preparing for Vancouver

Since it's been t-shirt (no jacket) weather here for weeks probably thanks in no small part to global warming, I decided to check out the forecast in Vancouver just for fun. Right, so where is it that you can order those UV lamps for people with SAD (seasonal affective disorder)?

6-10 Day Forecast for Vancouver

27 28 29 30 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Check Flight Delays Check Flight Delays Check Flight Delays Check Flight Delays Showers High 43°F Low 37°F Precip. 50 % Showers High 43°F Low 37°F Precip. 50 % Showers High 44°F Low 35°F Precip. 60 % Showers High 42°F Low 33°F Precip. 60 %

Last Updated Nov 21 10:23 p.m. Local Time

what 80s band are you?

Man, I swear I did not try for this result. Yes this is one of my all time favourite bands, along with Pet Shop Boys, Grapes of Wrath, and New Order, but I was hoping for a better result than this. Great, guess it's time to take advantage of that free therapy a la grad students in our counseling department.


You're so depressed... but why? Some people might
call you whiny and annoying, and you are, to
them. You still have people that are willing
to listen to you... right after they've been
dumped.


What band from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

idiot friends

It is with great hesitation that I post this. This is a new blog of a friend of mine.

http://idiotfriends.blogspot.com/

He will remain anonymous for obvious reasons. I'm pretty sure I'll get a mention on this blog, titled "my friends are idiots," in the near future.

weekend and stuff

Friday night was a good time. We went over to James's and KT's house for her 30th birthday. It was nice to just hang out with a few folks, good food, and a couple bottles of Crown Royal. We had Vietnamese spring rolls and sour fish soup (KT), clams, and seabass (Simon). Yummy yum. After dinner we ended up doing a few rounds of drunk table topics (1-2 minutes of impromptu speaking on a topic NOT of your choosing) since 3 of the 7 people there were in Toastmasters (weird coincidence). We need to do small potlucks more often.

Saturday was my drive down to Monterey for the final round of the Toastmasters Humorous Speech contest. It was my first time speaking with a microphone, on a stage, in front of over 200 people but I guess since this was my 4th competition delivering the same speech, it didn't seem all that scary. There were 8 awesome speeches. I didn't place in the top 3 but I *think* I was somewhere in the middle. I still need to check if I get to find out that kind of information. I have to say I'm pretty happy to have even made it to the final round of competition, a first for our club. The weather was beautiful in Monterey, which is rare. I wish I could've stayed at the hotel there. The Best Western Sand Dunes is right on the beach and you can get ocean front rooms that are pretty awesome. It looked a lot better than you'd think from reading some of the user reviews on tripadvisor. I'll probably stay there next if I have to go to Monterey.

Sunday was rest, work out, and house cleaning day. Boy did we need to do all three of those things. Hooray for a short week.

rich

I don't understand why rich people have to steal. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051118/wl_canada_nm/canada_media_black_col

Is it not enough that you're a multi-millionaire? Did you really have to skim profits for no reason other than pure greed? That $60K that Conrad Black stole to throw his wife a goddamn birthday party could've paid for university for 3 students in Canada, perhaps the children of people cleaning the urinals at his company. I hope he and his buddies get thrown in jail. Of course, even then, the kind of jail he and folks like Martha Steweart get to go to is probably fancier than our apartment.

I, like others I've talked to, truly believe that it takes a little bit of struggle, a little bit of suffering of some sort to really build character in a person. Some people make it big and they lose that bit of wisdom, maturity, and sense of appreciation for everything they have. People who are spoiled all their lives never had it to begin with.

food, grants, Tivo

I made the tastiest dish last night. Chinese eggplant, oyster mushrooms, green onions, thinly sliced beef stirfried. The sauce: garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce, bit of honey, chinese cooking wine, bit of kalbee sauce, water, cornstarch. Sorry I don't have exact measurements, just a bit of this and that until it looks about right. It should be mostly oyster sauce though. I don't know how people can live on restaurant food alone. After a few days without home cooking and I don't feel well.

So I have been looking for grants and scholarships from Canadian sources for next Fall but I'm having a hard time finding anything. The categories tend to be so narrow - women in engineering, children of employees from X company, disabled, etc. Anyone out there with some suggestions? I don't think I even qualify for the regular BC grant for grad students studying outside of Canada. I need to get on this ASAP.

So my supportive bf (including in a financial way) got a special gift from me this year. Yup a Tivo and lifetime membership. I haven't much to contribute financially so I thought a big gift was in order. And no this does not serve as a dual gift for me. There's nothing on TV that I desperately need to watch, whereas he goes to great lengths to catch every West Wing. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to also watch a lot of Star Trek and anything with tanks, guns, and soldiers. We got it activated last night and I'm impressed by how easy it is to program. So, Will, Denny, Gigi, we've finally joined your cult.

traffic reports live

Look what I found on someone elses (Prayers for Now's) blog -- http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/index.php

Click on live traffic and it shows a legend with the average speed for that area and icons indicating major incidents on the highway to avoid. That is cool if it actually works.

my lucky day

Today I witnessed a most impressive act of God. As I was walking to Brent's popular culture class where I sit in a corner and listen quietly (I'm not actually enrolled because I'm too poor to take extra classes I don't need), a huge and I'm talkin' HUGE flock of seagulls flew over head. I saw them coming and ducked under a tree a little bit. Just as I ducked, the head gull must've issued the "bombs away" order and it literally rained bird shit right next to me. First of all, I've never seen so many gulls fly in a flock together. Usually they're just standing around alone on a dock. Secondly, I have never seen mass simulataneous shitting before. Not like that. The gulls densely splattered an area about 15' in diameter and the first thing everyone in the vicinity said was "holy shit." Quite an appropriate statement. I'd like to say that I narrowly escaped it but sadly I did not. I got some on my left pant leg. Isn't there some culture out there that believes that being shit on by a bird is lucky? I think it's time to buy a lotto ticket.

Completely unrelated to birds and/or shit, I'd like to point you to yet another new blog. http://watertreading.blogspot.com JP is a fellow I met on the old Media Action Network for Asian Americans newsgroup (which is totally useless now that it is moderated and all the latest news and info is delayed by days if not weeks). Like me, he's into issues of ethnicity and media and politics...but he's a whole lot more articulate.

more on blue cross

OK this is mostly for Syndromes but also for anyone else on Blue Cross. If you read the fine print, they will do your blood work for $75 (instead of billing you $229 %#@&) if you go to one of the Blue Cross "Wellness Centres." They have contracts with these centers so it costs less to get this and other stuff like routine physicals (also not covered) at these places. The number to find a center is supposed to be on the back of your membership card. Of course they don't tell you any of this shit unless you call in to inquire. The web site is garbage and just meant to give enough information to sell you a plan. No info on the details of your benefits. But still, Blue Cross was the cheapest PPO plan I could find (less than $70/mo., $5K deductible). HealthNet was HMO, which I hated, and costed more and I already talked about Kaiser below. You'd probably walk into Kaiser for a booster shot and end up accidentally getting chemo or something. And if you just lost your job, get off the COBRA plan asap. It's just a continuation of the benefits that your company provided you except it now gets billed to you instead of the company that just kicked your ass out on the street. So quite likely your COBRA will cost a few hundred bucks a month and is way more than you need if you're generally healthy and single.

don't go to the doctors

I hate Blue Cross. I went to the doctors for an annual check up and the doctor wanted me to take a blood test to check my cholesterol and stuff. I figured this was basic stuff so I didn't think to call Blue Cross first to see if it was covered. Typically my doctors visits are covered 70% or something. This week the bill came. My blood test costed $229 and NONE of it was fucking covered! I'm so pissed. I call the doctor and then Blue Cross and it turns out that routine testing or preventive care of any kind is not covered. So the logic is they pay only for services that you need. So let's say I want to check my blood cholesterol. Not covered. Let's say as a result of NOT getting my cholesterol checked, I don't realize I have high cholesterol until I have a massive heart attack. Well lucky for me, getting checked into the hospital to treat the massive heart attack would be covered. In other words, they ain't gonna pay for anything until you're actually sick. Treating someone already sick I would think costs more than preventive treatment... I mean bypass surgery versus a blood test, come on already! So I don't understand. I hate you Blue Cross. But the only other option really is Kaiser which costs more, and they've managed to accidentally kill 4 of their patients in San Jose/Santa Clara in the last 13 months by giving out the wrong medicine or wrong dose. That is just spectacular.

So add that $229 to my $1400 in auto repairs this month and the $800 or so of grad school application fees. I dont make that much money in 3 months. I'm so broke it hurts.

grammar epidemic

I'm watching an NBC news story about businesses sending their employees to remedial business writing classes to correct horrible and embarrassing written English. One of the instructors they interviewed in the story blames electronic communication, such as the use of Blackberries and informal email correspondence. As a writing tutor, I disagree. Students who speak no language other than English are arriving at my writing lab with pages and pages of words that make absolutely no sense. There are sentences with no verb or with no subject. This happens a lot but still it ceases to amaze me. It's pretty obvious that students are getting through high school without the writing skills they need to get through college or hold a job that involves written communication. If Americans want to be competitive in this so called global market, they'll have to get back to basics and at least ensure their youngsters can write in their native language by the time they finish high school. Many of the ESL students I work with have better grammar and sentence construction than the American students and, for lack of better words, it totally floors me.

racists in Philly

Recently Asian American businesses in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania received threats of rape and bombings. The white supremacist Aryan Nations claimed responsibility. http://www.nbc10.com/news/5164409/detail.html

From an email I got...

Please show your solidarity and support by signing the following online
petition requesting that Mayor Street of Philadelphia, Governor Rendell of
Pennsylvania, and Executive Director Kao of the Pennsylvania Governor's
Commission on Asian American Affairs act swiftly in regards to investigating
these matters.http://www.petitiononline.com/phillyhc/

Edison NJ, no thanks

Remind me to never go to Edison, NJ. The elections for mayor of Edison, NJ included two Democratic candidates, one of them Korean American. A while back there was a morning radio show talking about how chinks should go home because they will just vote for the Asian guy. Now that same hostility is coming from the poll workers. Yes POLL WORKERS!!
From http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051102/NEWS/511020421/

The Justice Department outlined its observations in a letter sent to the
Middlesex County Board of Elections. Some of findings were:

Poll workers telling federal observers that voters should learn English in order to vote
A poll worker stating when a Gujarati or Hindi-speaking voter appeared she would "send them to the nearest gas station."
A poll worker walking across a gymnasium to tell a Gujarati-speaking challenger he could not assist Indian voters.
A poll worker telling federal observers if a voter speaks a language other than
English, she sends them to town hall unless they have brought someone with them
to translate.

I'm also really unimpressed with the the opponent's campaign worker's comments about "their countrymen...telling them who to vote for." You really call yourself a Democrat? Non-English speaking people don't speak English, it doesn't mean they're stupid and don't get information about each candidate in brochures written in their own language. I bet he also talks really loud to blind people. Just another reminder that we're not all treated as equals in this country for those who mistakenly thought that we were.

zzzzzzz

The last few months, or maybe longer, I've been making sure to get at least 8 hours of sleep. If that means getting up at 10:30am then so be it because I don't have a regular job with a regular pay cheque so I at least deserve that luxury. Often I even get 9 hours because climbing out of bed is too enormous of a task to deal with first thing in the morning. But even those days when I've had a very full nights sleep, once 3 or 4 o'clock rolls around I can barely keep my eyes open. I even told my doctor about this and she said a power nap is perfectly normal. But my "nap" is required only 5 hours after I get out of bed the first time, often lasts an hour, and it's not just a nap. It's mouth hanging open, drooling, and snoring that ultimately wakes me up. (Yeah I wake myself up when I snore, it's weird). If left alone I could easily sleep 12 hours. Am I the only one who needs to sleep this much?? I have to say it's totally getting in the way of other things... well everything.

hamster pics

Some recent photos of my furry friends. No they're not gerbils, they're Russian dwarf hamsters aka Campbells. They are teeny tiny (that is a toilet paper roll that Snowy is snoozing in in the second photo). Anyone have a male dwarf I can borrow? I wanna get Snowy knocked up so we can make a new generation. Last time we tried to start a hamster family, my male hamster (Poopee) almost got mauled to death by my female ham, Lucky, who still lives at Simon's office. Poopee was never the same after that.

Snowy and Fatty

Snowy

30 club

So it was a productive weekend. Watched Crash (plot was forced but it still worked for me and I enjoyed it) , got some work done, went running twice (I'm up to a whopping almost 3 miles), got new tires for Simon and then headed out for Candice's 30th birthday. Yup looks like there's only a small handful of us now who have yet to join the 30 club. Cecil, thanks for reminding me of your December birthday and that you haven't even turned 29 yet. Bastard :P

I haven't seen some of my friends for months. It was nice to break out of my reclusiveness for a night and sit outside at Voda Lounge with all my close Bay Area friends to chit chat, tease, place bets on when Candice would lose her dinner, and tell drunk tales. It's so damn hard these days to not be anti-social and sit at home doing work, especially when my bank account is hurting so bad. But I have to say a couple martinis, fresh evening air, and conversation with friends sure made for a good time. I will have to remember that next time I whine about having to put on make up and drag a brush through my mop to leave the house. Living vicariously through my younger at heart friends (like Will) by reading their blogs is really a poor substitute for getting out a little. I think I'll start this weekend by heading out with my school pals to our prof Brent's performance on Friday. Anyone wanna join us? My friends are actively in a competition to see who can make out with the most random people (and I'm obviously not in this competition) so I wouldn't mind some company. I'll even explain the rules of the contest - there's a complex point system involving bonus points for such things as making out with someone already out on a date, out with their mom, practicing Mormons, bartenders, under 21/over 31, under 5'3"/over 6'3", can't speak a lick of English, married, with children, engaged and a whole slew of other categories that we came up with over sake bombs a few weeks back.

homeostasis

Not having a car certainly makes a mess of one's regular routine. I finally got my car back this morning and with my new, well, EVERYTHING the car drives like a dream. I got to see my clutch and a whole damn spring had come loose and there were twisted shards of metal from the spring and bolts flying around and wrecking shit. Now shifting is like cutting butter with a hot knife. Now I can get back to some degree of homeostasis. Got a couple more big statement of purpose application essays done last week, did my guest speech at the Lion's club, and midterms are all graded and returned so things are settling down.

Next challenge -- refilling the huge gaping hole in my checking account from auto repairs, customizing my other 9 statement of purpose essays, and delivering another guest speech at the new Toastmasters Club at Applied Biosystems. The speech I'm on is called "The Abstract Concept." I've decided to title my speech Demystifying Postmodernism, but now I'm thinking that's a bit much to cover in 6-8 minutes. We'll see how it goes. I need to get some sleep. Snowy and Fatty decided to run a marathon on their wheel last night and the stupid wheel kept hitting the side of their aquarium but I was too lazy to get up and fix it and it kept me up for many hours. Now that is first class laziness.

Oh yeah, Canucks beat the Wild last nightl. Yay Canucks!

scary part deux

WTF???

Wannabe Olsen twins who sing about white supremacy...and they live in Bakersfield, CA. They have gotten death threats and are said to be in hiding now. I think I'm going to go throw up.

car update

The bolts and springs that were holding the clutch inside the tranny came loose which damages the fly wheel and the clutch so the repair is $856. So I get brand new Acura bearings, bolts, seals, clutch, pressure plate etc.

I actually read about this problem in an Integra forum and it happened to another of my mechanic's friends. So those of you with 1997 Integra GSRs with manual transmission who have problems getting into gear (and it's not as simple as the clutch slipping), you know what to look for and it ain't good. Please note my new PayPal donation button -->

scary

So all the conservatives are happy with this Samuel Alito fellow that Bush brought in to save his rep with the right leaning folks. I find this scary. It's a weird feeling to be scared in the country you are living in, especially when that country is the United States. I never would have predicted feeling this way back in 2000 when I decided to move down here. There sure have been a lot of changes in the past 5 years. I was still living out of a hotel room during the 2000 election, but I sometimes wonder what life would have been like here if Gore had been elected (as he should've been).

my shitty week

So Simon met the new neighbours. They're nice enough apparently, just too stupid to realize a parking stall full of crap is ours and not theirs. Oh and they don't have one screaming child, they have TWINS. Twins who were running around and screaming AGAIN this morning. Oh and my fixed car wasn't so fixed. After getting my master and slave cylinders replaced it still didn't drive right and now it is likely a clutch job, and possibly (if I'm really unlucky) a transmission thing. So I am without car. I cancelled my office hours today and will walk to my tutoring appointments as usual. After that Simon will likely have to work from home at least a half day so I can take his car. This is really a HUGE pain in the ass. In my stupidity I also sent away for a set of GRE scores TWICE by accident. Another $60 down the drain if I can't get them to void the request. Is it my feng shui or what the hell is going on here?

new neighbours

Came home late last night after taking out Simon's coworkers from Shanghai for dinner and drinks. This kept us busy all weekend so we didn't see our new neighbours move in next door. When we came home last night they were parked in our parking stall. It's pretty easy to figure out that this is our stall and not theirs since we have boxes in the parking area, a broom, and pictures of owls that we put up to scare away the pigeons. There is also a big empty stall NEXT TO ours that would belong to THEM. Then this morning I was woken up by a screaming kid running up and down the stairs in the apartment next door. We went out to run errands today and they are now in our parking stall AGAIN. Great. So Simon's about to go knock on the door to tell them to move their damn car. I miss my old neighbours, the friendly quiet husband and wife who had crazy screaming tantrums at 6am. At least that was entertaining. Screaming kids are not entertaining, just really %$#@ annoying.

new blog alert

Just wanted to announce the go-live of another blog. http://www.nilsnet.com/ My pal from NetIQ.

His content is much more intelligent and certainly less whiny and dirty than mine.

Update on my car, it's fixed. Thanks Ron the greatest mechanic in the Bay Area. I spent the day at Simon's office trying to work on my statement of purpose for UC Davis. Unfortunately he took me to Super Taqueria in San Jose for lunch where I ate a super burrito. It weighed about 3 lbs in my conservative estimate. Of course when I see anything stuffed with avocado and carnitas, I can't help but finish it. That led to immediate drowsiness and a complete inability to think. I think dinner will have to be 2 coffees and a salad.

drunken friends

OK so I have to admit I just recovered a little bit from my bad mood by reading Will's blog again for the third time. At least to the part about his drunken rampages.

I also have to share part of an email that my friend who will remain anonymous sent me. This part comes after the part where he describes how plastered he got at a party. Here's when his gf is driving him home.

As Jane was parking she woke me up saying we're almost home; not knowing the car was still moving I opened the door and fell to the ground puking. Jane had to stop the car; carry me up; clean me up; and bring me to the bathroom; then go back and finish parking the car.

Then he recounts the day after. Yes, doing stuff with a mad hangover:

The day had finally started to look brighter when I found a premium parking spot right in front of Julie and Colin's place. The chances of finding such an amazing parking spot on a Canuck's home game night is next to impossible. We stayed at their party for a little while before having to rush out to Tasha's. Going back to the parking spot I realized why I found such a good spot as my car was being towed away. Apparently there's no parking on the street on game night.

Thank you friends for your drunken tales that make me laugh and keep me from listening endlessly to the Cure while counting the reasons why my life sucks more than everyone elses.

bad mood

So it rained today. I fucking HATE RAIN. Sometimes I even hate people who like rain because they probably have never lived in a place where it rains more often than not. So yeah, rain lovers can go to hell, the same place that people who don't NEED glasses but love to wear them also go. So the weather combined with lack of hockey, plus car problems (driving with intermittent access to 3rd and 4th gears SUCKS), plus expecting to unload a lot of money for my car problems and grad school application fees ($60-120 a shot times 13 schools), and topping that off with no Halloween for me is making me very sad/mad or perhaps smad. I'm smad. I think to make things better I'm going to go to my friend's house tomorrow (hooray satellite) to watch the Canucks play the Avalanche and have a beer or 5 to make it feel all better. But right now I need to adjust all the grades from some midterm and finish reading Julie of the Wolves before my student does. So those who have read this book, is it really possible for a human to get all chummy with wolves like that (by emulating their gestures and howls) without getting your face torn off and eaten? For those children who came to this page in error whilst Googling for this novel, I apologize.

no Halloween

All I can say is this week sucks the big one. My car is semi-functional and I have a tonne of shit to do and not enough time to do it and I'll have to miss out on Halloween for the first time in 4 years. Just no time to pull it together this time. All I'm thankful for is that I have a friend who is a mechanic so he doesn't rip me off AND I get a mechanics lesson with every fix. If you need a mechanic in San Jose let me know and I'll give you his info. There is no one I would recommend more. I just wish he didn't live so damn far away. It's a long drive to get there sans 3rd and 4th gears (at times). Stupid slave cylinder.

Oh yeah, so my schoolmates have really worked hard on their vlogs and podcasts on http://www.nooneslistening.org. It's amazing the connections you can hook up when you introduce yourself as an ex-reality show "star." Irene has interviewed Craig from Craigslist and Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia. Pretty cool huh? How they can spend so much time on the production of this and still get through grad school is a mystery to me.

damn nachos

Dcee decided to drive down here from Vancouver (alone) and got here a day earlier than expected so I took a break from my 2nd working weekend in a row to go for a beer at BJs in San Mateo with him, K and G. I had just finished working out (ran my two miles and the gym closed) so I was kinda hungry. But I totally defeated the purpose of my workout by wolfing down most of the nachos I ordered for the group. Dammit. And I have a blood test tomorrow morning that is going to show a hell of a lot of cholesterol. Oh well, I'm helping a friend move tomorrow so I'll try to carry the heavier stuff, or do lunges with the boxes....or wear ankle weights...or something...

I'm just happy that I finished a first draft of the lecture on race and media I'm giving next week and before 3am too. Bonus.

Crap it's been 2 hours since I left BJs and I'm still full. Is there crack in nachos or something? Once I start, I can't stop.

runners

We just got a new member at Toastmasters who came out with us tonight for "post Toasties", i.e. drinks at a local restaurant. We checked out the new BJ's in San Mateo and it was really good. Tasty beer, melt in your mouth pot roast sandwich, and, according to Eva, good dessert. So our new member, originally from India, was telling us that his wife had never done exercise until two years ago when she entered a gym for the first time. Under extreme duress she signed up for a training program for a marathon where you also must raise over $2K for children in India. So that was it, in May of this year she signed herself up and couldn't get out of it. Between May and now she has worked herself up to running 21 miles by following a mentor with a training program. Is that inspiring or what? It almost makes me want to take up running. This past Sunday I ran 2 miles and then walked a half mile. The run portion took me 24 minutes. That already seemed like an awful long time and I ran pretty damn hard considering I suck at this. I think I'll try to work up to maybe 6 miles and make that my goal. I can't understand how people can do anything for 3-4 hours straight. I can't even watch a movie for that long without a break, snack, or nap...or all three.

checking fluid levels for idiots

I've been having troubles gearing down in my car and I get a squeeking noise when I turn my steering wheel all the way so I decided to do some DIY research on how stuff works. First thing to always check are your fluid levels. I am a car maintenance retard, first class. I found these sites pretty easy to follow:

http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/parts/articles/45400/article.html (even has a video)
http://www.ehow.com/how_108_check-power-steering.html

Also check your belts:
http://www.ehow.com/how_109_check-belts.html

My dad thought my shifting problems might be due to low brake fluid but I checked and it's all there. The squeeking noise is likely a need for a new power steering belt as my power steering fluid is all there too. In any case, I'm taking my car to a kid in my neighbourhood who is a certified mechanic/student/car club founder. I found him on craigslist and he promises to check out the car for free and clutch jobs (God forbid) start at $250 from him which is actually not a bad deal. I'll let you know how the kid works out and post his info if he meets with my approval.

stair treads anyone?

So my dad's retired now except he's still running a small business making and selling custom stair treads made with an aluminum rail, epoxy and silica sand. Anyone need custom treads for their stairs for patios? They come in DIY kits. http://www.grippertreads.com Yes I realize the web site is ghetto and lame and doesn't even have rollovers for links but I built it and I was busy. He has customers in the US and Canada. And please don't mention that you heard about them from this blog. They don't need to know.

I hate drinking

So last night was supposed to be a grad student get together at Miyake's in Palo Alto. Like dinner and a couple drinks. Of course everyone ends up bailing except for the two people whom I would normally go drinking with anyways, oh, and Denny, my friend who has attended more of these functions than most of the students. But whatever. We got the sake bombs rolling before the food came and it started a pretty interesting evening. Most of the folks there were older than the usual Stanford college crowd. Older as in they were more their parents age. Luckily this couple walked in and they looked to be a new couple. You could just see the discomfort and awkwardness in their interactions. So M decides to help their date along by getting them to join in a sake bomb. Unfortunately it just wasn't enough to loosen them up. We observed that the guy was so nervous he couldn't think of stuff to say and just kept scratching his head. His date, well, she couldn't stop talking and it's not clear the guy was really listening. We tried to get them liquored up some more but they left. So much for our good deed. After about 5 or 6 more sake bombs with the table behind us, we headed to Old Pro for a beer tower. On the way there we spotted someone walking their cat on a leash. Weird. Over at Old Pro, R and I played a hearty game of foosball with Denny. He kicked our asses so bad Denny played with one hand against the two of us and still won. Meanwhile M was chattin' up three guys until she sensed a certain level of discomfort with her brushing up against them and the guy she was working on explained that they had to leave because his boyfriend was about to pick them up. Ooops, time to turn up the gaydar there. A ping pong match and game of air hockey later (I lost due to scoring on myself, duh), it was time to head home. I didn't realize that I had probably had about 9 glasses of beer if we count the sake bombs and beer tower. And that is why I was hurtin' today. Thank God for the hearty stew and rice they serve at the school's salad bar. I wouldn't have made it through my day without it.

procrastinating

Do not adjust your monitor. Yes, I did change out my background gif. I did not feel like working on my grad school applications so I decided to muck around in Photoshop and change my background because it was too bright and was starting to get on my nerves.

Simon is supposed to be blogging about his business trip to China but I just realized that Norris told me recently blogger/blogspot is blocked in good old communist China. Too bad. So I'll pass along what he said. Shanghai is dirty, people are ridiculously shy, and his hotel room is super tiny. Jason is having Montezuma's revenge like symptoms and it took many attempts to find a store that sells Gatorade. That's all I've heard from him so far except that he's out playing golf today.

grad application weekend

I've grounded myself, at least until Sunday evening when I go for sake bombs with the other grad students at Miyake's. I am going to attempt to do 13 doctoral program applications in one weekend. So far I've done 1/2 of two applications. Fuck. Each program has about 10+ components - often 2 transcripts for each school attended, statement of purpose, online application, GRE scores, 3 letters of rec, financial affidavit for international students, writing sample, supplementary application for the department, CV/resume, international student form, fellowship/teaching application, and some miscellaneous shit for other schools. Some of those components go to the Graduate Admissions people, other stuff goes straight to the department you are applying to. The schools are not consistent in how they handle these docs and where they need them sent. I have a monster Excel spreadsheet to track all this and it's still hard. My advice to those of you thinking of applying to grad school, especially tougher programs like PhD, MBA, law, medicine:

1. Start your research early. It took me 4 months to narrow down my list of schools
2. Start your statement of purpose early and allow for at least 2 rounds of editing and revisions
3. Have smart profs you trust give you feedback on your statement of purpose
4. Give people at least a month to do your letters of rec and give them all the info they need - addresses, mailing labels, info etc.
5. Get ready to bend over - if you are American, you can cry poor and request they waive the application fee of $60 - 120; If you are international it adds up quick. ETS also charges $15 for each school it reports your scores to.
6. Read the fine print - International students often have deadlines that come 2 to 3 months before the regular deadline
7. If you haven't done your GRE/LSAT/GMAT yet, do it ASAP to allow for a rewrite in case you need one (like I did because I got all ADD, got the urge to pee and had to hold it, and then miscalculated how much time I had left for that last reading comp question). Studying for those exams is no walk in the park, be prepared to dedicate several months of hardcore study especially if you're not used to standardized testing (e.g. you didn't take the SAT). Princeton and Kaplan make the best study guides and Kaplan gives free practice tests at their centers with minimal sales pitching at the end of it. Bring earplugs to the exam. There will be annoying people there (foot tappers, mouth breathers, pencil tappers, throat clearers, snot snorters you know...). General rule, if your quant and verbal don't add up to 1000, you REALLY need to retake the exam as that is a bare minimum cutoff for some schools. If you're going for a science/tech/math related program, you better score pretty darn close to 800 on your quant. If you're going into English/Humanities, you better score pretty darn close to 800 on verbal.
8. Use Adobe Acrobat full version to fill in these damn PDF forms. Handwriting would be hell. And who in the world still uses a typewriter?
9. Buy a buttload of stamps and envelopes and make sure you have your own printer.
10. Be organized and, again, START EARLY as this is a massive undertaking
11. Don't plan on writing your thesis concurrently. It won't happen. I will even bet you $20 right now.

I was going to go work out to psych myself up for all this but instead I got suckered into going to happy hour at El Torrito. Damn you Shannph. Now I'm kinda sleepy and loopy from my two sleeves of beer. Oh well.

could you imagine

Could you imagine reading this article and replacing "Canada" with "USA"? Hehe yeah right. Folks here are too busy chasing down people at the border with shotguns.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051014/ap_on_re_ca/canada_immigrants_needed

I'm feeling an urge to go home soon to the land of decent health care, educated citizens, friendly cops, liberal government, hockey mania, and clean streets. If only it were as sunny, exciting (in a big city sort of way), and populated as it is down here. Those are the things I really love about the Bay Area. That and a faster life than back home. You know where people in their 30s actually go out and makes themselves the center of their lives, instead of hunkering down right away with kids.

Dammit why can't I have the best of both worlds? If I could inject the Greater Vancouver Area with a few million good handpicked people from San Francisco (and other American cities with mostly Democrats :), increase the wages, stir in 300 more days of sunshine, and build a decent highway system, I think I'd have the absolute perfect place to live.

nothing much

The week went by fast since I only got back into town Monday night. I was flooded with email about finding cheap tickets to watch the Canucks (or at the very least the Flames) play San Jose. For some reason we used to get super cheap like $25 tickets to watch games here. Now Canucks seats are no less than $60. What the hell happened? I know it's not because the lockout stirred a sudden interest in hockey in this country. I don't know if you Canadian folks know but there is ZERO hockey coverage on network news here. Nothing, nada, zip. Can you believe that? Someone mentioned that the only network covering a little bit of hockey is OLN. I didn't even know the pre-season ended already. Reading the scores and plays is not quite the same as seeing them for yourself. Now I don't know if you Americans know, but hockey is such an obsession that during the NHL lock out, Canadian news talked about every other hockey league they could find - junior hockey, European league, Pee Wees ANYTHING just to make sure Canadians got their fill. I am so sad there is no hockey here. I hate baseball.

On an unrelated note, I was at the school's media access lab today to preview a video called Masters of the Pillow that I want to show for my Race and Representation in the Media lecture that I'm delivering in 2 weeks. It's a documentary about a UC Davis prof who made the first Asian American p0rn. It's a pretty good documentary, you should check it out. The problem with watching this at the lab though was that they assigned me to viewing carrel #4 which is only a half cubicle with my back open to people walking by. It was really hmmmm uncomfortable to watch a video with intermittent sex scenes - yes with full nudity and penetration - knowing someone might walk by. I have to admit I had my finger on the channel button to change it in case someone were to stroll past. I used it several times. Most memorable line from the video came from the male star who had never done anything like this before and had no other film experience. He asked, "uh so where did you want me to do the so-called money shot?"

the man who didn't move

Something funny happened during this Banff wedding I forgot to mention. When Simon and I headed over to the wedding reception we passed by this old Asian guy passed out on a couch in the hotel hallway. That was about 6pm. After the reception ended, the bar shut down and we headed to room 301 Shel and Tasha's suite for the after party. After some more dirty jokes and an exhaustive explanation of what it's like to grow up Chinese in Jamaica, I left and headed back to our room. This was about 3am. I took the same route back to my room as I did going to the reception and low and behold, old Asian dude was still KO'd in this chair. I went back to tell Bryan who came out to check if he was breathing. Indeed he was. So I turned off my flash and took this picture. I wonder what his story is. Is this your dad? Did his wife kick him out of the room? Did he get lost? Is he even in the right hotel? Did someone slip GHB into the wrong drink?

We will never know. Anyone have any ideas?


The man who didn't move

Shel and Tasha's Banff wedding

Back from our weekend in Banff where we attended Sheldon and Natasha's wedding. So those who don't know, Shel is Simon's friend from York University. I hadn't met either of them until this weekend but we've been reading each others blogs, which we found by accident, for a while. Natasha used to date a friend of my friend Ben and followed the links to my blog where she and Shel saw a photo of Simon and connected the dots. I found their blogs by stalking out my readers using SiteMeter. Weird!

So to keep this brief I'll bullet point the most memorable things about the weekend:
- Natasha and Shel are as funny, interesting, and intelligent as I figured they were from reading their blogs
- The ceremony was beautiful (beyond words...check out the photo below)
- The reading from the Velveteen Rabbit about being real was SO cute and original, just like the couple
- Meeting the wedding party and their close friends at the Hot Springs Saturday night was fun, drinking with them and drawing dirty pictures of the Captain Morgan pose at the hotel was even more fun
- The reception featured a candy buffet, wedding cupcakes, a chocolate fountain, WWE takedowns by the bride, breakdancing and many other varieties of what I'd consider "dancing with reckless abandon" (in other words, that was the craziest reception I've EVER attended)
- Open bar is always a good idea - when the well drinks are a little rough, just add soda and one of the colored mixes
- You know the bride and groom are cool when they happily toast your table with a vodka shot (not tea or apple juice)
- You know the bride and groom are cool when they invite everyone to their suite for an after party (or did we invite ourselves...I don't remember)
- Having the reception in the hotel that most guests stayed at makes it even more fun (and easy to get home)

Simon's speeding ticket which he got 5 min after leaving the airport in Calgary

Beautiful place for a ceremony (albeit a tad chilly out there in Banff)

Shel and Tasha getting ready for the cupcake cutting!

The bride tackling one of the groomsmen ala WWE

Breakdancing is what truly makes a wedding reception memorable

My first wedding AFTER party!

patrolling US-Canada borders

I had such a wonderful time reading this post and all the comments that I must share.
http://lessinges.typepad.com/les_singes_the_life_of_mo/2005/10/who_are_these_m.html

Thank you Egan and all the other Americans who don't hate Canadians.

The part from the Globe and Mail is hilarious. I must copy and paste for your reading pleasure

"I have a great idea for the Minutemen. They could prop up trees in danger of falling over the border, [thus] constituting illegal lumber imports. Alternatively stop cows going in either direction, and arrest American grannies buying life saving drugs cheap in Canada".

Holy that is funny shit. If you're confused by the quote go to the link above and read Egan's post in its entirety.

No One's Listening

Thought I'd post a link to a podcasting project that a few of my pals from school (Skye, Chris, Irene, and Mandy) are working on.

http://nooneslistening.org
http://nooneslistening.libsyn.com

hooray

Hooray for a few things

1. My Internet is back up (I was about to blow my top here)
2. Vancouver was rated the best city to live in the WORLD http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4306936.stm
3. The gash in my finger healed. So in case you're wondering...when you accidentally take a hunk of flesh out of a finger with a chef knife (and it was a big one; I had to get on all fours to keep from passing out), closing up the gash tight with a bandaid (sort of like stitches) for a week allows the flesh to just sort of fuse back together. Amazing! I wonder how much money I saved not going to get stitches.
4. The weekend is almost here
5. I'm competing in my first Division level public speaking contest Saturday morning. I advanced after taking first place at the Area level in the humourous speech contest last week (woohoo my first trophy since I did gymnastics). I didn't even think my speech was all that funny because funny for me usually means talking about lewd or obscene things, lots of swearing, bit o' toilet humor, and a good helping of sarcasm. My speech has none of that since I talk about the challenges of being short. Go figure. Wish me luck.

Quickly in Foster City

So we went to try out the bento box dinners at Quickly on Friday night. I was so excited to have a place that we could take a walk to, eat late and have a bubble tea. With the bento boxes the bubble tea is free so that's even better. So among us we, got the assorted fried steaks box, two chicken steak boxes and one tofu & octopus. The latter was edible and so was the fried steaks box if you don't eat the green beans from a can crap. But the chicken steak boxes were SO SALTY they really were not edible. They must've soaked the chicken in salt water before adding more salt and frying it up and adding a bit more salt before serving. They also got me the wrong bubble tea, brought out the food in reverse order, and took forever making it. I think I'm going to stay away from Quickly until they can get their act together. I heard the one in Millbrae isn't half bad but in FC, they have a lot of kinks to work out first. Yuck.

fridays feast

I have nothing interesting to say except that the Quickly bubble tea place opened up in Foster City and has a 59 cent bubble tea special. Unfortunately, they can barely figure out how to make all the drinks so you have to wait about 15 minutes for it. They really should rename the place Slowly.

So anyways, I think I'll do this week's Friday's Feast

Appetizer
When was the last time you visited a hospital?

Age 15 when I dislocated my elbow in PE.

Soup
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how ambitious are you?

9 during weekdays, 7 on weekends, 2 after a few beers

Salad
Make a sentence using the letters of a body part. (Example: (mouth) My other ukelele tings healthily.)

Toe - Try ordering everything

Main Course
If you were to start a club, what would the subject matter be, and what would you name it?

The Association for Short Asian Women Who Look Younger than their Age and get Treated Like Shit by Everyone as a Result (or TAFSAWWLYTTAAGTLSBEAAR for short)

Dessert
What color is the carpet/flooring in your home?

Desert sand with carefully hidden stains from the previous tenant's stupid cat and her curry dishes spilled in the dining area.

union campaigner from hell

No my finger has not healed, yes it hurts to type, but I'm pissed and need to vent. I was sitting in the grad lounge today during my writing lab hours when a woman invited herself in. She handed me a card to join the Cal State University UAW (United Autoworkers) union. You see there's been a movement underfoot to unionize for higher wages and benefits. Fair enough and I support that cause but it doesn't mean I'm going to jump right in and blindly join a union like so many people do. I explained to the woman that I wasn't quite ready to sign up. She pushed me for a reason why and I explained that I have some bad experiences with unions. Take for example the fact that the labourers at a concrete company my dad worked at decided to demand wages that the company simply could not afford. Although my dad was only a purchasing manager, he was forced to spend week upon week in court for union negotiations that wore him out and costed the company thousands of dollars.Ultimately the dispute caused the company to go under. That put my dad out of a job and my family out of an income. Oh and the labourers were out of work too. Lose lose situation.

But that woman would not take no for an answer. Every time I said something she either insulted me ("Oh, so you can't sign up because of YOUR DAD???!") or twisted my words around. When I said I wasn't yet clear on all the issues and fine print and just wasn't ready to dive into this union yet, she translated that into "So you're saying you don't care about your fellow students and you can't spend even $1.72 a month to support the rights of workers who are treated unfairly?!"

Uh no, that's not what I said. This went back and forth for about 15 minutes as she went from "asking" for support to pitching an all out fit. I decided to halt her onslaught of verbal harrassment and intimidation by calmly saying, "Look, I hear what you're saying and it's all fine and good but..." and I was about to say for the millionth time, "I'm just not ready to sign up right here and now". But she cut me off at "but" and yelled like a 3-year-old throwing a tantrum, "NO IT'S NOT ALL FINE AND GOOD." Finally, she picked up her bag and left.

I was on the fence because the issue with my dad's experience with a union which left my family without an income. I was also hesitant because unions in America tend to be staunchly anti-H1B visa for foreign workers (something I support for obvious reasons) and anti-outsourcing (what I believe to be an economic reality as per my post below). There is also no room for dissent in a union, you either do as they say or get pelted with rocks and eggs literally. Still, I honestly was on the fence because I do feel that our wages and benefits are too minimal for the work we do but if joining our CSU union means being on the same team as that crazy bitch, I'll have to respectfully decline. I refuse to be harrassed and intimidated into doing anything.

If I had to choose between getting screamed at by a union campaigner or getting conned into going to bible study by someone who kisses my ass by saying they like the shoes I'm wearing, I think I'd choose the latter now that I've experienced both unfortunate situations. What's that saying about attracting bees with honey or vinegar?

new Governor General

Bit of Canadian news for you all -- Canada gets a new Governor General. An ethnic minority woman in a high ranking position. Don't see much of that down here eh? Nope just white dudes who are barely qualified for their jobs and make a mess of the country. I'm thinking of more than one guy here. Just take a guess.

Blogging will be light for the next while. Took a big chunk of flesh out of my finger when my chef knife slipped whilst cutting a green pepper. Is it messed up that I found the hunk of flesh and put it in a ziploc baggy? I think this gash could use stitches but I think that would only cause more pain (and financial burden... stupid medical insurance). So Band-Aid it is.

Van Dyk and rooftop potluck

OK I'm a bit mad I just wrote this long ass entry, hit submit, and it didn't publish. I just got this message that a blogger engineer would be looking at the problem. Gee thanks. So I'm not going to rewrite except in bullet form:
- Friday chilled at home
- Saturday full day of errands, then saw Van Dyk at a Love Parade afterparty -- too expensive, too crowded, too sketchy but OK
- Sunday Elena's birthday potluck
- SF is sure beautiful when it's sunny
- Dinner at Kev and Gi's place -- duck and onion rings are yummy


Panorama of the view from Veronica's rooftop

Birthday girl Elena in green

Hanging out with view of TransAmerica building in the background

idiots

I was commenting on a document from the Writing Task Force at my university. They are dealing with how to ensure students graduate with adequate writing skills because currently they are not. I was reading other people's comments on remedial English education etc when I came across one that really pissed me off. Here's my select quotes and responses to his post:

I quote " At best, when these students graduate, they will take a job in America that would otherwise go to an American, contributing to our current unemployment problem."

Taking (as you say) a job in America is a near impossible feat that requires finding an employer who will sponsor an H1 visa. Not only are these visas limited in number, few employers will spend the money (thousands of $$ in legal fees) or time to complete the process unless they REALLY need the person for his/her unique set of skills. If that is the case, then I would hardly call it "taking" an American job away from a deserving American.

I quote again "An even greater problem is the economic impact of students who do not register as international students, but simply enter the U.S., legally or illegally, become "California residents" by living with a relative or someone for two years, graduate from a California high school, and pay in-state tuition"

Wrong again. One cannot register as a California resident without permanent residency status (ie greencard) which again requires a sponsoring employer (very very rare these days due to cost and paper work so the sponsored individual is typically quite deserving). If they were sponsored by a relative, that's called immigration and that's what built this great country.

Finally outsourcing is not a problem caused by educating international students as you claim. It's an issue the US becoming less globally competitive. If companies can find skilled people elsewhere, they will. It's all about the bottom line. Most people who work as offshore resources are educated in their home countries. The US needs to focus on adding value to our workers to help them stand out and to be competitive. Grumbling about outsourcing and blaming international students is nothing short of racist.

------
Essentially this person turned a comment on how to improve the writing skills of our students into a rant about how the school must stop accepting international students. Idiot.

Jay and Jess's wedding

So here are some photos from the wedding over the weekend in Toronto. It's was extra interesting for two reasons. 1. it was a mixed Chinese Korean wedding which means a blending of different customs, 2. Food Network Canada's "I Do, Let's Eat" was filming the whole thing. So now I know what it's like to have a camera crew in your face the whole day. The show, which focuses on wedding cuisine from different cultures, will air June of next year. It'll be the first episode of season 2. How cool is that to have a free professional videographer AND have your wedding on TV??


Simon's folks getting served some tea during the Chinese tea ceremony for the bride's side of the family

Simon and I outside the church

Korean wedding ceremony for the groom's side before the Chinese banquet started. I don't know the details of what was happening and why but there were shot glasses, liquor, and food involved and it was really pretty and elaborate. Any Koreans out there care to explain? I'm guessing the part about throwing dried fruit and nuts into the bride's scarf was a fertility thing?

Korean style full body rock, paper, scissors (this is pretty hilarious)

I think Jess wore a total of 4 different dresses throughout the day and changed probably about 6 times including in and out of the white wedding dress a couple times. There was the white dress, the Korean one for the ceremony, the pink Korean one for dinner, and the Chinese cheong sam for dinner as well.

Now I want to go to more mixed weddings because this one was so cool to watch. In terms of food, I'd love to attend a Greek, French, Japanese, or Italian wedding. I will have to strategically meet engaged friends of those nationalities!

More pics here. Oh yeah, so this wedding reminded me some more about how dull, cold, and no fun my family is compared to the Ma family. Hell will freeze over before my family joins hands and dances in a circle at a wedding. In fact, hell will freeze over before I see my parents hold hands or display any affection to me or to each other. From informal surveys and various chain emails, I gather this is the norm for Chinese families rather than the exception. So I guess that makes the Au family normal.

weekend in TO

Just back from Toronto where we attended Simon's cousin's wedding. I am so wiped out and have so much stuff to post so I'll just leave you with some of my trademark grumbling before I hit the sack. So I was cleaning out my bags looking for my hand sanitizer to take to TO. Nothing sucks more than finding in a bag you haven't used in a long while a book from the public library you forgot you had borrowed. Actually what also sucks it not finding the hand sanitizer after looking through all your bags. Luckily I keep a backup stock in the guest bathroom. Another thing that sucks is getting a super deep paper cut and then forgetting you have it and rubbing at that finger with a cotton pad doused in nail polish remover. OUCH! OK more later. I need to catch up on sleep and regain some semblance of sanity if I ever had any to begin with.

gas

OK gas is getting expensive. My 1997 Integra GSR manual says premium gas. Can someone tell me if that is really true? This premium shit is $3.19 a gallon which is almost $30 a fill. That is an hour and a half of tutoring for me!!! Can't I just pump the cheap stuff instead? Man if I could walk to school I would but 20 miles is a bit far.

shopping

Oh and if you ever needed an excuse to shop, go to http://givingworks.ebay.com. A number of people are auctioning off their stuff, old and new, with 100% of the funds going to hurricane relief. Think of it as donating and getting something nice at the same time. I think that's the only way I'd forgive you label whores for spending a few hundred on a Chloe bag to a few thousand bucks on a Hermes bag. I won't call you a materialistic idiot if you do it for charity. :-)

I don't even know what to make of this one. Wow.

coupons and people watching

This weekend was another food fest. Baja Fresh sent coupons in the meal for $5 off a $10 purchase (I'm all for coupons). It was still kind of a rip off since you can get authentic Mexican food for a lot less but it was close to home so we each polished off a burrito. Yum.

After slumming it at home and doing some clean up and chores we pigged out again. This time we had a coupon for the Clubhouse Bistro in the Crowne Plaza in Foster City (thanks again Eva). I got the lobster ravioli and Simon got the meat lover's pizza. The food was surprisingly good. I'm talking really yummy. We got to the Bistro, which turns into a hotel nightclub at 9:30pm, at 9pm. So we didn't pay a cover but we did get all sorts of entertainment over dinner that forced us to get a nice chocolate mousse dessert so we had an excuse to stick around. When this place turns into a club on weekends, it gets pretty crazy in a gross sort of way. This older white couple in their late 50s sitting by us got up onto the stage and started dancing like go go dancers. They actually had rhythm and lots of it. They could've fit right in at a rave. But that wasn't the gross part. The ladies at the table next to us had huge 80s hair (as did many of the other women in the club) and make up applied gently with a spatula. Other sites to see included an abundance of top cleavage spilling over the top of tiny shirts, women in spandex tights and high heels, men with long ponytails, men of all sorts shamelessly looking the women up and down, and a few older Asian women in huge platform shoes and skanky clothing.

There was one individual particularly worth noting. An Asian woman with conservative short hair, no make up, and glasses about the age that most of us would call "auntie" (Chinese kids have to call anyone remotely close to their parents' age "auntie"). Auntie was braless and wearing a top that plunged at the neckline to her belly button so you could see a side profile of her boobs. She also got up on stage and shook 'em. It was, needless to say, a scary sight. Despite the huge age range and weird fashion sense of the folks at the club, the place was a crazy meat market. Everyone was picking up everyone and all this in little Foster City. Imagine that!

Anyways, today was another ho hum day. Washed the cars, took a ballroom lesson at the rec center (that was fun!) and ate another huge meal, this time at Harry Hofbraus. We had never been there and it's our goal to eat at every restaurant in our city. It's basically (white) home cookin'. You get roast beef, turkey, chicken, or leg of lamb and choose a couple sides and it's all served cafeteria style. Comes to about $10 a meal and it's a pretty big meal and the salads are really nice and fresh. If I were every aiming to gain weight I'd go back for sure.

favourite products

Everyone has a favourite product or two, or more. Yes, generally I'm anti-consumerist and ridicule people who rely on brand names and designer goods to establish/convey a sense of self/identity, but there's no avoiding the fact that we need certain things to get through our day. So my favourites tend to be things that are good quality, do what they say they'll do (if they have any advertising), and are a good value. Off the top of my head, my favourites include AlphaHydrox skincream (by far the best exfoliating cream, better than Roc and all the other AHA creams and cheaper, available at Longs), my Canon S600 printer (5 years old and going strong, cartridges only $6 or so), Glysomed for really dry skin (the thick cream in a green tube, the richest most effective moisturizer EVER and cheap), Reactine allergy meds (nothing else works, available in Canada only sorry), and Gold Toe sport socks (nice and thick, don't lose elasticity, fit snug, cheap at Marshall's yup).

Stuff I generally think is a rip off and a joke - anything Clinique (except the men's face scrub because nothing is as abrasive and I like it that way), Palm (talk about lack of progress and shitty UI), Nike shoes (cheap construction, poor support, fall apart fast), Essie nailcolor (overpriced for shitty nail polish that goes on dull and chips easily), Aldo shoes (I'm still bitter about several pair of poorly constructed shoes I got in the mid 1990s that they refused to exchange and insisted on half assed repairs). Anyways, speaking of bad skincare products, I read this book over the summer and I recommend it. She has her biases (e.g. not liking shiny eye shadows) but a lot of the beauty industry myths she busts seem well informed and her review of products she discusses that I've tried seem bang on so far. Read it before you shell out any more money at the department store beauty counter. I don't like the fact that she started her own line of products recently but she doesn't peddle them as hard as Dr. Phil (though I still like Dr. Phil).

So I'm curious, what are your favourite and least favourite products?

condensed hell

How come long weekends are always followed by ridiculously busy weekdays? Today I had to prep for a contest speech and a guest lecture, both of which are taking place tomorrow. And I still haven't even had a chance to visit my thesis committee chair since school started, nor have I gotten any more interviewees. My day won't end til 9:30 tomorrow same with Thursday and I hope to throw back a drink or five soon after that. Crap everything is snowballing. If I could have one wish, it would be the power to make time stand still on command.

weekend in Monterey

We took off Friday morning to do an overnight trip to Monterey with our friends Ben and Candice. Always nice to get away for a long weekend especially if you get back a day early to recover. This trip was an eat-a-thon. We got to Cannery Row and had a big seafood lunch and then headed to the aquarium since none of us have been there. Thanks for the Entertainment book coupon Eva. That saved us a total of $20! After that we checked into the Quality Inn, one of many spots with absolutely no vacancy for the weekend. Thanks AAA! After a long nap (God we're old), we walked down to Alvarado street for dinner and then headed back to the hotel after a stop off at the local liquor store. The next day we did the 17 mile drive, walked around Carmel, ate another huge lunch and headed back home where we went to Tapioca Express in Mountain View (the people who work there are sooooo confused on so many levels) to eat a late dinner. Today Simon and I geeked out at Fry's and then walked around Ikea where we also ended up eating dinner. Hooray for $2.99 BBQ chicken special and $2 desserts!

Me with Bubba Gump Shrimp at Cannery Row

Simon and I inside a clamshell at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Nothing more trailer than drinking malt liquor and eating chips in bed

my new PDA

So I decided that if I'm going to spend money on a used PDA, it has to be a Pocket PC because I really cannot stand Palm. I almost got a Toshiba for about $60 but then I thought, how much more would it cost to get one with wifi? That would be really handy with the free wifi I get at school and at the library. So I snooped around on eBay and found the cheapest to be Dell Axims. There's the older X3, followed by X5, X30, and the slick new X50 with 624 Mhz.

So I got on eBay. With $40 in my PayPal account from selling my old purses and clothes I was ready to get myself a new toy. After a fierce bidding war I won an auction for a slightly used Dell Axim X5 with Wifi card (no not internal in this version). $122.50 and $15 shipping for total of $137.50. 400 Mhz and expansion slots and all that stuff. But I'm not satisfied with just winning an auction, I have to watch a couple more to make sure I got a good deal.

So another X5 just sold 2 minutes ago. It was the same as mine but with an extra battery (they cost $8) and keyboard (about $25). That just sold for $170 and $10 shipping so $180. $40+ more than mine so I'm happy and I can continue going about my day.

my second home

So this is where I spend 5+ hours a week. Emphasis added on the +. Welcome to the grad lounge for the Broadcast and Electronic Communications Dept at SF State. Those of you in UC and private universities (or any school in Canada) go ahead and laugh because I did when I first walked in here. This "lounge" is where I run my office hours and a writing lab for students who need help with their writing assignments.

Anyways, as you can see this place is a total shithole and not only is it a shithole, it is a shithole located in the bowels of the creative arts building which is about 50 years old and the subject of many lawsuits pertaining to handicap access or so I hear from a senior faculty member. I just worry the whole building will crumble as soon as the next earthquake strikes.

The floor is cement but partially covered with a really old and grotesque rug. We've also got a second perhaps dirtier rug rolled up and leaning against the wall by the door. It's probably been there for a decade or three waiting to be adopted. We've got 4 old Macs, 3 of them work most of the time but can only run a really old version of Netscape. I think we had more powerful computers at Simon Fraser in 1994 when I was doing my BA. The printer in our lounge never has ink and the lamps sitting on the monitors were donated by a fellow grad student and are for "mood lighting"...what kind of mood I don't know.

We have a bar fridge that is so filthy no one uses it. But it does the job of holding up the coffee maker and coffee that, well, no one uses either. But we do have a TV, VCR and stereo. I don't think the latter is functional but the TV works after you give it a good thud with a closed fist. Oh and we also have a great little microwave that takes a VERY long time to heat up anything probably because the door doesn't seal shut and most of the radiation is actually cooking the students in the room. The rolling chair is my favorite but one of the wheels comes off and I've nearly fallen to the floor on more than one occasion. Oh and lest we not forget the art on the walls that some student must've stolen from Motel 6 in 1972 or so.

So yeah, this is probably the dumpiest grad lounge in this country but I have to say I have a lot of fun in here. The door has a code to keep out those pesky undergrads and grad students frequently come in to nap, check email between classes, or hold their own TA office hours. That means there's a lot of traffic in here and a lot of time to spend with each other gossiping, commiserating, planning parties, sharing advice, generally shooting the shit, and, near semester's end, pulling out hair and panicking. A lot of memories were made here and when I graduate in a semester (or thereabouts), I'm really going to miss this shithole.

exhausted

I haven't posted in a while mostly because school started and chaos set in like the fog over San Francisco. Wow that was one lame analogy. But really, it's been a hell of a ride. Back to my schedule of tutoring 4 students 2x a week each, running the writing lab at school 5 hours a week (I heard students think of writing lab as punishment and hate it and thus hate me by association, how uplifting), running my Toastmasters club, working on my thesis, applying to schools, and finally TAing another class. The instructor for that class pulled a no show on me at our scheduled meeting and then arrived to the first class 35 minutes late. I hadn't even met the guy yet. So by then one of the undergrad assistants had gone to the department office to call around for him to make sure he had the right room info and by that time the department chair and last semester's acting chair had caught wind of the situation and come to our classroom to deal with the 75 confused students....and then the instructor ran in. Apparently he had installed something on his computer which set his computer clock back an hour. That shit happens to the best of us. I'm just glad that wasn't me.

So anyways, it's been a busy week and I cannot wait for the long weekend. I've been really bad about going to bed before 2am because I have a stack of things to do on my desk and I cannot resist the tempation to squeeze in a little bit of blog reading and online window shopping. It's gonna be one of those nights. Dammit.