

And I did know. Because I had played the "games" already in my head, and I was okay in the end. I got better. I believe that the night Wally slept over, my mind knew that my body was about to get really sick and in order to prep me, it gave me those dreams. Was it God who sent me those dreams? Does the power of the mind take over when the body is going through a lot of pain and illness? God only knows.

Auntie Tess and Uncle Mike Abrazaldo (Wally and Ate Michelle's parents) were there during the hardest parts of my sickness. They saw the ups and downs.

On Tuesday I took another blood test in the morning. Later in the day I had dialysis. While at dialysis, my mom was able to find out the results of the labs. She went to my kidney doctor's office and showed him.

The doctor was so pleased with the numbers that he said, "I think we can stop dialysis treatments for now." Although we're not completely off dialysis yet, if the numbers continue to improve, then no more dialysis for good. Music to the ears.

We told Auntie Tess right away. "In a way, this is a blessing in disguise," she said. And it is. I won't take my health for granted. I won't take my family and friends for granted. I love life a little bit more. Things that used to bother me don't bother me as much. I handle what it's in my realm to handle, and try not to worry too much. Because we're young and God only knows what life has in store for us. We still have so many games to play.

No Rain, No Rainbows.