ah, yes, i have figured it out.
i CONQUER YOU, blogger.

testing 1, 2, 3,
is this thing working for me?

(THE FOLLOWING POSTINGS WERE WRITTEN AND MADE IN THE PRE-BLOGGER.COM ERA OF MY SITE)

The saga continues...
2/3/02--At the urging of my friend Rob, I am updating my webpage. The following are the TOP 5 REASONS I have a personal webpage:

5. I have no life. Really, I don't. Today I was filling out some form on the web and under "Occupation" I picked 'Student' purely out of habit. Then I realized that i'm all grownups now. i reluctantly changed my answer to 'Other' as i shuddered with disgust.
4. I am an insomniac. Did you know that 95% of the work done on this page is a result of me not being able to go to sleep at night? i've had this problem ever since i was kid. as a kid, there were times when literally, i would lie awake staring at the ceiling for at least an hour. nowadays, it's more like at least 2 hours where i lie in bed thinking about all the things going wrong in my life. i toss and turn so much that i get so restless and my bed is all hot and uncomfortable. it is 6:35 am as i write this. i read somewhere that masturbating helps you go to sleep. i would try that but i'm afraid i'd run out of sperm by next week.
3. I am a biter. i remember freshman year in the dorms, when i first discovered the internet via a T3 high speed connection. after porn got boring, i started looking at people's webpages. some looked really cool/professional, some were hilarious, most i just looked at pictures of people i dont know. they have these webrings like the 'cool asian webring' and once you hit up one site, you can link to many other sites. also i remember lou had some crazy site. 'jsin' has a cool site on asianavenue.com (he was member of the week! haha). jean and y.peter have cool sites (check them out, they're under my 'links'). for awhile i used to think only lousers and geeks had personal webpages, but i was truly inspired by jean's musings on life and y.peter's photo journal in la. art meets entertainment meets personal expression. say hello to the internet revolution.
2. It helps my obsessive compulsive disorder. i'm not as bad as jack nicholson in 'as good as it gets' but i do have my moments. i wash my hands about 10 times a day (no joke, my skin is so dried out if you look at my hands during the winter months), i always leave one bite of any hamburger i eat, sometimes if i dont do something a certain way i have to 'undo' it by doing something else and 'reset' and then do it the way it's supposed to be done. working on something like this helps; did you know how long it took me to line up those 3 images of kim jong il on the first page so they'd be lined up perfectly? if anything seems crooked or a little off on this site just know i'm saving it to fix it on a rainy day.
1. I am seeking an outlet to hone my creative writing skills and my web design skills. ha, yeah right. but really after reading jean's musings on life i knew that i had to keep some kind of journal on a webpage. you hear that jean? "from you, i learned it from watching you!" sorry, inside joke (so inside she probably doesn't even get it). and i took some classes at uc berkeley for web design where i learned a little HTML and photoshop and dreamweaver. since i dont have the patience nor talent to draw and doodle anymore, this is the only creative outlet i have left.

Paradise Poker
1/30/02--in the past week i've been gambling online at paradisepoker.com, an online casino. of course, i only play texas hold 'em (how could you play anything else after watching Rounders?). the first 2 days i lost 50 bucks each day. then 2 days ago i lost another 100. wat is a poor boy to do? well, i fell asleep last night at 11pm so i found myself getting up at 5 am with nothing to do. and i dont know how, but next thing i know i'm buying in for 70 dollars more. i swear, this was all automatic, i was consciously thinking how i was digging myself in a deeper and deeper hole but all those thought disappear when you have pocket kings on the big blind. i played for a couple hours, ate, chilled with dan and vin and vee at the pc bang where i played for 3 more hours. then i ate dinner and at night i played with dan some more. my balance is now $930.75. not bad for one day's work, donchyathink?? well, minus the $270 that i bought in and was originally in for, then subtract $200 for dan's share of the profits when i played with him at night... but still that's $460 profit. i'm going to put this towards paying off my student fees. did you know i still owe the university $450 from an emergency loan i took last semester? they're not sending me my diploma till i pay it. and the juice is running; $25 a month to be exact. i know cuz james graduated in may with the same loan and he hasn't paid it since. ouch.

guess what, i might go to europe. drew found roundtrip tickets from lax to paris, france for $298!!! cheap. i'd be going with dave, emily and drew, and whoever else tags along. march 26-april 7 are the dates, but im thinking 2 weeks might be a little short...
there's another deal new york to london for $198. maybe i could get a ticket to new york from la for under 200 on priceline and make a nice vacation for myself. this deal expires 1/31 so i have a lot to think about....

The Chair
1/21/02--guess what, today i audtitioned for abc's new game show "the chair" hosted by none other than john mcenroe. 10 people initially, we're all given a 30 question multiple choice test and only 5 remain. of course i was one of them, and what followed was a brief on camera interview with a heart monitor strapped to our chest. i wasn't as perky as the rest of the white people, cuz i felt it was my duty to affirm the stereotype of asians being quiet and submissive. no but really, they asked 3 questions: tell us about yourself ("im a recent uc berkeley graduate and i am now officially unemployed..."), tell us something interesting about yourself ("i have the uncanny ability to survive on mere pennies a day and this skill was honed at berkeley as i lived off of 99 cent jumbo jacks and slept on my friend's couch...") and finally they ask us to entertain them for 30 seconds. now this last part i had no idea wat to do so i started telling stories about how far i would stretch the dollar. YAWWNN.... i know, everyone else had some really corny jokes to tell but i had nothing. my only hope in getting on this show would be from the fact that i had an incredibly low heart rate the whole time. i think other people were around 110 beats/minute and i was around 80 the whole time. does that mean i'm healthy or not??

Kevin's Fake Announcement
1/19/02--about 2 weeks ago i get a message on my cell from kevin. goes something like this: "hey choi, me and jenny are going to have a joint party that yunmi's planning on the 19th so leave that date open..."

now my immediate reaction is "oh shit, they're going to announce that they're engaged" because after all 5 years is a long time. i havent even had a relationship longer than 5 months? augh... anyways, but then i remember that kevin's bday is on jan 19th. but still, i'm thinking that why would they have a joint party? planned by none other than jenny's future bridesmaid yunmi? but then i remember that jenny's bday is on the 16th. OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH, i get it now. stupid. but still i was half expecting for some type of announcement....

well anyways, we all go to pig 'n whistle, have a fabulous dinner, watch the raiders get robbed in the playoffs, and have drinks afterwards. did you know that they have beds there? anyways, i had a glass of wine, 2 cranberry and vodkas, 2 cranberry and vanilla vodkas, a scooby snack, some random shot of something and some other drink that i dont remember. i also had a cigarette (tsk, tsk). i wasn't really drunk, even though i drank grips, and i dont know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. most of my weaksauce friends were red and acting loud and obnoxious; me, i was just a little talkative and tipsy. when am i going to face the fact that drowning my sorrows will never solve anything? oh well, at least i can drink more than you.

Temptation Island 2
1/18/02--dave & buster's with old high school friends, then me, jean and veroncia go to vern's apt. and 'chill'. veronica has temptation island 2 taped and her and jean watch it every week and they were talking shit about the girls. they're funny. work people have no life besides the shows they tape and watch later, i learn.

Roscoe's CHicken N Waffles
1/16/02--me, john and mike visited ritchie up in la. we "chilled" and got hungry so we went to roscoe's. pretty tasty sh!t, although i went into cardiac arrest on the way to the car. but im happy tho, i've tried two different l.a. restaurants in two days. now aint that something?!

Kimchi Galbi Burrito
1/15/02--boy do i feel lousy. daniel calls me today out of the blue cuz it turns out that his coworker is an old friend of mine, karen, from berkeley days. he cleverly mentions that it was his bday today and i was like.."oh?... what day is it today? (as if i didnt know it was the 15th) oh is today the 15th? happy bday man..."
anyways, so later me, gary, abe and jeff and chuck and their whitney crew hit up some bar in ucla i forget wat it's called. mulligans? madison's! ? something like that. i got pretty wasted ($1 pint refills on tuesday nights) and then we all hit up 'jose bernstein's', some mexican joint. actually i should call it mexi-koreano because i tried their kimshi galbi burrito. there's chunks of beef, kimshi and spanish rice wrapped in a tortilla. i was pretty inebriated so i dont remember what else was in it. i just remember it was pretty spicy and it was ok.

1 step forward, 2 steps back
1/14/02--today i woke up feeling like sh!t. you know the feeling where you wake up in the morning and you feel more tired and more restless than you did going to bed? i havent been getting good sleep lately and the sting of my girlfriend dumping me last week prolly has a lot to do with it. im sure the late night shabu shabu and iced coffee with joonsik and drew didnt help much either.
LIFE - 1
EUGENE - 0
yeah yeah, i should be getting over her but it's tough when youre trying to quit cigarettes. i dont know bout any of you, but whenever i quit i get mad mood swings. happy-sad-mad-glad-pissed-depressed-nonchalant, up and down, up and down, down and up, up and down. oh yeah, i get pretty constipated too. not to sound like a braggart or nuthin', but this is the first time i got really dumped in my life. usually it was somewhat mutual or in most cases it was me breaking it off before things started getting serious. yea, i got 'closeness' issues, so sue me. but this time i was just plain dumped...
...but things were kinda looking up this morning cuz i got a voice message telling me that my documentary, the war against drugs: truth or D.A.R.E.? was selected for the 2002 student documentary show at the pacific film archive in berkeley. for those of you just joining us, that documentary was made with mike, jessica and yosef for my ethnic studies class during my last semester at berkeley. our group gets to split a whopping $50 (CHA-CHING) but hey, it feels good getting your work picked for something, no matter how small the film festival may be. i even forgot to feel sorry myself for awhile.
LIFE - 1
EUGENE - 1
but of course later on in the day i find out my grandma's cancer has spread to her lungs. she was undergoing chemo yesterday and she fainted cuz she was so old. man, i'm feeling for her. my mom's a wreck and im not being the supportive son i should be. things are definitely not turning out well.
LIFE - 2
EUGENE - 1