blank...

a blank page is always daunting.. it stares at u with its blank eyes..
it's like trying to fill an empty box... ur intention is to neatly stack items so that the arrangement is aesthetically pleasing, but what u end up doing is just chaotically dumping everything in...

it becomes one big, indistinguishable pile of crap...

lately, i sit down to type and i stare at the blank page and my mind becomes a reflection of it... blank

of course, i could always just awoiehgaiejb2813479186t893ygofihdjknvmc ... mind vomit.

back to the drawing board..

goodnight and good morning.

kids and other influences...

i have a 2nd cousin.. my cousin's daughter... N
in yellow terms, she's called my niece..

she's a giggler, silly, very resilient (for a 6yr old)... rarely whines (c'mon, what 6yr old doesn't?)...
she's just a great kid...
has manners (when she remembers too),
is considerate of others,
she has this energy that knows no bounds,
and there's a quiet (occasionally not so quiet) determination that will give rise to something great one day..

my cousin, who is more like my sister, raised a wonderful child..
our tainted up-bringing gave her the tools necessary to give N a loving, psychosis-free home..

i, on the other hand, am unable to promise that i could give my child the same, if i were to have a child..
keyword: if

goodnight and good morning..

nobody there..

wow, it's been nearly 5 years since my last post..

alot, ALOT, has happened.. SO much that i can't even remember where or when to begin..

my head is a jumbled mess... much like the attic of an old lady living with 20 feral cats..

but the past is just that, in the PAST... must move forward..

which, somehow, brings me here... it's ironic, i know..

blogging is such a thing of the past, u say~

and if i'm to move forward, why am i back to this, u ask~

because, i feel like i'm losing my mind.. no, really..

i find myself repeatedly asking myself what day of the week it is... over the coarse of one day...

pausing for a moment, searching for the answer...

and then reassuring myself that it's sunday, as if i knew all along...

oh wait, no, it's monday... definitely monday..

and the solution to my problem? back to blogging..

why not scribble into a journal?

or the plethora of social media for that matter..

because, somehow, typing is soothing.. easier to edit, go back and clarify one's thoughts.. the quiet tappity, tap, tap... delete, delete... tap tap tap...

as for social media, it has its uses... but i don't need to remind my friends on a daily basis that i'm not all there...

so, there it is.. i'm back..

for how long? who knows...

goodnight.. and good morning..

it's a quake~!

i felt the earthquake shortly past 1:30am this morning...
twice..
i thought i was imagining things..

sometimes nature gives me hope that i'm not as crazy as i make myself out to be..

pineapples v my stomach

i've never had a problem with indigestion, especially when it came to any one particular food..
except maybe cocktail shrimp, but that's because i would consciously overdo it and eat a whole bowl that's meant for 2-3 people..

onions, especially white onions, blehck... have caused my gag reflex to react,
but other than that, i've been able to enjoy many delicious dishes...
no aversion to spicy, cheesy, fruity, or even unrecognizable...

until yesterday, when my stomach had it out with the pineapple...
i didn't go overboard... it was just a couple of pieces when i returned home after work...
relaxing in front of the tv for a bit...
and then slowly, but surely, my stomach begins its jihad against the pineapple infidels upon the battlefield which is my body...

1 offering to the white porcelain god and 1.5 agonizing hours later, i'm still in the fetal position,
but i'm still breathing...
wondering when i'll have my next pineapple...

patient driving...

now there's an oxymoron~
R frequently asks me how i can be so patient in almost all other situations except when i'm driving..
whereas, he is the most easy-going driver i know, next to my father..

why is it that whenever it rains, drivers near and far behave as if it's the first time they've seen water fall from the sky and, from what i gather can be the only reason why this happens so often, they then try to swerve away from the rain..
which, if one thinks about it, is ridiculously impossible... right????
yet~!!!! yet...
yet, we see accident after accident after vehicular wreck spilled over on the side of the roads..

and their so-called "accident" slows down traffic even further than the rain ever did in the first place ! ! !

arrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

my patience is for things that are beyond my control...
like ignorant jerks that insist that i'm chinese and i need to go back to my country...
or
like when my wireless network goes down for no logical reason and won't come back up no matter what i do..

as much as that last scenario might really freak some people out, that seems like heaven compared to the driving skills, or the lack thereof, of half the city...

why? because in each situation i can just walk away from that particular asinine individual or impossible situation...
but driving... one does not drive alone in this land of highways and biways..
*grrrrrr...*
*sigh*

she won~!!!

to commemorate my unofficial and, no doubt, uneventful return to the blogging world,
i write a little bit about someone else, other than myself... =P

my little sista, a.k.a. zoe, won~
she entered into this fashion competition, and won~!
of course, it's pretty much all greek to me,
considering that 99% of the clothes produced in the fashion industry are not designed with my body type in mind...
ok, that may be overstating it, but those of u who kno wut i mean, kno wut i mean...

anyways, she won and i'm absolutely ecstatic for her..
not because of the fact that she's really good at what she does and has been obsessive about all things fashion ever since i knew her when we were wee little children...

but because she deserves it... she really does..
so, here's to u, zoe...
salut, cheers, and 건배~

book me read

congratulate me.
i finally got on my ass and finished a book.
"life of pi" by yann martel.

it took me 6 additional months, but i picked it up again and decided that it was now or never.
i have to say, i loved it from the zoo to the sea..
and then the interview at the end...
but after the floating island, i thought the shores of mexico came rather abruptly...

nevertheless, martel has a way with words...
i don't know whether it was his or pi's,
but the descriptions weren't boring like "green trees" and "blue skies"...
they're alive and visible...
it's as if i didn't read the story, i saw it...

an excerpt... (here pi is at first struggling to come to terms with an athiest teacher, mr. kumar):

"i was more afraid that in a few words thrown out he might destroy something that i loved.
what if his words had the effect of polio on me?
what a terrible disease that must be if it could kill god in a man.
... He became my favorite teacher... ...It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith.
Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.
...it is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics.
doubt it useful for awhile.
...but we must move on.
to choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

365 days...

it's been a year since our wedding..
in some way i'm amazed that we even got this far...
and in another way, i wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we went another 20 or 30 rounds, excuse me, years...

so, how has this experience been??
calming... strangly interesting... daily learning something new..

i thought about this a year ago amidst all the wedding broo-ha-ha and hair pulling commotion...
and i think it still applies to the now...

the wedding was only one day...
it wasn't the wedding that was necessarily important..
it was the after... and still is..

and after the wedding, those petty skirmishes are also just 5 minutes out of a vast 24 hours...
i've found that it's a bit difficult to still be steaming mad for the remaining 23 hours and 55 min....

here is to tomorrow. salut.

contact

what is more likely here,that a message from aliens results in a magical machine… that whisks you away to the center of the galaxy… to go windsurfing with dear old dad and then a split second later returns you home without a single shred of proof?
or
that your experience is the result of being the unwitting star in the farewell performance of one s.r. hadden. a man with the means, the motive to play you and indeed the rest of us as pawns in the biggest, the most elaborate, the most expensive hoax of all time?

dr. arroway, you come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts… only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility. over half a trillion dollars were spent. dozens of lives were lost. are you really going to sit there and tell us we should just take this all on faith?

please answer the question doctor

ellie: is it possible that it didn’t happen? yes.as a scientist i must concede that. i must volunteer that.

wait a minute, let me get this straight...you admit that you have absolutely no physical evidence to back up your story?

ellie: yes.

you admit that you have very well may have hallucinated this whole thing?

ellie: yes.

you admit that if you were in our position you would respond with exactly the same degree of incredulity and skepticism?

ellie: yes.

then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony and concede that this journey to the center of the galaxy, in fact, never took place?

ellie: because i can't...
i had an experience... i can't prove it. i can't even explain it.
but everything i know as a human being, everything that i am tells me that it was real.
i was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever.
a vision of the universe that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant and how rare and precious we all are.
a vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.
i wish i could share that... i wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe and humility and hope.
that continues to be my wish.

happy b-day

it's r's birthday today...
i didn't get him anything tangible..
i didn't know what to get...

ha ha... this is going to be the first of a long string of birthdays where i hope he will be disappointed to no end..

i'm such a good wife... (insert evil grin)

yay!

eggs

it's very frightening how much i have unknowingly adopted my mother's characteristics...
i swore day in and day out how i would not be like her..
how i wouldn't think like her, eat like her, believe like her, speak like her, clean like her...

but day in and day out i see more of herself in me...

she loves eggs.
boiled, poached, scrambled, over easy, sunny side up, egg salad, deviled, omelet... all of them...
and i confess... to my horror... i too, love them all...

jeebus only knows what's next...

humans are a strange wonder... durable, yet breakable... like plastic

the media is at that stage in the game where they're past the pictures and stories of the displaced unfortunate..
and they've moved on to 'who's to blame'...
what was bush doing in the 24 hours after the hurricane hit...
and where the f**k is cheney in all of this..
do we even have a vice-president?

but it still doesn't change the fact that thousands and thousands of people lost their homes and everything in them...

so much has happened in just these past few years...
it's already been 4 years since 9/11...
massacres before that, wars after that...
fire in a corean subway in 2003... epidemics in afrika...
bombings in the u.k.... hurricane katrina...

i don't know how people do it..
how are we capable of dealing with one tragedy after another..
now, more than ever, the technological advancement of communication opens our eyes and ears to a wider scope of news around the world...
in doing so, we have inadvertently managed to expose ourselves to even more natural disasters and man-made horrors 25 hours a day, 8 days week, 366 days a year...

it's all slightly overwhelming... almost to the point of expelling the contents of one's stomach..
it doesn't quite make me vomit.. but the gagging reflex is there..

but somehow we manage to pick ourselves up, clean up and continue on this journey that is both strangely intoxicating and irresistibly addictive, where absolutely nothing is 110% certain...

humans are truly an odd species..

i luv tv...

i haven't watched every episode... yet (i probably will when it comes out on dvd)..
but i am huked on entourage...

critics claim it is "sex in the city" for men..
but it's too much fun to be just for men...
like how gq is, often times, more interesting to read than cosmo..
i never really understood "sex in the city"... i think it was too love-is-in-the-air, women-power, gotta-have-more-shoes, than i cared for...
then again, i never really cared for pink... *shudder*

so, watch it, don't watch it... who the f**k cares...
in the words of ari gold...let's hug it out bitch!!

ugly ugly ugly font

so i stripped the new ipod of all the mp3s... (insert very evil cackle)
threw out all the photos..
proceeded to upload wedding photos and my eccentric taste in music (i.e. everything but metal and country)..
when, to my complete horror, appeared this hideous asian font...

i started off with a b&w ipod...
was very satisfied with it.. and ended up giving it away as a gift...

now i have a 60gb color ipod...
still love it....except for one thing: the asian font.

the b&w ipod from before had a nice asian font.. how could it get worse?
couldn't they use the font from its predecessor? would it be possible to get this changed on the next update?? with my luck, probably not, huh?

but this is bad... this ugly asian font is chicken scratch..
it's literally making my shiny new ipod (dare i say it?) ugly.
i'm not sure i want to look at the screen anymore. *sniffle*

some people may think i'm being anal or unreasonable..
but for $400 (not including tax) i think i should get nice clean font...

secret ipod

the strangest thing happened on the way back from circuit city...
R and i recently invested in a 60gb color ipod...
we positively adore it... but that's not the point to this bizarre story..

the item was completely brand new...
shrink wrapped with little round clear stickers in all the right places...

we turn on the ipod...
and there's 680 mp3s already on there...
along with an extensive album of photos of family and friends...

i didn't know wut to think or say..
the people in these photos are somebody's friends.. somebody's family...
and the songs, carefully chosen one by one and uploaded thru itunes...

i still don't know wut to make of it...
no scratches... no nicks...
it works without problem...

simply bizarre....

musak to mine ears

1. total number of records i own on cd (or vinyl or cassette):

when i was little i had a vinyl record player and my favorite record was 'alvin and the chipmunks'...
it had classics which included, "witchdoctor", "america the beautiful", "supercalifragilisticexpialidious", and several more...
alas, i don't have it anymore...

total number of cd's i own.... last count, i believe it was around 400 cds... something like that..
from the things i've done and consumed, i could have been a (insert choice addiction, for example: video game) junkie...
but for whatever quirky reason, my body refused to become addicted to anything... (perhaps i'm just really that lazy.. which is quite sad if i think about it...)
however~! the one thing i did get obsessed with was cd collecting...

2. total volume of music files on my computer:

10,500 songs... give or take 20 low-bitrate crap...

3. the last record i bought:

a corean album by the group "resurrection" (부활)....
i long for the days when artists were really artists and they wrote their own songs...
and every song on the album was a 4 minute journey of pleasure for the ear to embark on...
(or maybe that was the pot talking...)
instead of these half-assed hacks who are whining about people ripping them off by spreading mp3's...
maybe if they'd really take the effort to produce real music, i'd consider them worth my 12 dollars...
before resurrection's album, the next two most recent cd's i bought were eminem's... how sad is that??...
it's ironic... those artists who i'd really want to spend 12 dollars for a cd, don't even have a record out...

4. the last record listened to / song playing now:

mozart's symphony no 25 in gminor k183, 1st movement
no, i don't use classical music as a sleeping aid... i actually enjoy it...
it actually gets the juices in the brain flowing and motivates me to get off my fat ass to get working...

vivaldi's nulla in mundo pax sincera, popularized from the movie 'shine'... great movie, by the way..

bobby darin's 'beyond the sea'... although i prefer bobby caldwell's version...
it's just one of those songs u cannot help humming and swaying to when it starts up...

have i gone soft, u ask?? are my head banging days over??
nah... they've only diminished in number..
once in awhile i still enjoy obnoxiously loud measures.. lately in the car, where singing is optimum

5. five records that I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (either singles or albums):

enya - shepard moons album... what happens in l.a. stays there. enough said.

beethoven - symphony no 9 Dm op 125 - 4th movement... the ode to joy movement. if this doesn't move ya, i don't know wut will

dj doc (corean) - any of their hits... they're fun, with the times, and best of all, they're not always politically correct~!!

bobby caldwell's version of 'beyond the sea'... good feelings of hopelessly falling head over heels in love~

al pacino.... i like his monologues..

6. tag five people to do this meme... (i didn't want to limit myself to only people)

jeebus
buddha
lucifer
cherz
al pacino

to know...

there are some people out there..
or perhaps just one close by...

that upon first meeting, a silent connection is made...
no greeting is necessary...
as if u've known each other for a very long time...
and were only waiting for the moment to finally meet...
words of recognition or confirmation are meaningless...

a relationship where telapathy is real...
words are only used when required...
such precious breathe is not wasted on words..

all knowledge is acquired thru action..
nothing is assumed..
a connection where everything is already known...

i've known such a person since birth..
and that very same person knew me from before i was born...
he knows me still to this very day...
he knows me... and i know him... we are truly kindred spirit..

i suppose it's unusual to speak of one's father in this fashion...
but i cannot hide that which is true..

now that i'm married... i think back on my image of that "dream" husband..
and somehow i thought it would be someone who knew me so well that it would truly be,
that our eyes would be the windows to our souls..
and noone else but the both of us would "know"...

maybe someday..

three things in human life are important:

the first is to be kind;

the second is to be kind;

and the third is to be kind.

henry james (1843 - 1916)

the sad part is that i learned of this quote thru csi...

i swear to jeebus i be livin in the dark...
damn...

r.i.p. russell jones

ol dirty bastard, aka russell jones, member of wu-tang clan cashes his chips in one day before his birthday...
he was kinda the odd man out, the monkey of the group...
literally jumpin around like one...
the press called him erratic and unexplainable...
he was just being himself.... ol and dirty and a bastard....
he shall be missed...