sentimental value

When I first laid eyes on it, nothing seemed to pop. It was so plain in design, minimalist and somewhat drab. It's just a jacket and what the hell is the north face?

That was roughly eight years ago and I still wear that jacket to this day. Granted, most of the fleece lining has fallen off and it has seen better days. Wind passes right through it like Mexican food through my digestive tract. Nowadays I mostly keep it around for sentimental purposes.

Throughout its lifespan, I've done some rather crazy things to it. For instance, my first year in high school, I treated the jacket as my personal filing cabinet. The left chest pocket held my cache of class notes all neatly folded and my other pockets contained my writing utensils. The insanity even went as far as carrying a calculator, scissor, mini stapler, highlighter, sticky notes and other miscellaneous items in the jacket. To this day, I'm not quite sure what compelled me to stuff my pocket with all those items, but I am sure I've had a few moments when it has come in handy.

Don't worry. These days, the Denali lives a quieter existence, draped over my body as a personal reminder of days long gone.

messy solutions

The other day while leaving work. I had the unfortunate decision to make: walk like a fool or keep my feet dry. Let me explain. It was raining rather lightly when it came time for me to leave work; however, I didn't have the foresight to bring my umbrella with me. The one day I don't scan through the hourly updates on Weather.com comes back to bite me in the ass. What's the big deal? It's just rain. Well, that day of all days, I decided to wear my favorite pair of dress shoes. I couldn't bear to have them ruined by the rainwater. I told my friend about my dilemma and she had this to offer, "Wrap your feet with trash bags." Wow. Trash bags. I'll admit the idea seemed plausible at first. Plastic is water proof and it'll prevent my precious shoes and pant legs from getting wet. I looked around the office and finally found some clean plastic bags to stuff my feet into. Minutes pass and I still couldn't get the hang of tying the bags properly. They had a tendency to slip off and make a mess of things. After a while, I decided my best efforts will have to do and I boldly left the lobby. That's when everything started to go downhill. The knots started to unravel and the bags started to bunch up under the soles. This caused a lot of unnecessary sliding. Not to mention, I completely looked like an idiot walking down the capitol avenue with trash bags on my feet. My face burned with embarrassment with every step that took me closer to another pedestrian. I quickly duck under an awning and phone my friend. After a few minutes of bickering and "thanking" her for the brilliant idea, I decided enough was enough. I grabbed a fistful of plastic and ripped the ridiculous shell into pieces. The rest of the story is rather straightforward. My shoes ended up getting wet, but not to the point where the leather was ruined. Thank God for that.

Moral: Never follow through with ideas that involve using plastic bags as shoes.

the sartorialist in me

The past few days I've been obsessing over clothes. It can probably be attributed to the recent shopping spree a few days ago. I feel ambitious this year. With the mounting pressure of having to balance an internship with school and KCF, it seems like the best time to turn over a new leaf. I've been asking around if I should try to merge GQ with "indie/scenester." They're both entirely different styles and it'll be a bold maneuver. Here's my logic, I figure since I'll be donning a suit twice a week, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to continue wearing clothes of that nature on my off days. On the other hand, I've always had a fascination for the "vintage too-cool-for-conforming" style that is popularly depicted by stores like Urban Outfitters or American Apparel. This is the real challenge, trying to fit my shapely body into skinny pants. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Unlike some guys, I value my crotch space and prefer things to be loose instead of cramped. Balls need to be aired out folks.

Here are a few styles that I like.








Besides just changing my style, I want to undergo a personality shift. I'm reluctant to say "change" because I doubt it would happen. Whereas to "shift" would simply mean emphasizing specific traits over others. There are certain personality traits that I would prefer letting go of. We'll see if that happens or not.