cold as a motha

cyn and i are hashing over the latest hollywood gossip. and the whole hk edis*n chen thing. did you see the pics? scan-do-licious.

my ass is typing with some froze-ass fingers because stupid shanghai went and dropped back down into the 30s this week. about this i am quite salty. there's nothing meaner than weather that goes from icicle to semi-balmy and then back to icicle. in our world, we call that 'so not right.'

i came from my new level 3 putonghua class. it was alright. at least its only twice a week and only 2 hours a day this time around. i had the foresight to run to paul's (as i always have the wisdom to do before class) and purchase copious amounts of overpriced bread. the effin' regular baguette just increased from rmb 14 to 18. jerks. i gnawed on an olive-embedded baguette for a snack whilst walking from the west tower to the east. it's only a matter of a 45-second commute, but i managed to consume about half the baguette. the closer i got to my classroom, the bigger the hunks were that i tore off, and the less i chewed them. i wonder sometimes if my intestines aren't poked full of holes.

alright. i'm cold and have to get up early tomorrow. i hope the goddamn rats or whatever it is that lives in my walls and kept me up with squeaking and scratching last night has the common sense to make noise downstairs for the neighbors and not me. this will be the 5th night in a row without decent r.e.m. and mankind may plummet because of it.

over and out.

dreams

i dreamt last night that one of my eyes fell out and so i carried it around in a tea cup, looking for a doctor.

the night before i dreamt i saw an ex and his hair was overgrown and shaggy and his eyelids had fallen and were droopy.

what's with the presence of eyes in dreams?

dan shui lu

happy v day

for my general amusement -


whatd u guys have for dinner
sister: er
pigsfeet and hair
chicken
cabbage
me: did dad buy mom the requisite see's candy in the old heart box?
pigs feet and hair?!
sounds delish
sister: you know the faat choy or whatever that is usually in jai?
it was actually pretty good
me: yeah i know
i like that stuff
sister: dad didn't get shit for
mom, not even the sees
me: dang
cold, man, cold
sister: i know
mom got desserts at la farine
me: you can tell him i said that
sister: dad says he's become an orthodox hindu that disapproves of valentines day
me: lmao
wtf
he's hella random
why do hindu disapprove of valentine's day
sister: too risque
me: it can be conservative love day
sister: hehe
btw, your cat is hells of fat

latest cat update

sister: kvgbkvbkvb (from scarlett who's on my lap)
me: hi scarly
whats she up to
sister: oh sleeping under the library chair in the
living room again. and sharpening her claws on the under side of the chair!
I caught her the other day on her back with all 4 claws in the chair!
me: lol
the usual
sister: yup
me: i am thinking about taking her to denver
sister: please do!
me: i hope she doesn't freak out again
sister: shes rubbing her face on the monitor
me: yeah
she'll bat the cursor, too, if she sees it
sister: mom will be pleased
she says, get away from me, you! to her all the time
me: lol
yeah, poor scarly
no one plays with her
she's a brat
sister: dad says it sounds like a fantastic idea, she will love the snow
me: lol
i'm going to teach her to board

wednesday surfing

there are people as ridiculous as me -

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/inspiration/streamlining-the-medicine-cabinet-042601

two wheels

for christmas, trevor proved what a good listener he is and presented men with a bicycle. i had been going on one day about how much i wanted one, especially since steph has one and we can go riding around the city. it has, since then, been sitting on the first floor of my building, gathering dust. it's lovely, actually, if i'm allowed to say that about a bicycle. i loved it upon sight - pearl white with green detailing, a happy reincarnation of my snowboard in bicycle form. like most bicycles here, it's a one-gear beach cruiser. just my speed - i can drive any manual transmission, but give me gears on a bike and i freeze up.

i had been stalling about riding it - something was always wrong. too cold, snow on the ground, i don't know the roads well enough, something. i was super excited to try, but also scared. i have a thing with bikes, some weird nervous chickenshit craziness. i remember as a kid riding around all the time, tearing up and down the joint like my ass was on fire. more recently i'm a nervous wreck and i guess two disastrous vacations expeditions involving mountain biking haven't really helped to alleviate that.

long intro aside, i finally got into the saddle this afternoon. and, drumroll... it was lots of fun, actually. a bit annoying because there are several big streets around me that bikes aren't allowed on, so i had to figure out some roundabout way to get to jiu guang for some grocery shopping. i tried riding on the sidewalks for a bit, but if you've ever tried walking - let alone riding a bike - on a sidewalk in urban china, well, it's not the best way to alleviate fears. the next concern was theft - my bike is shiny new and white. it literally gleams next to the other stacks of bikes standing by. trevor bought a couple of locks, but they're really more of a deterrent and anyway i'm just a big worrywart.

the impetus behind the bike riding arrived in the form of a fitness plan. i was cruising around on yahoo and somehow landed in the yahoo health section, and started idly reading the various articles and blogs about fitness and nutrition. (all of this as a method of procrastination for studying chinese.) lots of this at this time of year because of those resolutions, i expect, but also the reality is that most people that live in china carry a bit more weight than they do at home so i'm always aware of how crappy my fitness level is these days. it's hard to buy the nonfat yadda yadda or the flax seed this and that here, and most chinese food is oil city. i don't run outside because we are all concerned here about the repercussions of running outdoors in a highly polluted area. when i first arrived, i lost a ton of weight pretty quickly, but that was due to the non-sitting-all day, no-car change of status that my life underwent. i'm now back to the sitting-all-day business, and my gut reflects it. ew. i also took this free diet/fitness assessment where your diet is analyzed not only for calories + fat, but also for your nutrition. i'm think about my diet here a lot because i know how i am - the easiest thing for me to get is new york deli sandwiches (MONSTER MEAT sized, no less, because it would just be too much for me to consider eating in moderation) for lunch, and something fast at night since i get home so late. recently it's been these dried japanese noodles that i can't stop eating. my diet is abhorrent. i bought a big costco bag of raw almonds for snacks, but i also space out meals with crackers and those rice seaweed triangles from family mart. i'm a fast food junkie these days. if it's not ready in under 10 minutes, fuck it!

anyway, i do the yoga classes during the week, but every little bit helps, right?

p.s. the point of this entry was supposed to revolve around a conquering-my-fears theme but it really is turning into c's diet gripes. sorry.

snow 2008

so those of you outside of china were probably hearing about all of the severe weather that was hitting china the week before and of cny. i've heard that it may snow on occasion here, but it's pretty rare and never sticks.

here are some photos of the snow (from the week before cny) coming down outside of my office, which is located on the bund. the bund area is a stretch of buildings on the huangpu river where a lot of the ritzy boutiques, restaurants, and clubs are located. it's kind of annoying - especially if you work there - but the buildings are heritage architecture and are quite pretty.




out the front window looking at #3 bund



out the back window where some of the smaller buildings (residences) hide behind the grander bund structures

asymptomatic

t left today for his chinese new year trip to guiyang. he spent a year or so down there during his block of years here, and it proved a defining time for him. he has a good friend down there and spends the time with the friend and the friend's family. when asked to describe guiyang, he usually says something like, 'its the capital of the poorest province in china' to which i usually interject some smartass comment about how he beelined for the poorest area whereas i would run far far away from anything that sounded that grim. but he loves it down there, has a great time, and that's that.

recovery from over 2 weeks of having couple-time is in-process. because its still the cny holiday and my friends have literally all fled the country, i'm in no mood to venture out. it would just be more of the same. my holiday consisted of watching 'rome,' cooking, eating, and taking walks with t. the longest time we spent apart for these 5 days was yesterday afternoon when i took a yoga class and he met his buddy for meat sticks and beers. i think we would make most people vomit, including myself.

last night must have been some specific day in the new year where it is auspicious to blow up all of the explosives you can get your hands on. the warfare started at dusk and heavy artillery fire did not cease until about 10 this morning. those of you who live here know what i'm talking about - you can't really describe it because verbal accounts don't even come close. i would say it sounded like a battle, but i don't think any military on this planet would have the luxury of using ammunition like firecrackers are used here.

a few days before the actual new years day, our friends all gathered to watch a member of the social circler, anthony, in his annual tradition of blowing shit up. he spent 1200 rmb on fireworks this year. i thought they were bringing in cases of beer, but they were 12-packs or 18-packs of rockets, and giant wheels of firecrackers laced together. these are not the measly little bottle rockets we get at home, these mothers were loud, powerful, and housed together so you need only light one wick on a case to set off about 12 rockets. it was pretty awesome, actually. a bit concerning knowing how many knuckleheads there are out there and how completely unregulated it is, but fun nevertheless.

i dropped a short video in here for your enjoyment. this was last night from my bedroom window. unfortunately i didn't think to film during midnight, when it honestly sounded like we were in the middle of an air raid, but this does pretty well to demonstrate what was going on all around. mind you, i live in one of the most densely populated areas in the city, so these are blowing up in between apartment buildings in narrow lanes that cars can't even squeeze through.

and me, incredulous

i have been accused, more than one or two times, that i speak condescendingly, that i am patronizing and arrogant. my usual response (mentally) is that i can't help it if everyone around me is stupid. sometimes i'm not kidding, sometimes i am. i don't necessarily think that everyone is dumb, but i do think that most people suffer from not-paying-attention-itis, which gets complicated when i am and i expect that you were, as well, so when i go on to start a lively discussion about what just happened, or what happened three hours ago, or what happened six months ago, i am frustrated when met with blank stares.

this is quite frustrating.

i also usually remember, verbatim, what so-and-so said during an argument or conversation. it really doesn't matter to me if the conversation was three years ago or three minutes ago; usually if i remember a conversation, i remember it and that's that. so it puzzles me when people aren't the same way, or worse, they start arguing in contradiction to what they were arguing about previously. i don't understand how you can have an opinion about something to the point where you are representing one side of a debate, and next time 'round you suddenly do the 'ol switcheroo and are on the other. that doesn't work in my world. does not compute.

i have also never really understood mainstream feminism (this is going somewhere, i promise. bear with me). i studied feminism in college, and found it baffling and alienating because of the rage and divisiveness in the rhetoric. it seemed unreasonable and self-limiting. this may be why i make a damn poor activist. i remember one girl in a social movements class, taunting some guy who didn't understand some point or another about cesar chavez, but making it a gender-based taunt. something about him being a man and life being so easy because of it. it seemed unnecessary, forced, and honestly a bit beside the point. to be filled with that much rage about him being a guy and being somewhat lame didn't fulfill a purpose. moreover, cesar chavez was a man. so what the fuck?

that said (wait for it...), i am finding that the older i am, and the more experience i have with interacting with the opposite sex, that i am starting to draw broad conclusions about the simplicity and somewhat low-IQ behavior of most dudes. sorry, guys, it blows my mind as well. i actually found myself on the verge of shouting, 'what you don't know could fill a book!' i am turning into that girl in my lecture.

seriously, tho. i am met with behaviors that make me want to beat my face against the wall and make those 'donk donk donk' noises. the gender divide just gets wider and wider the older i get. is it me? i know i had a hard time accepting that i was a girl for maybe the first 25 years of my life, but that was mostly because i had and have a thing about emotions, and expressing them, unless it included rage or ego. emotions were for girls, so count me out. but the older i get, the more i learn about guile, and the more i associate it with females, and the more i understand that guys don't have a goddamned clue. you could club them over the head with the reason that their ex-girlfriends thought for 11 months that they would be getting back together and still get the blank stare. some even have the nerve to argue.

pshh. please. i am surrounded by fools.

friday nights

isn't there some football sitcom that's entitled something something friday nights?

it snowed a little again today. i'm so glad this week was over. i was bitching and moaning to trev like on tuesday night or something that i wanted life to end, that i was too tired to live through this week. honestly i don't know how he puts up with my ass. i'm such a drama queen sometimes. in my own defense (to my own criticism), i always mean it at the time, i'm not trying to be disingenuous. but damn, he must be rolling his eyes when he listens to me. seriously. he deserves a gold star for not strangling me this week.

but i guess its hard to strangle someone remotely.

hello, firecrackers! apparently chinizzle new year is off the hinges with the firecrackers. i wouldn't know. last year this time cyn and i were busy getting ripped off in vietnam. we didn't even have pho that was exemplary. wherever all the good shit is in the country, we fucking missed it. usually i don't want to leave whatever country i'm in. this time i couldn't wait to bail and find someplace better. wrong, huh.

so my latest thing is to come home, switch on the radiator and mattress heat, wash up, and immediately get into bed. its too cold to heat up the other parts of the house without it being a complete waste of energy, and i get home late enough where going to sleep immediately is feasible. of course i just sit and fuck around until way too late and end up pissed at myself in the morning, but the farting around part is fun.

am i hungry or not. hmm. i ate dinner at like 5:30, being overexcited that it was the weekend and i could order burritos from ny deli. i ate half and stuffed the other half in my bag with my manolos. then i looked down at my beautiful sage green suede bag with the huge sheng jian bao grease splat on it (from last week, oops) and wondered if that was such a good idea. made it home (and through a 70 minute shiatsu treatment) just fine, tho.

no reward in sight. must procrastinate.

so i really must do two of two things. one is check my work email, review the revised presentation, and update my notes to reflect the changes so i don't suck ass at the client pitch tomorrow. the second is to do my rather extensive mandarin homework assignment for tomorrow's class. can't do it during lunch because i'll be pitching to the client at that point in time.

so what am i doing then? of course. feasting on ayi's jiaozi and roasting my toesies in front of the heater. watching scrubs season 6 and writing in the blog. so so def.

mandarin class was brutal today, only because i can really be a dunce sometimes. i have a theory: once the synapse has occurred and the track has been laid in my brain about what something is, if i learn it incorrectly, i can't fix it. i can't fix what 'yi dianr' means vs. 'yi xiar' because i wrote it wrong in my notebook, and when conjuring up how to use those two phrases, i recall how it looks in my notes and always pick the wrong one.

wtf is wrong with me? my cognition is too heavily visual.

some french dude participated in our class tonight as a makeup class, and tho his english was fair, his french accent was entertaining. imagine hearing 'mapodoufu' with a french accent. i had to use my eyedrops in an effort to not giggle.

this week is going to suck. i keep telling myself - something that always works when i'm feeling panicky and stressed - that it's just an hour. or a week. and how many gajillions of those have i lived? it's nothing, a drop in the bucket. it'll be over before you know it.

i'm surprised that there are walls in my apartment. i am so cold and getting accosted by so many drafts that i feel like i'm typing on the roof. how can one make an apartment with so many invisible holes? as sherry says, so not right.

as i curse to (and at) myself every day, i can't believe i'm paying this much for such a stupid apartment. in china.

ok. i'm off for a flossing and brushing session that will be followed nicely with a snoring session.

the mechanics of missing

i listen to my girlfriends' stories, mine through them for motivation, for reason, for patterns. bad behavior can usually be filtered down to one or two simple reasons - attention and insecurity. related to each other, sometimes, often. behaviors that seem irrational frequently have a very ordinary, very logical explanation, if you look carefully enough. humans are so much more human than we give us credit for.

a few days short of my 30th birthday. as always, i'm relatively underwhelmed about the whole thing. i catch a few moments of excitement from my friends' enthusiasm, but in the end no one's here to celebrate it and the birthday fairy isn't descending from the heavens to plan it for me, so i'll end up doing what i was going to do originally. not much. i think trev will be down here and we'll likely go to dinner or something, but the candlelit romantic crapity bullshit dinner is not what i have in mind. i'd rather have the world's best jiaozi or pulled noodles or something. nice dinners are... nice, but they remind me of going on dates and feeling awkward.

looking back on my 20s, especially in the current phase i'm experiencing, is a calibration of the times when i banged my head on walls hard enough to learn something from it. oh, that time. oh, right, that one. that's how a guy looks when he's scrambling for lies to tell you. that's what a company does when it's in trouble. that's how things fall apart when you don't keep your mouth shut about your friend's new boyfriend.

all of these chronicles of hardship. good things, too, but i'm in no mood to conjure them up. in the marathon that is a long distance relationship, i'm about halfway through and feeling like i could just sideline to the mall over there, rip the number off of my chest, and look for a place that sells lemonade. try to blend in. it's the dailiness of the absence that's started its wily erosion. it's spending yet another week with only yoga and the company of the only two people i can stand to be around these days to look forward to.

i try to look back on my 20s and learn from them to get me through this. what have i learned, what do i know about myself that will help me understand why i'm suddenly inconsolable about a single word, the way something is phrased, the hint of impatience in his voice. why two hours on skype isn't enough. why i suddenly need something so badly i want to walk out of my office at 2 in the afternoon and fall into an abyss. when was the last time i felt like this? before the epic meltdown of 2006. what drove that? work pressure and the perfectionist devil sitting on my shoulder. how did i deal with it? i brought down the house. i am, if nothing, impactful.

some people who know me well blame it on work. stop taking work home with you, don't be so hard on yourself. quit your job. you're sounding like you need to see a shrink. don't obsess. my answer to that was that you're telling a person who has obsessive patterns and rules by which she lives to not obsess. my my, that is a blunt tool we are using. try a laser, those are more sophisticated.

i can't dissect right now. i don't have the clarity i need to pinpoint the culprit for the moods, the sadness. the fatigue. the quicksilver of pain in the back of the throat. feeling like the world is too heavy. if i had a handful of percoset i'd make a damn fine addict. i am feeling that sharon stone had it pretty good in casino. lolling around in satin nightgowns, downing painkillers. wearing bad 80s hair.

going to sleep.

damn

7.5 hours of mandarin a week makes for one tired birdie.

bird jerky

i cooked myself a tough-ass chicken. i'm mad. i wasted about 40 minutes and two heads of garlic and went out and bought chicken broth and everything. not to mention buying the goddamned chicken itself. stupid freshmart, tricking me into buying a stewing chicken and not a roasting chicken. this is the first time i've bitten into a piece of chicken and actually could not come away with any meat. it was solidly strung onto bone. it was like chewing on a plastic fake chicken that tasted meat-like.

my veggies were super good tho. roasting veggies always results in goodness. i bought some tiny potatoes and threw those in, too.

steph and i were supposed to go get foot massages, but we both bought a ton of groceries today and i bet she did the same thing i did - cooked up a storm, ate royally, and is now collapsed on the couch like me with a blankie and the heat blasting. for some reason the drafts are letting up tonight so i'm actually feeling some semblance of warmth. odd. i'm sure this nice warm cosiness will dissipate soon enough and i'll be back to the freezing popsicle i was before.

i love that i am sleepy by 10:30. what an old lady! its awesome. and i love that my friends are either out of town or leaving me the fuck alone so i don't feel pressured to go out. i can be a real homebody.

i want to sleep. hence my winter gut. chub chub. i had noodles for breakfast, pizza and beer at steph's for lunch, and a massive, garlic-infused dinner.

i should be in an igloo

my ass is cold.

why is it that in beijing, which is anywhere from 20 - 40 degrees colder than here, i feel warm and snuggly and honestly frequently sweaty. why, people. i swore after moving out of that victorian in SF that i would never live in another old building... and yet here i am. i wake up and i can see my breath everywhere in the house. these goddamned high ceilings are lovely and all but right now i would take 8 footers over these visually appealing rafters any day.

some people live and learn. i am beginning to suspect that i just live.

i went to the hospital today to get the 'ol eyes looked at. eye, anyway. some weird pressure and feeling like the muscles connecting my eyeball to my head was pulled, if that makes any sense. what i thought was eye strain in my left eye turned out to be a corneal infection in both eyes. nice. i read all this shit about it online afterwards - now i'm getting all paranoid - but the doctor said it was caused by either wearing my contacts too much or too much computer work.

proof that work is toxic!

it was my first hospital experience in the city. i went to the huashan 'worldwide medical center' or some craziness, rumored to be the best hospital in the city. the foreigner clinic looked like a hotel lobby - heavy brocade-inspired carpeting, a rose in a cut-glass vase on small polished-wood side tables next to arm chairs. that hushed lobby feeling. at any rate, it went well - a thousand times better than the hospital in foshan that scared me - the nurse and doctor seemed fine, everything was super clean. the doctor actually had the worst english out of everyone there; the young nurse and various receptionist / pharmacist / cashier people were impressive. i kept following the wrong person, tho, because once the ubiquitous nurse be-hatted, greenish uniform-wearing girl currently handling me would turn around, three more would swarm into my visual field and they all looked the damn same. i kept having to get scooped up by the right person after following the wrong girl.

i've got my shins positioned in front of this heater like it's a fireplace, with the relatively ineffective wall unit blowing behind me. with the drafts blowing here and there and everywhere, i can't tell if it being on is helping at all. i've got burning hot shins and the rest of me is cold.

catty catty catty

the cat was good today. even with multiple sources of overstimulation in the form of visiting relatives waving her cat dancer and green ribbons in front of her, and petting her the wrong way, and placing tempting feet with wiggling toes in her path, she didn't take a swipe at anyone. she hid under the sheet of red cellophane that housed my aunt's bright-orange gap jacket, she gamely lunged out after the dancer or prudently ignored it, she adored my aunt's gift box by rubbing against it but refrained from chewing, she even let me cut her nails after everyone was gone and only nibbled me once on the thumb. i think she's maturing. this is a good sign.

finally got skype to work - this time on my laptop - and trev and i have been talking. it's nice to talk without one eye on the timer, stressing about how much its costing him or my sister's international calling account. skype is a good, good thing. looking forward to going back if only to see my favorite face for a few days before it heads back to bj.

three and a half more days of clean air...

blogging

the funny thing about me blogging is that i actually kinda hate reading blogs.

passing the days

relax time for me is a mix of actual relaxation, plus an undercurrent of high-strung guiltiness about work. not working makes it hard for me to relax, but working is working. and aren't holidays all about not working? whatever. i never did deal well with stress and i think i'm just getting worse at it as i get older. terrible at drawing boundaries.

yesterday was the outlets and today was 4th street in berkeley. neither are major shopping destinations for the holidays, but tell that to the crowds we beat off. all i do is walk around and mentally compare the US with china. i marvel every five minutes as how lucky americans are. still, i think more and more that i'll be glad to leave china. i know living in the states is insular and we're ungrateful and wasteful and wealthy and use too many plastic water bottles, but being in china is wearing thin. it's been less than 18 months, too. sure didn't last very long, eh? here at home i've gone running in the woods and walking around the neighborhood with my sister, there's clear sunlight and industry, it's all building up to the consensus that china is dirty and i don't want to go back. there's opportunity there, and i'm grateful for the experience, but right now i think about china and the only thing i do is feel irritated.

being an expat is a weird place to occupy. you have your criticisms about the society in which you were raised, and the one that you have temporarily adopted. you watch the american SUVs zoom by, see the kids drinking starbucks and carrying cell phones, buying piles of crap at target and claire's and using words like 'need' when discussing a seventh gray sweatshirt or new nikes. you sit in heated leather car seats and drive your dad's german-engineered car, revel in your boxes and boxes of 800-gram weight towels and frette bedding and the stacks of sweaters and belts and handbags and candles you blew your paychecks on. you think about these things and wonder where you fit in now with these luxury items and a newly minted conscience. where would you be if you hadn't spent so much money on things that just take up space now, that didn't enrich your life or those around you but sure made you happy when you wore new outfits to work for 4 days in a row. you spend 45 minutes in calvin klein, trying everything you can but walking out with nothing thanks to your new china size and your new china frugality. am i really going to be one of those women that drive around in a minivan with an armchair-sized ass encased in terrycloth sweatpants? and when i am, will i look at myself and care? will i just write all this shit down on some free blog service and forget about it once i'm back in a place where i can drink tap water and buy designer bath products for my dog?

i really don't know. all of these thoughts - i'm not exactly fraught with them but i am aware - dance around and i wonder where it'll all settle out. what will be the end-product of it all. i'm ok with it going absolutely nowhere, i understand that stepping outside of consumerism - even just mentally - makes me a weirdo here. mostly i think i'll just have flashes of conscience like i do now, will likely write them down, then turn back to my peets cup with my organically-shampooed dog snoring beside me, wonder what to eat for dinner, and move on.

i read in the chronicle today that front-page article about yusef bey and his followers. i think about chauncey bailey and the obvious implication that the death of the journalist and the bey party are linked. i think about what it would be like to be walking around downtown oakland in broad daylight, maybe thinking about lunch or that stupid email you got from a colleague or your kid's shoes for god's sake, and getting killed with that unimportant thought still in your head. maybe food still in your teeth or that stain on your tie. it makes me feel so aware of how important life is, but unable to act out how to demonstrate that. appreciate every moment? hug your mom? recycle and reuse? spend holidays in soup kitchens or donate more money? go to museums? become vegan? demonstrate at rallies? lose that weight?

homey loo

finally getting a handle on this jetlag. arrived home last week, and have conducted a rather extensive food tour of my favorite spots since the plane touched down. tartine, immediately after the airport. (a big shopping break at jeremy's - armani jacket and gucci sweater, 3 pairs of shoes.) pho for lunch at ao sen on e12th. dins with the village, korean bbq. since then, we've conquered more vietnamese, da bi no at my pah pah's house, tonight is burritos. me and grandma. it's on. right now she's getting her grub on with the almond chocolate pocky we bought her yesterday.

besides my tummy, the doggie has been benefiting rather nicely from my return. walks twice a day, nighttime runs. she seems to appreciate it. the cat, another story. her fat ass is so plumpy for the generous hand my mom has with her food. she's only getting one scoop a day from me, and she's not happy about it. she's wearing so much fat under her fur, she looks like a plushy snow leopard. without the fast and agile part.

saturday was lively. met up for dinner with former work peeps and their extended friends. drinks at casanova - $19 for a guinness, a pbr, a shot of jim beam, a sapphire tonic, and a belvedere cran? we're going back! - went for a couple hours, bumped into another few coworkers, then off to some lame joint in the marina. i promptly got rejected for my lack of ID (damn it. driver's license no longer lives in the wallet! no need for it in china) so jenn and erik and i sought out irish coffees at perry's. heavy on the irish, my friends. very very heavy. we almost couldn't finish them. jenn swears the guy used one shot of espresso for the three of us.

after perry's we headed late-night to the aquarium. running around at 4 am in the aquarium? petting the sea turtle. having giant sea bass swim up to us. the touchpool with starfish and abalone and anemone! sticky tentacles.

btw - i love berkeley bowl. about $100-worth of love.