r e d.chilipepper

h.pylori

i despise, thee. away with you nasty things, ye.

thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate my baby's birthday this weekend. once again, i greatly overestimated the amount of food necessary to feed a hungry bunch of asians + 3 token white people. or maybe it's just cause i constantly want to eat that i made everyone bring so much food. but thanks, anyhow. it saved me several hours of cooking.

news:

catie pie and i are booking tickets to italy for this summer. thanks, boss. while booking the tickets, she reminded me of some mit words i forgot: hosed, tooling, and punt. oh, my dear sweet 'tute, how i miss you.

i also realized that nobody really knows what they are doing or exactly where they are going. d'apres wesley, anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something. and anyone who is trying to make you feel like you should probably doesn't know himself.

i am the owner of a new burton feel good snowboard, salomon bindings and boots. as well as a new north face sleeping bag. note to bf, stop being so damn active and talented. if you were a lazy piece of crap, i'd only have to spend 2 bucks on a bag of doritos in order to entertain you.

back to the neural substrates of arithmetic cognition.

thanks vinny. you're the best.

not safe yet..

just when i thought i had paid my karmic dues for all the bad sh*t related to gunther last week, i nearly ripped the tip of my pinky finger off last night and landed myself in the er.

i was shaking. not from the pain (shock saved me), but the fact that there was so much blood. on my colleague's car seat. on the paper towel. down my arm. on the floor in the ER.

my pinky finger is about 1 cm wide but that nasty cut earned me 7 stitches, 4 shots of linocaine (sp?), and some t3 - tylenol with codeine.

this bad luck needs to wane. i want bf to come home. now. and i need to start volunteering again. i've been way too focused on my own hedonistic needs lately. karma is probably sending me some messages.

this weekend sucked

and i divorced myself. i'm filing the paperwork right now. just like that guy who hit his own car with a truck and then sued himself. i should divorce myself for my own stupidity.

the summary of saturday:
i locked my car keys, wallet, cell phone, and house keys in gunther's trunk. being paranoid, i always keep the trunk lever locked IN my car as well. triple AAA wouldn't jimmie it without fearing it being damaged, and the locksmith raised the price 50 bucks to open it between my two calls. nice. from 140 to 190. honda wouldn't help me open my trunk. even with the vin number, no one wanted to make me another master key. i was on the phone for 3 hours with 5 different hondas. i ws even nice to the fellow who hung up on me and said, no luck lady. the other master key was in san francisco, locked away in the old apartment. the residents of which are ALL away this weekend in vail, not to return until wednesday.

i had nothing and it sucked.

lessons learned:
1. if those damn locksmiths ever send their kids to me when i'm a psychiatrist, i'll jack up the fees 50 bucks each time they come and claim ignorance.
2. it really sucks when bf goes away. because when something really crappy happens, you want to cry and the fact that you can't cry to him makes you want to cry even more. this, my friends, is what i call double sucking.
3. don't be a f*cking retard and lock your life in your trunk.
4. memorize best friends' phone numbers. this one saved me.
5. be lucky enough to have a friend stick with you through all 6 hours of the ordeal, laugh it off, give you a hug, and never once chastise you for being an idiot.
6. thank the lady in the parking lot who commiserated with you after she saw you screaming at the trunk lock and stomping on the ground like a spoiled little brat and asked if you were okay.
7. your friends must really know you when you call them to tell the story and they act totally unsurprised. that's a reminder to how much of an idiot you are in your daily life. get your act together!

Yosemite falls...

bf and i went to yosemite falls last month. if you want to see the full set of pictures, you have to join my flickr friend network.

the view and the tranquility were more than worth the cold feet, snow, and slush. the best part was that the snow had frozen under the waterfall, so that when the water broke over the snow, it looked like a cloud of snow dust! i can't wait to go back in the summer!

tired...

there's been so much rain lately. all i feel like doing is gardening on my porch. i went out to get some medicine last night and ended up staring longingly at some jasmine plants and soil. the potting soil *really* had me going. i wanted to grab a big bag of it and hold it lovingly to my chest.

now, what i really want is a david the gnome statue. did anyone else see david the gnome as a child? those cartoons were the best. maybe if i get myself david the gnome we can sit on my porch and i can pet his porcelain head as we watch this ridiculous abundance of rainfall flood more of the south bay.

i'm still under the weather. i've been spending too much time with people. i'm getting into that hermit-like phase where i feel like avoiding people and hiding. i just want to be alone. with david the gnome, that is.

the cultural significance of space

SWF likes to hold on to my arm. sometimes when she's talking to me, she'll grab my arm and shake it, almost reminding me of how a three-year-old would shake his mother's arm, or a whiny girlfriend her boyfriend's. actually, i do shake bf's arm with a high pitched voice, but only when i'm trying to pretend to be a high maintenance annoying piece of crap. she also likes to touch me as she complements me, and frequents my office 3 - 4 times a day.

this isn't american protocol. there's such a sensitivity for personal space and individuality in the us that no one would fathom really touching someone else unless it was for a purpose -- opposite sex: flirting, same-sex: well naturally, they are homosexuals. seriously, think of two guys extendedly hugging in the street. if they weren't related, i think most of america would think that strange (i'm not anti-gay, to note).

but that's not how it is in taiwan or in china. you regularly see teenage boys holding hands as they walk down the street, girls walk arm in arm, and families are always over at each other's house. it's expected that your parents move in with you as you get older, and my grandparents were always in my business. they still are.

that i'm comfortable with. but i realized that there are cultural differences that SWF may not be privvy to. so how do you gently tell someone what the social etiquette is without insulting her? do you gently tolerate her ignorance? it's really escalating to a distressing point. when i hear footsteps in the door at work, i'm almost scared to turn around. i've even starting bringing headphones to work, not to drown out the colleagues, but to appear busier than i am.

why am i uncomfortable about it?

because even though i was raised in a traditional taiwanese family, i need to possess my space. i've been taught not to like it when people venture too close, it's wrong for there to be too much hugging -- i would prefer a friendly handshake or a quick pat goodbye when friends leave. maybe that's even why i'm so possessive about my bed. i'm selfish -- it's my space.

but now she's everywhere. at my work, writing me, emailing me, im'ing me and she wants to now move in. i can't even fathom what that would be like. i *know* she doesn't mean it and i know it's not implicit within asian society for that sort of respect for exaggerated distance. but really, it's starting to cause me to feel very uncomfortable. because i know she doesn't know better, i don't want to say anything... but i'm not sure how excusable ignorance is, especially when one should have to operate within the normal confines of society.

sam cooke

music: bought his cd the other day in (i am ashamed to admit) starbucks. but oh, hot damn! what good music he has! i made bf listen to it in the car. he wasn't nearly as excited about it as i was, but mark my words, he will be converted.

same-sex stalker: i really need to get rid of SWF. it's starting to freak me out. today she tried to force me to let her get me something from mcdonald's. even after i rejected her 3 times, the offers kept coming. i'm not kidding when i say that i'm scared, either. sure it's just food, but i don't want it!

boarding: not sure if i'm sold on it. i'll give it another season, but i think i'm doing okay. ex-roomie seems to think that i have it, but i'm not linking as smoothly as i'd like and i'm still afraid of falling. i almost went off a few cliffs. eek!

opposite-sex stalker: huh. i don't have any of these of late. how nice!

trips: off to taiwan in a few weeks, business trip to dc in may, new engand over summer, seattle/vancouver late summer?

graduate school: still undecided. how did i ever become such a sloth?

i smell like garlic. i must have crushed about 30 cloves last night. even that wasn't enough to keep SWF away.

the reality of movies...

in life, you watch some demented movies and think, thank god my life isn't like that.

example:
psycho
the exorcist
jacob's ladder
heck, even clueless or 16 candles.

and then you watch single white female and when you realize that some of that movie somehow applies to you, you want to gouge your eyes out.

somebody save me...