Senior day weekend

I must say, it was pretty awesome...

There was nothing better than playing in front of my family, specifically my mother because she hasn't seen me play in about four and a half years. And there no better feeling than seeing your mom smile watching me playing the game I love...

Ill see you soon mom!

-Jun

Spending time with the ones who care

Being away from home, its rough to not have parents when times are hard. Parents say they are only a phone call away, but it is not the same. There isn't that feeling of comfort when you need it.

But I been quite fortunate with the people I call family while living in Iowa because they have been the world to me. It seems as if we can't do anything without each other. If one person wants to go eat at the cafeteria at a certain time and others wants to another, we just yell and converse and come up with a conclusion some how.

I been a part of something special. Being part of a Final Four team in junior college baseball was pretty amazing. I wouldn't give up the memories or the people on the team for the world. Everyone of them are like a brother to me, even though I have seem to distant away for them since moving out to Cedar Rapids.

But being out here at Mount Mercy and living on my own with people I have never met, I never thought I would build a close relationship with anyone. But when people have your back and pick you up when you are down, you start to look at things differently. And that's how my dysfunctional family at Mount Mercy is. We always say that they are like family, or second family. And this is, literally my second family.

Speaking of family, my mother and sister's came out to Cedar Rapids to watch me play on Senior day, which is in couple of hours from now.

I think the last time my mother saw me play was in high school.

She did come to one of my games when I was playing for El Camino College, but I was a red shirt then.

I got to spend time with my mother and sisters these past couple of days. I never seen my mother so relaxed and enjoying time away from life.

For those of you who do not know my mother, she was a house wife before she divorced my father. Then she had to get a job to support my two sisters and I on her own. Ever since then, she has been on the grind; just non-stop work. I remember in high school, I never saw her throughout the week because she would be working early mornings shift that would last until late nights. The only time I saw her was on Saturdays, if I didn't have any baseball games or band competitions.

But just seeing my mother laughing away and having a good time, it put me in a better mood.

I am glad my mother made it out for Senior day this weekend. I don't get to see her everyday now and for her to see me play baseball just one more time before my college career ends, it's a dream come true.

Dont take those people who care for you for granted because you never know what you had until it's gone. Take time to appreciate and thank them for all the things they have done for you.

-Jun

Special shout out to my mother, Yumiko and two sisters, Haruka and Azusa!

#ChantingForChange...a little confession

It's been a struggle this season.

We were 4 - and who knows how many loses we have and - 1 on the season before this past weekend. I haven't playing bad, but I haven't been playing well.

This past Friday, I didn't end up going out with my teammates but instead stayed in. I have just been overwhelmed with school and exhausted with the lack of sleep I am getting (speaking of, I should be sleeping right now). So I clean my room a bit and did some laundry that night. And for some reason, I felt the need to chant.

For those of who may not know, I am a Buddhist. And to be quite honest, I am not fully committed to this religion. I never really believed in any religion before. Part of the reason I am a Buddhist is because my mother started to practice it and I was just brought into it. I would be forced to go to monthly meetings with my mom so I can get to know the religion more.

I also felt guilty because one my of best friends in California is a Buddhist, along with his parents and I thought I would be letting them down by saying I don't want to be a buddhist.

I have been a Buddhist since 2009 and heard many stories of struggles in life and met so many people that wants to push me to be a strong believer in the Buddhist movement of Soka Gakkai International, also known as SGI. People that join the SGI receives a thing called a "Gohonzon" and is to chant the phrase "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo", which mean the world of Buddhahood, for as long as you want. My mom chants for hours and hours on a daily bases. The reason behind it, I think, is to get rid of all the bad karma and start seeing change in something.

But back to those people I was talking about, they come up to me and take their valuable time to meet with me and talk about Buddhism and get me going in the right direction. And me being ignorant about it, I just listened from one ear and it went though the other.

I would talk to my mom about all these bad or stressful things I would be going through at the time, like losing way too many games this season, and every time she would tell me, "Go chant." But I would always put it off because I thought it was a waste of time.

Going back to my night on Friday, like I said, I felt the need to chant. I just felt I needed to do something for a change, to turn this frustrating season my teammates and I are having and just for myself in general, so I opened up my Gohonzon for the first time this school semester and chanted for a short amount of time right before I went to bed. When woke up Saturday morning, the first things I did was chant.

So I get to the field to because we had a game that day (Saturday) and we lost two games. I played the first game, went 1 for 2 with a walk and made two errors on the field. Our coach made changes in the line up the second game and I wasn't in it. I knew I messed up and couldn't do anything about it. I just had to keep my head up and hope I'll be back in the line up next day.

I got back home mad, disappointed, frustrated, all the bad emotions that go through after you lose and get taken out of the line up. But I got home and before I went to bed, I chanted again.

I had to wake up early on Sunday morning to cover a story on a fundraiser, and long story short, the event didn't start until two hours after the time it said on the schedule. Anyways, one of the things I did before the double header on Sunday, again, was chant.

I went to the field hoping for a change...

I wasn't in the line up...

I was pretty upset. I was going to the game to redeem myself and I couldn't prove that on the field that day. But there was something else that happened that day.

After a 15-game losing streak, we finally won a game. A huge relief for the team. After that win, I was hoping I can get in the second game.

I went to look up the lineup for the second game when it was posted, and again, my name wasn't on there. But after the second game, we ended up winning two games and I was happy we finally tallied up some wins.

But I also felt I'm riding the emotional roller coaster as well. The feeling that you're happy for one reason but upset for another.

At the end of the day, before I went to sleep, I chanted again, hoping for a better tomorrow and changes to come.

The power of Buddhism, in fact any religion, comes at a unexpected time. My advice is once you start practicing a religion, whether if you like it or not, give it a chance. I gave it a shot, probably not the best example, and a change was made for the better good even though it may not have been something at the top of my list.

Everything happens for a reason. I just have to keep my head up, work hard and chant away for a better change!

-Jun

What's perfect to you?

Before I started to write this blog, I didn't know what to write about. Everything I write about always seems to have a trending topic so I thought I ask people for suggestions.

So I did and still couldn't find anything to write about. But as a friend was talking about her daily problems when she wakes up in the morning, a light bulb clicked.

She was telling me that when she sleeps with her socks on but ends up elsewhere when she gets out of bed, and when she wakes up to eat breakfast, she doesn't know how much cereal to put in her bowl. There was a few more things she listed but at the same time, I was thinking about some ideas to write about.

...

We all run into those problems or difficult situations , whether if it's wondering how much cereal to put in a bowl or fighting with a family member. We never want to encounter that bump in the road but in time, it seems to appear out of the most unexpected times.

But if we, as human beings, lived in a perfect world, there would be nothing to look forward to in life. No excitment. Nothing. When I hear someone say, "I want to live in a world where everything is perfect", I think to myself, "Really?" I can picture them thinking living a happy, married life in a nice home in a nice neighborhood, going to work at their dream job, everything is just oh-so perfect. Everyone smiling and have everything they want.

Don't get me wrong, I never want to have problems of any kind, but living in an oh-so perfect world is just boring to me.

When I think of a perfect world, I think of imperfection; dealing with adveristy and everyday problems. If it weren't for those 'how much cereal I should eat', 'who's a better athlete', 'I have to find a job', or simply dealing with death, we wouldn't be the people who we are today; the different emotions, different feelings, different perspective, etc.

If you have a bad day, don't dwell on it. Even though that day may not have been perfect, tomorrow is perfectly a new day to start over.

-Jun

Taking a look around...

Today, I went to a visitation with the whole baseball team for my teammate's brother that has passed away this past week in Lisbon, Iowa.

Lisbon is a small town in Iowa, that only has about 2,200 people in there town. As I got out of the car and walked to the church, I looked around and I start to think about how fortunate I am that I was born and raised in a big city in California because it has so much more to offer and to do out there.

I get this feeling every time the bus stops at a gas station on our road games out here in Iowa.

...

As the team went up to my teammate's family to show our sympathy, I was surprised how people who you never talked to, knows how you are.

First I went to go hug the mother and quite honestly, I didn't know her name before today, but as I gave her a hug, she said, "Hi Jun. Thank you for coming." Then I shook the father's hand and he said, "Hey, you're number five on the team, but that's all I know." Before today, I have never met or talked to them...

Most of us don't realize the importance of some people that come into our lives, whether if it is becoming best friends with them or simply just coming to a baseball game to show support. And it's the simple things like that that makes me appreciate life.

So take time and look around you; you don't want to miss something or someone that might mean the most to you.

Jun

R.I.P. McKale Morgan

Whole Life Challenge 2013

You need to challenge yourself with something some time in your life time...

Training with Functional Fitness at the Bluffs (aka FFOTB, the Nation, fake gym) opened my horizons up with the work outs I do and the nutrition I intake.

I was really never a big work out guy or a nutrition guy. I didn't start lifting weights until my freshmen year of college. When I was younger, I was told to not lift weight from my mother because one, it would keep me from growing tall (well, look how that turned out) and two, I wouldn't be flexible to play baseball. But I realized after walking-on to my junior college baseball team, I needed to lift to build strength since everyone else was.

With nutrition, I was told to eat want ever I wanted since I was involved in a sports and I am active all the time, and for those of who knows how I eat, I would literally eat anything that is in front of me. But during my first semester as a freshmen, I tried to eat "healthy" by eating only mama's home-cooked meal and subway...

Until I joined FFOTB. my work outs have become more intense and I am more careful with my nutrition (well try to. Buying all the food on a college student's budget is rough!).

FFOTB had many of their students take part in a couple of life challenges, one being a "Route 56" challenge, similar to what I am going to talk about in a moment.

So talking about nutrition, I'm going to go ahead and talk about the challenge I am particiapting this year.It is called the Whole Life Challenge!

Basically, the Whole Life Challenge is a competition with other people around the world, but mostly with yourself.

The work out I was given for the prelims and the finals is:

Complete as many reps as possible in 10 minutes of:

800m Run

40 Walking Lunges

40 Sit Ups

Max Burpees

But this is not the only thing that comes with the challenge. There is also a nutrition aspect to it as well.

For the nutrition, these are the rules that apply:

NO grains or starchy carbs

NO sugar or sweetners

NO dairy

NO alcohol

NO soda

NO fruit juice

NO artificial ingredients

Out of the two challenges provided, the nutrition part is going to be the most difficult because when I am on the road for away games, we do go to restaurants to go out to eat at times but  our coach gets us pre-ordered Subway sandwiches or pizza from pizza hut for the ling bus rides.

I decided to participate in the Whole Life Challenge because the Gelbrich brothers called me out on it, and also to better myself. 

At FFOTB, the coaches their always preaches to be better than yesterday. This challenge will definitely add to the benefits of being better than yesterday.

It might not have to be at an extreme like this challenge, but I recommend for everyone to go out and find something that would challenge you a bit and better yourself. You never know, it might be a life changer.

Jun

A short thanks

The other day, I was running on the treadmill, listening to my iPod when the song Danza Kuduro by Don Omar came wiring through my headphones.

For those of you don't know, that song was my buddy, Rafael Del Rio San Andrea's walk out song last season. Rafie and I became really close as friends and teammates. We were like the Latin and Asian version of Carter and Lee from Rush Hour.

Though I rarely got playing time last season, he was always supporting and rooting for me all the time. This gave me some kind of drive to still work hard and never give up.

I haven't really talked to him in a while; the last time I talked to him was sometime in December. But just a couple of days ago he sent me a tweet via twitter wishing me luck in this upcoming season.

...

As I was running on the treadmill listening to the Don Omar music, I started to think about the people that have been supporting me: my friends and their parents, friends of friends, people I don't even know, coaches, teachers and  most of all my family. If it wasn't for all of them, I wouldn't be at where I am and who I am today.

I just wanted to thank everyone that has been there for me. I never thought I would have a big support system. I am truly grateful and blessed.

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make out souls blossom." -Marcel Proust


-Jun