what the hell?

I've picked up my Uncle and Aunt
from LAX during the past week and
everytime I pick them up from Tom Bradley
and take them to my car to drive them home
I turn on the AC in my car and
I comment on how hot it is but then
I forget that they're from Taiwan and then
they remind me that they are from Taiwan and
it's way hotter over there than it is here and to them
90 degrees ain't too shabby.

Chris' Lunar New Year Party was last night

I saw Steve and Dave Grotts at Albertsons on Saturday when I went with Le to buy some alcohol. Kimsun and one of his friends, Emily came and tagged along since we were all a bit too early to the party.

At the party I was made to take a shot because Le forgot Trinh(?)'s name. So somehow that made me liable for party foul by friend relation. Either way I just took the shot because how can you refuse alcohol?

From there things escalated. Chris made me a drink and then I think James also made me one although I might have just imagined that. Kevin made me 2 or 3 shots as well but the stuff he made was pretty light.

And then when I went back for more to drink no one was there to mix me a drink so I made my own drink. I put in some kind of banana flavored rum(?) and some melon alcohol and then put some pepsi on top of it. It tasted pretty good I wonder if Pepsi will ever come out with Banana Pepsi because that's what it tasted like.

The rest of the night was fun. Just going around randomly and hanging out with people. Being outside was nice because it was cool but apparently the Cha people could hear us across the street?

---

Le let me crash at his place since I had driven over there. I had to wake up early to head back home because I was going with my family to some Chinese New Year Festival in Pasadena.

First though, we stopped off at this place that sold these beautiful pieces of pottery from somewhere in China (forgot the name) where all they do is make pottery.

Here is an example of some of the pots.



For some reason there was some sort of "Military Museum" next to this place but it turns out it was just some random guy who kept a lot of old military junk and charging $4 to see it all. There was a tank and battleship AA gun. I couldn't tell what kind of tank it was so it may just be some fake but my sister and I took pictures in front of it anyways.



Here is the AA gun.



More stuff inside the store.



Haha and then I saw the greatest thing as I was about to leave


So when we got there I guess we got on the butt end of the parade because everyone was stopping and getting off their float.
The girl on the very top of the float is Miss Los Angeles China Town 2005. I didn't catch her name though


This is one of the bands. Santa Ana Winds Youth Band. They have a Bass Clarinetist


Here's me in front of the dragon that was at the end of the parade.

Thursday: Ate Thanksgiving dinner with the family, then stayed up all night and left at 4AM to goto Best Buy for Black Friday.

Friday Morning: Asuka was nice enough to tag along with me and wait it out but I'm pretty sure she regretted it because even before we got into the store she wanted to leave. Haha TOO BAD.. :/ I got a hard drive and a couple of DVDs. Some Asian family had 5 hard drives which had rebates limited to one household.

Friday Night: There was a lot of confusion about where and when this place was, I tried to call everyone and get it all organized but unfortunately I had very limited amount of time to do it. I'm sorry if I forgot to invite you or if you couldn't make it for one reason or another but I tried my best and it's very hard to remember everyone especially when they never ever ever talk to you even though you spend your whole time on AIM just waiting for that person to IM you and say "hi" or even just sign on AIM.

They also decided to prank me by telling the Buca employees that it was my birthday and as a result I got four waitresses to dance, sing and shake their boobies in front of me. The two in the middle were the best ones out of the group although I might have to reconsider it if I can get a picture from someone. Afterwards we went to Heroes briefly to have a couple of drinks. Then we went over to Don's house to play some Poker which I ended up losing in the end because Mike Chen is a stinkin' cheater.

Saturday: Went with family up to Palm Springs. We were going to goto Cabazon but we couldn't find parking even after an hour so we just left to go gambling. We decided to go eat and we saw a Burger King so we exited only to find out that this was the place where they filmed that scene in that Peewee movie where he's in the T-Rex. So my sisters and I took pictures with the T-Rex and the Brachiosaurus that was there .

After that we drove to the Casino, it was called Aqua something. I decided to play Blackjack even though my previous outing wasn't so good. But I ended up winning $20 even though I was up by about $70 or so at one point. Stupid hustler dealer screwing me out of good cards at the end

Also Troy people: Please post pics of the waitresses at Buca's, thanks.

On Thursday CA went Karaoking at the Elvis Karaoke and then went to go get some Pho.

Now I'm at home.

My parents have had this house ever since we moved here to California. But that was way way back there. Ever since we first moved in we have had only one couch. This couch could seat about 5 people and was this kind of 70's tan color with black floral designs.

To my surprise, when I came home Friday night the couch had been replaced with this L-shaped leather couch. I'm still having difficult adjusting to this thing. It's comfy and all but it's just so much bigger than the old couch.

My uncle is also visiting from Taiwan. He was detained a couple of hours at customs because they were suspicious of him only staying a couple of days everytime he visited.

And then today I went to buy a used bass amp somewhere in Downey.

So my cousin graduated from high school on Friday and my sister graduated from college on Sunday. I helped them take a lot of pictures with their friends.

This is in complete contrast to what happened during my graduation. My family stayed outside 'cause they thought that I was going to come out. The whole time though I was waiting inside for them. :(

Yeah so anyone who has a picture w/ me at graduation from two years ago. I MUST HAVE IT!!!

I also decided that I must clean up my room at home. It's been really really dirty for the past year or so. The walls are really icky too. Lots of tape and stuff left over from posters. You know how some calendars and posters have that sticky solid material on the back? The stuff that looks like its a piece of foam only its white and sticky. Well never use those to put stuff on the wall. It fucked up the walls in my room. I think I'm gonig to put up some posters to make it look better.

Another problem is that I'm a huge pack rat. I have all this random shit from Junior High and High School. I just can't seem to bring myself to throw away stuff even if it was like a homework assignment that I got a bad grade on. I need boxes to store these in, place them in an attic and then come back in 5 years and go through the stuff... I kinda have a box like this for all my stuff from senior year of high school. All the stuff I collected from the dances, alot of my ASB gear (well my jumpsuit, visor and sweater), and my notes from my classes. I'm accumulating a lot of stuff from my college days.

I also should probably put up some picture collage like James and Pranav have. But I dunno, I don't like that idea too much because if someone comes over and sees that theres only one picture of them on the wall, they'll probably be wondering why I don't have more pictures of them. I was joking with Pranav the other day about why he only has one picture of me on his wall of friends collage. Of course I was just joking and now that I think about it, I'm glad he only has one picture of me. *Gaydar goes off*

Sometime this past week Erik and I watched Ghost Dog: Way of The Samurai. I can't really say whether or not I liked this movie. Do not see this if you are looking for a fast-paced action movie. I don't get this movie. When he has guns you get double vision? RZA making random guest appearances? I don't get this movie. He's waving his gun like a samurai waving his sword? Wait, why is Forest Whitaker a hardcore samurai assassin? Why do they keep showing him stealing cars and then just drive around for 20 minutes? I don't get this movie.

Friday night was All-UC at LBC convention center. All-UC is where all the 5 So Cal UC's battle it out in a dance competition. It is indeed quite competetive. Shawn and I read each other's minds and decided that we should both wear red. Waiting 3 hours until the thing actually started _because I went with Ed and Shawn and David, who had to go early to "help"_ sucked. I felt like I was being a bother to everyone so I just tried to stay out of the way after a while.

When the show actually started it was pretty cool. Lots of the teams had cool dance routines. Some schools you can also add, "dance scandalous and suggestively." But in the end UCLA won against defending champion UCI. :(

After the whole dance show they opened the floor up for the normal out-of-rhythm people to dance. My back started to hurt probably because I stood in one place too long. I tried to have fun but after a while I just gave up, went out, and resting my back then went back in.

And yeah after an exhaustive night, I went to eat at Denny's

And then today. For most of the morning I was packing and organizing my stuff at the apartment and browsing the interweb. My sisters came down to pick me up after my oldest sis flew in from up north. The whole family decided to go eat at Todai in the Puente Hills Mall (where they filmed BTTF) and ate there. Sushi is good but don't eat too many too quick or else you get sick.

Speaking of sick (this means if you don't want to hear something sick, albeit funny, skip this paragraph), during our dinner I had to take an "important" trip to the bathroom. I'm sitting on the can and I'm in the big stall which has the toilet facing the remaining two stalls. A kid comes in, enters the closest stall near mine. He slams the door several times back and forth before he finally turned around settled down and went to pee. Except he urinated onto the floor. I don't know anyway to describe it. He didn't lose control of his aim or anything. He basically pissed in long bursts that completely missed the toilet. Big Double You Tee Eff to that.

So in short, Todai = good = expensive. Thanks sis for paying :D

After we ate, we went down to the Fullerton AMC 20 to watch The Matrix Reloaded. My mid-sis, cousin and 'rents hadn't seen it yet so we all went to go watch it. Viewing it a second time makes me reconsider lots of stuff throughout the movie except (MINOR SPOILER: the Raving/Sex scene still burns my eyes).

My dad called me earlier tonight.

As my mom is usually the one who calls me, and I knew my dad would only call if there was a technical problem, so I knew that there was something wrong.

It took him a while to get the words out. I'm not sure if he couldn't bring himself to say it or if he was too scared for me...

He told me that my grandpa (his dad) had died.

This wasn't exactly unexpected news. My mom had gone back to Taiwan a while ago to visit him in the hospital. They really didn't explain too much to me about it, just that he was very weak and in the hospital.

While I understood the situation. Death to me is still an unexpected thing. This is the first person that I knew who has died. I had seen a video of my great grandfather's funeral when I was little but I hardly knew him.

My only real memory with him consisted of him and I playing catch when I was real young. Since he hadn't visited the States in a while and I never having the chance to go back either, the last time I saw him was when I was in the 4th/5th grade.

When my dad told me the news, I felt empty inside. Mainly because I was trying to imagine that the person who I had played catch with when I was young, didn't exist anymore. To me, that's mind-boggling. It's just so incomprehensible to me. I don't know if that counts as an emotional response but that's all I could feel at the time. Trying to figure out whether someone who once existed and interacted with me could now... not exist, at least in corporeal form.

I know many of my friends this year have experienced the same thing. I apologize if I didn't say anything beforehand and I hope my silence wasn't represented as lack of respect. Like I said, I haven't dealt with death before I would feel out of place trying to comfort someone when I myself have no experience. Even now though I still don't feel that anything I say would help with the loss.

Went to Hollywood.

I went on a tour.

I took pictures.

Okay, that's it.