woo-hoo! long weekend! i canNOT wait to get out of here. of course, i'm not going to party or anything, because my mom's here, but at least i get to get away from the office for three whole days. tonight, i think i'm taking my mom to mongolian BBQ. yes, i just had it yesterday, but my mom likes eating minimal meat and lots of veggies, and i will NOT go to a place like sweet tomatoes or fresh choice, so this is the best place, i think. the only question is whether to drive all the way to su's and pay an exorbitant amount, or to go to a cheaper place like gobi and get subpar noodles. i'm learning towards gobi. su's, especially for dinner, is just way too expensive.

alan and i are taking our moms out to chevy's tomorrow night. we were thinking or a more upscale place, but chevy's tortillas are so good, and i think my mom will enjoy their fajitas. then, on saturday, i'll drop off my mom at SFO, and then, i'll go to alan's house for a low-key BBQ. then, i'm treating jeffrey and nicki to alexander's steakhouse for their going-away dinner. yes, it'll cost me about $150 or so, but who knows when i'll see them next, so i don't mind going a little more extravagant. white truffle oil french fries, here i come!

sunday is wide open. man, i love long weekends. i just hope the weather isn't too hot.

anyways, just asked leeya and paul to attempt to translate this tweet that was directed towards me that i got a few weeks ago. it's written in vietnamese, but neither leeya or paul were able to decipher it. i just realized that there are websites that can do translation from vietnamese to english, but after i pasted in the text, i got something that didn't make any sense, and the second part of the sentence wasn't translatable. so i'm stumped. why the hell would a guy write me a tweet in vietnamese? what's he trying to do? *ponder*

check out this acoustic cover of lady gaga's "poker face" by chris daughtry. i like it! first, it's acoustic, and second, it's sung by chris daughtry, so it puts a completely different spin on the song. rad. in case you were wondering, no, i don't read ryan seacrest's blog, but i do follow him on twitter, so that's how i found it.

so last night, i showed my mom SYTYCD. i think she was intrigued. however, i got a little uncomfortable when they were talking about one of the dances being a story of a female alien trying to impregnate earth's last male. my mom is pretty religious and conservative, so this dance was kind of (weirdly) sexual in nature. and over the weekend, i also felt a bit funny watching an erectile dysfunction ad on tv with my parents; when i saw it come on, i just got up and pretended it wasn't on. yeah, i know we're all adults, but i think my parents still think i'm a little kid sometimes.

basketball was very grueling today. i played three games to 11. my team lost all three, although we were up 9-6 during the last one and then gave up 5 straight points. i had only one good moment in various phases of the game: one good power move (a shot vake, power dribble to the middle of the paint, and then a hook shot for a swish), one good jumper, one fastbreak layup, one tipped pass, one assist, and one rebound. the other team played man defense, and i just can't score with someone on me like that. ugh.

i want to buy a pedometer and see how far i run during basketball. i'd like to think that i cover a decent amount of distance during 3-4 games. if not, then i'll be depressed that i get so tired and sweaty and only run like one mile or something. i licked my arm twice after i got back, and it was all salty and stuff. ah, sweat.

wow, people are takijng off early today. my boss left early, then my project lead, and now my next door cubicle neighbor left just now. so after i post this blog entry, i'm going to take off. :)

the williams sisters are in the wimbledon finals! that's pretty damn impressive. especially how venus DISMANTLED #1 seed safina. i think it was like 6-0, 6-1 or something. just a complete and utter demolition. serena took three sets, so in light of that, i predict that venus will win. pretty amazing how two sisters can dominate the women's tennis scene. on the men's side, i'm rooting for andy murray. after all of tim henman's failures, i think the UK needs a tennis hero. either that, or andy roddick. poor roddick; he came into the scene during the height of the federer/nadal rivalry, and he got eclipsed by those two.

oh, mallory update. it seems that she has ignored/rejected my second and latest friend request. wtf? so now, i am pretty sure that she doesn't want me in her life. i am very saddened by this. since i am pretty sure that i didn't do anything wrong, the only plausible theory about her is that after her divorce, she wanted to start a new life with new friends. like i said, i have also noticed that two of her best male friends aren't on her list of facebook friends, either.

jay and i both think that SYTYCD is rigged. i mean, how did melissa, being the only ballerina among the contestants, just *happen* to draw the pas de deux that required ballet shoes? how did the two contestants that the producers seem to want to kick off *happen* to draw the quickstep, the dance that's been labeled as the "kiss of death?" strange things are afoot.

ok, that's it for me. i'm outta here. take it easy, folks, and have a STUPENDOUS 4th of july weekend!

last night's GNO (guy's night out) with the gang was fun. i was the first one to arrive at maggiano's in santana row, and jeremy arrived soon after. then, jay and alan arrived, and we had enough critical mass to sit at our table. eventually, jack, dean and cliff rounded out our table of seven. we ordered the "family style," which meant: 2 appetizers, 2 salads, 2 pastas, 2 entrees, and 2 desserts. it was a ton of food, although we all knew that jeremy could have eaten more. what's new? :) i bought birthday boys jay and jeremy vintage NFL t-shirts: ny giants for jay, and new england patriots for jeremy. ah, they went head-to-head in the super bowl not too long ago, so it was a bit bittersweet for jeremy. i hope they liked them.

dinner was a bit pricey. out total bill, including tip, was $300. of course, the birthday boys didn't pay, so the five of us shelled out about $60 each; i paid a bit more because i got a jameson on the rocks. we had good conversation, and one of our topics was that $100/cup indonesian coffee that comes out of the ass of a civet. i do want to try that one day, even though i'm not a coffee drinker. and i WILL order the $200+ kobe steak at alexander's one day, as well as go to french laundry for dinner.

afterwards, i stopped by adam and rae's house for half an hour or so to chat. we talked about the double eyelid surgery that a lot of asians get, and we checked out pictures of this one girl who we met way back when in 2001, who got it. she apparently got cheek implants too, and when adam brought up pictures of her on his iPhone, i barely recognized her. apparently, she is all into modeling and stuff now. she looks good, but i wouldn't date somebody who has gone under the knife so much. natural beauty is where it's at, imho.

i had to rush home because i hadn't seen my mom all day. she's done with all the leftover food we got over the weekend, so tonight, i'm taking her out to dinner. and after that, i plan to take her for a stroll around stanford campus. then, i'll show her SYTYCD. i hope she likes it. i wonder what she'll think of all the skimpy outfits that the girls wear, with her being a conservative christian and all that.

it's amazing how fast liquids travel through your system. just an hour ago, my pee was dark yellow. then, i had two mugfuls of water, and now, my pee has just a trace of yellow tint. nice! it's nice to be hydrated.

oh! the other day, i went to go take a leak, and this guy at the urinal next to me flushed in the middle of peeing. then, he finished and left without flushing again. after i finished, i peeked over in his urinal, and the water was yellow. **WTF**? clearly, since he flushed once, he's not a germophobe. so why didn't he flush after he was done? that completely baffles me, and it pisses me off as well. i just don't understand some people. at least he washed his hands, or else i would have *really* gotten steamed.

i synthesized my code today! it took a while to compile again, as DC has more stringent rules than VCS. but after it finally went through, i found out that my core logic is about 240K gates. that's pretty big! especially since i'll have two of them in the chip. i don't think i've designed a piece of mostly-datapath that's that big before. and now, i'll have to get it to work. it's going to be tough. i bet it'll take at least two weeks to verify.

so i don't know if you know this, but i've been following nigel lythgoe (executive producer of SYTYCD) on twitter, and he's trying to put together an all-michael jackson night of SYTYCD. what do you think of this? is it a bit too much? i mean, yes, MJ was a big influence in the dance world, but i think it'll be constrictive on the variety of the show, which is really the strength of SYTYCD. i mean, can you waltz, foxtrot, samba or paso doble to his music? won't most of the dances be too similar?

in our latest chip, we did a gate count analysis of my group's IP modules, and my designs account for about 800K or so gates. that's pretty big! i hope my company recognizes that my contributions have been important, and they keep me as a resource when it comes time to evaluate who to retain. *crossed fingers*

i am not hungry at all. D, I, and i went to gobi mongolian bbq today, and we all ate massive amounts of food. actually, i ate the least, but i still managed to stuff myself with two bowls of ingredients. but still, after i post this entry, i'll be leaving soon to take my mom to dinner. before going home, i gotta get some cash (maggiano's last night wiped me out) and deposit my $1,000 deposit refund check from my old place. they charged me $300 for cleaning and $300 for carpets and deducted it from my original $1,600 deposit.

mikeT told me today that he's rewatching _ally mcbeal_. did you know that _ally_ is my favorite tv series of all time? i bet you're surprised to know that, huh? i just loved all the characters and the fact that it was a well-written show about relationships. john cage was my favorite character on that show because i could relate to his quirks and stuff. and callista flockheart was so cute in the beginning! (i didn't like her as much afterward because she got too skinny.) i cried when billy died, too, and i think that's the only time ever in my life when i've cried while watching something. anyways, i just remembered that i have a few _ally_ episoides on DVD, and i should go watch them.

jimmy got furniture! so i was IM'ing him today, and he said that his housewarming party is forthcoming. i can't wait! however, he said that before it happens, he needs to build a path from the street to his front door. right now, you have to walk across a dirt patch to get to his door, so he needs to lay down some concrete and stuff. he's off next week, so hopefully he can do it soon. i really want another excuse to party and drink. and this time, i won't be hosting, so you know that i'll have a better time. ;)

i notice that my work keyboard's 'n' key is really worn out. do i really use 'n' that much? or do i hit it with more force than i use for other keys? i mean, 'e' is a common letter, right? but it's way less worn out than my 'n' key. hm. the things you learn over multiple years of hammering away at the same keyboard. oh, and i only use my right thumb to hit the space bar, so the spot where my thumb touches it is totally smoothed out.

ok, time to wrap this puppy up and call it a day. i'm sort of afraid to come to work after today, because i know that the verification stage for my LTI block is going to start. *shivers* BUT... one more workday until the long weekend!

i compiled! 17,000 or so lines, they all compile without any errors or warnings. it took me THREE hours, and just under SIXTY iterations of compiling/error fixing. *whew* it was grueling work. i thought it would never end. especially in the beginning, it was taking a long time to work through each and every one of my dozens of files. and then, when i was nearing the end, i got a ton of port width mismatches, and each of them took a while to figure out. but now i'm done, so tomorrow i can synthesize this massive block and see just how many gates it is. i'm quite scared, actually. :/

i'm leaving in half an hour to go to maggiano's. guy's night out (GNO)! and this one is for a double birthday (jay and jeremy), and it just might be the first GNO where all of the people (except peter, but he's always a maybe because of his malignant medical resident schedule) are able to attend. we always have one or more people drop out, so this just might be a hallmark event! seven people going! *excited* i'm not excited about the food, but the company. and whiskey, if they have it. someone told me they have whiskey, so i'm looking forward to that.

last night, my mom and i met up with jeffrey and nicki at gombei for dinner. they're leaving early july for good. jeffrey and i go way back to our high school days, so i'm sad to see him go. i'm taking them out to alexander's (le charm was my first choice, but it's far (SF), and traffic on the 4th of july to the city will be bad) for a going away dinner. i'm looking forward to the prime rib, but even more to the white truffle oil french fries! i can't wait!

we're getting in some new hires in our division. the first one arrived yesterday. i interviewed him a few months ago, and he didn't do that stellar. but, the others like him, so we hired him. i hope he's cool, and we can be friends. he's not super-talkative (he's turkish, btw), and he sits far away from me, but maybe i'll ask him to come out with us for lunch tomorrow. we get some more new hires next week. i hear one of them is a girl who scored a 1,600 on her SAT's.

my company is having a lecture/info session on improving one's english communication skills. clearly, this is targeted towards the fobs here. i wonder who decided this was a good idea, and who will attend. and will this be effective, and will it produce any results? i'm curious. anyways, i won't attend, but i'm definitely interested in what they information they will present. there are definitely some people who need to work on their english because they can't get their point across due to the language barrier, so hopefully they'll go to this lecture.

hey! i just got a response from a girl i just e-mailed! that just made my day. i'm going to try to finish up this blog entry quickly so i can write her back. :) :)

anyways, i really need to develop my basketball stamina. i only played two games today. i find that when i run a few fast breaks back-to-back, i get REALLY winded. and after i play a (relatively) short 7-point game, i feel like collapsing. the other guys play for a long time after i leave, and i always feel like a wimp. my goal is to play until everyone finishes, but i think it'll take me a long time for me to get there. i need to work on that. i'm just physically weak, i guess. must. get. stronger.

i feel bad for my mom. i wish i could take this week off so i can hang out with her, and today, since i have my GNO, i won't get home until late. she's eating leftovers from all the meals we've had so far, too. anyways, tomorrow, i'm going to take her out to dinner and then hopefully have some time to take her for a stroll around stanford campus. then, i'll show her SYTYCD. then, friday, alan and i are planning on getting our moms together so they can chat. cute, huh?

my mom is deathly afraid of dogs. she told me last night that when she was growing up, her family had a dog. however, every time she came home, someone had to hold the dog down when she entered the door so it wouldn't pounce on her. so i guess i can't take my mom to alan's house because rylie (alan and ting's dog) likes to hop on people.

and in contrast, i LOVE dogs. i still wouldn't get one myself because i'm not responsible enough, nor do i have the time to take care of one (and plus, picking up a dog's shit still grosses me out). but yeah, i absolutely adore all of my friends' pooches, and i've been known to hug them tightly. so i definitely didn't inherit my mom's fear of dogs.

ok, time to e-mail that girl back. i'm SO excited to see the guys tonight!

i miss my dad already. i love my mom, yes, but i get along much better with my dad. we have more to talk about and do together. we drink and smoke together, which is pretty cool; how many of you guys do that with your dads? my mom is completely wrapped up in her religion and paranoia of all things she reads about (these include bottled satan, water, wooden chopsticks, the sun, milk, meat, gluten, etc.), so we don't have much to discuss.

my dad is one funky dude, though. this weekend, he dropped two gems on me:

"if you want to find a wife, you should only wear white or black, and put on a tie every day."

"you should marry an orphan, because they aren't messed up by bad parenting."

how's that for fatherly advice? haha! yeah, i don't know where he gets his ideas. :)

i finally finished coding! every last piece, i think. my tally is around 18,000 lines of verilog. *phew* today, i implemented and hooked up that one last port in my integration efforts. it was not a trivial thing to do. i had to implement a 3-way split in the stream protocol, and then merge them in the downstream block. but the thing was, i originally needed to do a split/merge immediately, but that's not allowed, so i had to take the data one cycle earlier, split it, delay it by one cycle, and then then do the merge afterwards. man!

at fry's yesterday, i finally saw an LED tv (a samsung model). it was pretty damn impressive. so sharp. and thin, too! not that i'm thinking about getting one, but it's nice to see what the latest technology offers. i'm totally happy with my current sony XBR2.

having AC rocks. during this past scorcher of a weekend (temps in the 90's in mountain view), air conditioning totally saved the day. however, upstairs was still really hot, even though the AC cooled down the first floor really nicely. i guess all the hot air got pushed upstairs; i should have opened the windows up there and expelled it, huh? whoops.

my mom wants me to get rid of all of my pillows and blankets. i am firmly holding my ground on this. yes, they are like 20 years old. but they're cool fabrics, and i love them dearly. we went to this store called "tuesday morning," and it was like a marshalls or t.j. maxx of housewares. my mom suggested it, and she looked for a bed set for me. however, she agreed that all the stuff they had there was damn fugly, so i lucked out and didn't get anything there besides a bath mat for my shower. i told her that i would buy some new blankets when i buy a bed, which is something that i really should do and intend to do in the near future.

like i said, last night, my mom's religious college friend came over for dinner. at one point, she asked me if i wanted to go to church with her, mainly to find a nice christian girl to marry. ugh. when she asked me, i was sitting at my computer, and i just shook my head and said in chinese, "i don't want to." i really hope she doesn't follow up on this. i hate being pressured into these situations; it makes me very uncomfortable. i know that they feel inclined to preach to us and shepherd us into their faith because they want us to go to heaven with them and all that, but really, it's up to us to find god in our own time.

i got some scary news the other day. one of my friends is in the army reserves, and he got some orders handed down to him two weeks ago. yup, he's being shipped out to iraq next march. a nine month stint. i'm worried for him. and once he goes, i'll stay worried for him every day until he comes back. war is nothing to sneeze at. i mean, he's not being sent to the front lines, and he won't be on active patrol or anything, but still, he's not going to be in friendly territory or anything. so if there is anything that i would pray for, it would be for his safety while he's out there.

i'm bummed. amyM's not coming out to visit me next month. i was really looking forward to that. i haven't seen her in 6 years! she was supposed to come before she left for hong kong a year or two ago, but that fell through. and now this. *sobs* amy's one of my oldest friends, and it's amazing how we've kept in touch through the years. i guess i'll have to make it out to NYC one of these days.

so yeah, i finally got a digital scale yesterday at bb&b. my naked night weight was 186. scary. this morning, though, it was 181.5. where did that weight go? don't tell me that i sweat it out at night, and it gets absorbed into my sheets and blankets. ewww. i really need to lose some weight. tonight, my mom and i are meeting up with jeffrey and nicki (old church friends) at gombei, so maybe i'll just split a gombei chicken with my mom. i'll feel bad if i eat a whole one by myself.

do girls who pluck their eyebrows have a problem with ingrown hairs? i pluck my cheek and nipple hairs, and every once in a while, i get that issue. it's really annoying. and they don't seem to have the ability to resolve themselves; the follicles just keep growing in a subdermal lump, and eventually, i'll have to scratch at them with the tweezers (which can lead to a small bloody mess) until they pop out. i would imagine that it would look unsightly around the eyebrow area. luckily, though, i haven't had this problem with my nose hairs, which i also pluck. i would imagine it would be downright impossible to fix an ingrown nostril hair.

you know what is totally sexy on a girl? sass. it's rare, but it is DAMN HOT. too many girls try to be too nice and polite. i love one that has an edge, an attitude of "i don't give a shit." *drools* i WANT one of those!

ok. almost 6pm. i need to go home pick up my mom and then head over to gombei.

friday night, geoff and pak came down from daly city to have dinner with us. he arranged a big outing with a bunch of people at the pizza my heart in cupertino. we ordered three large's, and i was surprised at how good the "big sur" pizza was. i had three slices of it. we hung out there for a while, and then we left for greg and cheryl's place. right after i walked out of the pizza joint, i had to go back in to take a dump; my stomach was just not feeling well that night.

at greg's place, we watched the end of _virtuality_, this much-hyped made-for-television movie by the creators of _battlestar galactica_. it was pretty bad, or at least, we couldn't follow it, so it was very uninteresting. the only thing that intrigued me was that it had the guy from _new amsterdam_ in it. i liked that show.

i had some whiskey, and i hung out for a bit, and then i went home. i didn't talk much, and i seem distracted for some reason. i played mostly with tachi, greg and cheryl's white furry dog.

saturday, i got up around 10 or so. i called some friends, and around noon, my parents arrived. yay! i took them to cafe yulong for a light meal (dumplings, potstickers, and champon). it was damn hot outside, and they had some jet lag, so they took a nap. i took a nap, too.

around 5 or so, i left them at home and met up with alan and ting at valley fair. i did some quick shopping; we hit the gap, who were having a $19.99 jeans sale. i picked up a pair; i couldn't find my size (34-32), so i tried on a pair that was 33-32, but they were too tight, and they were the wrong fit (easy fit), so then i tried on a loose fit that was 35-32, and i bought that instead. i saw one asian girl there who was really cute; she had short hair, of course. alan and ting spent over $220 there!

then, alan and i went to brookstone for a bit, and we marveled how one entire section of the wall was devoted to the frogosphere. what's a frogosphere? it's like a glass bowl with two mini frogs, some seaweed or something, and some other stuff. basically, it's an entire mini-ecosystem. do people buy this stuff? why devote a huge sectionj of your store to this one product unless demand for it is high?

then, i went back home and took my parents to dusita. yup, my 3rd time there in 6 days. i am getting tired of dusita. my parents insisted on ordering a 4th dish, and it was way too much food. so we had massive leftovers.

sunday, i woke up at 9 and dropped off my mom at church. then, my dad and hi went to fry's, where we got latte's, and he bought cordless desk phone for his office. he paid $130+ in cash. people just don't do that anymore, in the days of credit cards and checks. then, we went to best buy, where he bought a case for his garmin GPS. then, we went next door, where i finally used a 20% off coupon at bed, bath and beyond on a digital scale. i finally get to weight myself accurately!

then, i picked up my mom at church, and we headed over to milpitas to meet up with my mom's cousin at mayflower for dim sum. man, her daughter is totally spoiled; she doesn't eat any fruits, vegetables, etc. (yes, i do that too, but it's more out of laziness. i will eat them if they're given to me.) but anyways, during the entire meal, she ate a few bites of fried noodles and some sponge cake. her diet is shot.

i was distracted during the entire dim sum outing because there was a tv on the far wall, and it was showing the US/brazil soccer final of the confederations cup. the US was up 2-0 when we got there, and i was totally excited. we rushed home afterwards to watch, but alas, brazil was on fire during the second half, and we lost 3-2.

around 5pm, my mom's friend E came over. she owns like 5 restaurants in the bay area (tokyo star, and some other ones), so she brought over some sushi rolls and some malaysian food. both E and my mom are super-religious, so they prayed before the meal. she prayed in chinese, so i could make out "find dardy a nice christian girl" and "bring dardy and his dad into the church." ugh.

i sort of wanted to get out of there, so i called up dishi, and after he got done buying temporary shades at home depot, i met up with him for food at hanamaru. well, he ate, and i just drank a strawberry sake cocktail. (i hate sake, i realized.) then, we drove over to his new house, which is remarkably close to mine. his place is really nice! i marveled at how much space he has, and now i'm totally looking forward to his housewarming party. GO DISHI!

then, i went home, and E was still there, so i said goodbye to her when she left, and i just hung out with my parents.

and that was it. i love my parents, but i'm not sure i could live with them 24/7. my dad, i think i could deal with much more easily. he's chill, and we get along much better. my mom is another story. well, my dad left at 6:30am this morning, and my mom will be staying with me for this entire week. we'll see how it goes.

after a week of integrating my modules, i am *so* close to finishing. today, i continued to hook up all the ports, and i got to the *very last* one, and then, i realized... i didn't implement it correctly! *ARGH* shit. so now, i have to do some surgery on my stuff and do it the right way. *sigh* so close, yet so far. i think i'll hold this off until monday when my head is clearer. my top-level core block with all the instantiations is over 1,000 lines long. crazy!

today, i arranged a 6-person outing at dusita (yes, i was just there on monday) for V's 27th birthday. there were three vegetarians attending (all indian guys), so i figured thai cuisine offered a good variety of veggie offerings. i had catfish on monday, so this time, i ordered the pork pad see ew. it was good. i love dusita. and i noticed that one of the waitresses there was pretty cute. short, but cute. when she smiled, her eyes would just light up. i dig that.

i found byron on IM last night. i hadn't heard from him in years since he moved from the bay area to LA. he was a reader of my blog that invited me for a meetup one day. we became friends, and we played tennis together a few times. i even invited him to one of my gatherings at my place years ago. he's married! yup, just got hitched a week or two ago. i'm happy for him. byron's a cool and gentle guy, and i hope he has a joyful life with his wife. he used to blog as well on xanga, but he hasn't updated since like 2006.

so! my parents come tomorrow. i'm a bit excited. i can't wait to drink with my dad. i now have four kinds of whiskey (bushmills, jameson, black bush and sheep dip) at my place, so maybe we can do a whiskey taste test and get smashed. j/k. i think i'll bust out the black bush since he's never tried it. i wonder if my mom will want to go to church on sunday. i hope her health is ok; traveling is always tough on her. my dad upgraded their seats to business class, so that should make their long flight easier on them.

geoff arranged a dinner tonight. i haven't seen him in a while, so i'm excited to see him. we're going to pizza my heart, though, so the food isn't really much to get amped up about. but it'll be the company that matters. maybe afterwards, we can storm duke of edinburgh for some drinks. i'll make that suggestion.

so D bought tickets already to the 9:45 showing of _transformers_ at the metreon's IMAX. i told him to get there at least an hour early to stand in line to get good seats. at LEAST an hour early. i mean, you do NOT want to be sitting in the front row in an IMAX theater; that'll absolutely kill your neck. i bet it'll be awesome. i know the movie has been getting destroyed by the critics, but come on, you watch it for two reasons: cool robots and megan fox. that's it. who cares about the plot and acting? although, it *does* seem a little long, though.

shhh. don't tell D, but i bought him a kobe bryant bottlehead doll as a going-away present. he's leaving my company at the end of july, and he's a huge lakers fan. the other day, he mentioned he wanted one of them, so i went online and found one. i mentioned this to my cousin, and she mentioned there were some selling at nba.com, and i found one there that was better than the one i bought. however, that one had a wait time of 14-16 weeks, so i said, "fuck that." anyways, i hope the one i ordered gets here in time; i think D'll really appreciate it.

i got my first HOA bill. this, and the property tax (which i haven't gotten yet), is the one that hurts. my mortgage payment is only $82 more than my old rent, so that didn't bother me. but the HOA is a lot, and it's an added expense that i have to suck up. ick. lately, my credit card bills have been pretty damn huge; they included my $750 TV stand, my $600+ car repair bill, etc. i mean, i'm trying to save money here, but every month there seems to be a huge incidental purchase that i can't avoid. damn!

has anyone been to cheetahs, which is the new kit kat club? i see their ads on espn at night, and i still can't believe that they can advertise strip clubs at 10pm. are the girls any different? hotter? the kit kat had some ugly, old, fat strippers, and some nice ones sprinkled around here and there. but i wonder if cheetahs has raised its standards. i'm a little curious, but then again, i have to admit that i'm pretty bored of strip clubs these days. alan and the gang want to make a trip out to vegas some time this year, but i'm just "meh" about the whole thing. like i said, i've only gotten a woody once during all the lap dances i've received.

i wonder if my parents will complain about my place when i they see it tomorrow. i'm almost positive that they'll say it's too dark. my old place was an end unit, so it had two more windows on the first floor than my current house. i have to admit, in the mornings, it is surprisingly dark down there. but at least they can't complain about my house number, which is a prosperous number in chinese. anyways, my parents are pretty good about not being annoying nagging asian parents, although they do talk a lot about health and eating fruits and getting exercise and stuff like that.

man, i want to get out of here.

i've decided that i'm not going to IM a certain friend of mine anymore. he only responds with a single word each time, and it's just not satisfying or rewarding talking to him. it's seriously like pulling teeth. where's the joy in that? i mean, i could confront him and tell him that he's brusque, but i don't see how that would help. so i say just don't deal with it at all.

in contrast, i got an IM from a friend today who thanked me for being his friend. he told me that i'm one of his oldest friends; we've known each other for 8 years, and i guess he doesn't have many friends who he's known for that long. so he just IM'ed me to tell me that. it was genuinely heartwarming. and to be honest, it pretty much made my day; it was a kind gesture that was spontaneous and sincere. yay for those! :)

i think the right two got kicked off of SYTYCD last night. and i repeat, after a stellar first week, i am getting disappointed by the quality of the dance on this season. there are a few standouts: ade, brandon, kayla. but the rest of them do not impress me. so i don't know if i'm going to the tour this year. we'll see. when are napoleon/tabitha choreographing next?

damn, i have been bugging edric and jessica about getting indian food over the weekend. now that my parents are here, it's not going to happen this weekend. i CRAVE indian food. i doubt my parents would dig that; they're very narrow-minded when it comes to cuisines. in fact, when my mom was here last, i took her to get thai food for the first time. i don't know if she liked it.

ok, that's it for me. take care guys, it's gonna be HOT this weekend! temperatures nearing 100!

well, i will remember today as the day that michael jackson died. i was amazing to see the news unfold. i first got wind of it on twitter when jessica posted that he died. then, i went to msnbc.com, but they only said that he was hospitalized. slowly, word got around, and then i saw ryan seacrest tweet that he was rushing to the E! studios to get on air. about an hour later, it became official on the news sites; first that he was in a coma (on some sites), and then that he had truly passed away.

i wasn't a huge fan of his work, but he definitely made an imprint on my childhood. i still remember being a kid, and all the cool kids (well, there were only like one of two "lucky" ones) had his red leather jacket with a million zippers on it. i remember watching the world premiere video of "bad" on mtv, and then laughing at weird al's "fat" spoof. i remember trying to do his moonwalk and failing miserably. i remember loving the video to "smooth criminal" and wondering how they did that leaning-forward thing.

MJ, you will be missed. rest in peace.

on to other topics, i'm getting disappointed at this season's SYTYCD. aside from the very first dance of the season (phillip and jeanine's slow hip hop by nappytabs), there has not been one truly awesome or memorable dance. i mean, wade robson's crash test dummies was quirky, and last night's mia michaels ass dance was intriguing, but would i want to watch them again live? no. at this moment, i am not inclined to go to the tour. :( and phillip chbeeb needs to step up his act BIG TIME, or he will be cut before the top 10, and i'll want to see the tour even less.

i tweeted twice today. the first one was about expectations ruining everything. they truly do. when i was a teenager, i always used to say "pessimists are never disappointed." i think it's really true. lately, i've been raising my expectations, on everything from friends, shows (such as SYTYCD), my housewarming party, etc. and i've been sorely let down. i think i need to stop expecting things to be great, because i keep getting bummed out all the time. expect nothing, and you'll be surprised. yeah, that's the way to go, methinks.

my second tweet was about being impatient. it's sort of tied together with the expectations thing. i expect people to get back to me ASAP, basically for life to happen instantaneously. and things just don't happen that way. life needs a time to work itself out, and i need to be comfortable with waiting for it to develop. a lot of it has to do with me having so much time on my hands, so i spend a lot of time doing nothing, and when i want to do something, i want to do it right at that moment. so i need to work on my patience.

it's hard, though, because we live in a world that's built to deliver instant gratification. instant coffee? that was invented decades ago. instant messaging? well, that's self-explanatory, isn't it? now, we have "on demand" tv, where you can press a few buttons on your remote and have a movie or show of your choice immediately delivered to your screen. websites deliver streaming stock quotes and live gamecasts of your sporting events. youtube! millions of videos at a mouse click's command! twitter? that allows your to conduct real-time searches. things are now flying around, streaming to you directly at any moment you wish. so yeah, patience is a virtue that is getting lost (or rather, irrelevant) in our modern, hyperactive world.

*sigh*

it's hard to balance the breakneck speed of certain aspects of life and the fact that certain things just take time. at least, *i* am having trouble reconciling those two issues. like at work, it's always a struggle, i.e. the hectic schedule vs. the actual time it takes to get things done. and in my personal life, i find myself wanting certain relationships to progress at a pace that i want, but they're just not happening at the rate that is acceptable to me, if at all. and that leaves me very frustrated.

ok, this was probably the most thoughtful entry i've written in a while. i know it's short, but that's all i have to say today.