Huh?

Okay, so I haven't posted in foreeeeeever. Forever of course being a week. But alot has happened in that week, most notable: I finally got my visa, in hand, attached in my passport with my I-20 in an envelope (for what reason, I have no clue) stapled to said passport.

Today is a day that merits celebration.

Anyway, in other news, I have not progressed with my thesis proposal, which I was supposed to have done, printed and bound while here in Thailand. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. Also, Maya will be here for a few days, so I will be hanging out with her, going shopping and probably melting in the heat. Then it is possible that I might get some work done. Notice I said possible, not will, or definite, or anything that indicates that I most certainly will get alot of work done. Just making sure I cover all the bases here so I'm not lying to anything, most importantly myself. Which I am very much inclined to do is such circumstances.

Have a great weekend!

The sun'll come ooooouuuut, tomorrow!

Actually, it came out today as I was waking up at five in the morning. Partly from jetlag and partly because I was so nervous about my visa appointment today. Honestly, from six a.m. (when my brain actually began functioning) to let's say...11 a.m., I was the biggest ball of nerves I have ever been.

But before I regale you with details of my morning (which I'm sure you're curious about), let me say that my last post was, less than efficacious (woohoo thesaurus), but things are better now, and hopefully they will be for the remainder of my stay here. In my mind, I am free to be as bitchy as I want when I'm in San Francisco, but not when I'm home with my parents.

Hmm...onto the visa stuff, I had planned to do a detailed play-by-play, and while typing it realised that it was as boring as a textbook, and written like a Rosie O' Donnell blog, cryptic and just plain weird. So let's just say, my dad wasn't allowed in, I got more nervous with every step, waited in a room for an hour for my number to called (air conditioned, thank goodness), got to the desk and the only question I was asked was "Why in the WORLD did you go to Fresno?" Loved the interviewer, good humoured guy and nice to boot. So all those nerves weren't for nothing, but it was a huge relief off my shoulders, and even though I was out of there at 9, I didn't even start relaxing until hours later.

Yesterday went to the design library at Emporium TCDC, registered (which was an oddly laborious process) and hung out there with Michelle and Golf reading and learning how to use the library. Went for ramen afterwards, which was very tastey, got the Japanesse-style ramen, burned my mouth, but still loved it. Put some pictures of the Orchid Fair on my flickr. More in a few days!

P.S.

Before I forget, I discovered this great cartoon that (for whatever reason) have fallen in love with: PUCCA!

Pucca and her love interest, Garu.

I was (of course) UBC's (or TrueVision, whatever the hell that is) cartoon channel Spark! and saw this show that has minimal dialogue, and the dialogue they did have was in English (score!). The cartoon is just really cute, the graphics are super clean and simple, which I love, and it's pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, I only watched it that one time, and have been hunting for it ever since. Damn UBC.

Did you know....

....that they restrict certain websites here? I can't access the Seattle PI website because of said restrictions, it's a newspaper site, of course they're going to have scandelous subjects on that website. Anyway, the biggest problem so far is that I can't look at any blogger websites, either because the internet is too slow or because the website is restricted. So that's just a big pain in my ass.

Meanwhile, yesterday I went out with Michelle, and of course ate up a storm. I will simply do a food log, because other than that, all we did was wander around Siam Square, Siam Center and Siam Paragon, since neither of us wanted to buy anything. We started out at Ice Monster, ate ice covered in red bean and green tea with (vanilla?) ice cream on top. Very, very tastey, will go back again, but not to sit, because it's just too crowded in there. The next food stop (hours later) was popcorn, we chose cheesy and sweet (not mixed, just...in the same box) and munched on that...after a while we moved back to Siam Square and went to Baan Khun Mae and ate pla sumlee daad deow (cottonfish with sliced mango and carrot?), po pia tod kung (shrimp spring rolls) and tom yum kung (spicy soup with shrimp). I accidentally ended up eating a full pikinew (tiny superfire chilli) which was one of the most painful experiences of my life, but everything was great, okay, except for the plang plang of the "authentic" Thai instruments in the background. Good third day back. But very hot.

Beauuuutiful Girl....

Damn song... My sister played me this "old style/reggae song with a twist" the other day, and of course, being as catchy as it is, and as one-track-mind as I am, I can't get the damn song out of my mind. And on top of that, I need to through all this U.S. bull-junky that I honestly hate. Stupid forms, with their stupid constant questions and with the system so messed up with the buying of the PIN to the scheduling of the appointment, to the RED TEXT that of course is a "something to take note of" but mostly what it does is scare the shit out of me and cause me to have a near panic attack. That red text is something that I'm supposed to have, well, what if I don't have it? Like proof of payment for my SEVIS I-20? I'm sure I did it, if not, SEVIS would for sure be up my ass asking for some cash for their boleta, but I have recieved nothing since the first time they introduced SEVIS, so what now U.S. Embassy in Thailand? What NOW bitch? Ugh. Honestly, the last time I was this panicked, it was when I realised the hadn't gotten my I-20 signed the DAY BEFORE I WAS GOING TO TRAVEL. Sorry for the caps with the combination of bold there, was completely necessary to make my point.

So right now I'm installing the printer at my parent's place onto my computer so that I can print out the stupid confirmation page that appeared when I made my appointment for my visa 8am. Meaning I must be there at 7:30am. Which is fine since I'm still jetlagged and waking up at a hearty 3:30am. Meanwhile I'm still singing the song, which although a nice song by..uh...*quick research* Sean Kingston, (the song can be heard at his myspace page www.myspace.com/seankingston) it's just a little weird to be singing "suicidal, suicidal" when I'm truely feeling somewhat near that right now...printer installed.

P.S. Do you see the color issues I'm having? After the whole red text thing, I have no way of changing it back to default. So I"m leaving it as a reminder to never do that again. And also because I still haven't figured out how to change it to default.

When the moon hits your eye...

...Cuz you just had to fly,
Thaaaat's the jet-laaaagg.

When the world seems to quake,
Cuz you can't stay awake,
Thaaaaat's the jet-laaaag.

Clocks that tick, dogs that lick,
I can't sleep, I just weep,
I can't help iiiiiiitttttt.

Can't you see, I can't sleep,
It's to early for meeeeeeee,
Iiiiiiiittttt's theeeee jet laaaaaaaaaaaaaag!!!

(Sung to "That's Amore" Dean Martin version)

No troubles in this paradise...

*Knock on wood*

Gotta do it, even if it is superstition, I must do something to make sure that I have warded off the evil that is irony. Or just shitty luck. Can't believe how much Alanis has messed up that word for me, after all these years, I still don't really know how to use it.

So my last blog was a whopping...twelve (give or take) hours ago, and now I'm in Taipei, sitting in the First Class lounge which is a little irksome. It started when I walked of the plane, done the hall towards the transfers to go through security again, when I saw this lady waving a sign that had: VANTHA scrawled on it, figuring it wasn't a hugely popular name and the fact that none of my tickets ever have my whole full name on them since apparently those two extra characters are just to much, I walked over, told her that was my name and she directed me towards the counter. Walked up and found out that because the TPE-BKK flight was overbooked, I got bumped up to Business. Woohoo. So walked into the lounge, which has a lobby and two directions (left and right) to go, right being the regular lounge, and left being the "first class lounge". She looks at my lounge voucher and says "Due to the fact that you have a gold card and are flying business, you're going to the that lounge, bye!" Now I have to mention that just a few days ago I was telling a friend about the lounge and how I'd never seen the left lounge, I always went right, and I have tried surreptously peering down the hall to no avail, that is a very long hallway leading into the left lounge.

So I walk in, it's pretty much the same, there's a "quiet room", bathrooms, it's a little smaller, but far more empty, which is nice after being on a chock-full plane with two unhappy babies in the row in front of me. (On a side note, I have -yet again- sworn off children.) So what to do now? Taste the fare of course! I have so far gobbled down a cup of stir fried noodles, potato au gratin, a slice of bacon and a beef pot pie. Ummy. Not sure what else is there, must peruse more. A few more hours and I'll be in the big BKK! More then.

Traveling...or is it travelling?

I can never spell the word, honestly, I make a note to remember how it's spelt then I forget what the note was about. "Did I tell myself to make sure I spelt it traveled, or did I make a note that it wasn't spelt traveled?" Fark.

Anyway, I'm sitting in the EVA lounge at SFO and it's pretty nice, there's Anderson Cooper on the widescreen in the adjacent room, meawhile I'll sitting in a spot where I can acess the internet through a DSL cable, while everyone is typing away because I'ms ure they don't have completely tempermental built-in wireless cards. And why is it that everyone in this room is using a mac? Guy sitting two seats away from me? Black ibook. Three people behind me? All white ibooks, one with those built in cameras. Yes I looked, I'm absolutely nosey.

So far I've eaten a chicken salad finger sandwich and some palo which I guess is braised pork that comes with a boiled egg, but I didn't think my innards could take any egginess, so I stuck to the pork and the sauce. I have absolutely been overeating the past few days, and it is not good. But I'll wait until Thailand to reconfigure my digestion, which usually takes the form of me not eating for a meal or two so my body can ebb off it's sugar-high-insanity and float back down to earth.

Since I quickly mentioned the widescreen in the next room, and spent about ten minutes sitting in front of it, let me tell you this: People do not look good on a wide screen. How does that even work? Anderson is not that wide-faced, yet I was watching as he and his correspondant were talking about Warren Jeffs, I noticed their faces decidedly wider than natural, even though the crawl on the bottom did not look distorted...odd. I don't know anything about video or television technology, whenever W and I end up perusing Best Buy we're both struck by how shitty HD always looks, that's about as far at my knowlede goes.

And since I touched upon macs earlier, let me continue that vein of thought (and let me also interject that the guy with the black ibook actually has an IBM, so that closes it down to three ibooks in this room), I have once in a while considered buying a Mac, they're pretty, cute and apparently the best thing in the world, the computer version of meth, but then I go to the school library and am forced to use a Mac when I realise that I love me some Windows technology (strictly XP, I've heard Vista's quite the crapper). It's just the interface makes absolutely no sense to me, it seems clunky and at least once in every duration of my use of an Apple computer, the screen will freeze and I will be forced to sit there waiting while the computer "computes". A great website that I came across (I don't even remember how anymore) was this one, particularly because of this page where the writer vents about Macs, love it: One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't... And those obnoxious "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads drive me up the wall, and chase me farther and farther away from the hoity-toity (teehee, funny spellings make me giggle), stick up your ass way of life that Mac'ers have.

This is the first time in a month or two that I don't feel the weight of the world crashing upon me, and the first time in four months that I've actually got nothing school-based to do. So I guess that why I'm blogging, for lack of anything else to do and because I haven't done it in two weeks. The other day I was browsing through Yelp and wondered aloud to myself "How did I have enough time to Yelp as much as I did?" Luckily no one but Moo was around, and she gave me a death glare at interrupting her cleansing ritual, curled up and went to sleep. But honestly, how did I have the time? The last few weeks have been so panic-driven with finals and getting all the documentation for my visa, it's just so weird to actually have time to myself. Nice, but totally weird.

Oh, I guess I never explained why I'm sitting in the EVA lounge at SFO. I'm waiting to fly to Bangkok, with a stop in Taipei, and luckily (thank goooosness) I have a Gold card after flying with them so long, so checking it was quick, got ahead of the crowd at security and flew (speed walked?) to the lounge to hang out. That Gold card, it's quite the lifesaver, don't know what I'm going to do when it expires in July. Probably cry the next time I have to check in at the "regular" line. I know, I know, you probably want to say "Oh how sad for you." while at the same time pushing me over and kicking me in the face. But you know how you experience something good and then you can't go back without comparing to it constantly? Well that's how it goes for me. Now I'm going to go get some food, relax and surf while I wait to get on the plane so I can fall asleep drooling.

Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman

Yes, yes, I gave in. I went to go watch Spiderman last night. And let me tell you, it was better than I thought it was going to be. But that's not really saying much since I thought it was going to be shit.

I will keep this brief, simple and hopefully spoiler-free. But I must start from the beginning, for the full experience. I came straight from school, toting my handbag AND a laptop bag, while my friend toted her tube with her rolled up plans inside. My sister's friend had saved us seats, a complete boon since I was looking at the line for the 7.50 show and let me tell you, it was a looooooo-oo-o-oong ass one, probably because it was for imax. Got in, sat down, popcorn in hand (which in my hands, kernals of course went flying when I sat down), and waited for the movie to begin. I love previews, I love watching them on this huge screen right before a movie with my mind tingling that I'm about to watch a movie IN THE THEATRE. As you may have gathered, I do not do this much. I usually say I'll watch them when they come out on DVD and rent them, but I never do. Three previews that I recall looked very good, Harry Potter (eek), Shrek 3 and Across the Universe. Eddie Izzard's in the last one, which was an instantaneous pull in, but the preview was exclusively Beatles music (love it!), Harry Potter was looking dark and surly, and looked really kick ass, which was probably just the preview, and Shrek 3...Gingerbread man shitting a marshmallow was just too good.

As for Spiderman, there were some incredibly corny parts, pretty much every "sad" and "emotional" part made me crack up, Tobey Maguire being "bad ass" was just too much nerdiness to handle, too long, too many characters and a very drawn out movie, but still good. I ended up enjoying it and it was worth going out to see. That said, I'm going to relax for the rest of my Sunday and go to sleep soon. Zzzzzzzzzz.....

Oh The Insanity...

Do you know how I know finals is getting to me? I just pressed the button for the "key lock" on my phone and held it to my ear for at least 10 seconds before I realised that I wasn't calling anyone. Because I had just locked my phone. With the intent to put it in my pocket and continue working. This is what happens during the few weeks before finals, I slowly lose my mind and drink more and more caffine so that I am not only crazy, but wired.

It's weird, yesterday I got to school at 8am and worked (on and off) throughout the day, and left at about 8:30pm and was feeling great when I got home. Yet today I leave home until 1pm, got to school around 3pm and it's only 5:30 and I'm tired as all fuck. I haven't accomplished near as much as I wanted to. Maybe the key is that I need to wake up early. I'll test that theory tomorrow.

She's A Maniaaac, Maniaaac...

And by "she" I am of course referring to me. It is now hour 10 of being at school (on a Saturday, no less), granted I have not been working the whole time, I have taken multiple flickr breaks, food breaks and general walking around breaks, and I guess the time that I spend darting from computer to printer can't really be called "working" per se since I am not doing anything but giving my legs a good workout and causing my brain to slowly disfunction while I silently swear to myself about the paper I'm wasting by constantly printing out stuff and then realising I made a mistake. Semi-epitome of d'oh.

Well since I've mentioned flickr, I guess I should just go ahead and admit it to the world. I am addicted to flickr. And blogger (obviously, since I'm on here right now when I should be working). Every few minutes I will stop working and go check to see who's commented on my photos, which invariably means I will go and look at those peoples' photos and comment on them and trust me, that takes a while. Especially since alot of people commenting on my photos are cat people and therefore have gorgeous pictures of their cats, which I of course sit and drool over the wonderful cinematography (does that work for static photos? Whatever, they're beautiful) and of course then I go and look at what camera they have, then gotta check how much it costs at bestbuy, and compare it to my tiddliwinks camera, cry in pity and then get back to work. I have honestly considered getting a REAL camera which I can actually self focus with the turning lens (oh how professional I'll feel once I get a turning lens!), and I figure, if W can drop $500 on an xbox 360, I can totally drop at least that much on a camera that will last me the rest of my life. The other week I dropped my current camera in the park without knowing, had walked half a block before I realised and backtracked until I found it. The whole time I was backtracking I was thinking about what kind of camera I would get if I couldn't find the old one. Wonder of wonders it was in the same place I dropped it, untouched, although I'm wondering if I knows I thought of replacing it before I even got closure. It'll probably electrocute me for being such a callous camera slut.

Last night I watched the movie Shopgirl, which apparently I swore I would never watch because I had read the book and knew the movie would never, ever, in a million years live up to the beautifully written humorous subtlety of the novella, but against all odds (and the fact that I forgot my swearing) I watched the movie, and it was (of course) very different from the book. Steve Martin (who wrote both the novella and screenplay) played the main "older" character, which slightly freaked me out, I would have preferred Chris Noth (Big from Sex and the City) since he had the suave older guy thing down in SatC, but Martin did a great job in the role, proving that he really should not be doing crap like Cheaper by the Dozen. Ever. In the special features they kept mentioning how Martin was best choice since he knew the material so well, and it's true, he wrote every nuance and so played it in the truest way, it's just disarming to see him in that role. Claire Danes as Mirabelle was a great casting choice, my sister remarked that Gwenyth (sp?) Paltrow would have been good in the role too, unfortunately, too old. As for Jeremy, Jason Schwartzmen (sp! I'm too lazy to look it up) was good, perfectly awkward, but of course, me being so superficially focused on looks, he didn't really look the part for me. After Rushmore, I just can't imagine him as any other person.

The cinematography was amazing, the movie has a very thought out art-film quality which I love, and like they mentioned in special features, having people not from L.A. (director Anand and producer Ashok, look it up on imdb.com to see last names, I can't remember) working on the film really breathes new life into the location. Views that do not conjure up thoughts of L.A., yet do are shown throughout the movie, the color changes to reflect moods work so well, it's so amazing how it plays on your psyche without you knowing. When Mirabelle is going through her "blue" phase and coloring followed suite, I absolutely felt it, but didn't know why. That's great movie making right there. If you ever get around to watching it, I recommend you watch it then read the book, I did it the otherway around and I was constantly thinking about how people who hadn't read the book would not know what was going on, and I'm sure it was because I had read the book, with its full omnipresent narrative which explained ever little remark, so in a sense I was over-educated. If you don't end up watching the movie, I implore you to at least read the book. I still go back and read it, since its such a quick read and so beautifully done.

Back to work.

Hot As All Hell

You know, when I'm hot, and I have to run around and do a bunch of errands WHILE it's hot, I'm not a happy camper. Never mind that the sun is shining, the weather is beautiful and the east coast is getting it's ass whooped by the cold weather, I am SVITZING! And it really doesn't bode well for anyone I have to encounter during the day. Just thought I'd let all of you know...

New Moo!

I don't really have anything interesting to post word wize, so here I am with the photos. Here's just a little taste of what's been posted on the flickr account!

P.S. I've officially gone Pro! With the new flickr pro account I can post as many photos as I want! Watch as the madness unfolds...

Shoes!

Okay, honestly, for my 101st post I thought I might do something that was groundbreaking in my life, or was super-inspiring, or something amazing. But I'm just going to post about something that's only huge and groundbreaking to me: I bought two pairs of shoes in two days that I can actually wear on a day-to-day basis. Now, let me tell you this, because I get made fun of all the time about my huge collecton of shoes that I never (seriously, never) use, because they're either high heels (which I can't stand for more than three horus) or shoes that are inordinately uncomfortable and need to be "broken in", unfortunately I have no patience to break them in and so they're still painful and so I refuse to wear them. It's a very vicious cycle that I repeat constantly without fail. Bad, cheap, painful shoes are honestly like my crack, I totally find myself saying "No, it's going to be different this time! I'm going to find GOOD shoes! And they're going to work, they will! I promise!!" And of course like a meth addict relapsing and going back to that disgustingly dirty drug, I go back and buy a pair of shitty shoes from Payless and waste yet another twenty dollars.

But not this time! This time I am ditching that drug and I have bought two pairs of comfortable shoes which I will wear everyday and wear into soft, awesome shoes. Now here's the problem, I will NOT spend money on shoes, yes, yes, I wear them daily, and my feet are pretty important, I don't want hammertoe and bunyons, blah blah blah...but I can't stand it, so I end up buy cheap shoes that kind of fit my freakishly wide fan feet that are so used to being shoe-free and open air in the house. Well it usually doesn't work out so well because that "kind of" is the difference between soft clouds of pillowly shoeness, and crippling pain after an hour.

And so...here are the shoes:

$20 Sugar's from Nordstrom Rack (mentioned in yesterday's post)

$17 Roxy's from Ross

Oh how happy am I? Happy enough to go eat some shortbread and chocolate cookies and a burrito! G'nite.

Oy-yoy-yoy! My feetsies!

So let me start from the beginning. This morning was the second day of my visit from Aunt Flo and I was NOT a happy camper. But I had two overdue books sitting in my locker at Northpoint and I HAD to get them to the library today, or incur the wrath of the librarians! I already had 25 cents in late fees, I didn't need more. So I slowly got ready, had a breakfast of cereal and half a banana. Technically it was still breakfast, it was before noon (11 o'clock) and my first meal of the day. Then I took the bus to Northpoint, puttered around printing out stuff, organising, realised that I didn't draw as much as I needed to last night on my lighting plan, and shit, all my stuff is disorganised. Fuck this, I'm gonna clean up this mess and move on. Took the F-line to New Montgomery, walked down to the library, returned my books, puttered (as I do best) and then went downstairs for a gyro. By now it's two and I'm starving. The gyro's good, the fries are amazing and the Sunkist just finishes it off. Unfortunately I did the very silly, very Asha thing of eating too much, and I lurch out clutching my stomach, not hungry anymore, but in a little bit of pain.

Now at this point I should explain why I didn't just up and go home right after the gyro incident. I had discussed with a few friends about going out to dinner, and then a movie was brought up, why, sure! Well, sent out an email, got a few replies, one had to drop out, the other was having dinner with other friends, so it was decided we would postpone the dinner to a later date. The movie? Looked up times, 5:05 showing, texted the two left standing (T.L.S.) and then walked over to Westfield for retail therapy. Now let me tell you two wonderfully delightful facts: 1. Cell phone reception for me at Westfield is shit. For some reason there is a T-mobile forcefield around that shopping mall and whenever I walk through the glass doors, my bars go from six, to one, to nil. 2. Window shopping is damn depressing when you're in a frugal bitch with cramps. So get a call from one of the T.L.S. who agrees to the five o'clock showing. I call the seconf of the T.L.S. and she wonders if we can push it back to the next showing. A very reasonable suggestion, but me being the menstrual hag that I am at that very point, say I probably will be weeping in pain by that point, so I don't think so. Okay, whole thing gets scrapped, let's try some other time.

Now, it's not that I'm frustrated with them, at this point I'm so frustrated with the fact that: A. I have my period. B. I can't organise a DINNER AND A MOVIE worth a shit. C. Organising it cutting it very close to corralling, and I have a new found respect for my high school friends who did this all the time, meanwhile I was the brick-shaped cow being corralled. So I leave Westfield, pissed that I didn't find the cheap candles that I wanted ($32 for a candle?! Are you shitting me? It's smelly wax!) and I start walking towards Fifth, see that I'm not going to make the 14 that will take me home, so I decide that I'm going to just walk home. Oddly enough, as I'm walking block after block, I realise that I am actually meeting the 14 at each bus stop, but as stubborn and frustrated as I am at this time, I keep going. Until about Seventh when the 14 whizzes right by me and on into oblivion. Damn.

I reach 9th and decide to cross the street and start walking towards Howard. And then realise that the direction I'm heading is the same direction as the Nordstrom Rack that I have never gotten the chance to go to. Since June, I have wanted to because I have been gagging to get a new pair of shoes, but of course, being the aforemention frugalist that I am, I won't pay full price, so I end up going to the Rack because my love vs. hate relationship with Ross has boiled to the point that I now hate, hate, hate it. Anyway, the ol' reliable rack granted me a cute pair of Sugar shoes that I'm definitely going to have to break in, but I'm happy so...nyeh. Then I walked home, and now I'm sitting here with very pained footpads which I shall bitch and moan about in my head. Oh and as for the map down below, it chronicals the walking I did today, since, unwalker that I am, was a major accomplishment for me. Adios!

Click to see the actual map.

Note: I just realised that this is my 100th post! *Cue Madonna music*

"Celebra-ate! Holiday! It would be so nice..."

Woo-hoo, just goes to show, if you create a blog, and you have a grumpy enough personality, and you perservere to gripe to the world, you can do it!

Hardeeharhar

So I guess I haven't blogged in a while (by my standards), but I've been stressed, had class, and have a pained belly-perfect excuses!

So I wrote that previous sentence a week ago and pretty much haven't logged into blog to post anything since. It is now Wednesday, April 18th, 11:31AM and I have so far accomplished: Not much. I ate breakfast, showered, checked all my daily online stuff (myspace, facebook, comics, emails, etc.) and called my health insurance to see why the hell they're telling me I have to pay an additonal $31 on top of the $40 I paid for my annual exam THAT I HAD IN JANUARY. Ugh. So in an effort to get my "creative juices" flowing (gross, oh I am SO 12 years old), I put on some classical music, unfortunately I think I just put on the music from the Nutcracker. I just slipped in the stupid Tschaichovsky CD I had, okay, let's try Bach. This morning when I woke up, my roommate had one of the public access channels on and they were playing classical piano music, and it was really nice to wake up to. So add to 'to do' list: Get classical piano music.

Okay, Bach's on...it's...nice. Well actually it's okay, it's a full on orchestra. I guess I was looking for something a little more simple like the music I heard this morning. Let's give Pandora.com a try. Except I have to find an example of what I want...shit, okay onto Amazon.com to look for classical music. Shit they're playing my other radio station "Oscar Peterson" and it's 'How High the Moon' and let me tell you, Bach and Peterson do not make a lovely pair. Plus I the Bach music is making me picture the main hall of a castle, with a lyre playing the lute. Okay, no to Bach then. Luckily I don't remember ever buying these, they were just laying around my house (in BKK) and I brought them to the states with me.

Okaay, "Most Relaxing Piano Album in the World...Ever!" lets give you a try. No no no, you're way too relaxed, I definitely want to fall asleep listening to you. The goal is to WORK, not sleep. Let's try "Ultimate Classical Piano"...Oh, oh this is nice, okay who are you? Isaac Albinez, click click click into Pandora.com aaaaand....no. Okay, let's try a different approach, let's do songs.

Okay that didn't work out so well, they didn't even recognise Fryderyk Chopin, so I'm thinking this is a lost cause. Whatever, it's half an hour later and I have accomplished nothing as far as work. And I wonder how I never get any work done in a day. Guess I should go buy that birthday card and nail polish remover before it gets dark.

Meanwhile I have all the windows open to air out the apartment and Moo is having an absolute fit because it's too cold. She is currently hiding under my bed.

Blogging And The City...

So I have spent the last nine hours watching Sex and the City online while also working on my classwork in CAD. Which worked out great, I actually powered through and got one of my projects completely moved from paper to computer and I was able to listen to the show and switch back and forth between windows whenever I felt like it (and pause, rewind and fastforward at my will, oh my!) The only problem is that now that I've been watching a SATC marathon, I'm filled with this sense of longing and weird happiness. Longing because obviously every episode has to do with the love & lustrelationships of characters involved and also because I can't believe how much bullshit I bypassed by dating a guy like W.

Another problem with watching that show is that it has an omnipresent narrative that is also a writer, and therefore gets my mind clicking and I'm suddenly filled with the urge to type to the world, which actually happens quite often, before it was You've Got Mail that got me going. And luckily, now that I have a blog, I can just post this and if people read it, so be it, instead of how I used to send my word out to my little world, by writing an e-mail and imposing my insanity upon everyone by having it pop up in their mailbox, unless they junked me, which I totally understand. I've actually written to a few people explicitly telling them not to send me anymore forwards, since I was so damn sick of opening up my email inbox and getting the same stupid outdated forward about sodium laureth sulphate making my hair fall out and giving me cancer. One particular email was actually really bitchy, and though now I think of it, I could have dealt with that situation in a more adult and civil fashion, bitchy got the job done. But I still try to refrain nowadays. Sadly W usually gets the brunt of my bitchiness...

Why did no one tell me a new Diner Dash came out? I was completely obsessed with this game two years ago one vacation at home (it was way too hot to leave the house), and I actually made it to the last level on the original downloadable Diner Dash, but could finish the game because I just wasn't fast enough on that last level. Sad to think that I still want that unattainable goal. Sometimes I just have to shake my head and sigh at my own antics...

G'nite folks.

I Guess Other People Are Partying...

It's 3:39AM on a Saturday morning. I'm awake only because and hour ago I woke up with a headache and wasn't able to find a comfortable position to sleep in and was too frustrated with having a headache to sleep. So I massaged my skull. I rolled over. I tossed off my comforter. I used one pillow. Then two pillows. Then no pillows. Still I was unable to get to sleep. I finally gave in and took a painkiller that I was given for severe back pain last year, and I think the headache is slowly ebbing away as we speak *knock on some damn hard wood*.

The only good thing about being awake at this time is that most of the channels that I usually watch on T.V. are running infomercials, which -unless deal with exercise- are some of my favorite things to watch when I can't get to sleep. For whatever reason, it just reminds me of back in the day when I used to come visit the states and I'd be so enamored with U.S. television because it was so much more interesting than IBC (remember when it was called that?)

I'm a little over the Magic Bullet, they seem to run that one pretty often, but I still love watching the Miracle Blade with "Chef Tony" who is the classic Italian chef. You know those cartoons of Italian chefs? With the pudginess, the thick black mustache and the tall chef's hat? If that was a police sketch and you saw Chef Tony you'd pretty much say "That's your perpetratin' ho right there officer." Which is obviously just how you roll, right? I've been watching way too much I Love New York.

I can't believe I watch this show, it's all completely staged, and NY is just too over the top, but still, I'm drawn to the horrible VH1 find-me-love "reality" shows. An hour ago I caught the last five minutes of the finale, and it was just too horrible for words. It makes me glad I didn't watch it when it first premiered on Monday night so they can't use my view as a vote for ratings. Right now I've got the Eukanuba Dog Show on and I THINK I'm looking a black cocker spaniel, but I honestly have no clue because all I see is black bell bottom legs and a small black body. WHERE IS THE HEAD? That scared the shit out of me because it seriously has the smallest head I've ever seen on a dog with that size body. Stupid show dogs and their blow dried poof-hair. It's honestly very disorienting. I wonder if anything else is on...and if I can get to sleep now...and why that dog runs in such a weird hippity-hoppity way. G'night!

It's Getting Better All The Time...

...Or at least I'm getting better, which is very nice. It's always nice to be able to breathe through your nose (even if it's only every once in a while), and nice to NOT wake up because your cold-induced snore was too loud. It's also nice to not have to constantly be clutching tissue and bed-ridden. Even though I'm still a little sniffly and constantly clearing my throat, I'm still pretty happy. The only thing that I'm a little iffy on is that I am such a complete baby when it comes to being sick, I was so upset with being sick because it was completely not the time for me to be sick, two days in bed may sound like fun, but that's only when it's voluntary.

Anyway, it's now Wednesday, I'm actually feeling almost all better and I decided to take a break from working on class stuff to do a little "photo shoot" with Moo-raka...

Captured just at the right moment

I uploaded quite a few pictures of Moo onto my Flickr, no new scenic ones, hopefully I'll see something interesting to take a picture of now that I'm practically human.

Yelpper!

Are you Yelping? Because I'm tooootally Yelping. I've caughten the Yelping bug. By now you're probably wondering (1) Why is Asha using the word "yelping" in every sentence? (2) Why does "yelping" have a capitalized "y"? (3) Is Asha a little crazy?

Well I shall answer accordingly: Yelp is cool. Yelp is a name, thus capitalized. And yes, Asha is a little crazy and especially so right now because she's hopped up on cold medication.

Oh how I hate being sick, and I don't think I made it any better by spending the first day of being sick (yesterday) running around San Francisco. A meeting, then the SF Design Center (FOR THREE HOURS, classwork), and then dinner and dessert. Dinner was hilarious because there were four of us and three were sick with a cold. Anyway, this whole Yelping thing, at www.yelp.com you can read reviews on restaurants, stores, basically anything that's reviewable, and also post your own. Which is what I started doing this past week and haven't been able to stop. Went to a new restaurant? It will be on my Yelp the day of or the day after I went. I'm just like that. And I spend way too much time on the internet.

Now I'm off to bed to try and sleep this cold away.

Random Thoughts...

Okay! Enough with the Care Bears and the Caballeros, I'm done with childhoodness and soooo ready to bitch about the hear and now! And maybe the yesterday.

What is with (say it with a Seinfeld voice, say it) the MUNI? Yesterday I had the weirdest experience. I had just left school and was half a block away from the bus stop and like always I'm walking down there just KNOWING that the bus will pull out a minute before I get there, because that's what always happens and then I'm stuck waiting at a cold, blustery bus stop for half an hour. Well not this time! I ran down the street to the corner and practically jumped in front of the bus to stop it from moving (driver wasn't even looking at me), ran on the bus, paid my fee and slowly weaved from side to side to a seat. My weaving is courtesy of the bus driver making a left turn at record speed. I'm not at the weird part yet, that's about twenty five minutes away. So we're chuggin' along pretty fast, which is great, I love the fast drivers, because they go -duh- fast and so I get home faster, and I'm sitting there happy because I got off class early so that in combination with driver-fasty-pants, I was going to get home after a long, shitty day and chill for a long time before going to sleep. Sweet!

The weirdness happened when we pulled out from the Post St stop, our driver was going slow as a snail on pot! I didn't have a clue what the deal was. Before Post, he's barely even let people get through the door before he slammed them shut on people's asses, and now he's waiting at the bus stop for nonexistant people to board! And then he's going 10 miles an hour, with NOBODY in front of him, waiting for the traffic light to turn red so he can stop and wait some more. UGH, I was so confounded and frustrated, I didn't have words to describe. It must be the tailgater in me. Anyway, I figured it was one of two options, either: He was going to fast in the beginning, therefore was off schedule and was trying to make up for it by going slow OR he wanted to pick someone up at a certain stop and had to make sure he got there in time. The second I almost believed because as soon as we turned onto Mission, he was going normal speed again, next stop, he picks up three guys that smile at him "familiarly". Except those three guys got off three blocks later. wtf.

I don't know, and you know what else I don't know about? It's practically a full day later and I'm still wondering about this. I think I might be borderline OCD.

I'm now eating the rest of the fried rice I made for lunch as a "mid afternoon" snack and I'm noticing that my jaw is more fucked up than it usually is. Two years ago, I was in class and climbed up onto some cabinets to open a window because it was getting too warm in our classroom. Well clumsy me, slipped when I stepped up and full on fell and hit my jaw on the cabinets, and since then I've had jaw issues where my jaw will misalign and I have to move it back in place so I can chew on food. When I went to see the doctor about it, he said I would probably need physical therapy so I would know how to properly chew so my jaw wouldn't realign, but of course I never went and now I'm probably doing more harm than good when everytime I open my mouth.

Oh oh, and today, this is great, I was doing some aerobic exercises (in my sad attempt to lose weight) and I nearly blacked out. Yeah. I'm healthy like that. I was doing the "level II" workout, which is twice and long and quite a bit harder than level I and halfway through I really needed some water so I took a long sip, and then...I could feel my heart beat in my throat, which I've never felt unless I've done some extreme exercising, so I thought maybe I should calm down for a little bit, stopped moving, kept breathing, and the heart beat got stronger and faster, so I lay down. BAD IDEA. Dear GOD where did this headache come from? It felt like I had a blood clot in my brain that was just stuck somewhere in the middle and just pulsating. So imagine me, on the floor, rolling from side to side, trying to figure out whether I'm going to die from a brain aneurism on the floor in my sports bra and sweatpants, mean while Debbie the workout instructor is still playing on the TV, telling me that I've just gotta do eight more reps.

I seriously thought I was going to die.

Then the pain ebbed away, and I sat up, turned off the TV and contemplated what the hell just happened. Then I took a shower and ate some fried rice.