I just lost my rain of thought

I am officially cursed with electronics. My laptop has passed away and I am missing a couple months worth of photos because the last time I backed up my computer was in March. Farewell, Drew Jr. Luckily I got off my resume and movies. The pictures are important but I have a lot of them on my Flickr, so I guess that’s good. Sigh. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have bent (bended?) the truth because now my computer and I are suffering. I’m on my sister’s computer now and she’s not here in the daytime so no worries. I’ve been keeping busy anyway. Sunday I went to Heren’s grad dinner, Monday went to Old Town and Panera Bread with Wendorz and then we went to do decor child labor for Susan’s mum. haha. Today I met Dar at Boba Express by biking and then we biked to his house to Partyville and then play Diddy Kong when his dad kicked us out of the TV room (crazy new TV they have) to watch the Lakers game. Biking home was pretty tough because it’s all uphill but perhaps I will have awesome legs by the end of summer then.

CONGRATS TO EVERYONE WHO GRADUATED!! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE THE COUNTRY BECAUSE I HAVE FEW FRIENDS NEARBY AS IT IS!! I will especially miss my roomie, Heren, but we will have a ball in Europe soon enough.  To celebrate (more like mourn) the “end of an era,” as Meeshella likes to put it, we shot a really touching video, which was put together by the talented M-Dub. Please watch it over and over and over again and then spread it amongst your friends.

Sharon Stone, though she apologized for it later, recently implied that the SiChuan earthquake was caused by karma, because the Chinese were “not nice” to her good friend, the Dalai Lama. I’m pretty sure natural disasters don’t come around just because a large group of people isn’t nice to someone, otherwise a freak hurricane would’ve swept up most of America for criticizing Sharon Stone’s fashion sense and crappy movies.

I have personally been to SiChuan and there are descendants of people from Tibet there, too, in case you didn’t know, Sharon Stone. The Dalai Lama is a peaceful man and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t wish an 8.0 earthquake on anyone–not his own people, not anyone–especially not a group of people who did nothing to deserve it. Is it wrong that he was exiled from his own home? Yes. And is it wrong that the government gives Han Chinese people economic incentives for moving into Tibet and making the culture there obsolete? Again, yes. But the Chinese population isn’t the culprit here, the government is.

So due to her comment, there has been a ban on her movies implemented in many of the theaters in major cities in China, which, according to the article is more of a blessing. At least people have a better excuse not to watch her movies now other than the fact that they aren’t very good.

Anyway, I never got around to writing about the earthquake, but it’s really devastating. SiChuan is a beautiful place with people who live rather simply but enjoy food that I swear was fermented in fire because just smelling it makes me cry a little. Oh, and I was once attacked by little kids on a hillside in SiChuan near the Jiu Zhai Gou area when my family and I went up the hill to put up prayer flags, because I had a Hello Kitty keychain hanging off my backpack, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything besides that it was kind of funny. I digress. SiChuan is not a very rich province overall, so this earthquake is really, really tragic and more than 5 million people are without a home because of it. So if you can, donate some money to help them out, or even better yet, for those who can and are extremely ambitious, go over there and do something!

PS Speaking of bans on people implemented by China, did you know Brad Pitt is banned from China for being in the film Seven Years in Tibet?

My AC adapter for my laptop caught on fire sometime around 3am this morning. This is not an exaggeration. It started out smoking and then when I tried to use it again, there were sparks. And then a scene from Backdraft took place. That last sentence might be an exaggeration. On top of all my Ubuntu problems, everything I plugged into my laptop seemed to malfunction as well. Something was a little off with my laptop charger to begin with, but it got much worse within the last couple weeks. It wasn’t anything a little twisty maneuvering couldn’t fix, but last night it just refused to work. I twisted and tweaked the little nubbin that attaches to my laptop and it just wouldn’t charge. My laptop was on the brink of eternal hibernation (until I could get a new charger, that is) and the little orange light wouldn’t turn on. I started to hear this strange beeping noise and wondered where it came from. As I leaned in to the boxy adapter thing, I realized it was coming from there. I’m pretty sure adapters aren’t meant to beep, but it was doing it. I tried to move the wire a little again and the beeping shifted as the wire did. It started to get reaaally hot and the rubber got a little bloated. The beeping heightened and all of a sudden, smoke spat out of the wire. I unplugged it right away to prevent it from blowing up my computer and let it cool off. I stupidly thought if I tried it again maybe my laptop would charge, but this time was worse. MUCH worse. The beeping went all crazors and I did a little twisty action on the wire again, but all of a sudden I heard sparking noises. A bunch of smoke came out again as the sparking noises ensued. Then, i saw the sparks and they went craaazy! Even after I pulled it out, the sparks kept going. It was so traumatizing… I was extremely sad my adapter was now useless, but I found out my dad’s charger is the same size, which bumps me up to only really sad. Even so, it’s not like I can take it with me, because it just so happens that he’s returning from China this week. He wasn’t supposed to be back until later this month. So my sister is lending me her laptop for school, which I am very grateful for. She was going to pass it down to me eventually anyway, she says. I was thinking of buying a new adapter for Drew Jr, but she doesn’t think it’s worth it since he’s pretty old, but he works fine for my needs, so I kind of want to save him. I don’t know what to do. The adapters are like 20 bucks on eBay, which isn’t that horrendous, but she doesn’t even think it’s worth it to spend that much on little ol’ Drew Jr, emphasis on the “ol’.” Well, anyway, if anyone wants to be generous, my computer is a Compaq Presario 2100 series laptop who enjoys long walks in my backpack and being fully charged and turned on.

And before I forget again, Duck Confit (con-fee) is kind of fun to say.

I hate the way I fuss over such minute problems in my life while there are bigger things going on around me. For a couple weeks now I’ve been flying without wings, but for some reason (that I know haha), I sort of plummeted this weekend. I was alone, bored and I just wanted to get out Friday night, but no one was around to save me, so I did some random stuff and eventually got tired and went to sleep feeling okay. But for some reason everything about Saturday just seemed off. I’m not in the indifferent state I was in before, at least, but I’m not filled with the glee I was enjoying earlier. Minor setback, I’d say.

I suppose it didn’t help that my cousins were talking about relationships and such, and, both of them being married already, were saying college is prime time to meet the mens, because, as said by one of them, “it’s all slim pickin’s from then on.” I mean, all my married cousins met their hubs in college. What can I do? I’m no social magnet. It made me a little scared, like I was behind in my schedule of life. I would prefer not to be an old spinster, but if that is my fate, I suppose I’ll have to accept it. But uh, if anyone wants to help a sister out, I’m open to suggestions (and introductions!). Nothing shady.

As for the greater things going on around me, I hate feeling like I can’t help those around me. I feel so…helpless, for lack of better words. I’m one of those people who just wants to fix things all the time and make everything better, but I can’t. I’m totally ready to get my superpower of making miracles happen, yo.

On a lighter note, some relatives visited from SF this weekend. I went with two of my cousins to Old Town Pasadena for some retail therapy today. And some Pinkberry. Thinking back on that, I…feel kind of good now. hahaha. I love frozen yogurt. It was really good hanging out with them and talking with them and earlier on, my other cousin, Cherry. Helen and Mary got to try Pinkberry for the first time today, so life’s got new meaning for them now, of course. haha. Anyway, didn’t see a lot of things I liked today, but Mary got me a coat from H&M and that filled me with some materialistic joy. Yee!

Writing this down has actually made me feel better, so kudos to blogging. My heart (and foot) goes out to others who are not doing so well. I’m sending good thoughts their ways.

I was looking forward to choir all week and then it was cancelled. Sigh. My life is forfeit. What to do? At least it gave me time to finish my essay and draw some pictures.

I don’t mean that in an emo way. I went snowboarding yesterday for the first time in two years at Mountain High. Good Lawd, I am in so much pain today. I feel like every single muscle and joint in my body is crying. My butt is like abused. I have a tougher time than others because I don’t really have a butt, so there isn’t anything there to break my fall. My existence hurts. I’m not kidding. The only time it doesn’t hurt is when I stay completely still. One reason why my whole being hurts is that I forgot to stretch, even though I had told myself several times before I got there that I would. I just got so excited when I saw snow that I put on all my gear and began walking towards it. Another reason is that I freaking ate it a few times. It got to the point where I was covered in ice because the snow melted onto me and I had snow everywhere it could dig itself into. I had snow encrusted onto my whole scarf, in my pockets, down my pants, inside my sleeves… One time I fell so hard that I somehow got snow inside my goggles and I couldn’t see anymore. The thing is, my goggles didn’t come off my face. Odd. I have lots of mysterious bruises and cuts, too, that I don’t remember getting but I’m not surprised.

To make matters worse, I had like a ten-hour shift a few hours after I got back. Did I use those few hours wisely and rest up? No. Did I ice my bum? Nope. I actually don’t really recall what I did for those hours. But it wasn’t either of those.

Snowboarding was fun, but I wish it didn’t hurt so much. Fall less, you say? Well, I haven’t learned to carve yet, so I don’t see that happening any time in the near future. I hope to figure it out soon, because pain is so saddening.

Whenever people talk to me about relationship problems, like really depressing ones, I tend to hurt with them. It reminds me of what happened to me. It really, really hurt, but I try to play it down a lot now because it was so long ago and because I still feel ultra lame about it. haha. That’s right. Not just lame but ultra lame. It creeps up on me a lot and because I was feeling a little bummy, I decided to go back to old journal entries and relive the ups and downs a bit to figure out what the eff happened and I found this baby. The first paragraph is what I’m pointing out and you may choose to ignore the rest if you’d like, but I found that stuff kind of funny. What I wrote is still true. I’m a pretty upbeat person most times, because I hate being such a Debbie Downer and ruining everyone else’s fun. My method of getting better is just to keep the smiley faces going if I can and try really hard to take my mind off things and eventually enough time will pass for me to say that I really am okay. I do, of course, talk to a select few about those kinds of things when it gets bad, so don’t think I’m like a walking timebomb of crazy or something. It’s weird because, upon reading that old entry, I felt like the way I write now isn’t quite as happy sounding as it used to be, like I’m just kind of numb to everything now, possibly a little more angry and annoyed with the world, but maybe it’s just because that entry was from so long ago and I was trying really hard to keep the world from seeing how I was really doing. Or maybe I am a late bloomer and suffer from twenties angst instead of teenage angst.

I hate that I keep staying up until morning, by the way. I haven’t made much effort to normalize my sleeping patterns since I got back. There’s just been too much going on! I have to move a lot of stuff to my apartment today. I can’t wait to see my lovely apartmentmates! But I think I am returning home afterwards because the Moon Festival is on Tuesday and I’d like to be home to celebrate with family and repeatedly play and sing along with my current favorite song, Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin!!

I am very bummed that the Barry Gibb Talk Show clip was taken down. Now I can’t watch it over and over again. Why must YouTube suck the fun out of everything? Why?

Anyway, I feel like I have already become the bitter old woman I have been destined to become my whole life. It just surprises me how mean I am now. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was my hellish year and my lack of faith and trust in human beings. Maybe it’s philosophy forcing me to see what I have been trying to ignore. Maybe it’s the way people disregard what I have to say until someone else validates my opinion. I just don’t know what to do. A break from life is much needed. Sigh.

In other news, I’m kind of excited for dressing up for my cousin’s wedding, the first wedding I am going to where I don’t have to do any labor for the bride. Yes! And I don’t have to wear That Dress anymore! I get to wear the dress I bought like more than half a year in advance… Bahaha. The reason for the excitement is because of my aunt’s visit. All this talk of her daughter’s wedding has gotten me thinking about hair and my dress and what shoes to wear with it and wondering what the wedding will be like so I can be prepared. Then I thought about the weddings of my other cousins and it’s just so yay.

Hopefully this time I won’t be such a fatty. Thanks for not telling me I gained like twenty pounds last year, everybody. True, I do not want to hear the blatant “You’re so [friggin'] fat!”s that I got from pretty much everyone who has ever seen me in China (that is sooo not an exaggeration, I swear), but a much friendlier “You’ve put on a little weight” would have been nice. I’m sure if they had a word for friggin’, they totally would have used it, but instead I added it in myself because the way they said it in Chinese was meant that way. Seriously I’m like average weight over here, but they are just so MEAN over there. It’s not my fault I am not malnourished, geebus. Anyway, I’m sleepy. PEACE AUS.

I am finally on break, but not really because I have summer school starting on Monday! I hate that it’s in the middle of the friggin’ day, because anything I do will have to start at like 6 pm or end at 2 pm, which is most likely one or two hours after I wake up. Blah.

Things haven’t been too swell since I got back. I have nowhere to put my things that I moved home. My doggle is not well . And my computer is being a little weiner. It won’t freakin’ shut UP. I broke it somehow, I guess, because the effing fan turns on as soon as I turn on the computer, causing it to get hot really fast and use up my battery really fast and make my computer slower and get on my nerves really fast. I want to throw it across the room, but then I’d lose all my stuff. Sigh. Did I mention my doggle is not well?!?! She looks so tired and sad and we can’t do much because it’s the weekend and not many places are open that can look at her and this one place that was doubles the payment if you don’t make an appointment, so we’d have to go Monday anyway. Her face is all swollen on one side and I have no idea what is wrong with her. She doesn’t get upset when we push on it, but it’s huge! I don’t know what to doooo.

The only bright side so far has been watching Ocean’s 13. It’s pretty awesome, so watch it!