one last cry

yo im a freakin' loser, i went to le prive again tonight. i havent gone to that place for almost a year and then i went 3 times this past week. but i had to, johnny 'punani' wanted to go and events like that happen about as often as...never. it's ok, i've decided that this time was my one last cry.
so we joined up with albert and brian and their la canada boyz. i tried hitting on one of their friends but ended up empty handed. games, why must all you play games?
anyways, so around midnight a rumor starts flowing around that brian mcknight was there. yeah right.
but then pretty soon everyone started talking about that sh!t, and sure i enough i see brian mcknight next to the dance floor talking to one of the security guards. john from la canada goes up to say that he likes his music and then feels gay afterwards, another random girl tells me that she felt his package from dancing with him on the dance floor and i walk by and give him a thumbs up.
he looks at me and says: "hey chewey".
huh?

songs of the week
what's playing on my playlist:

aaliyah - more than a woman: aaliyah's best song in my opinion.
alicia keys feat. jimmy cozier - mr. man: nice alicia keys gem. thanks to FOXYYELLOW on asianavenue.com for the tip.
cure - close to me: i just downloaded the original and as many remixes i could find. one of cure's best.
no doubt - dont let me down: no doubt revisits the 80s! best on their new album in my opinion. nice sunny orange county vibe to it.
no doubt - hella good: i really liked this song until i realized that there are no verses, just a chorus sang over and over and over and over....
too short - the ghetto: i remember listening to this song when it first came out in 5th/6th grade. it was my first introduction to the rich subject of 'the ghetto' and the beginning of my attraction to ghetto stories. i never knew it was a too short track, and since then i've been looking for it. i heard it being played on the old school show on power 106 or the beat and downloaded it the second i got home.
it was good to listen to a song i haven't heard in about 10 years. but it kinda bugged me that a song that i fondly remember listening to in 5th/6th grade is now being played on "the old skool show" on the radio. you know what song they played right after that one? tony toni tone's anniversary (which is a decent song by the way). i liked that song too, and it was from jr. high. sh!t, am i really that old school?

damn.

I am a Gauntlet Adventurer. I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there's a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can't find the exit. I need food badly. What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You?

cycles

i had 2 interviews today. one doesnt count cuz it was with addecco, a temp agency.
the other was with a dot-com. a very small dot-com. in fact it's a 4-man powered dot-com. but i guess it's a good sign that they're expanding and looking to hire some more people. i think i'm gonna be one of them. ill keep y'all posted.
yeah, i know what you're thinkin': "dot-com's are SOOO 4 years ago!"
yeah, fukk you i like livin' in the past. don't you know that things go in cycles? we'll experience another dot-com boom yet!! (maybe).
don't you know that things go in cycles? [ask peter] one of my favorite unverified conspiracy theories is that this rave phenomenon that passed (is passing) us is really the disco-era of today. you got the outlandish costumes, and of course, the 'designer' drugs. coke 'blew' up in the disco era just like 'e' blew up today. both also seemed to pop up as a complete antithesis to a previous era. none of those hippies saw disco coming just like none of those grunge rockers could ever predict pacifiers, glowsticks and of course, PLUR. of course i have nothing to back up my claims but try to argue otherwise. i dare you!

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Moderate
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	High
Borderline:	Moderate
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	High
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High
-- Click Here To Take The Test --

watchoutnow.

"You're not getting any younger, Mark. The world is changing, music is changing, even drugs are changing. You can't stay in here all day dreaming about heroin and Ziggy Pop." - Trainspotting

translation:

"You're not getting any younger, [insert your name here]. The world is changing, music is changing, even drugs are changing. You can't stay in here all day dreaming about [insert your vice here, such as smoking/gambling/drinking] and [insert your time-waster here, such as counterstrike/sleeping]." - Trainspotting

im at a pc bang right now. my stinkin' friends dragged me here. i dont play computer games that are addictive as crack, so i gambled online. didnt do too well now im here.
yo, should i go to audiotistics? it's a rave/music festival type deal with a pretty impressive lineup. outkast, the roots, talib kwali, mos def and others. 2pm to 2am. april 13th. $30 presale, $40 general. pretty good deal. i need to scrounge up funds.

sh!t, i need a j-o-b. if things go well i'll have choices. shanghai with microsoft as a communications specialist with an unknown amount of pay, enterprise rent-a-car management trainee program paying 34k/year while living at home, or an entry level gig at an advertising agency for probably high 20k if im lucky. if i got extremely lucky my dad might be able to exhaust his rolodex and find me something in hong kong. that would be nice. so what do you think? what the heck should i do?

i wouldnt mind going to korea and teaching english for 6 months, but my mom would disown me. she somehow gets the funny notion that all i'll do is get drunk 4 times a week and party. i wonder how she could have gotten that idea?
but really, i would want to go just to be there when the world cup is in town. june 2002 korea and japan is cohosting the 2002 world cup. i remember my friend lou was backpacking in europe in 1998 when it was in france that summer and he was in france after they won the championship. he said it was a sight to see: the whole country was having one huge party. everyone was in the streets dancing, singing songs, linking arms and having the time of their life.

now, korea's chances of winning the world cup is probably about 10,000 to 1, but here's the interesting part. although korea has been one of the most successful asian teams in the history of the world cup, team korea has yet to record a win in world cup play. the best we've done is tied with some quality opponents. now if i were to be in korea when korea wins their first game, that would be a treat. if i somehow secured a ticket to get into the stadium, that would be a dream come true. i would want to sit next to the 'horang na-bi' guy, you know the actor/comedian/singer with a mustache that's a staple at every korean soccer game. back in 1998 world cup my friend dan was in korea and everyone in the country was watching the korea soccer team at like 2-3am in the morning. back then businesses were supposed to be closed by midnight but that night everyone was watching the game so no one cared. i bet all the cops were watching the game too. my dad's friend lived in the la brea high rise apt.'s in l.a. and he said that after team korea scored a goal you could hear a roar emanating from the apt. buildings from the many koreans who live in that complex. the sound would bounce off all the high rise buildings that stood facing each other.
this is the type of excitement sports brings, especially at the international stage. FUKK the olympics, i want my soccer hooligans and penalty kicks.
i wonder if you can still make good money teaching english in korea.

i just remembered a funny story.
back in 3rd grade i was in little league baseball and the parents had to take turns each week in bringing the after-game snacks.
well it was my turn one week and my dad brought out boxes of what he thought were oatmeal granola bars. as the snacks were being prepared, he looked down and realized that the boxes he just opened contain instant oatmeal mix, NOT oatmeal granola bars. he simply picked up the wrong item after a cursory glance at the label. i remember kids asking why we only had juice and no snacks and some parent telling her kid that someone made a mistake. i didnt think anything of it then, but i recently recalled this childhood memory and i began to feel horribly embarassed. i could imagine what the other parents must have been saying to each other: "oh it was the oriental parents turn this week, and he brought oatmeal mix! i wonder if he can read english?"

yeah, yeah, that's a really stupid thing to say. it's stupid to think that white people are always thinking the worst, but it was just that occasionally some parents would bake their own oatmeal cookies. my mom wasnt able to cuz she would probably have to dig up the recipe somewhere and cuz she was too tired from working full time and running the household. but after uncovering that old memory that i hadn't thought about for over 10 years, the first feelings i had were those of embarassment and insecurity of what the other parents must have thought, considering mine were the only asian fobby parents on the team. then i realized that i am often VERY insecure about what white people think of when they see me, an asian.

sometimes it comes out at as anger, like when i would get pulled over by cops because of the rice rocket i used to drive and the asian teenager behind the wheel. back in high school, even though i was an honor roll student i was always treated by cops as an asian punk, a potential gangster. i remember my little brother's friend daniel was once horsing around and pretended to choke one of his friends. a nearby teacher freaked out and he was suspended for a couple of days. nevermind that my brother's friends are the biggest bible thumpers i know. i wasnt fully conscious of my insecurity back then, although ironically i rebelled by growing out the long bangs, sagging the baggy pants and fixing up my car. granted, there were a lot of problems with asian gangsters in my jr. high and high school but i always thought it was unfair that people always made automatic assumptions about me. like i said i was an honor roll student with over a 4.0 weighted gpa, so when i was treated like a degenerate asian 'gangsta' i noticed. i didnt learn the term 'racial profiling' until college but it was one i knew all too well. there are millions of things you could point to: stereotypes of asians in the media as either the uber-nerd or the street thug. the disproportionate amount of asian parents in the PTA to the asian students in the schools (about 40% asian in my high school) thereby translating into a great deal of people misunderstanding each other. bottom line was i was experiencing a lot of things i didnt understand until i took asian american studies at uc berkeley. granted, i do think that some of the asian american studies rhetoric is a bit over-reactionary, but still this didnt help my always being so self-conscious and insecure about being asian and how i might be perceived to the white majority. ive been becoming more [self] aware about this more and more recently, especially when i talk to my korean friend peter, who grew up as a white boy. he always tells me i have a chip on my shoulder.

i traced this phenomena back to my childhood. i moved around a lot as a kid and when i was 2 years old till i was a 3rd grader i jumped around the midwest. ohio, iowa and then wisconsin. i got stared at a lot. on top of that i was constantly being the 'new kid' at school on average every 2 years so that didnt help. i remember the reason why i quit boy scouts in 2nd grade (in wisconsin, where me and my brother were the only non-white kids at our school) was because we were all making soap-box racers. all the other kids' dads had their craftsmen sets in their garage next to all their crazy tools that only white people have. my dad was like "what the hell is a soap-box racer?" we didnt have many tools and my dad tried his best. however he was using a shitty saw and he ended up breaking apart the piece of wood that was supposed to be used. it didnt resemble the smooth, sleek race cars the other kids had but was simply a piece of wood with these huge chunks missing from a botched cutting job from a shitty saw. the race was the next day and it was too late to start over; besides in wisconsin everything seemed to close when the sun went down. i cried and cried saying that my dad ruined everything and he got pretty pissed off that he worked hard on making this thing he knew nothing about. i remember him yelling at me out of frustration, his hot temper flaring, making me cry even more. later he came into my room apologizing, saying that we could cover up the missing chunks with paper and such, but i said through my sobs that it was too late and i didnt want to go to the stupid soap box races the next day. i remember feeling mortified, embarassed. there was no way i was gonna go to that race the next day, with all those kids and their fancy cars that they had no part in making (not as long as their tooltime dads were around) so i said i was gonna quit. i couldnt get the badge without making a car anyway. i have a lot of these type of stories. you know, the heart-wrenching immigrant kind. but i digress....

i also remember my mom always telling me not to do stuff, or else everyone's gonna look at me and think "ugly asian". throughout my life my mom used that term "ugly asian" for when i would spit in public or smoke cigarettes. i know that to a certain extent my mom was unknowingly transferring a lot of her insecurities and her being self-conscious of being asian to me. and this whole thing about me being that way no doubt comes from my parents, my mom especially.

but i dont blame them. not in the least bit.

i dont know what it feels like to go to the doctor for hemorrhoids and have him tell you that he thinks that it was caused by you coming from a third world country where the sanitation's bad and proper bathrooms are hard to find. when my mom told me that i literally burned with anger. if i ever come across that hick-ass doctor im gonna beat him to a pulp. im sure my mom has a lot of stories like this, since living in the midwest in the 80's is no easy thing. i know my parents shielded me and my brother from a lot of the blatant racism that went on around us, and i know this because they would always tell me that i had to work twice as hard as the next guy to make it in this country cuz there were a lot of ignorant people and i would always be seen as 'oriental' and not ever an american. i never understood what they were talking about when they set me aside to tell me this but they were always serious when they did this, as if they just had another "encounter" earlier that day.

and i dont blame or hate white people for this either. i know that in the 80's asians were still a rare site, especially in the midwest. yea, some white people would give me and my family a hard time cuz they were racist but some were simply ignorant and didnt know any better. i mean korean people are some of the most racist people i know and i know it's only cuz they're ignorant. i am simply a product of how and where i grew up as a kid. and even though i may at times have this 'chip on my shoulder', i wouldnt change anything. im proud of growing up in the midwest because i think i had a much richer, fuller childhood than all my friends who grew up here in the californian suburbs. they would ride their bikes to the liquor store and buy candy and play video games. i would catch fireflies at night in iowa, build snow castles and explore the forest behind our apartment in wisconsin. and i dont blame my parents for creating this 'chip on my shoulder' either cuz i know that they were doing their best with very little money and resources, shielding me from the greater ugliness that they experienced.

wow, this is the longest blog i've written yet. i started with what i thought was an amusing story and ive ended up spilling my guts. i guess the happy ending to this story is that i really dont feel that insecure or self-conscious anymore. i mean, i did start out by saying that i had a funny story. it's good that i can look back and laugh and truly cherish my childhood experiences, cuz it's made me the MAN i am today. life has thrown me a couple of curve balls but i think i'm a better batter for it.

god i feel like doogie howser. blech.

i read somewhere recently that the nicotine high from a cigarette lasts about 5-10 minutes. i cant recall the exact number, but you get the point. while i was taking drags off my winston light, i thought about stuff i would do tonight: apply to more jobs, make a to-do list and update my blog. bloggers are hot-sh!t nowadays, my friend rob "robonix" tells me. i think the 5-10 minutes is up, cuz my brain doesnt seem as ambitious now.

hello y'all, im sleeping over at albert's place in la canada. we're going to do makeovers and gossip about boys all night. if we get real frisky we may even have a pillowfight!

prive was fun tonight, saw a lot of people i haven't seen in years. all i got to say is that girls be lookin' good these days.

peace

berkeley trip: part 1

i just got back from berkeley last night. very fun, very fun indeed.
i left last wed. the 13th. as usual i lagged like a mudderfukkah and finished packing at 3pm. i would've left then but i had to take my brother johann (pronounced "yo-han") to pick up his car from a mechanic in the LBC (long beach for those that dont know). so of course i ran into rush hour traffic. sux. i didnt get to berkeley till midnight.
fast forward to yesterday the 19th. this time i lagged for 2 days. i was gonna leave on sunday but i found out i didnt have to report to jury duty on monday. then i was gonna leave monday but i found out i didnt have to report to jury duty on tuesday. you get the drift. i just called and i have to call again tomorrow, thursday, to see if my number gets called for friday. what a pain.

so anyway, i left mike/albe/james' apt. tuesday at about 3pm. the 6 hour drive between LA and berkeley is a bitch, but trust me its worse when you're going at it alone. i remember my first time i drove alone i took the advice of one of my friends and blasted one of the mexican radio stations with the windows rolled down. when that didnt work i just found a song i knew and sang along at the top of my lungs. it worked, but it might have had something to do with staring up at the sky and seeing all the stars. when was the last time you looked up and saw a sky full of stars? quite humbling. and there was something about the way my headlights lit up the 5 freeway, behind the bright blue glow of my spaceship dashboard, with nothing around but you and the road and the sky full of stars. i remember on a couple of occasions seeing shooting stars right in front of my face as i was driving. but i digresss...

so anyway this time around i got pretty sleepy once again. i was ok until the sun went down at around 630pm. oh yeah, a cigarette will wake you up sometimes too. it helped but i needed something more. i stopped at good ol' kettleman city (the disputed halfway point) and bought an ice cream sandwich. a neopolitan. liked the chocolate, hated the artificial strawberry. vanilla was vanilla. that did the trick for about another hour or so until my eyelids started getting heavy again. i sooo wanted to pull over and take a nap but i was making SUCH good time and i was only an hour and a half away...

so i rolled up my sleeves and kept plowing forward, until the bright lights from commerce casino caught my eye. hmm. should i? nah, im only 20 minutes from home now. but i was hungry and i convinced myself that they had good food there. i cut off a car and crossed 2 lanes to make the exit. i had a 10 in my pocket and pulled out another 80 from the ATM. i bent over for the surcharge and ill probably get another ass-raping from bank of america. but there wasn't a BofA around when i needed one and i was all ready to gamble.

i sat down at the $3/$6 texas hold 'em table. i ordered food right away: sweet and sour pork with steamed rice and an egg drop soup. not bad. i've had better but not for the special poker player's rate of $4.25. there was an old white guy in his 50's on my left with his wife sitting behind him. he left after a couple of hands and told me: "take this seat. this is a good seat." i looked at the rows upon rows of chips he had trouble carrying and quickly obliged.
i grinded it out for about 2-3 hours. i finished my dinner and was still hovering around my original $90. i got as low as $45, but no higher than $140. my original plan was a quick hit it and quit it after i was up a $100, and i was determined. the old asian man and old asian woman sitting in my corner of the table kept talking about how the man had hit a "bad beat" jackpot earlier that day. he had low straight flush and the winner had a four of a kind. the way these jackpots work is if you have an aces full of 10's (i think) beaten by a four of a kind or better, you win a share of the progressive jackpot. the guy next to me was the one who gave the "bad beat" so he was entitled to 20% of the jackpot which came out to $1,400. the rest of the table splits 30% of the jackpot and the guy who got "bad beat" with his four of a kind got 50%. every casino's different.

around 1130pm the chips start rolling in. i took down one pot that was probably about $80. i think i had an ace high flush and i got a lot of action. sometime that night i had 4 queens and a full house somewhere. either way, it's about a quarter till 1 and i'm up $200. i play out my blinds and play some bad hands and walk out of the casino at 1am, with $278 minus the dollar i tipped the cashier. subtract my original $90, the $5 in ATM fees and i just made $182. not bad, considering i had dinner and a $1.75 strawberry shortcake. at this point i'm wide awake and finish my trek back home.
i check my email and apply for jobs for the next 3 hours, with frequent trips to the bathroom cuz i got some wicked chinese-food strain of diarrhea.

blogger, i choose you!



What Kind Of Pokemon Are You?

ok my brother's computer is finally all fixed and running.
gorillaz was cool, although the show itself was about an hour and a half with no real opening acts. what that translated into was a big waiting game: we got in line at 5pm, went inside at 6:30pm, and the freakin' show didnt start till 9pm. at about 10:30 i got out just in time to hear cal lose to arizona in the pac 10 semifinals. with nothing to do, we ended up going to commerce casino. i was down almost the entire time; i was in for a 100 bucks. but in the last 30 minutes before we left i made $88. so basically i figured i ate a $12 flounder dinner. not bad.

saturday night i partied like a rock star. i hung out all day with brian chin, my san jo friend from 6th grade. we were both working on stuff for our cars. it's funny cuz we both drive the same model honda preludes, and our younger brothers who were also friends in san jose both drive the same model nissan 240sx. weird.
but after all these years it's cool that me and him can hang out and do the same sh!t. it's weird but it's kinda comfortable hanging out with him just cuz it seems like we've been friends these whole years. am i making sense? i'm in lazy-writing mode so i'm just trying to get down the facts.

later that night we went to le prive with brian's san jose buddies. as usual i ran into a lot of old faces. there was my old roommates brian and albert and their la canada contingent. they were with alpha, some chick who went to berkeley. funny, i didnt think she looked like my ex. my ex said that everyone used to mix them up and say they looked like twins and sh!t, but personally i think i went out with the better looking twin then. we got introduced and she started with the "you look familiar..." line which i replied with "did you go to berkeley?" question-to-which-i-knew-the-answer-to schtick. i think i met her probably twice before. in hindsight i think we could have one of those 'good' conversations where we would probably get to know each other better and avoid the small talk games, but by that time i was already drunk cuz me and brian were taking swigs of jack daniels in my car on the way up to la. ironically when we got to his friends' motel room they were watching 'leaving las vegas'. we took a couple more shots of remy martin cognac and jack daniels. i think my 'alcohol problem' lies in the fact that i have a pretty good tolerance.

anyways, i ran into sue and her friends, and this girl karen i was seeing last summer. she dropped a bomb on me just as the lights were going up. let's just say i felt like a fukken' asshole.
anyways, i met these good looking girls from torrance, and if i wasnt so drunk i probably would've gotten a number. one of them followed brian around and finally gave him her number but let's just say her friends were a lot cuter. man, i keep thinking about these torrance girls even with the incident with karen. dude, i AM an asshole.

ok lazy writing mode is in full swing right now. do you guys remember that grammar check on old versions of microsoft word where it gives you a 'report' at the end? it would tell you how many words there were, what "grade" your writing level was and other random data. i dont even know how that program determined the "grade level" that your writing was in, but it would say that this writing was at the 7.8 grade level. anyways, this weekend was probably the most eventful in a long ass time and i just wanted to write down what i did so i would remember in the future. and considering how faded i got last night this is good idea. ok, my brain's not working..

i left the house once today. just right now, i just got back. it's 12 midnight now. i left at 11:21pm and went to blockbuster and rented 'office space' and 'pi' on dvd. i also stopped by the gas station and got a pack p-funks (parliament lights, on special for $3.47 which is 4 bucks even after tax) and a quick pick lottery ticket. hey, i'm supporting california's educational system, not after the $30 million! i had to do my part in funnelling more money into the schools in the good neighborhoods. anyways, i ended up spending almost $20: 14-something at blockbuster cuz my stupid brother once again had late fees on his account.

so that was my day. oh, i chatted with the other jean today; it was nice talking to her again. but wait! there's more! i have an exciting night planned out. 'office space' or 'pi'? decisions, decisions. maybe both, if my insomnia kicks in. and i just had my first cig of the day on the way home, so hopefully it'll help my bowel movements. i think i still have that beef fajita in my lower intestines from tam's last night. i plan on eating a bowl of cereal later when i get hungry, and since i'm lactose intolerant now i'll probably have some 'mul ddong' tomorrow morning (literal translation: "water shit" in korean). that should clean out my system.

you want to know how big of a loser i am? i'm pretty excited about the pac-10 basketball tournament which kicks off tomorrow. i've been following the cal bears and subsequently the entire conference this season, so i'm pretty psyched. i was trying to get tickets on ebay cuz it's being held at the staples center, but they were too expensive and i'd rather go watch the gorillaz concert on friday 3/8. they're playing that sh!t on tv anyway.
ooh, there's a rumblin' in my tummy.
i'm out.

i just finished watching 'magnolia'. very good film. if i were to make a 'magnolia'-type film i would have a storyline of a kid who was an aspiring filmmaker all his life, a la dawson. he'd do all the right stuff and even sign up for the 'production assistant association' and pay an entry fee and go to their opening orientation/seminar only to find that it's a scam. they just want him to pay more money and sign up for these bullsh!t classes where you learn about how to become a production assistant (this is america after all). this of course shatters the poor kid's dreams, since he scrounged up pennies to pay the "membership fee" for the PAA. it's like discovering the wizard behind the curtain, only in a bad way.
make sense? didnt think so. this is the type of sh!t my insomniac brain thinks up as it's trying to ease into a state of inactivity conducive for a sleeping environment. i think i'm going to become a vampire.

it's past 5 am and i should be asleep.....actually i have absolutely no reason to be asleep. i can stay up as long as the fukk i want!
normally that would bring me a sense of relief, but now all it does is bring a feeling of guilt. i feel guilty because i feel useless.
but OF COURSE once i start working and get a job i will probably look back at these days with a sense of longing.
but as much as i want a job right now so i can finally NOT be broke for once and NOT feel like a useless, expendable member of society, i really just wish i could travel right now and see the world. but i can't AFFORD to go backpacking around the world because i don't have a FREAKIN' J-O-B. my life is so ironic it makes me sick. i just made $500 this past week playing online poker, maybe i'll try to make enough to fund a trip.....