San Jose – Just Another Day…

Writing Prompt #17: When have you felt like the “new kid”?

Posted on November 3, 2018November 3, 2018 by anele25

The idea of being the new kid has always intrigued me because you’re going into a new situation and you barely know what the process is like. I read quotes on my social media that talk about how going to school at a certain age should not matter. However, at the age of 25 I started going to San Jose State University where by some means could be considered older as you go and finish out school. I stepped into my first year after having been accepted not knowing what to expect. The admissions process was stressful because I wasn’t even sure if I was doing the steps correctly with financial aid, the writing test to be placed into a writing class, and the orientation itself. But somehow someway after having first done the writing test and then the orientation I successfully completed the first necessary steps. I went in and also finished up my financial aid paperwork which I thought would not be enough to pay for classes but I had plenty left over after to cover the rest of my expenses. Let’s fast forward to July and I wasn’t sure when my registration was supposed to be as well. I sat at a hotel in Las Vegas and I awaited a response from the person who was the contact to register for my classes. I was on a little mini vacation at the time and the prospects of not being able to sign up for classes was stressing me out. The classes were less than a month away and I was still waiting. Little did I know, I ended up resolving this issue the day before I was coming back to home. I saw the e-mail the contact person had sent me and I got on the website to see if I could register for classes yet. I got back from the park that day and I was wondering while at the park what the next steps would be. I got on and I realized there was a button that I hadn’t yet got through on there portal and I clicked on it and that advertisement was no longer there. I was super happy to discover that all my information for my classes was on the side. I went through that and I saw the few remaining classes that were left. I ended up taking Social Psychology, Human Factors, Nutrition, Psych of Prejudice, and my Writing class. I had 4 classes on Tuesday, 1 on Monday, and 3 on Thursday which gave me Wednesday off. My classes were finally set and I was ready to go although when I walked into my first day of classes I saw how much older I was than most of my classmates.

There I was walking into a class of 20 something year olds and I was a little ahead in age. But as the day went on I saw that yes I was completely on my own as the new kid on the block and that isn’t a bad thing. I saw chances to be learning and make friends with everyone in class that I could. I even saw some familiar faces as the day went on. Some folks were graduating already and other were just getting started. For myself, I kept telling myself that I was on my own now. I wasn’t sure if I’d be successful but I said I wanted to finish my degree and do it with some help of course. As the days went on, I started warming up to people and I could not let the idea that I was too old already to bring me down even more. The funny thing was that many times I doubted myself before this and just the idea of being in something new was the thing I feared. I even saw a guy that was in one of the orientations I was in earlier that year and by chance we ended up being placed in the same team for a project. We still keep in touch today and I am glad we do because it gives me a chance to reconnect. The first semester was a chance for myself to see how I could do exactly and I must say I had a great first semester. At the end of the first semester, one of my professors sat me aside right before the final and said some nice words to me on how I always had some wonderful comments to add to the class and I don’t think many other professors had nice things to say like she did. I also had a conversation with one of my professors in the nutrition class who had some disputes on one of the papers I had written about obesity being a myth and she did not take too kindly to some of the articles that had been published. I ended up having to write the paper twice and the second time we had a lengthy discussion about it but at the second outset she had talked about her current job she saw different evidence and she gave me full credit on the paper which I found to be awesome. The “being the new kid on the block” isn’t always the worst thing in the world because you have to create your own opportunities. I went out there and saw what classes I needed and disciplined myself enough to get through my classes. You can be shy or the most outgoing person in the world but it helps to go out there and work with what you have. Throughout my 4 semesters there, I saw people come and go but I was able to build a bond with some of my classmates that was worth it till the very end. We had one goal and that was to graduate and find careers out there. I think this experience was one of the most grateful I’ve had because I was put into a new situation and I excelled at it. What made me most grateful was having people there willing to help even if they were strangers. The people you just sat next to who randomly started conversations with you and asked for help those were the ones who were there for those great times. Honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing about this and I’d do it all over again.

Day #69 8/16/11: Hell of a hand…

Posted on September 18, 2011 by anele25

I helped my brother out this morning to take his rental car to the San Jose airport and needless to say it was an adventure as we both got lost big time and it was a story that can take many hours to explain. I took this picture to remind me that things were so much simpler back then and you didn’t need to really worry about anything but that night as well, I once again started helping again to cook as it has become quite a hobby of mine to find recipes online or in magazines for food as I want to keep the creativity going and I can’t emphasize this enough. But needless to say, a fun night where the A’s magically bust out for a crazy amount of runs and I thought that maybe the next day they would be doomed…

Remembering VCR’s and VHS’s…

Posted on December 27, 2010December 28, 2010 by anele25

“In a New York Minute, everything can change, In a New York minute, things can get really strange.”

-Don Henley on New York Minute

This past week, I decided to dig up some old tapes that I had. Now, these tapes ranged from this TV show I used to watch that was called El Chavo Del Ocho, Vicente Fernandez concerts, as well as Alejandro Fernandez concerts, and also old wrestling tapes. What was surprising was that I also dug up some old Christmas tapes as well. I was thinking in my head that this was everything was simple and technology had not advanced. The reason we use the technology we have now is because it is convenient and accessible. Everything is so different than it was 3 or 4 years ago when I was still taping things on a VCR. I was surprised when I especially found the old wrestling tapes and the amount of wrestling I had on there was stupendous even to me. I found stuff I don’t even recall taping such as this street fight between two very accomplished wrestlers in Edge and Shawn Michaels. I thought about what was going on in my life at that time. I remember I was still in my Junior in High School and I was engaged in reading Catcher in The Rye. I was also busy trying to get ready to pass my license test that I prepared for at least 3 months in advance (taking into account that this was in February. I was astonished that watching the Christmas tape as well as to how much of a spoiled little kid I was. I wasn’t proud of what I saw on the tape because I was trying to get all my presents first before anyone else. I was hogging the camera spotlight trying to be something I wasn’t. I also saw myself in the tape speaking English and Spanish, yet Spanish was not as advanced as English. I look back on that and see how much things have changed since we had that Christmas in 1997. That was one of my favorite years in my life as many great things happened that year to make my life a pleasure. I had my mom, my dad, my brother, my uncle, my aunt’s husband, my uncle’s wife and his kid, my other uncle, his wife, and their daughter, and also our next door neighbors there as well. That was one of the last times that we were all together as we have kind of drifted apart to different parts of the the San Jose area, and/ or moved away to Mexico due to economic circumstances. I was also happy to watch some parts of a El Chavo del Ocho tape I found too. When I started watching El Chavo in 2003, I had just moved to the West part of San Jose and I had little to any hope of actually staying in contact with my old friends from the old apartments. I completed my first year of high school at Homestead High School and that was the only time I got to see them. However, when I would take the ride home it was fun and exhausting because most of the time I would take two buses to my house and I remember being a little tired from starting at 7:30 in the morning to almost 3 P.M. I didn’t have anybody to talk to when I got home but I just remember the year before, my mom and I went to Mexico in August of 2001 and this show came on that was both funny and educational. My Grandma, myself, my mom, and my grandma’s brother would watch the show when it would come on at night for about a week or tow before we had to leave. I always laughed the hardest when Chavo would would say something dumb to Don Ramon and Don Ramon would hit him on the head. I also laughed a lot whenever the kids (Chavo, Quico, Chilindriana, and Nono) would cry for whatever reason. I was amazed watching the show because it taught me a lot about comedy and how it doesn’t need to involved sick,crude jokes, and it doesn’t need to involve cuss words to bring about humor as well. I was a little sad when we had to leave to come back home because I didn’t know if I would ever watch the show again. Well, one day I was flipping through the channels and I saw El Chavo on and I started watching it a bit. There wasn’t much of a choice as to what I could do because my friends had were now away from me. I thought to myself ‘hey this is pretty funny’ and then I had the idea of taping the show which low and behold I ended up with 12 tapes of El Chavo del Ocho, which, I told my dad were for sort of a time capsule from a period in my life. I can say that recording those episodes were apart of what got me through the early part of high school because I looked forward to see what the antics would be Don Ramon, Dona Florinda, El Chavo, Quico, and the rest of characters as well. Watching the concerts a bit also surprised me because I forget I had even recorded some of Don Vicente and Alejandro Fernandez. But, above all the wrestling still shocked me when I found some stuff that I don’t recall taping at all. For example, I found a match with the legendary Ric Flair against a guy that was supposed to be one of WWE’s future stars in Carlito. Now, granted Carlito never made it huge, and rightfully so being a wrestler with a “bright future” does not guarantee anything and yet he still managed to have a wonderful match with Flair. I still get a bit of nostalgia when I think of a live event I went to here in San Jose where these two put on almost a similar match yet the one on TV went a bit longer. After watching a few matches, I realized that taping stuff (whatever it may be and NOT on a DVR) really makes you think back and say: I remember that or ‘I taped that, really’? I felt better watching those because I realized even with stuff we have now, it is simpler, yet our kids will never know that we actually had to sit in front of a TV to wait for something to come on. It feels better to wait for something to come on because it is that much sweeter and much more satisfying. We have everything at the touch of a button now, or we have phones that can bring food to your house, and we also have the ability to pay things electronically instead of actually paying it in person. It’s not at all bad, yet some things were better when we had the ability when we could actually do things in person. It goes back to the whole Facebook argument in that we don’t have to see these people face to face we just have to send them a message and then they’re our friends. I’d like to end this by adding that if “Life wasn’t a challenge it wouldn’t be fun” good day to all (Go A’s):

Concert on 11/6/10…

Posted on November 11, 2010November 11, 2010 by anele25

Music seems to be my obsession these days as whenever I feel happy or sad I just like hearing it as the variety of music in the world is astonishing. What most people don’t know about me is that I’m a big Mexicano Regional music fan and when they find out they are surprised to hear so. Well, last Saturday I went to a concert at the convention center in San Jose, mostly because one of my favorite Norteno bands, Los Tucanes de Tijuana was coming to play. There were also other bands such as El Komander, La Original Banda El Limon, and Voz del Mando but I don’t know their music as much as I do Los Tucanes. Out of all the preceding bands before Los Tucanes played, I thought La Original was pretty damn awesome due to the fact that the other bands were singing fast paced and I can’t really understand what they are singing about. I had never heard La Original besides back in the 90’s when they had a different singer in Julio Preciado but these new guys actually left an impression on me. They sang such songs as Derecho de Antiguedad, El Maestro, Que me Digan Loco, Entre Perico y Perico, and Al Menos. They left an impression on me due to the sheer quality of music they sang and I also thought the instruments were pretty bad ass as well. Whenever I see a big band playing it’s pretty cool to think of how in sync these guys must be in order to be able to get all there notes right in order to please an audience full of people who payed good money to see them. Then came Los Tucanes and I tried my best to sing along with all their awesome hits such as Mis Tres Animales, Mis Tres Viejas, El Jefe de La Sierra, Amor Platonico, Mundo de Amor, La Chona, El Papa de Los Pollitos, La Chona, El Cetenario, and Soy Todo Tuyo. When they came out I thought about all the great songs that they’ve sang over the years and they still sound as tight as they do with Mario Moreno writing almost all their songs and some of them have some real good themes to them. My personal opinion, he is one of the top 5 song writers in Mexican Music due to the sheer honesty he puts in the songs they perform. On my favorite song from them, La Recompensa, tells the story of how several bands of drug traffickers are having a meeting yet the police is offering 5 million dollars to whoever can give them the hiding spot of where they are and at the end of the song someone gets it but he ends up dead which is ended with the saying it’s better to be poor and alive than dead and rich. Anyway, seeing them and having my parents there made me realize how much it meant to have my parents there. Whenever I’m with my mom or my dad and we hear an artist we both like it’s better to have that connection of hearing what the guy or gal is saying to be in sync with what the other person is feeling. I feel much better when me and my dad are riding in his jeep and we just blast some Antonio Aguilar, Felipe Arriaga, or even some Vicente Fernandez does the trick. Personally, after watching Los Tucanes de Tijuana perform I felt proud to be apart of something special and something unique in Mexican culture-the influence of the Corrido. Corridos are like the tall tales of men dying, relationships as a story, folklore sayings, and even drug deals. I realized that corridos are an essential part of our culture and it needs to be with us from here till eternity. Whether they are sang as covers or written originally they are an essential part of our story and it will continue to be part of us for many decades(here are some pictures of the concert)