Worst Slogan Ever

Just saw an ad for Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by New York Hospital at Queens: "Now Queens has a New York Hospital"

Beauty of Slangs

While watching the Mavs-Kings game, I saw a fan holding up a sign that said, "Nick Van 'Da Man' Excel." I thought about that time when Dad was mystified to see a memo from his boss, which said, "You are the man!" I tried to convey the actual meaning to him for about 2 minutes and then just gave up. I could only tell him his boss thinks he's doing a great job.

Wounded

When is a girl just being friendly and when is she teasing/misleading me? That's the question I have been pondering for the past two days. I really really need to find out how I can distinguish between the two before I get destroyed again. I am not one of those hopeless dreamers in Hollywood movies who always fantasize about the girls that they will never have and suffer mightily for their unrealistic obsessions. I am the fucking idiot who meets a girl by chance or through friends expecting to just be friends, but only to fall for her and then come to the bitter realization that she will never treat me as more than a friend when she, say, mentions that her boyfriend will come visit her soon, or that she is not interested in a relationship now.

On such occasions, I can only let out a silent scream inside as I am buried by an avalanche of anguish, frustration, incredulity, confusion and self-loathing. Anguished because once again I find myself jerked off the Luckiest Guy On Earth Pedestal and casted into A Girl's Best Neutered Male Friends Purgatory. Frustrated because I know that that terrible empty loneliness will return to taunt me again. Incredulous that in spite of previous disasters, I am stupid enough to dream about fun, cool, romantic things to do with her only to have everything come crashing down on me again. Confounded as to what actually went wrong. Was it a figment of my imagination, or did the waitress really say to me in Chinese, "Is that your white girlfriend? Don't be shy, you two look like a great couple." Didn't we spend 6 hours together having a blast and didn't she email me the day after, wanting to "reiterate how much fun" she had and how she would like to meet me again "soon!" for "dinner? coffee? something exciting?" I hate myself for knowing the pain that's in store and yet proceed ahead recklessly anyways. I have no one to blame but myself.

Maybe the world isn't as naive as me, like Yan said. After all, these girls never really made it blatantly obvious that they wanted to be in a relationship. WITH ME. Maybe I am just another hopeless Ally McBeal, sick of being alone, always thinking about girls I like, hoping to meet The One, but always doubting myself and wondering if that will ever happen. Maybe I should just stop being self-delusional and wait and see what Fate has in store for me.

This game is too painful. But I never wanted to play it in the first place.

Weird Queries

The following queries were directed to my blog in the past two days:

"ben-and-jerry's flavors"
"hillary duff in short shorts"
"pictures of Hillary Duff on the Lizzie Maguire Movie"
"Rice to Riches"

Saving Private Lynch?

I remember actually being angry when Dad told me that he had read from overseas news sources that the Private Lynch rescue story might have been faked by the Pentagon to drum up some feel-good story in order to sustain public morale. Despite my opposition to the war and my mistrust of the Bush Administration for its stated motivations for the war, I did not want to believe that something this obscene and this devious could be true. "That is utter nonsense, " I fumed, "Why the hell would they want to do something like that?" Maybe I owe Dad an apology after all:

From The Guardian:

The truth about Jessica

Her Iraqi guards had long fled, she was being well cared for - and doctors had already tried to free her. John Kampfner discovers the real story behind a modern American war myth

Sick and Demented

Yesterday I stayed home and lay in bed all day because I came down with a pretty bad cold all of a sudden. I had a terrible sore throat and felt somewhat light-headed, but had no fever or diffulty breathing thankfully. The parents reacted more calmly than I thought. Although Mom did mention SARs, she didn't go on Def-Con 5 or Red Alert as I had expected. Most of the day, I was in bed trying to sleep the cold off. For the couple of hours that I was sick of being in bed, I managed to watch "Rebel Without A Cause," which was a great film. It didn't make me feel better about my own problems, though.

Last night was one of the most bizarre nights I have ever experienced since moving here. For half the night I couldn't figure out if I was hallucinating or dreaming. There was one period of time that I can swear I had super-sensory capabilities and could hear and feel every tiny noise in my apartment. For some reason, that throbbing, acute perception only came when the name "Bill Walton" was ringing in my head. The whole experience felt so surreal, like that dark stormy night in Julius Caesar when Brutus and Gang got together to plot Caesar's assasination. Maybe there were no lions roaming the streets, but I was really haunted by all kind of strange noises. After I finally shut it all out with great difficulty, I had a really bizarre dream in which I was sleeping in my car. A creepy homeless man woke me up with gentle knocking on my window. He wanted to get into my car for some reason. Frightened, I drove my car away trying to escape from him, not even remembering what he looked like. At some point during the night, I also dreamed that I had two huge finals in my history and econ classes the next day. Of course, I hadn't read any of the material all quarter and freaked out. It's been more than two months since my last nightmare involving exams, so I guess I was due for a visit from the Grades Fairy.

This morning I crawled out of bed feeling marginally better. I was still coughing and sneezing on the subway, which made the lady sitting next to me nudge herself away slightly more than a few times. I still feel pretty lethargic but I hope the Vicks 44 cough syrup I bought on the way to work will help me last through the day so I can sleep this sickness off on the weekend.

Whining

Damn it, why do I have to be sick today? Of all the days that I had nothing to do but stay at home and watch TV, today is the day that I actually feel light-headed and weak. This does not bode well for the festivities I have planned for tonight.

Amusing Spam Of The Day

From: cwgirl28
Subject: "if it were b i g they would call u"

Falling Down

Last night at the neighborhood grocery store, I couldn't find the price tag on a loaf of bread initially, so I turned to an old lady behind the deli counter and said, "Excuse me, do you know what the price is for this loaf of bread?" When she turned around, I was a bit startled because her face was really wrinkled and her huge, thick glasses magnified and distorted her eyes to such an extent that she looked like she was wearing a pair of those gag glasses with the fake eyes that pop out at you.

She yelled at me, her voice a mixture of impatience and plain old surliness, "WHY DON'T YOU JUST LOOK ON THE BAG? THE PRICE IS RIGHT ON THERE!! I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS!!"

I consider myself a mellow person and I can usually brush off a lot of abuse and move on with a smile. However, when that cranky old hag yelled at me, I felt like I was going to blow up. I had a long day at work because I went to bed at almost 3 am the night before. Of course I slept past my station on the way home, too. And I guess the rudeness and impatience that I endure on a daily basis in this city finally wore out all the laidbackness I had accumulated from living in California for the past 4 years.

I yelled back, "LOOK, IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE PRICE THAT'S FINE. YOU DON'T NEED TO YELL AT ME!!"

She mumbled, "I wasn't yelling at you. I was just saying that I just got here and I don't know what the price is. You can find the price on the bag."

I looked at the bag again and final saw the 99-cent price tag. After I walked out of the store, I had a big, stupid grin on my face. That felt good. Really good.

Breaking News

Just when I thought they couldn't get any weirder. From AP:

North Korea, one of the world's poorest countries, claimed it has invented a drink to ease a health threat few outsiders would associate with the country: computer fatigue.

Amazing

Looks like we should reconsider computerizing everything in our cars. From Reuters:

Security guards smashed their way into an official limousine with sledgehammers on Monday to rescue Thailand's finance minister after his car's computer failed.

Justifying My Existence

Sunday totally fucking validated my move to New York. First I met with a friend at a cafe and we had a lot of fun chatting and catching up for a couple of hours. While I was waiting in line for the bathroom, the guy in front of me noticed my 6th Man shirt and asked if I went to Stanford. Apparently, he graduated in '99 and is in his third year at Cornell Med right now. We exchanged contact information and will probably set up a time to hang out sometime this week.

Then my friend and I went to the Apple store to check it out because neither of us has been to the NYC branch yet. The store has the same kind of futuristic elegance and sleekness as the computers themselves. Every computer had full internet access so there were tons of people there just reading and writing emails for free, including my friend. There were a lot of cool gadgets that we played around with of course. And I SAW FAMKE JANSSEN IN THE STORE!!! I REPEAT, I SAW FAMKE JANSSEN IN THE STORE!!! I almost felt like fucking teenie bopper that just saw Justin Timberlake. I was totally gushing about her to my friend. I strongly resisted the urge to run up to Famke and get an autograph because I didn't want to act like a retard. At that moment, I wished I had one of those camera phones so I could have taken a picture of her. Man, I need to go to that place more often.

After the Apple store we had a really great dinner at a very good Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. I introduced her to some dishes she never ate before and she seemed to have liked it a lot.

After dinner, we had to split because I needed to go to Brooklyn to check out an apartment. I spent 20 min. on the train (stupid train rerouting because of track repairs), walked 10 minutes in the dreary, windy weather and didn't get to the apartment until 10 pm. It was so worth it!! Man, that apartment was just mind-blowingly cool. It was a huge loft space in a former shredder factory. The whole building looked like a WWII era factory, which it probably was. The apartment itself had a huge living room, a wall of windows from which I can see the Manhattan skyline, a huge kitchen and two big two-level bedrooms. Dawn, the 33-year-old psychologist (who's finishing up her Ph.D.) that showed me the place lives in one of the rooms. My room, if I'm fortunately enough to get it, was on the opposite end of the apartment. It had two levels. The top was a huge space big enough to fit a king-sized mattress. The bottom part I could totally put in my big ass computer desk as well as my futon. The apartment is just perfect. It is a bit on the grungy side but it is full of character. I probably will feel like an artist living there. Actually, the 7-story apartment is full of musicians and artists and they throw huge rooftop parties frequently. I think I will really enjoy living there just because of the cool community. It won't be just a room to sleep in. It will be a really social place where I can make many new friends.

The apartment's location is perfect too. It's two blocks away from the Brooklyn bridge on the Brooklyn side. It's only a 30-minute train ride from midtown and a 10-minute ride from lower Manhattan where all the shops, bars and clubs are. Actually the really cool thing is that it's only two blocks away from my company's Brooklyn Metrotech branch, which means I can just walk there in the morning and take the company shuttle directly to my midtown office. No transfers, no worries. What a great place.

Dawn seemed like a really chill roommate. She used "sweet-ass" in an email to me describing the place for crying out loud!! She takes dancing classes during the evenings, which is something I will probably do too. She's also a huge fan of Six Feet Under, which was on the TV when she was showing me the place. I tried to ignore the TV because I haven't seen season II yet and didn't want to see any spoilers. I spent almost two hours at the apartment chatting with her and getting a tour of the place. She has two pretty hefty cats that seem to like me and I liked petting them too.

The only caveats with that place are 1.) at $1250 it's a little expensive; 2.) there is a police station and a fire station right next to the apartment complex; 3.) the water heater in our place is small, which means I could only shower for 10 min. before the water starts to get cold. BUT, 1.) that price includes utilities and DirectTV; 2.) there won't be too much shenanigans going on near our place with the police station and the police academy (I laughed when she told me about the police academy because I remembered the movies) so close by; 3.) I can discipline myself to take a quick shower.

Dawn's current roommate won't move out for a while so I can't move in until July 1. On a completely unrelated note, I almost cracked up when I saw the birth control pills on her desk. Basically I'm ready to put down a security on the place. I just hope I will be chosen to live there, since I'm sure there are a bunch of other people that will fall in love with it. I hope my flat screen TV and kick ass speakers will give me an edge over the other fools. Crossing my fingers.

I didn't get home until almost midnight and I spent almost two hours alternating between folding laundry and chatting with bk and yan, which totally sucked. The laundry folding part, that is. Actually, the chat with Yan sucked as well, but for totally different reasons that I won't get into now. I only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night but it was all worth it because I don't think I have been this happy since I moved here. Here's to hoping that everything will work out.