survival

A few weeks ago a student at my school was moving her car when a man attacked her with a hammer. Yeah, a hammer. That's two random violent attacks since new years on women in neighourhoods I spend a lot of time in. The other attack was in Capitol Hill where a paranoid schizophrenic who should have been institutionalized stabbed a woman to death. Anyways, this UW student is going to survive, which is miraculous, but her attacker is still at large. What's crazier about this story than the fact that it happened at all is that she is a refugee from Rwanda who already lost her entire family and then came here, lived in foster care, and is now getting a 3.5 GPA in engineering. There are several groups raising money to help pay her medical bills but this story was one that really stood out for me.

You can help too. Contribute at any Wells Fargo Bank branch. Ask for the Pink Blanket Fund for the assaulted UW student.

disappearance

And this is why Beijing should not be allowed to host the Olympics. In supporting the Beijing Olympics, the world is complicit in their human rights abuses because we're watching as they sweep their shit under the rug and not doing a damned thing. Tiananmen Square was really not that long ago. That tragedy should be etched in our collective memories. And still today nothing has changed. When people dissent, the government makes them "disappear" literally. It's so outrageously fucked up. Oh and don't forget they fucked Tibet too. And you know what, those dissidents in China won't be able to read this because that great firewall of China blocks all blogger content. What the fuck are my people doing?

Hu Jia, my thoughts are with you (even if you can't read this) ...

Some more reading for those interested (and you should be):

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Prince-accused-of-straying-into.3719179.jp
http://current.com/items/88812990_tibetans_to_protest_beijing_olympics
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/13/asia/letter.1-113324.php
http://cbs2.com/local/Rose.Parade.Pasadena.2.619933.html

Australia

They finally dethroned that racist old man who served as PM of Australia. This official apology to the aborigines would not be happening otherwise. While it will never mend the damage done, I hope they follow up with programs and financial support to help their native people. They really fucked them over even more so, in my humble opinion, than Canada screwed our First Nations people not that these things should really be quantified but they were still denying it just 8 years ago for Christ's sake.

career

I've been stuffing envelopes (and playing Scrabulous) the last hour or so. The admin gig (along with my job as a research assistant) is a half time assignment I got in lieu of teaching this quarter. So here I am folding paper and running envelopes over this white ceramic thing that wets the gum on the envelope and I can't say that I'm in any way stressed out. In fact the repetition is almost calming. Every other job I have had, including teaching, has had me doing a million things at once, and every one of those things required thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and interacting with other people. To be honest, that kind of thing keeps me sharp but it also burns me out really fast. I've had this sort of dilemma before and I see two basic career paths that people generally follow:

1. Take a job that is challenging but fulfilling. Work will be hard and long but meaningful.

2. Take a job that is easy, pays the bills, and leaves you plenty of leisure time to do the things you really want to do.

I've never been able to choose #2 because I usually can't stand to spend even 7 hours a day on something that is meaningless to me. Actually when I worked in the tech industry I spent more like 10-12 hours a day on really hard work that was meaningless to me...but I made about $10K more 7 years ago than I will as an assistant prof for a public teaching university in 3 years.

But as I sit here and stuff envelopes I wonder if it isn't such a bad thing to do really mindless work that pays the bills (barely) but doesn't leave me exhausted, stressed out, and worried. And why the hell can't I ever settle for something in between? I'm actually working toward lower pay and greater workload...

But I have to say that every moment I spend reading and writing, no matter how hard it is at 1 in the morning or after working for many consecutive hours, is valuable to me because I'm learning something new or thinking about something in a different way. I guess I have to remind myself of that. Or win the lottery.

snow

Less than an inch of snow overnight and the whole city freaks out. My bus came 20 minutes late and it wasn't the usually extra long accordion bus. Needless to say it was packed full of people. The scary part came when the bus driver asked everyone to stand above the bus' rear wheels to give us more traction to get up the hill. That was scary because not making it up the hill means dragging my ass on foot up a slippery hill and that would suck tremendously.

It needs to not snow this week anymore so I can get up to Whistler where snow belongs.

match

I think this match.com FB application is going to really take off.

games

So last week when I went up to get bubble tea in the U District with K, it dawned on me that not everyone in the whole wide world knows how to play Big 2 (or choy die dee in Cantonese). Every 1st to 2nd generation Asian (or at least Chinese) kid in Canada who had other Asian friends (as I did but only after entering university) seems to know how to play but alas that is a rather narrow demographic. I guess that means that D's tattoo of the 2 of spades is a big mystery for a lot of people. So anyways I taught my Sacramento-raised hapa bf to play. It took about 10 minutes. I forget how easy that game is to learn. Now I'm on to Scrabulous which I hear is in trouble from the makers of Scrabble. Those dummies. They have no idea how I'm sure this online game has rekindled fond memories of playing Scrabble. And I will bet that many people have gotten hooked again and bought a Scrabble set for home. Ohhh now I'm itching for some Texas Hold 'Em. That is one game I refuse to play online or I'll never finish school.

townhouse

D and I are gonna check out an open house for a one-year-old place near Seattle U this Saturday. It's pretty much perfect except it could use another parking spot, another 1/2 bath and a reduction in rent by about $200. So I've decided to pimp out D by having him flirt relentlessly with the agent/landlord whom we already know is an Asian woman about our age. We'll see how this goes. Turn on that boyish charm D, this girl needs to move out of our shitty ass neighbourhood.

Oh and I don't remember if I mentioned that there is a Volvo still abandoned on our street after the big flood. That car must've had about a foot of water in it. There is now a notice from the city on the windshield. I took a look inside and it looks like a science experiment now. Mold growing all over the seats. Can't wait for them to tow that piece of shit.

commodities

"Same shit, different colour." I just figured out that Dania Furniture = Scandinavian Designs. Crate and Barrel is also pretty good at making expensive shit that looks good but really sort of sucks. Their furniture doesn't piece together properly as K and I found out when putting together his $550 bed. Hinges don't meet up with hinges they way they do in the instructions.

So for you snobs who think that any one of those stores sells furniture that is superior to IKEA's, you're wrong. Just because they have a fancy showroom and fancy/snooty sales staff and flashy catalog and higher prices does not mean you're getting a better product. You're still getting particle board pieces that you put together yourself, shit that falls apart, and couches that go flat. They probably even come from the same factories in China for all we know. So those of you who like to say things like "I don't shop at IKEA, I only buy my stuff from Dania/Scandinavian Designs/Crate and Barrel" can shove it. Funny how this week's English seminar dealt with commodity fetishism. Damn straight Walter Benjamin.

Oh and one of my favourite couches to sit/nap on is K's awesome super comfortable window sofa which came from Costco. So there.

Dania II

Dania Furniture just called in response to my letter and has ordered me a new futon. The same one. Perhaps mine is defective but honestly it looks to me like the design is just flawed. Oh well, a new defective futon is better than an old defective futon. Dania has narrowly escaped making it on my "bad company" list.

twitter

So despite what I see as rather limited use-value of www.twitter.com I've been using it because I can see what K is up to (design people seem to be addicted to it) and it also allows me to update my Facebook status from IM. However, it puts the "is Twittering:" prefix on my Facebook status. When my cousin saw this he IM'd me:

(12:10:16 PM) cousin: hey .. whats new? what does "twittering" mean??
(12:10:26 PM) me: www.twitter.com for updates that auto update facbeook too
(12:10:47 PM) cousin: oooh.
(12:10:54 PM) cousin: shoot i thought it was the urbandictionary defn of twitter
(12:11:08 PM) cousin: "the place between the twat and the shitter.."

Dania

Here we go again. Dania Furniture, unless they give me some sort of store credit, will soon join U-Haul, Haier, Lowe's, and Comcast on my list of shitty-ass companies with shitty-ass products and/or service.

Dania Furniture
6416 Roosevelt Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115

January 8, 2008

Dear Dania Furniture,

In October 2006, about 14 months ago, I purchased the Kiel Futon (SKU:M18 NEWKIEL/VE20; Price: $ 349.00) in hopes that it would offer better quality and durability than something from IKEA. The photo on your website shows the one I purchased:

The futon was great the first couple months but after that, we noticed the middle of it sagging.

Within 6 months it looked like this:

Now there is a permanent dent in the middle of the seat as you can see below:

My roommate and I weigh under 110 lbs each and have not done anything extraordinary with the futon that would cause excessive wear and tear. In fact, we are barely ever home to use it. We initially thought that the issue was an uneven flattening of the cushion from sitting in the same spot but we turned the futon over and discovered that the entire wire mesh is sagging because there is no crossbar in the center of the frame to support it, as you can see below. This is an outrageous design flaw that should have prevented the Kiel Futon from ever reaching customers.

It is not at all unrealistic or unreasonable to expect brand new furniture to last more than one year. I am extremely disappointed in the quality of the Kiel Futon I purchased from Dania, a store that I thought was at least a couple steps up in quality from IKEA.

I am writing to request an exchange and/or store credit for the Kiel Futon. There are obviously flaws in the design that prevent it from maintaining its structural integrity. At this point, the piece can hardly be considered usable. Unfortunately, it was never my intention to pay $349 plus tax for disposable furniture. Rather, my goal was to invest in something that would serve me for years, not months. I hope you take my request seriously as this experience has begun leave me with doubts about the quality of your merchandise and, in turn, the integrity of Dania Furniture.

Yours sincerely,

Fumbling

Paul

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks -- including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went "to pick up their welfare checks."

quote

Twitter quote of the day comes from K. "Seriously people, if your dog is trying to do its business don't drag them down the street."

This actually reminds me of a BBQ down at my friends' apartment courtyard one sunny Canada Day when my friend R wanted to play with another friend's yorkie, Dim Sum. R looked quite smart running Dim Sum around on the grass until the little dog stopped and began to squat and strain. R being the person he is did not want to have to pick up poop so he kept yanking on Dim Sum's leash forcing her to continue walking (or being dragged) back to her owner. I have to admit it was super funny.

thief

So I'm appealing to Republicans who might consider themselves too progressive to even consider Romney (even though I'm sure none of them read my left-leaning rants here on this blog). I'd like to share just a bit more about the supposedly less conservative GOP alternative, Huckabee. This is from The Boston Globe December 13th Page A15.

Contrary to pundits, not everybody loves Huckabee

In Salon.com, reporter Max Brantley recounted his years covering then-Governor Huckabee for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Reporters considered him petty, thin-skinned, self-righteous, and ethically challenged. Brantley reports that Huckabee used campaign funds to pay himself as his own media consultant. (Personally, I consider this a hanging offense.) According to Brantley, "Huckabee raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions. Inauguration funds were used to buy clothing for his wife."

Huckleberrys heart swag. When "Huckleberry," as he's nicknamed, left the governor's office, the furniture he'd been given to spruce up the place left with him.

When he and his wife decided to renew their wedding vows, they set up a registry at department stores so citizens could bestow gifts upon the First Couple. The list included Lenox china, a KitchenAid mixer, and a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer. You try losing 100 pounds without a LaLanne.

The heart of Huckabee. When a retarded 15-year-old was raped by her stepfather, she needed state Medicaid funding for an abortion. Governor Huckabee defied a federal judge's order and blocked the abortion.

It really freaks me out that people support him. Actually to be honest I have a hard time understanding how anyone can support the GOP platform or any of their candidates. Then again maybe that's a good thing, maybe some voters will come to their senses and vote democrat when the time comes.

movies

I watched a handful of movies recently so I thought I'd recap.

16 Blocks. Mos Def is in this and he's a really great actor. I have to admit I was searching Craigslist for a new apartment while I was watching but I did see most of it. Bruce Willis plays a washed up cop and looks older than I've ever seen him. His character is a bit stock though, nothing we haven't seen in a million other action movies. I wasn't all that impressed by him. I'd say it was a fun-to-watch action-packed movie and worth seeing but not an award winner by any means.

Eastern Promises. This one blew me away. I didn't know much about this movie going in but remembered seeing the newspaper ads with all the impressive reviews. This was an excellent movie about the Russian mob. It has a complex plot with a lot of twists and turns and incredible acting. I'm not really into violent mobster films (unless you count triad and yakuza flics) but I really liked this one a whole lot.

The Orphanage. Saw this one at Queen Anne theater on Friday. I'd seen Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone so I was really excited to see another Guillermo Del Toro film. Again, fantastic actors, especially the children, and I really like how the story unfolded and the ending was extremely satisfying. I did see elements of The Devil's Backbone being recycled in this film though so I figure if you haven't seen that you might like The Orphanage a bit more than if you have. Kinda like seeing The Others after seeing Sixth Sense if you know what I mean.

footprint

Hmmm I thought because I only drive on weekends and take the bus weekdays and eat very little processed food that I'd be in the clear. Apparently not. Well at least I am doing better than most Americans. Actually now that I think about it the quiz is far too simplistic. It does not ask about other types of consumption, energy for example, which is something that I'm very careful about. I recycle religiously (and carefully and yes like in the PEMCO commercial I wash out recyclables and separate paper, plastic and glass), ask for paper versus plastic bags, and avoid using disposable stuff (cutlery, cups etc.) and individually packaged goods in favour of resusable or bulk items, so I think I should score some points for that.

http://www.earthday.net/footprint/quiz.asp

CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 3.7
MOBILITY 1.7
SHELTER 3.7
GOODS/SERVICES 4.9
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 14

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 3.2 PLANETS.

Huckabee

Those of you who lean right ought to be reminded that one of the Republican candidates is a guy who was convinced by This Hour has 22 Minutes that we needed to put a dome over Canada's National Igloo to protect it from global warming. The awesome Rick Mercer, who hosts the segment "Talking to Americans" even got him on camera saying:

"Hi, I'm Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas wanting to say: `Congratulations, Canada, on preserving your national igloo.'"

And there was even a recent story on it and here is the video itself. I don't think that guy should be running any jurisdiction outside of Arkansas.

Oh and be sure to check out the list of other pranks pulled on the segment "Talking to Americans." They're pretty funny. My favourites:

- asking students and professors at Columbia University to sign a petition asking Canadians to discontinue the practice of abandoning the elderly on ice floes.
- persuading Americans that Canada is getting a five-dollar coin. It would have had a maple leaf on it and it would have been called the "woodie".

creativity

I thought the bait car program was a brilliant and funny way of catching car thieves. Now they've got an innovative way to catch drunk drivers -- by staffing fast food drive throughs late at night.

Seattle

I am back south of the border and my friends were right, crossing the border after dinner time is the best bet. K and I decided to stop off for a bite and coffee before heading home and happened upon Dineasty Restaurant. Holy cow so good. We just got some noodles and pork/veg dumplings but both were made fresh by hand (yup the noodles and the dumplings) and you got to watch them make it through a huge window into the kitchen. It was cheap too. $7 for 8 dumplings, and a little less for the noodles. Ok I need to get on with my day. Gotta unpack and get some work done, maybe buy some books for next quarter which starts in a week. Overall the Vancouver trip was pretty good. Saw lots of friends (but also missed meeting up with a lot of them too), snowboarded both Whistler and Blackcomb in one day, hung out a lot with my besties, saw my friend's baby nephew, hung out with the parents of some of my friends, spent a little bit of time with cousins but not enough, ate at Shabusen, Guu, Mondo Gelato, and Sun Sui Wah, watched I am Legend (meh, it was ok) and Juno (awesome), and took K out to English Bay, Robson, Gastown, Yaletown and Commercial drive. Next trip north will be first weekend of Feb (Whistler trip with K's company) or earlier if I have time.

boxing

Happy Boxing Day and Kwanzaa! The snow is turning to slush and tonight I'm going to Shabusen for all you can eat made to order sushi and Korean BBQ. Tomorrow I'm heading up to Whistler for a day and a night. Should be a good time if things all go off without a hitch.

read

There are many people for whom this should be required reading. If that's too much reading, at least read the final paragraph.

white

Why would anyone dream of a white fucking Christmas? I did not ask for this. All I really wished for this Christmas was to maintain my sanity and not have an aneurysm while visiting home which is already a big request. We haven't had snow on Christmas day since 1996 or something and here it is. Hoo-fucking-ray. You know what snow means for me? Seeing as I live on a steep ass hill and there are probably 3 snow trucks in all of the greater Vancouver area it means I get stuck at home so that my dad can make unwelcome remarks using his trademark tone of voice which is a unique combination of condescending, critical, and obnoxious. His choice of words also always manages to grate my nerves. There is no such thing as saying something gently for him. Oh and hockey, which usually keeps everyone facing forward and yelling at the TV and not at me, is not back on for a couple days yet. Snow please melt.

order

Had a fun night last night with my friends who were house sitting their cousin's condo down in Coal Harbour. Such a sweet place. We were originally going to karaoke but I didn't realize they'd forgotten batteries and didn't know that I had also brought my magic mic but whatever. Eating Beard Papas, 7-Eleven nachos, chips, cookies, and chocolates while chit chatting and later watching many episodes of Family Guy served us just as well. My friends who know my paternal cousins really well decided that, despite all of us cousins being only children, we have ended up manifesting the characteristics of siblings in terms of birth order. My older cousin is the rebellious one, my younger cousin is the silly laid back one whom everyone wants to take care of and give advice to, and I'm the complicated, frustrated, and misunderstood middle child. Not sure how we didn't figure this one out sooner because it's kind of true. Anyways, I ended up falling asleep and not being able to pry myself off the couch until 3:30 in the morning.

After the girls day over at Olympus spa in Lynnwood last week, I decided to see if there was such a place near my parents' house that I could go to to escape the constant lecturing, prying, and unwelcome commentary from my parents. I found this, JJ Spa Plus, right here in my neck of the woods and apparently the only Korean spa in the greater Vancouver area. Only $15 admission too. Might have to go check this out.

Anyways, Merry Xmas and all that crap that I don't really care for. Hope you didn't spend too much money buying a bunch of meaningless consumer goods from big huge corporations when that money is really better spent helping the sick and needy or at least sharing a meal with friends or contributing to a child's college fund, or hell contributing to MY college fund to pay for books and conference travel. (I mean, did you really need that new LV purse or ridiculous overpriced rags from *gag* Abercrombie? C'mon. Bah consumerism)

Castor

I'm watching a Hockey Night in Canada interview with Phoenix player Doan who grew up in a small town in Alberta. He played in the town of Castor and his team was called the Castor Raiders. Say that fast.

break

The end of Autumn quarter is always a weird one for me. I'm supposed to be on break but I've come to accept the fact it's hard to really get a chance to do nothing. Aside from Xmas shit, I actually have a long list of stuff I need to get done on this so-called break, part of it involves finished a couple projects to wipe out the incompletes I've taken on my professional development seminars, I've got a graduate students association web site to update, I've got a program of study to finish (and it's already late), my EndNote desperately needs updating, I've got old video to edit, my own web site to update, reference letter to write, books to read, exam reading list to develop, and a big mess of papers, handouts, and lecture notes to organize and file away. I also just got word that the panel that Robyn put together just got accepted to the Association of Asian American studies. Yay!! What that means though is that I need to magically turn my abstract into a full paper by April. Christ. That's a lot of stuff.

In other news I did take a day to head up to Steven's to try out my new Flow bindings which I'm thrilled with. Who woulda thunk that losing feeling in your toes is not a necessary part of snowboarding? Also took a morning this weekend to go to Olympus spa in Lynnwood to get naked with the girls from school. It was good fun to chit chat all morning while soaking in tubs of varying temperatures and napping in hot rooms with salt, charcoal and other good stuff. There was also a sweet steam room and a great Korean restaurant with fantastic bibimbop and fresh smoothies. I think the spa thing is going to have to become an end of quarter tradition.

McLovin12Four

This user showed up on my IM list a few days ago. Usually I need to grant permission for people to add themselves to my list but this one just showed up so initially I thought someone had just changed their handle after seeing Superbad. I did a quick google search and discovered this in a forum: "It's supposed to be some clever marketing for the SuperBad DVD... which was released on December 4th... thus the 12four (12/4) reference." If you think that is annoying how about this "found this annoying thing on my phone today. send it 'who are you?' and you get
Hi, this is McLovin, I am a Bot; I advertise for the DVD release..."

I saw the movie. I'll sum it up like this. Teen boys are charming, eager to get laid, but are innocent and have impressive feminist ideals. Teen girls are a bunch of morally depraved sex-crazed whores who want nothing but to get laid when they're drunk enough to be throwing up. On top of that the movie was actually rather slow and boring and unfunny. Not sure why so many people told me it was hilarious. While it had its moments, it was mostly annoying, sort of like that bot that showed up on my IM list.

seven

This came from Blue Sunday. If you're reading this, you're tagged.

The Rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules.
3. Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag up to seven people

---------

My Seven Random/Weird Facts

1. I have a slight phobia of chalk and chalkboards. The sound of chalk on a chalkboard and the feel of chalkboard chalk on my hands sends shivers down my spine and not in a good way. I had the overhead in my classroom pushed out of the way for public speaking so I was forced to use the chalkboard (no white board). Even my students noticed my awkward handling of the chalk.

2. I don't like talking on the phone. I've never been a big gabber and the awkwardness of talking without seeing the person combined with my short attention span and unstoppable urge to multi-task gets in the way of my focusing on phone conversations.

3. I've never been stung by a bee and have not yet been allergy tested for bee stings so I have a horrendous fear of bees. I'm also supposed to carry an Epi-pen in case I discover something new that puts me in some sort of anaphylactic shock.

4. My oldest piece of clothing is my SFU hoodie which is 14 years old. It's navy blue and has holes in nearly every seam.

5. My knees and fingers bend past 180 degrees the wrong way.

6. I have very vivid dreams, suffer from sleep paralysis, and (once in a blue moon) I have night terrors which cause me to wake up screaming bloody murder.

7. My parents used to make me collect stamps even though I had absolutely no interest in them. What is it with Chinese parents making their kids do something that seems intellectual or cultured. It's like they get bonus Chinese parenting points if their kids totally fucking hate it too. For most kids it was piano (I would have loved to take piano but it was too expensive) or violin or playing one of those ancient Chinese instruments. For me, stamp collecting. Stupid stamps.

outrage

I wish I could write about the specifics of what happened today but it could cost me dearly so I can't. But the gist of it is that I went to an important event at school today and witnessed the most outrageous and offensive Q and A session ever in my lifetime. It taught me several things:

1. Do not assume that senior (white male) faculty have even a rudimentary understanding of race and feminist theory, or any appreciation for the importance and urgency of it
2. Be prepared to defend critical scholarship that examines such topics as feminism, race or post-colonial theory because some people consider such research to be "irrelevant"
3. There is a good chance that many people out there, even other scholars, will believe that my life's work is meaningless and unimportant
4. I'm going to need to be mentally prepared to deal with all this

Right now I'm just in so much shock that I don't even know what to do next.

2007

It's a bit early to do one of those end-of-the-year inventories of memorable events but so much has happened lately that I can't help thinking about it. Off the top of my head:

February - turned 31 (bleh...)
March - went to Hawaii for the first time, surfed for the first time
May - went to Michigan for the first time and presented at my second academic conference
June - finished my 1st year of a PhD program and got elected to the grad students assoc
June - watched the apartment 3 doors down from mine go up in flames completely
July - relearned how to read music and learned how to play piano
July - wrote for an encyclopedia -- potentially my first publication
August - ended a pukey mess of a long term (6 year) relationship in a rather dramatic fashion
August - spent 3 weeks living and reconnecting with my cousin in a cool part of town (Santana Row)
September - watched my best friends get married
October - met an amazing guy who makes me wonder what in the hell I was doing in that other relationship for 6 fucking years
October - went to Kansas City, MO for my first conference for people more senior than just grad students
November - presented at my first national conference
November - found out one of my closest friends is pregnant
November - had my car break down on the I5
December - drowned my car in a flood in my own garage

This was actually meant to be a bitchy moany post because that's what I do here is bitch and moan. But having survived fire, flood, breakdowns (of both the mental and automotive type) and a breakup this year, the number and intensity of good things that happened far outweigh the bad. Even if I did list all the times I've injured myself just navigating my own apartment or all the delays and foul ups I've put up with at airports, it would still pan out that way. Ewww this post is so positive and out of character and so lacking in colorful language that now I feel all gross and sell outish. I'll just compensate by saying fuck for good measure. There, fuck.

RAIN

What. The. Fuck.

I didn't learn my lesson last year when my car narrowly escaped drowning in the underground garage you see here at my apartment. This time last year the drains were clogged but they managed to get the water pumped out pretty quick. Last night I got home late from K's house and saw some water gurgling a bit out of the drain in the garage. I figured that after that incident it couldn't be that bad. All the shit that was clogging it last year is probably cleared out.

I was tired and needed to go to bed and so I did. This morning I hurried off to catch my bus, a bus that did not show up. Neither did the second or third bus. 25 minutes later I caught the 4th bus and barely made it to school in time to teach my class. The roads were flooded everywhere and the bus looked like it was driving through a fucking river.

Oh and did I mention that today's class was taught outside in the pouring rain being blown sideways by the wind? Yeah, we're practicing our vocal projection for outdoor advocacy speeches. Being sane, I had the students each run through their speeches in groups and then ushered them inside to do TA evals before sending them off early. 11:30 am and I head on over to stats class.

I'm taking out my laptop when the phone rings. It's the management at my apartment. There is 3' of water on the street in front of the apartment (where Denny's car is parked) and the garage is filling up with water. Denny managed to wade to his car and move it and do the same with our other roomate's car. Mine however requires an alarm and a club key and when the alarm goes off the car doesn't start. So that is fucking awesome.

I had to skip out of stats, office hours and a job talk to go home and rescue my car. Actually since Denny had already done all sorts of swimming in dirty water to get his car and Jerri's car he kindly offered to wade knee deep to my car and drive it over to the grocery store parking lot. Damage was already done though. Cars are apparently not to be submerged even in 2.5" of water or you have the pleasure of scooping it out. Here are pics of my car.

I love my life.

So can someone tell me who I'm supposed to pay to suck out the rest of the water, spray anti-mildew stuff on the rugs, clean them and dry them? I imagine there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this and I want to make sure to not fuck this up.

Undoing

Undoing. Can't wait until this movie premieres in Seattle. After living in SF for so long I forget how spoiled we were with entertainment. Independent films always premiered there (and LA and NYC) first, the film fests were huge, and big name DJs made very frequent stops. Seattle doesn't tend to make it on the short list for these things. It kinda sucks but, then again, had I gone to school in LA or NYC I think I'd be broke and flunking out of school with so much stuff going on in the city all the time. I'm definitely better off here.

one

That title was for you Norris. So my friend thought something was fucked up with my RSS feed causing my titles to be truncated to one word. Little did he know I do it deliberately and for two reasons. One, because long titles fuck up the tidy display of that table and, two, because it's fun to try to summarize the post in one word.

Tumbl Track

So I quit doing competitive gymnastics 15 years ago and since then a lot has changed -- the uneven bars are further apart to allow for bigger release elements between the bars, forward tumbling got to be the thing to do, the horse we used to vault on has evolved into a much safer and less intimidating vaulting table (aka the tongue), and every gym seems to have a Tumbl Track (60' long trampoline) for learning new skills.

I tried out this Tumbl Track at the adult classes at the gym I went to in Mountain View, CA two years ago but it requires a completely different approach from tumbling on a standard 40' x 40' floor because the latter requires a lot of speed that you then transfer into upward momentum for the big skill at the end of your back handspring series. When I tried to use the Tumbl Track it was sort of disastrous because I was expecting the quick push back that the floor gives. Instead, you get this delayed push that my body was not used to waiting for which basically fucked up everything. Back then I decided I was an old dog who wouldn't be able to learn new tricks, but last night I went to my first adult class here in Seattle and for the first time I was the youngest.

My 52-year-old Charles-Manson-looking instructor (he's actually super cool, just kinda scary looking at first) convinced me though that you can't do floor tumbling forever because it's just too hard on the joints. It took him a year to adjust to the timing of the Tumbl Track but he argues that it will allow me to do gymnastics into my 70s like he plans to. So last night was dedicated to making friends with this new piece of equipment. I managed as much as a running front layout, and a front handspring to front tuck. The second one was actually a 1 1/4 front tuck that caused my face to make contact with the crash mat leaned up against the far wall because I had too much forward momentum. But my nose remained intact and so did my pride since, as a washed up ex-gymnast with a gut, I have none. So yeah, I've decided I'm going to learn how to use this monster so I can continue to do geriatric gymnastics as we call it without fracturing any joints. Check out this guy's awesome video with all the cool stuff you can do on it complete with names of the skills. Watch until the end to see all the falls which are fun to watch. My goals (no deadline since I have until I'm dead to learn them now) round off back handspring to back full (full twisting layout), and if I can find a Tumbl Track that leads into a foam pit (like this one) I wouldn't mind going for multiples twists and some double backs.

coding

I need to take a break from my work, which currently entails coding and categorizing 229 racist remarks. It's for a paper using content analysis that I hope to incorporate into my dissertation. Not exactly relaxing to read but I have to say I've gotten way past the point of letting the content disturb me. I've read so much of this shit that nothing really surprises me. Racist comments directed at me as an individual still catch me off guard and stay with me a while. It was only a few years ago that someone driving by in a pick up truck yelled "chink" out the window at me as I was going for a jog in my parents' neighbourhood. It was surprising... but then again, not entirely surprising. Anyways, comments anonymously posted online are just meaningless rants dipped in shit with a side of anchovies. Most of them are poorly written, illogical and often self-contradictory. Not exactly models of powerful rhetoric. But the task of coding each and every remark is getting ridiculously tortuously boring, like I'd-rather-be-looking-for-split-ends-in-my-hair boring. It's really hard not to take breaks to check out facebook, shop online for fun shirts and a new snowboarding jacket, cruise Craigslist for an apartment in Capitol Hill, read blogs and check up on the Canucks. Man I hate coding. I think for this reason alone I want to abandon this silly quantitative methodology forever and go back to critical discourse analysis.

Oh and in other news, I have abandoned all hope of understanding the Fahrenheit scale at cold temperatures. I learned it for temperatures 65 and above because I had 6 years of practice in California. But when we're hovering at freezing, it just makes sense to stick with Celsius so I know how many degrees above or below 0 (freezing) we are. Shove it, Fahrenheit scale!

fireworks

It was a nice and restful long weekend. Wed night we went to Maharaja and then to the War Room for Denny's belated 30th. Thursday was gluttony day at K's friends' house in memory of white people's raping and pillaging of our native peoples (aka Thanksgiving). Black Friday we went to observe the madness downtown. I also picked up some Flow bindings at REI for $139 (woohoo!). This is a photo of the fireworks that went with the lighting of the tree and star or some crap over at Macy's. The cool part was trying to figure out which protester belonged to which cause. It's not always easy to tell. That night, stayed in and watched Knocked Up which was okay, not nearly as laugh out loud funny as I had expected but it was kinda of cute I guess. Saturday was a homework and work out day for me and then dinner was over at Sea Garden restaurant in the International District to see if the food is as good when you're sober and it's not 2am. It sort of wasn't. It was bland like most Asian food in Seattle. That night we saw what is supposed to be the perfect movie, No Country for Old Men. It was good. I wouldn't call it perfect but it kept me seated for 2 hours. Today was errand day which meant lots of walking in the beautiful sunshine down in Cap Hill. I can't wait to start looking for a place to live down here when our lease is up in a few months.

teens

I got on the bus with my friend and colleague today. It was one of those long ass buses with the connecting accordion-looking thing in the middle. It was around 4 in the afternoon so it was getting full. We walked toward the back and I took a seat. The seat across the aisle from me was also unoccupied but this girl, about 13 or 14 years old, was sitting in the window seat sideways and she had her feet and backpack up on the aisle seat. I really hate it when assholes put their shit on seats so they have more space or to prevent people from sitting next to them. I glared at her until she moved her shit so my friend could sit down. Ah the power of a piercing glare.

That seems to be working lately. Over the summer this stupid woman in her late teens/early 20s left a table full of her trash at the food court at the mall. She also left her jacket on the seat. When an elderly couple arrived at the table, they called her back to tell her she had left her jacket. She was about to just grab the jacket and take off. But I shot her a look that said "those old people did you a favour returning your jacket, and if you think you're going to just take your jacket and leave them to clean up after you, you are one selfish bitch and I'm going to make a scene so that everyone knows that." I guess that thought came across loud and clear because she did a double take when she saw me staring directly at her and then went back and cleared the table. Who the fuck raised people like this? Jesus...

weekend

So I had a crazy week that bled right into a weekend without me knowing it since I spent much of it doing homework. Not because I had a lot but because it was stats and I missed a class and that led to me being totally lost when it comes to calculating ANOVAs and reporting the results. Add to that the immense anxiety I get when I'm not on top of my game which totally slows me down.

Anyways, I'll back up. I spent Wednesday traveling out to Chicago for my very first national conference. Until now I've only presented at regional or graduate student conferences so this time I got to play with the big kids and it was exciting. Aside from having to shuttle back and forth between hotels (I think there were 5000 attendees so they needed two hotels) and only being there for a day, I had a great time. My presentation went off without a hitch and got some great feedback from the respondent who was awesome, I got to have lunch with another Asian Am/Com colleague whom I met two years ago, and I met the author of a book I've read a few times over because she came to my panel. So Thursday afternoon was spent traveling back to Seattle.

On Friday, K (my new boy, who will from now on be referred to as K) and I went to see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. It was pretty good. We saw it in an old theatre in Cap Hill so the seats were not like those in the Silver City cinemas back home which means I suddenly develop restless leg syndrome, ADD, and mania all in one shot causing me to squirm in my seat like a whore in church. All crime thrillers tend to be predictable at a certain point and this was no exception. Fun to watch nonetheless.

Saturday daytime was all homework for me. That evening was K's friend's birthday which involved a home in West Seattle, wine, cheese, and a game called Squint (No, no references to Asian eyes and no need to start a petition. It's another guessing game). I was on my best behavior and made a fine effort at suppressing my potty mouth. Oh and I learned that even white wine makes me kinda woozy, at least that glass I had did. After a couple hours we headed out the door and over to Kurrent to see my friends DJ. They did a fantastic job and it was fun to just be out the house even though the crowd was a bit too BellTown for me. The lowlight of that part of the evening was some fucking asshole who walked by and planted a huge fart that not only stunk and lingered but also rose like hot air up into the DJ area. What kind of loser farts in crowded places. Better yet, what is a good way to punish them?

Sunday was another homework day. :(

This week is a short week. Hooray for American Thanksgiving! I am 2 papers, 2 stats assignments, and 1 grant proposal away from finishing this quarter.

luck

So I wasn't done blogging last night but it was late and I was tired. Now I'm pressed for time writing a paper, packing for the conference I'm going to tomorrow, and reviewing my presentation, the latter of which won't realistically happen until I wake up 2 hours into the flight. But I did want to recount some other bad shit that happened to me over the weekend just to prove to you that I was one fucking bad ass in my previous life and I'm paying for it now. Let's see. Ah yes, my powder compact not only broke but the hinge also came apart so the side compartment of my bag and everything in there is still covered in powder. The aerosol potpourri air freshener in my parents house got stuck and would not stop spraying until the cannister was empty. That was pretty awesome. It poured rain after I washed my car and now it is all muddy again. Al spilled boiling water on my leg while scooping some meat out of the hot pot for me. I forgot to register for classes and now some of them are full. OK I guess that's more stupidity than bad luck.

adventure

My life always seems to be full of unintended adventures. I often wish for a duller existence but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. This weekend's adventure actually took place on Thursday afternoon as I was driving north bound along the I-5 by Bellingham en route to Vancouver for my 4 day weekend (lecture was canceled on Friday). It was about 6pm and my temperature gauge suddenly shot up to hot and my check oil light came on so I took the first exit right onto a dark narrow road that led to a park-and-ride lot and a rifle range. As I slowed down I noticed smoke spilling out from under my hood and I damn near shit my pants. I turned off the engine and the smoke blew away so I was confident that running for my life away from both my car and the rifle range would not be necessary. After the car cooled off I tried to start the engine to get it to the gas station for some coolant, but it didn't want to start so AAA it was. They sent someone to tow my car to a nearby mechanic but in the meantime I had called my friends, one of whom is good with cars, to come see if they could get it running. I headed to the McDonalds across the street from the shop to wait for them to get there. Just a little while after I had spread out all the stuff I had to grade and gotten my cell phone plugged into the wall for a charge they arrived to rescue me from my own bad luck. Al diagnosed it as a cracked radiator since the oil was fine and the coolant was out and there was white crusty crap on it. We got a bunch of coolant and water and filled it up and hit the road. We stopped off at Fred Meyer a few miles up the road to refill it and pick up some beer and then made it all the way to Richmond BC. The next morning we brought it to my friend's cousin's mechanic. 24 hours and $657 later I got my car back with a new radiator. So that was my adventure heading to Vancouver. The visit itself was awesome save for the part where my dad lectured me continuously for creating a dangerous situation by driving in the dark. Keep in mind I left Seattle at 4:45pm, not 3 fucking am. But anyways, he blames me for everything whether I can control the situation or not.

Now on my way back I got adventure numero deux. I left my house at 11am Monday. Got to the border at noon. The sign that tells you the wait times for each border crossing wasn't lit and the line didn't look too bad. An hour and a few meters later, I decided I was wrong. It was really fucking obnoxiously bad. It was another hour before I actually got over the border. So that was 2pm. I had a meeting at 3pm with my classmates to do some content analysis stuff. Didn't look like it was going to happen, especially when I hit crazy traffic in Everett. I finally made it to my meeting in Capitol Hill at 4:45pm. I basically spent 6 hours in my car today. If I didn't have a full battery and many episodes of Weeds on my laptop I might not have survived the 2 hour border wait. I don't think I'm in the mood to visit Vancouver again for a while.

How come when Denny has adventures he gets invited to strangers' homes to play beer pong where he then drinks all the beer? My adventures are expensive and time-consuming and there's no free beer involved.

revelation

So today someone in my class mentioned the show The Scarecrow and Mrs. King. It was weird because I hadn't heard anyone name that show since it was on a long long time ago. I was telling Denny about this and we started coming up with other 80s shows that we remember that no one else seems to. For example, The Wonder Friends or The Electric Company or my favourite, Today's Special (where the mall closes down and the male mannequin comes to life and there is a Muppet-like security guard, a brown haired woman, and a mouse and they do a lot of singing and dancing). Well anyways, then I started to think of shows I saw in the really early 80s like Fantasy Island and CHIPS and Laverne and Shirley. I remember how the characters look and some of the theme songs or intro video but I can never remember the plots or even what the shows are about. And it dawned on me that the reason for this was not my age or poor memory because I remember other details fine, but rather the fact that I was still learning English. It's so weird to have memories of experiencing the world before I was able to speak or understand the only language that I am proficient in now.

zombie

So what I like about Seattle is its quirkiness. It's hard to explain what I mean by that except to share an example. So every year there is something called the Zombie walk which takes place before Halloween. And yes it is exactly that. People dress up as zombies and walk around the Fremont neighbourhood. It is even published in the Seattle Weekly under the event listings. I found out my former student likes to go to these Zombie walks and this year she even got photos of it. Here they are.

Halloween

I guess I should recap Halloween. I won't say what my costume was as that might give away my identity and we don't need that. So the weekend before Halloween I went to a party hosted by a student in my department. Highlight of the night was watching a bunch of students from another program in our department come in thinking this was the party of one of their profs. Their prof must have gotten the email and forwarded it on to them, and they must've thought it was their prof's party and a great opportunity to earn some brownie points. What a disappointment for them. Ah well. And alas further suffering was had by them as they, the hands-on media production program people, had to hang out with us, the research and hoity toity theory nerds. Kinda like oil and water. I wish it weren't that way but it kinda is.

Saturday night I went to the house party of a MSFT employee and friend of a friend. It was a pretty good party with some great food and the house was very big and nice and all that. I was surprised to see not one drunk person there. I guess I hang with a different crowd. Isn't there usually at least one guy taking himself down?

The weekend after we threw a house party at my friend's place. There were 60 on the evite but I'm pretty sure way more than that came and went throughout the night. I was not in a groovin' social butterfly type mode. Instead I stood in the kitchen and devoured the veggie plate and then returned to my corner of the couch to perch and stare at people and look confused. I obviously opted for the wrong vice at this little shindig.

All in all it was a fun two weekends and I even got to introduce my new boy to a few different groups of friends and he survived despite Joe and Alex giving him the third degree at Maharaja. Oh yeah and I tried a cream cheese and Swiss cheese hot dog on the street in Cap Hill. It was delicious. Good times. Can't wait to head up to Vancouver this weekend!

TA

Okay, if you are an undergrad this post is for you. There is something called office hours. This is the time reserved for students to meet with TAs to get help and ask questions on a one-on-one basis. Office fucking hours, got it? Please do not seek help using any of the following methods:

1. emailing your TA for feedback and help the night before something is due. we have no obligation to be on fucking call for you. we teach, we don't deliver babies.
2. hunting down your TA at the beginning of lecture so s/he can review your work during lecture while the prof is lecturing. not cool.
3. stalking your TA when s/he is going to the bathroom
4. cornering your TA in the locker room when s/he is half naked and trying to change his/her clothes

What office hours is NOT meant for, however, is getting a private tutoring session to cover the material you missed in the class you SKIPPED presumably to get raging drunk back at your little frat/sorority house. We're here to guide your learning, not to spoon feed you and wipe your ass. Be a little more responsible and a little less needy/demanding/spoiled.

cubes

Cubicles are inherently sad, but check these out, they're the saddest of the sad.

I don't think that open office floor plans are any better. It's kinda weird having to be face-to-face with your coworkers 8 (I mean 10-12) hours a day -- Observing every nervous twitch, hearing every sigh, watching as the fucked up ones cut their finger nails at their desk, or better yet cough phlegm into a hanky.

Man I so do not miss working at a tech company. Not even a little bit.

quake

This from my friend C in the Bay Area.

A moderate earthquake occurred at 8:04:54 PM (PDT) on Tuesday, October 30, 2007.
The magnitude 5.6 event occurred 11 km (7 miles) E (88 degrees) of Milpitas, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 9 km ( 6 miles).

So what would you try to save (other than yourself) in the event of a small quake ?

Here's how it went down in her house (she's on a business trip in Atlanta but got the report from her husband back home):

C: i asked B if he ran to the doorframe
C: he said no
me: hahaha
C: he was holding onto the plasma...which is right by the sliding glass door
C: in his defense he said he was trying to save the souvenirs and pics on wall and then saw the tv

I guess with a TV that is close to the value of my car, I'd go and save the TV too.

active

So there is a joker in the class that I TA. He doesn't even appear to be enrolled in the class but he always takes the quizzes, this time using a bright green pen. We haven't figured out who he is since there are over 200 kids in the lecture, but he likes to entertain us with his quiz answers.

e.g.

Q: Please rewrite the following sentence in active voice:
"The ball was kicked by the boy"

Of course the correct answer was "The boy kicked the ball"

His answer "The ball kicked the boy in the face"

Awesome. I love it.

home

Reasons why I need to go home for a visit:

- I miss eating at izakayas and good affordable sushi restaurants
- I miss my awesome friends
- both parents have their birthdays in November
- lecture is canceled on some Fridays
- I have more shit to retrieve from home
- last but certainly not least I need to hook up a sling box at my parents' house so that we can watch hockey down here. HNIC is only on Saturdays and CBC doesn't air any games on other days.
I'm thinking to head back the weekend of November 9th, leaving Thursday afternoon, returning Sunday night.

captcha

So you know when you go to register on a web site and you get a bunch of letters all twisted up so that you have to use your imagination to interpret what the fuck it says. Well Denny tells me that is called a CAPTCHA which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. It's one of those tests I often get wrong because evidently I'm not a human. I just installed Firefox so none of the sites that require login remember all my info. I was avoiding this for awhile because Firefox reveals all the code errors in my blog and web site and makes it look all jacked up because I'm too lazy to fix it. Anyways, that is not the point of this post. I'm writing because my CAPTCHA on Facebook was methadone and I thought that was cute. I would like my next CAPTCHA to be something along the lines of rimjob. I think that would also be cute.

match 2

Just thought I'd link to another blogger's commentary on lame match profiles because it made me laugh.
http://mamalikey.blogspot.com/2007/10/miss-matched.html

I have plenty more observations and have to admit I spent many evenings checking out profiles with my cousin when I was in San Jose in lieu of watching sitcoms. Far more entertainment value in poorly written profiles coupled with horrifyingly unflattering photos. But alas, I have a deadline every day until Thursday. So that post will have to wait... Until then, seriously guys, don't do the shirtless flexing in front of someone else's car thing especially with the tough guy douchebag expression in your profile pic. All I do with shit like that is circulate it among my friends so we can all laugh at you.

delete

I have an exam to study for, a lecture to prepare, and a research proposal to write. What do I do instead? Go through 4 years of blog posts to delete photos of myself so I can finally make this blog as anonymous as I think it needs to be. I also bought a new down comforter online to replace my crazy heavy Chinese one that is great on cold nights, but my apartment is always way too warm for such a heavy comforter.

Telling myself I shouldn't care about grades at this point in my schooling is actually sort of demotivating. I've tried for my entire life to worry less and be more laid back about things but I'm wondering if this is really a good idea when it comes to school. I think I need the pressure. At least a little bit. Someone kick me in the ass. I need it.

In other news, the Canucks beat Columbus today. Yay!

midweekend

So I'm finally getting over this little cold that I caught thanks to a couple days of rest at home. I spent yesterday studying and then headed over to a friend's house for a grad students assoc meeting and then to hang out. Headed over to Wallingford after that to watch Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. I had my reservations about this film because though I didn't see the Royal Tenenbaums, I really hated The Life Aquatic because I found the dialog pretentious in a ha-ha-if-you-didn't-get-that-joke-you're-not-as-sophisticated-in-picking-up-subtle-dark/humor-as-I-because-I'm-the-shit sort of way. I also realized that I just cannot stand the sight of Bill Murray. But last night I was pleasantly surprised even though I don't like Owen Wilson and Bill Murray had a cameo. It was actually pretty funny probably because it makes fun of super rich white people trying to find their spirituality. Good nuf.

Anyways, back to studying so I can head out. We're going to check out Common Market at Chop Suey in Cap Hill. I know...me hip hop? But this isn't the misogynistic commercial brand of garbage that I despise so I'll gladly go to take a listen.

gum wall

I went to Theatresports in Post Alley Sunday night and got to check out the famous gum wall. Yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like it is. I guess they used to not allow gum chewing in the theatre so people put their gum on the brick wall. It's kind of gross and interesting at the same time. I'll post a pic later. I'm too lazy to download it from my phone. The whole wall is covered and some people got creative and wrote their name.

I can't believe tomorrow is Thursday tomorrow already. I'm starting to come down with something but decided that I'll fight this with a 2 hour nap, echinacea, a multi vitamin, zinc, fish oil capsules, oil of oregano and grape juice. We'll see if this works. I hope it does. Ok back to studying for my stats midterm.

midwest

I don't know why it is that every conference I get accepted to is taking place somewhere in the midwest lately. I'm writing from the lobby of the Crowne Plaza in Kansas City, MO where I'm presenting at the Midwest Popular Culture Conference. My next conference, the National Communication Assocation Conference, will be in Chicago next month, and if I get into the Association of Asian Am conference (fingers crossed for that one) I'll be making another trip out to Chicago in Spring. As usual I have counted fewer than 3 Asians since I've arrived. And I'm totally exhausted. I present in 2.5 hours and I'm severely sleep deprived. I took a 1/4 of an Ambien CR which knocked me out but I woke up at 2:55am when the thunderstorm started. After that I was just dozing on and off until my alarm went off at 9am (7am my time). I'm not too happy with the set up of the room either. I went to a panel this morning in the same room and what they've done is divide one big room into two with a curtain. Yes, a CURTAIN. So we could hear two speakers speaking at once and it was pretty hard to focus on either one, especially when one of them started playing a sound clip. I don't know whose idiotic idea that was to use a curtain as a room divider. And since I'm complaining incessently I will add that they have this lectern thing set up that I don't think I'm tall enough to see over. Even in 2" heeled boots. Anyways, I need to get back to prepping for this presentation and trying to stay awake. I can't wait to get home. It's raining harder here than it is in Seattle.

match

I must share with you the most awesomely funny match profile ever from a guy who is quite easy on the eyes. He winked at me. I'm blocking him and don't really intend to login to that site anymore. Anyways, read on:

I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging jerk.

I have to applaud his way with words. I love a good writer. Poor grammar is such a turn off even more so than disregarding social norms.

1408

1408 was such a disappointing movie. The alternate endings on the Blockbuster DVD were even shittier. It's hump day. I think it's funny that white people call Wednesday hump day. In my head I picture people having sex all over the place in public all day. Anyways...

So I'm doing a good job of planning social activities so that my life doesn't completely fucking suck. Heading to an 80s night tomorrow in Cap Hill, Friday I'm having the girls over for Guitar Hero and then I'm going someplace Saturday night with Denny, Justin and friends but I keep forgetting the name of it. Now I need to do a better job getting up on the right side of the bed so I can work on my paper. Next next weekend is my presentation in Missourri at the Midwest Popular Culture Conference.

foul

Why do people say "waking up on the wrong side of the bed"? It makes no sense to me. But yeah, I did that today. When you wake up and the first word you utter in that raspy morning voice is "fuck" you know you're destined to fall face first in shit or get run over by a bus or something spectacular that day. I think I'm going to print myself a t-shirt that says "misanthrope" so I can wear it on days like this. Only because my shirt that says "fuck you" would probably cause me to lose my funding. There is this wise cracking frat boy looking Phd student in Poli Sci in my class whom I wanted to throw my travel mug at today. Actually I would like to first fill it with rocks, and then aim it at his chiseled little jawbone. I am pretty sure of my ability to get vibes from people and his reeked of self-righteousness and conceit.

Alright so now that I got that off my chest, I'm off to watch Weeds on DVD. I cannot get enough of that show. Hopefully it gets me out of this foul mood hell. Although I have to say that my writing gets more colourful and that is at least one benefit of feeling like I constantly suck at life.

weekend

So I kicked off Friday with an afternoon get together with the girls from school. Later that night I had a date with a hot hapa dude who turned out to be a total tool who took 10 years to finish his degree because he got kicked out for engaging in some very questionable activity. He also lacked the finer points of going out on a date that most men over 25 who aren't idiots don't miss. You know, like not making me get out of the fucking car to see when the restaurant closes or complaining I slammed his car door when I didn't. Somehow he thinks we're going to meet up again but good looks only get you so far when you're a broke cocky loser who acts like he's 18. Oh well, the movie was excellent. We saw In the Valley of Elah which I highly recommend. Man am I ever glad I was able to salvage my evening by watching the first season of Weeds on DVD. Last night I met Denny's cousins at the birthday party of one of the cousins. It was a roller rink party 80s style. I brought my own blades and got to try them indoors for the first time. It was pretty fun and I managed to escape any injury. I even won a 3-lap race around the rink without pushing anyone into the wall. Just got back from a happy hour at Norm's in Fremont where appetizers were all $5 and beer I think was $3. They had good wings, bacon wrapped shrimp and brie. Not a bad weekend altogether. Could use another day though. I do have a goal to work towards though. We'll be heading out to Neighbour's in Cap Hill for 80s night on Thursday.

day 1

First day of school today and it was not a lucky day but I survived. I thought my spirit friend had left the apartment with my roomate who went to Shanghai for the quarter but last night after I double checked that my alarms were set for 8:45 am and not pm, the alarms were indeed not set properly this morning and I was lucky I woke up around that time anyways. I headed out to catch the 9:39 bus which gets me there a half hour before. No bus, the next one scheduled for 9:49 doesn't come either, and the woman standing next to me says she arrived to catch the 9:15 bus which didn't come either. Finally 10am rolls around and I get on the already packed bus. I arrive at 10:20 and don't even have time to go to my office to get my attendance list. I was lucky I had the room number scribbled on a pieced of paper from the night before. First class of the quarter and I had to wing it.

detox

I spent the weekend in Vancouver for my best friends' wedding up at Westwood Plateau. The day was spent going from Burnaby to Stanley Park to the Wall Center in a big limo for photos. Drinking in the limo started at 11 am and continued until we arrived at the ceremony at 5 or so. The bride and groom did a fantastic job of keeping us fed and comfortable and all of us in the wedding party did a fantastic job of keeping them and ourselves entertained for the whole day...and night. It was only my second time being in a wedding party but I have to say this one really took the cake. I never had so many laughs (mostly at dirty jokes) and so much fun getting photos taken for 5 hours. Most memorable of the many funny things said in the limo came of course from my friend Dan. Tasha and I were showing off the incredible dexterity in our own toes while the others marveled. Dan says, "damn you girls could put a condom on a guy with one foot while making rice with the other."

Wedding highlights:

The first dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLgexf_irYs (woohoo Dirty Dancing)
The wedding party's dance routine (video coming)
The incredibly funny speeches
The videos
Good friends

I'm really not looking forward to seeing the photos and videos of me acting like a loud obnoxious asshole at the reception, although I have to give myself credit for not dancing on any tables and not falling down (like I did the other night last week when I came crashing out of a bathroom stall). Food highlights from the weekend: Dozo Izakaya in Richmond, the wedding food, the double teen burger combo from A&W at 2am that night, a great gyro from a place in Port Moody, and Kiyo for sushi in Richmond.

It was also fun to go on a mini roadtrip with my two closest friends in Seattle. Love you guys.

And after a couple summer months of being pretty much fubar more often than not, I'm feeling like it's time to tame things down a bit and drag myself kicking and screaming back into complete sobriety, at least for a week. I might even exercise or something.

composure

It's funny how awkward and uncomfortable it feels to return to a big room full of my colleagues. Actually it's not an issue with my colleagues but rather one of being in a professional setting, sober, and attempting to be articulate after three months of using the word fuck as either a verb or a noun in every other sentence I spoke, sentences that were never more than 6 words long.

Today was TA orientation day. All the incoming grad students and returning students introduced themselves and listened to the talk about how our funding works and our responsibilities to the program. For whatever reason, I was just not mentally ready to be back in that building, in that meeting room, talking to all those folks, especially all at once. A little overwhelming. I've seen my close friends from school over the last two weeks but having 50 of us in one room staring at one another after being away for three months was just heart rate elevating in a not good way.

I need another month off. Seriously. There are seven boxes of my shit from Simon's house laying around waiting for me to stub my toe on them. I've got some new school year resolutions though. I am going to focus on not losing it. That probably entails scheduling myself time to exercise, watch Heroes, The Office and My Name is Earl, and even go out to see people. These things did not happen in year 1 of this program. I watched almost no TV except for the news during dinner and very rarely went out. Relaxing it was not. I'm determined to make this not the worst 4 years of my life. I want to have a life this year, just a little bit.

the end

Where did summer go?

I saw The Devil's Backbone (2001). Fantastic movie. By the same director who made Pan's Labyrinth. Also saw Hard Candy. Interesting story. Bit gory and hard to watch though, especially for dudes. Denny had to leave the room. Sorry D.

Week and a half to go until classes start. So not ready for school. My head's not in the game and I really don't know what to do to get it there.

17 days

17 days is a long period of blog neglect. In that time, I ended a long term relationship, moved completely out of an ex-partner's apartment, went to LA to party like a rock star for a bachelorette party, detoxed from the partying, unpacked, packed, returned to Seattle, unpacked, saw my therapist, and gave myself a couple of other panic attacks over other shit going on my life and now I'm here. Back in recovery mode. Again. Despite my wishes for stability all I ever find is another adventure I never signed up for. There is never a dull moment in my life but I quite often wish for one. Dull would be a fantastic thing right now.

countdown

I am battling an almost-cold, mostly nose blowing and phlegminess that I'm sure I'll get over soon. The bride has an upper respiratory infection. One of the groomsman is just getting over an illness from last week. But we're all going to suck it up because it's stag weekend. (to the Americans, stag = bachelor party, stagette = bachelorette party). Boys are heading to Vegas to see DJ Tiesto and the girls are headed to LA to see John Digweed. I've hooked up a preparty at Circus with seating, champagne and free entry and a line pass for the main event, the Digweed party at Avalon. Sunday is supposed to be a beach day but I have a feeling it's going to be a write off. In fact I'll probably need to be carried off the plane on the way back to SF.

I just talked to one of the groomsman and my only request was that they not get arrested or hospitalized. Luckily my older cousin is not attending so that reduces the chances of getting arrested.

OK time to finish my writing so I can get packed up.

sicko

Sicko the movie was great. Go see it. But I'm actually refering to me. I'm sick. I never get sick which is why I'm so pissed that I'm sick. I was slurping down that awful oil of oregano like crazy and still I ended up sick.

"and the such as"

If you haven't seen the video of Miss Teen South Carolina, you must see this version with subtitles.

Here's one child who was definitely left behind. (That's my cousin's joke, not mine)

joke

So apparently there was a joke told late Saturday night that we all remember laughing at. But none of us were sober enough to remember what the joke was. Actually, I'll be honest, I don't even remember laughing at any jokes. I only remember eating a double double cheeseburger and it was fucking delicious.

After 72 hours of incubation, my briliant cousin has finally recalled the joke. It goes like this:

Q: Why do Canadians like to do it doggy style?

A: So they can both watch Hockey Night in Canada at the same time

Step It Up 2007

This year's event takes place November 3rd. Please go to http://www.stepitup2007.org/ to get on the distribution list and help fight global warming.

weekend

The weekend was eventful. I'm not even going to try to recap all the weird shit that happened to us during out ridiculous girls' night out on Friday but here is a taste. This conversation took place between us and two guys in line in front of us at VBar. C is my friend who did most of the talking in this situation. I was too busy turning around to yell at this asshole who happened to end up in line behind us with the chump ex-gf who still hangs out with him after he cheated on her a million times. Okay, so back to the drama in front of us in line:

Jackass: Oh perfect, four girls! Hey can you guys lend us $11 so the bouncer can let us pass the line? We don't have enough cash for the $20 to grease the bouncer, but we'll buy you drinks on a credit card when we get inside

C: What about us? How will we get in?

Jackass: You're chicks they'll let you in

C: We already asked, they wont. Plus what kinda job do you have that you wouldn't have any cash when you go to a bar?

[Jackass and his Asian friend produce business cards. Jackass is a manager at Bank of America, Asian friend is an attorney]

Me: you work at a fucking bank and you need to borrow $11 from us? Are you serious? Is this even your business card or did you take it from the bank?

[C looks at the business card]

C: You work across the street from me

Jackass: Oh do you work at Marina (a Chinese grocery store)

C: [steps up to Jackass and gets in his face] WTF??? Just because I'm an Asian woman you think I work at Marina? I work at _______ (software security company)

Highlight of Saturday night aside from seeing all my wonderful friends was eating a double double cheeseburger from Jack in the Box which I'm convinced is still in my stomach.

Oh and I saw Death at a Funeral last night. Great movie but don't read the description or watch the trailer before you see it. It took away from the plot and the laughs. Just go see it. It's great

comments

Shit the notifications that I have blog comments have been going to my spam folder. I just discovered a pile of them. Sorry guys. And here I thought no one ever reads this. They are all published now

gym

Went to Club One with my cousin last night. The place is immaculate and well kept. It makes 24 Hour Fitness look like a fucking bathroom in a dive bar in the Tenderloin. I noticed far less meat marketish activity on the gym floor but still the place is not without its characters. At one point I found myself walking to a piece of equipment at approximately the same rate as another guy. As we both approached the equipment I looked up at him and said "oh were you about to use this?"

The appropriate response for a normal person would be something like "oh you go ahead first."

But this guy just grunts "YEAH" and jumps ahead of me to use the equipment. I bit my lip to keep from blurting out "were you fucking homeschooled or some shit?"

After the workout, we were walking back home and my cousin says that some guy in the locker room was blowdrying his pubes in there and not even discretely. Awesome.

alive

Yes I am still alive. I have not written because I have been blessed with more drama. Ah the life I lead. A couple weeks ago while Simon was at work, many issues -- not the least of which includes dishonesty, zero communication skills, and face-saving tactics that essentially trivialized our entire relationship -- prompted me to pack up my shit and move out. And did he call me to see why I packed up and moved out or to check that I was alive? No, he calls a friend to get the scoop and develop his latest PR strategy to make sure he exits this situation looking like this was his decision and what he wanted all along. What do I learn from this? Don't trust people who are so self-conscious that they can't open up and be themselves even around people who love them. Ego-saving will ultimately be prioritized over your well being.

Not to state the obvious, but we are not on speaking terms. Even after 6 years. What a shame.

Don't worry I am okay. In fact, I'm relieved and, for once in my life, somewhat optimistic. And so begins a new chapter in my life. Please line up the eligible single Asian American men (educated and over 5'6" please) at my front door...naked.

eyesore

Having a messy house when no one is there to see it is one thing. Everyone has their tolerance for mess and dirtiness. Mine happens to be extremely low because seeing dirt, dust, or hair on floors and surfaces is actually nauseating for me and I get all sorts of anxiety about it and have a hard time staying at other people's houses overnight because of it. Okay enough about me.

Now having a big huge fucking mess for all your neighbours to look at every fucking day is certainly another thing. Please click on the photo to see it in full size so you can truly appreciate the detail:

So our HOA states that we are not allowed to have anything but plants, BBQ, and patio furniture on our patios. These losers have decided to use their patio as some sort of fucking storage. Let's play I spy with my little eye. I spy astroturf, a trampoline, an ironing board with an assortment of ugly ceramic fucking swans, bunches of fake flowers, a broken screen from a window, two satellite dishes, a kid's swimming pool, two exercise balls, a tricycle, a rug hanging over the rail, plastic shelving with more junk on it, a pretend lawnmower, cinder blocks, a hose, a broom and two ceramic elephants.


But hey at least they finally moved their couch back inside. I think I'm going to be an asshole and call the HOA to complain.

AsiaSF

So AsiaSF used to be a place we enjoyed taking out of town guests. They had these fabulous drag shows with the girls doing elaborate lipsynch and dance routines on the bartop. The gender illusionists as the web site calls them are also your waitresses. So the person who booked the dinner chose a set menu so fine whatever. The waitress, who used to come and hang out, chat, take pictures etc., I think made one visit to our table with the drinks. Thereafter, the busboy brought our food out. They somehow managed to pack the restaurant with more tables than usual so it was hard to squeeze through the seating areas. And with all the people crammed in there, the place got super hot and stuffy.

As for the service, everything seemed to come at once so there was no room on the table for all the plates. Then the dessert started coming but our salmon hadn't arrived yet. We flagged down the guy bringing the food and let him know. Soon after, another busboy brought more dessert and then the check...still no salmon. Finally, long after the dessert had come out and the check was on the table, the salmon arrived. What the hell are we supposed to do with that now??

To top that, they had forgotten our chocolate volcano cake. So I flag down a dude in a suit who looks like he might be in charge. He offers to take one of the salmon dishes off the bill and bring a round of shots. He also goes looking for our chocolate volcano cake. After what seemed like forever, another busboy comes along with our cake and our shots. The volcano cake, which used to be my favourite of all time, was so overcooked there was no lava spilling out of the cake. Instead it was rock solid all the way through. And the bill for someone who didn't drink? $78 including tax and mandatory 20% tip. This place used to be fun and the food delicious. Now it's hurried, disorganized, over crowded, and generally not a good time. Just too bad. We won't be going back. I wish I could get my 80 bucks back to buy a pair of shoes. Damn them

giving tree

Simon and I are going to be buying a new backback full of supplies for two low income children in the Bay Area. If you want to help too, go to http://www.familygivingtree.org/b2s/Sponsorship.htm
There is a link there if you want to buy the backpack from the online store for the kids and a from to print out a tax receipt. Don't worry I checked it out and they are legit. They get lists of needy children from various schools and agencies. These are kids who are on free/reduced lunch programs and really need help. Just look at these pics and thank yous from them.

pub

English pub food is something I really love to eat, especially sheperd's pie and fish and chips. There was a place called the Prince of Wales pub in San Mateo near my place. It was dark and dingy like a basement from the 60s. They hadn't changed the dirty pukey orange brown carpet or velvet red wall paper in decades. There were photos of people from the 70s who got their Polaroid on the wall for finishing a habanero burger. They had fantastic food -- fish and chips, deep fried pickles, and kobe burgers. Recently it changed hands. Now it is called the Swingin Door Pub. There are hardwood floors where the worn faded carpet used to be, all the photos of people from decades past and dirty framed newspaper clippings have been taken off the wall. The kobe burger is off the menu, ditto the deep fried pickles. Still an English pub with pub food but no more kobe burger, no more deep fried pickles, and a price hike. And the food really does not taste the same. No flavour. I took my out of town friends there today hoping to show them my favourite little hole in the wall but had to apologize for bringing them to a place with horribly bland soggy food. Too bad. I'm sure this breaks the previous owner's heart.

angry

We were carpooling to Mountain View for lunch last week when conversation about who might become the next president came up. Our consultant immediately noted what a bitch Hilary is and how, at the same time, it was pathetic that she took her husband back after the Lewinsky scandal. I had to defend her. I'm sure she had some idea at the time that she might want to run for president in the future. I'm sure she must've come to the realization that being a woman is already hard enough in politics. I'm damn sure that no one would elect a single mom. So her decision to stay with Bill was strategic if nothing else. As for being a bitch. If a man displayed qualities like being tough and stubborn and demanding, he'd be called a strong charasmatic leader. When a woman displays those qualities she is labeled a bitch.

Related to this is a new finding that anger at work earns admiration for men but for women, anger is seen as a sign of incompetence and being "out of control." None of this is surprising to me. I'm generally angry. I'm angry about this, I'm angry about issues of race, I'm angry at the media, I'm angry that I spent years of my life working in the tech industry where testosterone fuels the workplace. What have I gotten for it? Well people attempting to flatter me have called me "feisty" or, worse, "spunky." I consider that demeaning, paternalistic, and sexist. Would you call a man feisty or spunky because they are authoritative or passionate about something? That would sound silly wouldn't it? Being feisty or spunky is cute like a puppy gnawing on your finger. Next person who calls me feisty or spunky gets a fist shoved down their fucking throat. To be honest, I'd rather you call me an asshole.

no fun city

Vancouver is apparently the best city in Canada to live in but placed dead LAST for nightlife.

With the "fake" lines created outside clubs when there is no one inside, unjustified cover charges, tiny boring unrenovated venues (and very few of them), asshole bouncers everywhere, mandatory measured liquor pours (ie weak overpriced drinks), and absence of celebrity DJs willing to include Vancouver in their tours, I am not for a moment surprised by this finding.

As for safety, I know more Vancouverites who have had their cars broken into/stolen than not.

Vancouver has been voted the best city in Canada.
Aug, 01 2007 - 9:10 AM
VANCOUVER/CKNW980 - That according to a survey out this morning.
Though it's probably not a surprise to most Vancouverites, the poll by Angus Reid Strategies finds aside from the overall best city rating, Vancouver is also seen as the country's best city to live in and the best city to vacation in. However the findings are not all rosy with Vancouver finishing much further down the list in categories such as best city to find a job in and best city to do business in. We also finished tied for seventh place as being the safest city and tied for last place in the category of best city for nightlife.